Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Did you know that the pet care industry is a billion dollar industry and it is continuously growing? But are the people who care for your pets growing as well? I'm Dara Forleo and on the business of pet care, we are going to talk about what really goes on behind the scenes of those grooming tables, those daycare walls and those social media filters.
Welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome to the business of pet care where we are talking about systems, strategies and decisions that is shaping modern businesses today.
I'm your host, Tara Forleo and today I am very excited to introduce not only a colleague, but a good friend.
This is Britt Kastjak. She is an SEO specialist at Cast Creative Works. And I am really excited to introduce you to the Kass pack because that is something one. When her and I met, it was astonishing what she has created. Brit helps pet brands build authority. That translates into measurable traffic, trust and conversations. And it is not just about all the content output that we seem to be recreating on a daily basis.
Today we're going to start talking about what that authority actually looks like and how businesses, they're not really accidentally signaling all of this. So I would like to turn this over and welcome Britt. I'm so excited to have you. How are you?
[00:01:41] Speaker B: Hi, Dara. I am so excited to be here. I mean, it feels like forever since I got to speak with you last.
[00:01:50] Speaker A: It's been a while.
We met at Global last year and what an amazing opportunity. I had so much fun with, with you ladies.
It was just such an experience. I wish I could go back because I will say that was by far one of the best business summits I've been to in the pet industry.
[00:02:11] Speaker B: There's, you know, any chance that we have to get together and to learn from each other. That is what I think makes this community so strong, is that we all have our, our strengths, we all have the things that we bring to the table. And so when we come together, we can all build on that and help each other and lift each other up.
[00:02:30] Speaker A: Yeah, it was such a fun opportunity.
So let's talk about what you do because this is so important.
And right before we got on, we were kind of talking about this, you know, being found and being searched and, and when there's so many pet brands out there and a lot of us do similar.
So, you know, what are we doing? What do we need to be doing? What should we be focusing on? What kind of trade secrets do you want to give us today?
[00:03:02] Speaker B: So the biggest thing I want to say to everybody out there is that we're at a time right now where it is changing. Life is changing, the digital space is changing, Marketing as we know it is changing. And you've probably heard a lot of buzz about, like, SEO is dead, or you have to change everything to rank in AI or nobody's using Google anymore. And the biggest one that I've seen a lot of is Google's not ranking websites anymore.
I hate to break it to you, but if you go to Google and you search something, you still get websites.
[00:03:36] Speaker A: You get websites. You do get websites. It's a little buried under all that AI chat, but you do get websites in there. And it is tough because there are so many words.
You know, I've been trying to boost our website and it's like, what is going on? There are certain words that I just am not getting caught in those algorithms.
[00:04:06] Speaker B: Yeah.
One of the things that I've noticed a lot of is that people are throwing all these different phrases and words and trying to essentially trick you into buying their course. So it's like you have to buy this course for AEO and this course for GEO and this course for SEO, and they're. They're literally throwing spaghetti at a wall because at this point, we don't have that answer.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: You gotta back up. What were those Other2?
[00:04:40] Speaker B: So AIO is for AI optimization. That is how you change your content or position your content, I should say, so that it shows up in AI spaces. Like Google's AI overviews. Yeah, GEO is Generative Engine Optimization. So that's looking at your LLMs, that's your chat GPT. Perplexity Gemini, how to get those different platforms to actually recommend you. Okay, now, before you go dropping any, you know, money on any of this, or running to try and find the answer to each of these individually, I'll tell you that the solid foundation across all of these is almost identical.
It's the same things that we're doing already that you've been told to do a million times.
Whether you're doing it or not, that's another question. You know, each of us, each of us is going to have to look at what we're doing, and the way we do it can tweak a little bit sometimes. Like, sometimes there's a little bit of a focus more on one thing than another, and we can definitely talk about that, but the solid foundation is the same. So I want to stress. I can't stress that enough. Please, please don't freak out when you guys are seeing all of this being mentioned, talked about, what is going on out there, it's not changing as much as we think. It really isn't. From a creator perspective, from trying to use these tools to optimize ourselves to show up online.
[00:06:07] Speaker A: That is so.
All right, so for instance, website, let's say wherever it's hosted, doesn't matter. They, you, you got to go in, you get your pages, you're writing your long tail and your short tail. Right.
[00:06:23] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:06:24] Speaker A: If I'm saying everything, because I am, they know a smidge. Enough to be deadly, not enough to really do what needs to be done, I think. But putting in the right keywords to drive all this traffic.
