Animal Welfare Professionals

Who is responsible for promoting and marketing your adoptable animals?  Do you have a marketing budget?  We are struggling right now with large dogs and really need to push to find them homes.  This can be a challenge for us because we don't have staff dedicated to marketing or coming up with great adoption events.  It seems difficult to just get through the day somedays and adding more work to my staff isn't fair.  Does anyone have a group of volunteers or an easy way to keep promote these guys?

Every Thursday we have FREE FURSday!  Any animal that has been on our adoption floor for 2 weeks or more we waive the adoption fee.  We showcase a folder of these animals on our social media every Thursday as well. 

Check out these great ideas from For All Animals: http://picturemeathome.org/

And here is an article about a free dog event: https://www.animalsheltering.org/magazine/articles/cant-buy-me-love

We have some free tools and inspiration over on the HeARTs Speak site, including overlays/stickers/phrases to add to fliers or photos that might help with an adoption promotion or social media posts! The resources are really targeted for groups of all kinds but can be especially helpful for those without dedicated marketing staff https://www.heartsspeak.org/edu/

We also have a large network of photographers, marketing professionals and other artists that do pro bono work, so take a look at our map and see if there's anyone near your area. If not, feel free to let me know and I can do a call out for graphic designers that could help remotely, even if they aren't in your area! https://www.heartsspeak.org/find-an-artist/

A lot of the shelters we have worked with do end up putting together a group of volunteers who can take photos, brainstorm some creative ideas, and then collaborate with staff to execute them! I'll see if I can get some sample SOPs or other ideas on how to get started!

Also this marketing manual from the Medium and Large Adult Dog Foster Apprenticeship:

http://www.maddiesfund.org/assets/documents/Institute/Marketing%20Dogs%20from%20Foster%20Care%204-11-17-1.pdf

If you are part of the Best Friends Network, they have marketing tools and ideas for large dogs. Also, I can't emphasize enough how popular videos are now. We get more traction on FB with videos than anything. Definitely fantastic photos are a much, however videos showing the dogs having fun outside the shelter, with people, definitely helps. We mostly have large dogs, so I understand your struggle. Because we have a training program, we make it point to market that as part of the adoption process, including post adoption assistance. That helps.

Moving large dogs is one of our biggest challenges too and it's the majority of our population. We do A LOT of adoption specials either by weight (ie $40 for dogs 40+lbs) or specials with exclusion (no smalls, puppies, etc). We also do a lot of videos showing cute things that the big dogs do, even if it's just snuggling with a volunteer or playing with a toy. It's pretty remarkable how quick they can move if they have a cute video! Always happy to help with additional resources or marketing pieces if you'd like to see anything we do at KC Pet Project. 

At the Animal Rescue League of NH, we unfortunately, do not have a marketing budget. What seems to work for us with some of our larger dogs who stay a while, is that we try and get new pictures of them periodically and show people in their pictures interacting. I try to encourage the staff that are bonded with those dogs to change up their profiles to maybe grab someone's attention. Also, we try to work on good kennel presentation so that the dogs can sell themselves. Everyone asks about the quiet dogs when they walk through the kennel.

Our volunteers also send out notes to each other about their outings so that we can grab fun tidbits about the dogs there too.

We've also reached out to local pet stores to "advertise" and even to running stores if the dogs we have are athletes and need someone who would run with them.