[00:06:39] Speaker B: Yes. So keywords are still a point to consider because that's what people are searching, that's what people are looking for. And now I will say short tail keywords, things like dog grooming, that's the thing of the past. They're so oversaturated. You're really not going to get anywhere with anything like that. It's not worth your effort, it's not worth your time. The value lies in long tail niche keywords and phrases. And the reason for that is the search intent behind them. So if someone goes on and they're searching, whether it's on ChatGPT or on Google and they're just searching dog grooming, who knows what they're going to get? But if they're searching dog groomer in Orlando, Florida, that's going to be more looking for dog groomers in that area because they specifically want to find a dog groomer to book a grooming appointment.
[00:07:27] Speaker A: Gotcha. Gotcha. That makes total sense.
Make sure. So that's long tail.
[00:07:34] Speaker B: Yes, yes. Okay.
Those are the longer, more specific keywords that really drill down into your, your target audience and who you want to reach. Yeah.
[00:07:44] Speaker A: Okay, interesting. And this is stuff you put strategically throughout a website.
[00:07:51] Speaker B: Yes. So it should show up on every page that you're specifically talking about what your business is about. So if you have an about page, it should be in there somewhere. If you have, well, obviously you have a homepage, it should be in there somewhere. If you have a page that is all about, like it's got all your services listed and you want someone to book, make sure that's on there somewhere.
[00:08:11] Speaker A: That.
[00:08:11] Speaker B: Because that creates a consistency across your website.
So it's very, very clear that that is what you're looking for. Now don't over use it. It is where these phrases fit in naturally. Because if you say it, you know, five, 10, 20 times now, you look like spam and now you're actually going to get penalized.
[00:08:29] Speaker A: Okay. So you still have to keep your like your credit score up. There you go. Yeah, keep that all nice and level. So Google so the search engines don't.
[00:08:43] Speaker B: Yeah, basically. And then the, the key comes into finding different ways to say it. And that is really where AI especially kind of leans into things too is that not everybody is going to search just by writing dog groomer in Orlando, Florida. Right. They could be looking for Florida dog groomers or dog groomers in a specific area of Orlando, Florida. Like maybe it's a specific neighborhood, specializes in a specific dog.
It's going to be all about finding where the people you want to reach are and what they're searching for in that moment.
[00:09:21] Speaker A: Okay, any specific examples? A little more about how to see the these improvements if you start doing this and implementing this.
[00:09:38] Speaker B: Yes. So and this kind of gets into that. The next step of what I wanted to talk about is really that authority element. So in addition to making sure that something is on your page, which has always been a big thing in the past, we've also then really pushed link building. Right. We want to make sure that that link building is in there. You're getting links from other websites. Well, with the, the age of AI, that link building becomes a bigger authority building. You want to be mentioned, you want to be discussed, you want to be having people recommending you on social, having people post about you, share their reviews everywhere you can show up online, whether it's your website, somebody else's website, a podcast, a social media post, those all come together and AI looks at the entire big picture instead of just that website.
[00:10:25] Speaker A: Okay. That's has a lot to take in, especially for a small business that I guess doesn't have a lot of reach, that may be more centralized, but that for them could be looking for more of a, more of a community niche as well and looking internally verse the larger picture.
[00:10:53] Speaker B: And honestly for some of these businesses that have that small like tight knit loyal community, it's actually get some out there because these people are excited to talk about you. If you're throwing an event, for example, or you're doing a giveaway, these people are already tied to you and devoted to you. They want to share. So they're going to post on social and talk about you more.
[00:11:13] Speaker A: Yeah, we're going to take a break for just a minute, but up next we are going to move more into this because this is a big deal and this is really how AI is searching and how how this larger language model is really changing how we're discovered in the pet industry. So stay tuned. We will be right back.
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We are back and we are continuing because the search is no longer just about ranking on Google. It is all about the AI systems and retrieving, summarizing, recommending all the information that we need to know where it's going, where it's coming from and the pet businesses that if you are not adapting, you're going to lose visibility pretty darn quick. And Britt is going to take us into this.
What do you think, Brit? What, what do we need to do?
[00:13:13] Speaker B: So one word that you mentioned that I think really needs to be hammered home on is visibility.
We have put so much stress for so long about traffic, right? Your website's doing well if you get this many clicks or you have this many visitors. And in the current day and part of the struggle a lot of content creators are having and small businesses are having is that those clicks aren't there the same.
Even the strongest websites are seeing a hit right now on the number of visitors and the amount of traffic coming into their website.
But that doesn't have to be a bad thing because what's happened is that with the age of AI and with the fact that like AI overviews can give you kind of a rough summary first, people aren't having to click to hope. People are clicking because they know. So the people who are coming to your website, they're not coming hoping you have an answer, hoping you might be what they're looking for. They've already seen something, they've read something and they believe you have the answer and have already pre qualified themselves.
So from a business standpoint, it's almost like you're, you're sloughing off some of that extra traffic that really didn't do anything for you any anyway, it was just, you know, it looked good that you had these extra thousand clicks, but those thousand clicks were never going to do anything. They were never going to buy, they were never going to book. They had no actual interest in your business. So does it really matter that they're not coming to your website anymore.
[00:14:37] Speaker A: Yeah. So once you get them, so it's all about once they're there, making sure that that customer journey is really strong to get them to take that next step.
[00:14:52] Speaker B: Exactly. So going back to our, our example about the dog groomer in Orlando, Florida, if somebody has searched, you know, looking for a dog grooming on a drug groomer, sorry, in Orlando, Florida, they're not accidentally coming across your site because they followed some trend likely about dog groomers, period. They know you're in Orlando, Florida, they are looking for a dog groomery in Orlando, Florida. So when they reach your website, where are they going from there? Do you have like clear instructions about what you offer? Do you have a clear booking system? Do you have an example of what your services are so that they know you're the dog groomer for them and what step to take next? But they've pre qualified themselves because they've already acknowledged they want to find a dog groomer in Orlando, Florida and showing up on your website.
[00:15:42] Speaker A: Yeah, that's. Yeah, okay. But it's making, it makes more sense that way and it's, I think people just really at least come in from the service side of things and more. You know, we talk a lot about grooming here because I'm a groomer and that's what we do. But you know, we just throw up a website and let it go and don't think about or even know because this isn't stuff that's really taught in our industry.
And I've just really started getting involved in it as I've really started looking for more. How do we get better?
All right, so I'm going to ask you a question about the difference in this, the AI search. And I think there was something maybe on your website about LLM retrieval versus traditional search.
Is that.
[00:16:40] Speaker B: Yes. So when you try to get into traditional search, you're looking for that clickable link you want to show up there that somebody's going to click through to you. Now this changes a little bit with AI overviews, that's a whole separate category of its own. But if somebody is just going to Google searching like we always have in the past, they type in their, their query and a bunch of links pop up. They get that tiny little overview. We've all looked at those meta descriptions and what is being shown there, that little feature image and they decide to click on you based on that.
In the age of LLMs, which is your chat perplexity, those type of models, when someone asks question, they get an answer, it's right there in front of them in chatgpt in perplexity.
So that generic information that anybody can put out there is already there. And that is where we really have to start to rethink our content marketing.
Because if you're only putting for example, blog posts about very basic, broad topics that anybody can talk about and anybody can answer, well, not anybody could be chatgpt and so why would they click through to your website? But if you are offering more nuanced, more specific, more hands on, more person, first person experiences and bringing value to that conversation, then they'll get the basic overview and you're the next step to learn more. Right? So maybe they're have always been searching for why does this specific shampoo bug my dog's fur? And they, they read an AI overview, gives, you know, the basic different types of shampoos and skin allergies.
But then they see that you have an article specifically about how you use different shampoos with different dogs to accommodate skin allergies. Well, now you're that next step, you're that next piece of information. So they've read that overview in ChatGPT and it makes sense to click through to you.
And not only are you getting that click, you're now the knowledge expert because you're who ChatGPT says has the information, who knows more than any other person on that specific topic.
[00:18:47] Speaker A: All right, so how do you get more involved? How do you get into ChatGPT?
[00:18:53] Speaker B: So how do we get.
First things first, do you have to still rank with traditional search? Okay, I hate to break it to you, but every LLM does come back to a traditional search. Generally it's either Google or Bing.
So for Google, obviously we all know just make sure your keywords are there. There's nothing really special you can do. You can go into Google Search console to make sure that you're being shown like it'll tell you if there's errors, that they can't actually show your content or list your content.
Bing has their own version of that, the Bing Webmaster tools and it is actually very, very similar.
There's a lot of tutorials like that literally show them side by side. So you can see that it's pretty much the exact same thing except for Bing.
And even if you're not showing up a ton on there right now, make sure you're, you're on there. Make sure you go and sign up for Bing Webmaster, create your account, submit your site. Because if you're not putting your site out there for indexing and Bing isn't indexing you. Well then any LLM that relies on Bing to pull that information isn't listing you.
[00:20:00] Speaker A: So going back to when we met last year, you did this the class, I think you did this in Orlando.
[00:20:10] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:20:11] Speaker A: You did.
[00:20:11] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:20:11] Speaker A: That's right.
I have been trying for a year to get on Bing and still can't.
[00:20:20] Speaker B: Interesting.
It could be, it could be an error and I'd have to see your actual Bing account. Yeah, well, just I have had in a couple cases I've had some like weird tweak errors. But I've had the same in Google too. I've had a couple customers I've had to work around and troubleshoot. Yeah, for most people it's as simple as if you're on Google, you can literally transition to Bing. So there's a button that you can click that segues it right over.
We can talk though, for sure.
[00:20:45] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a whole other conversation. But as we're getting into this, I do have another question because I want to know as we're talking about this, what are the three highest priority adjustments that a small business should be making right now to get this? You know, we're coming into the end of quarter one already.
What's some things they can really do to, to help this this year for sure.
[00:21:11] Speaker B: So number one, I'm going to say that the absolute top thing to focus on going into the current age of, of Internet and digital presence is your authority. Make sure that your website, your presence online is very clear, clear about what your authority is. That means a very well described about page. That means having author bios on your blog posts and it means in your blog posts about being able to mention yourself or your business as an authority. It is okay to say as we do at Business Name here, things like that to put yourself forward because when people are reading it, when bots are scanning it, you want them to know that you are the authority, you are the reason behind it. It's not just some generic content that was spit out by Chad GPT. It was written by somebody who knows what they're doing and has that backing. Now that doesn't have to be certifications or a position.
It can be certifications or a position. In some cases, like in grooming, you can get certifications. But in other aspects, like getting into what we'll talk about later with my community, there is no certification to back a lot of what I do. It's experience. Right. So in that case I have to Phrase, experience into it. Either way, that authority is what's going to set you apart from everybody else. So don't be afraid. I know it feels a little bit like bragging and we all have that struggle. You know, you're writing your about page, you're like, am I being too braggy on this one? It's okay in that situation to brag. Please brag. Because you're telling everyone why they should trust you.
[00:22:41] Speaker A: Yeah, that's really tough.
[00:22:44] Speaker B: It is, it is. Even I have a really hard time doing it and you'll laugh. I was talking to a colleague of ours actually recently and I said, you know, I just realized and changed and put something on my website today to say that I have expertise in community building.
[00:23:02] Speaker A: You do?
[00:23:03] Speaker B: I have a 27 expertise in it. I have a 27,000 member community.
But I just added that. I just added that to my about page because for some reason putting that there to me felt braggy. Until I stopped and thought about it and I was like, wait, I'm preaching this to everybody else.
I'm not doing it myself.
[00:23:22] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We gotta take a break. So we'll come back to the last two. But real quick, where can we find you?
[00:23:30] Speaker B: You can either find me at Cast Creative Works, K A S CreativeWorks CA or as we'll get into in a little here, the Kaspac K A S pack.com, which is my community, my niche community that we're going to use as an example. Talking about a few things shortly.
[00:23:47] Speaker A: Exciting coming back. Do not miss. We are shifting now from strategy to the operation side of how Brit built the Cast Pack into a focused media platform.
And this is such an amazing thing. You don't want to miss it. We'll be right back.
All right, welcome back. Let's talk about what it looks like when someone does not just advertise their brand, but they are operating it up tenfold. Brit has built the Cast Pack, which is a very, very niche, pet friendly outdoor travel platform.
And it has grown, and I think even grown more since. Since we met last year, but.
[00:25:02] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:25:02] Speaker A: Yeah. So I'm gonna just say you have a huge following and it is very, very regional focused.
So how did you do it?
[00:25:17] Speaker B: So I started, to be honest, the Caspak as a website, the basic blog, just for fun. It was something I enjoyed doing. It was a passion of mine.
It is dedicated to outdoor travel with dogs and cats. So we camp, we hike, we backpack, we canoe with our dogs and our cats.
[00:25:36] Speaker A: With your cats too?
Yeah.
[00:25:38] Speaker B: I have, I have A cat who thinks pictures.
Yeah, I have a cat who thinks she's a dog. She hikes, she wears her little life jacket in the canoe.
That's my little Sia. But I, I just, I just wanted to share. Like it was just kind of fun to share, to put up some pictures to have those stories out there.
And as I was doing that, I was active in a lot of like the online camping groups and I noticed that when somebody would say something like, oh, I'm looking for the perfect campsite for dogs, you get a whole slew of people getting really negative like, oh, I hate camping around dogs. Dogs always bark and why can't dog owners clean up after themselves? And all these complaints that, you know, sometimes they're valid complaints, but like you've never met this one person with this one dog. So why are we throwing all of this at this person right now?
So I decided to create a Facebook group and my idea was if like a hundred of us got together, we could support one another and find some places. So I created a group and I named, I gave it a very basic name, made it very clear what it was about. It is camping and hiking with dogs. Ontario. So yeah, yep, Justin, Ontario. Like very specific, very niche.
Like I said goal was like 100 people, right?
So we're now currently at 27, 000, coming up at 28,000.
We now have whole events held within our community. I run photo scavenger hunts. We do 12 days of holidays giveaway where we have brands come in and do giveaways for them that are related to adventuring with pets.
We gave away raised dog beds and life jackets and dog coats and all sorts of stuff this past holiday season.
And what I realized really quickly in doing that was that people want to be part of a community where they connect with people. It's about that, that, that connection, that relationship building. And when you get into a niche focus like that, you're actually making that even easier because going back almost to that salesy talk, they're pre qualifying themselves by joining, by joining my group, they're telling me they love dogs, they love traveling with their dogs, they love camping, they love being outdoors.
So we share all of that right off the bat. So building that relationship has that foundation right out of the go. And because you're building that relationship, they then trust you and want to know more about what you're doing. So when I make a recommendation, it's not just Joe Schmo on chat. GPT says this is the best dog harness. It's that that specific person who I know camps and hikes with their dogs and I trust and I watch all the time, says that's the harness they use. I should look into that.
[00:28:21] Speaker A: Oh, look, we're being joined.
There's always one or two that pops in from time to time. Today it's Beatrice, apparently.
[00:28:29] Speaker B: Oh, hi, Beatrice.
[00:28:33] Speaker A: It's so.
[00:28:36] Speaker B: And.
[00:28:36] Speaker A: And you know, I know on Facebook there are some monster groups out there. How do you manage that by yourself?
Do you have some other admins? Are you like you. You guys doing it all?
[00:28:52] Speaker B: So I will say I'm very, very lucky. My husband is also very passionate about all of this.
[00:28:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I've seen his posts, too.
[00:29:00] Speaker B: We each have our own aspects of it that we enjoy the most.
He adores video editing, for example, whereas I love going out there and getting the content, but I don't really care to do the editing afterwards. So if he wants to do it, I'm not going to say no.
He doesn't like writing. So we found this kind of balance between the two of us that we're able to share a lot of things with the community.
We have the two of us kind of majorly overseeing it as the admins, but we do have a small group of really great mods that have volunteered just to be moderators, just to help support the community. Yeah.
And I also think the big thing to keep in mind too is with a lot of these monster groups, they just kind of let them take off. Like, there's. There's very little rules, there's very little moderation, there's very little care into building the actual community itself and therefore building the culture of that community.
I've been very intentional right from the beginning. We have some very specific rules about what we will and won't tolerate.
And by doing that, I've created a safe space that, to be honest, my group needs very little moderation, despite how big it's grown, because they're just so, like, it's such an incredible, healthy, positive space for people where everyone wants to help each other.
[00:30:15] Speaker A: I want to know about this scavenger hunt. How do you do that?
Or do you want to give that away? You don't have to have a great secret. Not here to take those away.
[00:30:24] Speaker B: If this. If this will help anybody else degrees, I highly recommend. I actually got it from somebody else.
Huge shout out to Emily hall and her kitty cat Go Adventure community.
[00:30:34] Speaker A: Oh, she's got an amazing one.
[00:30:36] Speaker B: Yes, she does. And she does these photo scavenger hunts, which is what inspired me to end up doing it as well.
[00:30:42] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:30:43] Speaker B: So in the summer, what I do is I put out a list of prompts.
And because of what my niche is about being about camping and hiking, they're all like, camping and hiking focused. But I try not to make them too, like, location specific because Ontario is big. Like, I don't know if you realize, but, like, a lot of people don't know that you can drive across Ontario for 24 hours and still be in Ontario. Oh, God. Nope.
[00:31:05] Speaker A: Had no idea.
[00:31:06] Speaker B: Yeah, we're massive. So.
And a lot of it, a lot of it, the people are kind of in one small spot. But that doesn't mean I don't have community members way up here in the far less populated areas. Right. So I don't want to give, like, this person has huge advantage because they live near Toronto.
So I choose prompts that are like, show me a picture of your dog getting muddy or show me a picture of your dog at a trailhead where you have the sign before you enter a trail. Yep.
[00:31:36] Speaker A: Yep.
[00:31:37] Speaker B: And so we pick random little photos like that, and they submit them by posting them in the group, tagging me, putting the number, and everybody. Every time that you get one, you get one entry per prompt. So you can't do the same prompt five times.
But if there's 15 prompts, that means you have 15 chances to get your name in. And then at the end, we, we take those entries and we do giveaways. So if you, if you did five prompts, you have five chances to win kind of thing. And it just, let's be honest, dog people want to share their dogs.
We want to share, we want to show them off. We want to share photos and videos and stories about them. And so when you give them that opportunity, everybody jumps on board because you're literally telling them, please show me your dog playing in the mud, please show me your dog swimming, Please show me your dog hiking. And people love it. We participate too. Obviously, my husband and I aren't eligible for the prizes, but we still participate with them and share our photos. And we have a couple brands that have joined that'll join the group that are doing the giveaways. And often the brands will join in too. Obviously they're not wanting to win their own prizes either, but they just like sharing their pets and it becomes just this huge community building thing. And I think that's part of the reason why the culture of our community is as strong as it is, is because we hold events like this that we literally connect with each other and feel that bond because we're all sharing something that is so important to us and so meaningful to us. Yeah.
[00:33:03] Speaker A: She is loving this.
She's like, tell me more, Brit.
I do not want to go hiking myself.
[00:33:12] Speaker B: But she's adorable.
[00:33:17] Speaker A: She is a mess, huh? Yes.
Super cute. Love them that. And so you do that for like the summer. So you'll set like three months.
[00:33:28] Speaker B: Yeah, so we, we usually do it July and August because those are like the peak season here for, for camping. And then it also kind of offsets that nicely because then we have the holiday giveaway in December. Now, if anybody is watching this and you have a seasonal business that's going to be naturally busy one time than another, obviously being in camping and hiking. Some people do winter camp and hike. We do, but not everybody does. In fact, the vast majority takes the winter season off. And I'm in Ontario, so winter is not small, winter is not short.
So by doing something in the holidays like that, that drives action and engagement within the community, keeps that community busy throughout the winter season so we don't lose what we've been building throughout the busier season.
All right.
[00:34:16] Speaker A: And did you say you just opened a website for this also?
So is this. Or you've had a website for it?
[00:34:24] Speaker B: So we've had Class Creative Works for a while, but we haven't really marketed it as something that we're actively going out doing until now. So what Cast Creative Works is. Is like the overall umbrella under everything which my husband and I do, which is freelance writing, SEO, strategy and consultation, community building, content creation.
Okay.
[00:34:45] Speaker A: And might as well keep going. Let's find you besides with the Cast Pack on.
[00:34:52] Speaker B: So yes, that is. So that would be catscreativeworks.ca is our main website. It links out to everything. We do have several other websites that we run, but the Cast Pack is our main one. Thecastpack.com and then across social media, we are on pretty much every social media platform. Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and it's all at the Caspac, the Kas pack. And our YouTube is actually becoming our big focus for 2026. So we're gonna have a whole lot more videos coming out there showing our pets out on their adventures and trying new gear and that kind of thing.
[00:35:28] Speaker A: All right. I love that because that is what I made. My goal this year is to. I'm like, I don't want a tick tock. I don't want to Instagram, I don't want to do any of that. I'm like, done with that. But I want to focus on YouTube and, and do that. So that's great to hear that there's somebody else going for that.
All right, we are going to take another break and this time we are going to be talking about the blind spots that are really undermining the pet businesses and the market. And when you're working as hard as you do, we got some work to do. So we're going to talk about that as soon as we get back.
Welcome back to the business of pet care.
Beatrice and I hold it in center court today. Don't miss a second of any of our shows Now Media TV and your favorites streaming live and on demand anytime. Grab the free Now Media TV app on Roku or ISO or listen to the podcast at @NowMedia TV. Now Media TV is available 24 7, so the stories you care about are always there within reach.
And welcome back to the business of Pet Care. In this final segment, I'm interviewing or if Beatrice has taken it today, but we are going to start talking about the marketing mistakes that don't just slow your growth, but they are really eroding that trust and long term visibility.
Oh my goodness. Okay, she's out of here.
So welcome back. What Brit, what do you think are the most common marketing patterns that really are limiting growth within the pet industry?
[00:37:56] Speaker B: So one of the first things that I see a lot is that people will over commit and under deliver. We all want to be everywhere. We want to be on every platform. And I know I just finished saying like I'm in all of these different places but there's, there's two of us. Keep that in mind. People like my husband is also posting. So I personally am not juggling all of this because if I did, I would burn out really quickly.
So I always tell people that as much as it's nice to have and you should have your setup of a presence of some form on every platform so that if people can find you, they know where to go find you. So let's say you don't want to use Instagram because that's not where your, your audience tends to hang out.
Build a profile anyway. Throw a couple posts up saying here's where you can find me.
But don't try and do everything.
Take a moment to think about who you're speaking to, who you want to connect with and where they're going to be and that's where you need to show up. Additionally, consider what you enjoy doing. Going back to what you were saying a moment ago, you don't really want to do the TikTok. So it would be, you know, if everybody's on TikTok, great. If you don't want to do it, it's going to feel more like work. It's going to wear you down way quicker and it's going to be harder to get yourself out there doing that and staying consistent with that. So find, you know, one or two social platforms that you really want to focus on and really hammer those home. But make sure you do set up a profile telling people where to find you on the other places. So if you're not active on Facebook, have a Facebook page that says, hey,
[00:39:25] Speaker A: I'm here, go find me here and pin that post or something.
[00:39:30] Speaker B: Exactly. And that also still allows for going back to what we were saying with the LLMs, that if somebody wants to mention your business, they can still tag you, which tells the LLMs they're talking about you. It goes back to that mention and that getting people talking about you aspects. You're making it easy by being there, but you don't have to be active there. You don't have to be posting every day on all places. Set yourself up to succeed by not overextending yourself right out of the gate.
[00:39:55] Speaker A: Yeah, it, it is too much. I, I was trying to do it all and it's like, oh my God, this is.
[00:40:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I see why it wouldn't be.
But we wouldn't be in nearly as many places if my husband wasn't doing half the work. Yeah. I'm not gonna lie.
[00:40:13] Speaker A: Yeah, there's. There's just too many platforms to do and how Threads is coming and I would. Blue sky and like, oh my.
[00:40:21] Speaker B: And if you're up here, Canada now. In. In response to everything that's going on in the world, we now have our own Canada only platforms.
So like, I recently just joined Gander, which is kind of like a mix of Blue sky and Instagram, but it's just for Canadians and by invite only. And so. So it's throwing more out there.
[00:40:42] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So it's just. It is. And I. The videos. I like the videos. I think that's getting really good. Is that like, I'm terrible at shorts. Not gonna lie. Absolutely atrocious.
I'm too long winded for it. I just,
[00:41:00] Speaker B: I will say, I will say if somebody is interested in getting into shorts, I personally find that TikTok is a little bit easier than Instagram or YouTube in the beginning with shorts only because the expectation that Instagram has built has been this more like edited, nice aesthetic situation and YouTube because it's so focused on long form. Video has also really adopted that edited, well produced aesthetic. Whereas on TikTok, if you're not making mistakes, they're probably going to question you and not show back up at your profile because they actually want to see real. So they want to see mistakes, they want to see you slub, they want to see the authentic, raw content out there.
[00:41:43] Speaker A: And so that's what I've been hearing. And again I'm like, yeah, it's a
[00:41:48] Speaker B: little bit more forgiving, a little bit more forgiving because if you do make a mistake, you don't have to go back and fix it. Just oh, oops, I made a mistake and keep going.
That said, I, I don't know about the future of Tick Tock. We won't get into that too much but with the sale of Tick Tock and everything else, like, I don't know if it's going to be around a long time. So that kind of brings us back to the other end of the spectrum of what I was saying, which is don't put all your eggs in one basket, especially a social media basket. So if the only place that you have yourself right now is on a social media platform, whether it's Facebook or Instagram or Tick Tock or whatever, and that platform shut down tomorrow, what are you going to do?
Let's look at Google plus. For a long time Google plus people were like, you should be on Google plus, like it's a great business platform and it's gone.
Everything you build on it is gone.
So you have to make sure you have something where you own that traffic flow, you have access to those people. Even if all of your social media platforms shut down tomorrow, you know, I
[00:42:50] Speaker A: have seen over the past few months a lot of big Facebook groups that have like had to admins have been deleted. We've been taken down, we're changing to a new group and had these huge followings. It's like, and, and you said you put everything into that and so that really made us. That's where I started really going, done here. This is one. It's not safe as an educational platform that we have. It's not safe for our students, it's not safe for our content to, to be that inundated in a such a public area like that. So we've kind of gone in our own direction with, with our own community.
But what about Google?
When you post on Google, what do you feel about that?
[00:43:49] Speaker B: It's, it's also really kind of relying on and hoping for Somebody else.
The real thing I drive home to everybody that I think everybody should do is you should have an email list. Even if. And, And I mean, we. I just finished saying, don't put all your eggs in one platform with a social media basket. Obviously, with my Facebook group, we have a lot there. But when you join my Facebook group, one of the questions that it asks is for your email address if you want to join our email newsletter. And because they're coming into a community that's about a topic that they're really interested in, I have a really high rate of people who give an email as they join the community. And then in addition to that, we make sure that at least once a month I'm posting something reminding people, hey, we have an email newsletter. If you didn't get a chance to join when you joined the community, it's here. Here are some freebies we've given out recently.
And so if they shut down Facebook tomorrow and I had to go move my community somewhere else, I have all those email addresses that I can then send out a message and say, hey, I'm over here now.
[00:44:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, I see that that's a big problem out there right now, but I think a lot of people are going to be finding that to be worse with their groups.
[00:44:55] Speaker B: Yeah. And even if you're only. Even if you're only emailing once a month, you have those emails. That is such valuable information, such valuable data to have in your hands.
[00:45:06] Speaker A: Yeah. So. And you think Google just posting on that isn't as. As great?
[00:45:12] Speaker B: I. I wouldn't just post on any one thing.
[00:45:16] Speaker A: No, no, I know. I'm just thinking, you know, when, when you see your post, when you Google yourself and it comes up and you've.
But what, what do businesses really misunderstand about customer intent and how's that showing up?
[00:45:38] Speaker B: So we go into creating content sometimes and we get a little blind to what the average person is looking for. Because when you're creating content about grooming, for example, you are coming from the experience of someone who knows all of this in grooming. When I'm writing about camping and hiking, I am, you know, years of camping and hiking with my pets. And this is something that I was reminded of recently because we do a survey once a year in my community where I ask them, are there any topics that you want to see me cover?
And almost every topic that was listed was beginner.
Because I had a lot of really great, further, more advanced content. They wanted me to step back and do that. Beginner content. And so then you have to stop. And that led me to. Because I, you know, am an SEO that I geek out over the data. So I go back and I look at the data of how people are finding me and searching for me, and when I look at those key phrases and what's ranking for them, therefore what people are actually looking for when they're searching, that a lot of it was beginner focused. So I was missing the search intent of my own phrases for some of these because I was taking the phrase and going, oh, well, obviously they want this advanced concept because that's what I would be looking for. But if you go and you go into like a incognito tab and you know you're not signed into your Google or anything, and you Google a phrase and you look at, you know, of the top 10, if five of them are beginner focused, that's Google telling you people are searching for beginner intent content.
In the same way maybe they're searching for. You're trying to rank for something to get them to buy something.
And so you've been saying, I don't know, dandruff shampoo. Dog dandruff shampoo. Yeah. And you really, really want to sell your dog dandruff shampoo. If you go there and all of the, like, top seven of the 10 are about how to make dandruff shampoo or why dandruff shampoo is not important.
Do you think people are actually going there to buy dandruff shampoo? No, they're not. So we need to take that moment to stop and look not just from our perspective, but to look from the perspective of who's searching to understand what they're actually looking for when they search that phrase.
Gotcha.
[00:47:47] Speaker A: Yeah, that, that makes, oh, so much to think about.
It's really stressful. Not gonna lie.
It is really stressful. Well, I want to thank you for being on the show and I want you to tell everyone one more time where they're at. And you know what, what are you gonna do? What can you do to help them boost their businesses?
[00:48:15] Speaker B: Yes. So over at cascreativeworks, CA K a s creativeworks CA is our overall media website and that is where we offer freelance writing, social media, content creation, and SEO strategy sessions. So anybody who is looking and trying to figure out how to do this, maybe they're overwhelmed by a particular aspect or they don't know what step to take first. Or I do do strategy calls where I will work with you and help you figure out where you're going and what you're going to do next. In that aspect, I also work with brands to help not only create but actually implement content strategies, whether that's photo content or I do a lot of written content with brands where we'll work together to find those phrases and then I actually have a team of writers that I can pull in and get that content written for you.
So all of that is available under Cast Creative Work. And if you are just looking for a community of people who like camping and hiking, the caspak.com that's their home.
[00:49:13] Speaker A: That's where they need to find you.
[00:49:15] Speaker B: Yep. That is, that is where we spend most of our time. That is where you will see across our socials at the Caspack. You'll see all of my pets, my adorable little dogs and my cat who thinks she's a dog and see the night in their adventures. So.
[00:49:29] Speaker A: Oh well, thank you so much for being on. This was so, so great. We have not had anyone talk about any of this so far on the show. So hey, for everyone out there, if you are building your search engines, if you're building your authority and and looking to do this, reach out to Britt. She's your girl.
There is nobody better in this industry to help you get on track than than her. So make sure your marketing is doing what it's supposed to for you and that it's productive and that you don't have to do as much effort because it's doing it for you.
So next time we will see you at next week. I'll see you. This is the business of pet care. I am Derek Forleo and we will see you soon.
