Pet Parents Rely on Ratings and Reviews
PetIQ’s industry-leading pet health products and brands deliver prescription medication, over-the-counter treatments, and treats to leading retailers nationwide, as well as online at petiq.com.
In the US, 66% of households – nearly 87 million homes – own a pet. Consequently, the pet care market is substantial; the global companion animal medicine market size was estimated at $21.3 billion in 2023.
Not only is the pet care market vast, it is also highly competitive. Pet parents, looking to make informed preventative care choices for their animals, often seek user-generated content (UGC), such as ratings and reviews, before making a purchase. This is why Manuel Perez, PetIQ’s Digital Marketing Manager, and Trevor Davis, PetIQ’s Senior Director of E-Commerce Sales, have leveraged ratings and reviews as a key tactic in their online brand-building and product marketing efforts.
It’s also a crucial commerce element for PetIQ’s retail partners, requiring customer reviews before making products available for purchase online. For instance, the online pet supply powerhouse Chewy.com mandates 50 product reviews per SKU for a new product to be offered through its website.
Putting the Power of Direct-to-Retailer Reviews Campaigns to Work
The company’s Sampling for Reviews campaigns have been focused on getting quality review coverage for two of its pet health products under its NextStar® and VetIQ® brands for sale by Chewy.com.
PowerReviews Sampling for Reviews program streamlines the process, making it a turnkey solution. PetIQ shipped the product samples to PowerReviews’ warehouse, and PowerReviews handled all the fulfillment logistics. The product samples were then distributed to pet parents meeting specific parameters within PowerReviews’ international community of consumers who voluntarily share their opinions and experiences on various products and services for leading brands around the world. Pet parents were then prompted to write a review for the Chewy.com site.
NextStar® Product Sampling Campaign Leads to 50% Boost in Sales on Chewy.com
PowerReviews’ Sampling for Reviews campaign for the NextStar® product achieved an 88% review completion rate with an average rating of 4.6-stars. The VetIQ® product campaign fared even better – with over a 91% review completion rate and an average ratings of 4.6-stars.
Why does the review submission rate matter? A high review submission rate means fewer samples are required to hit the desired review volume target, which in turn provides a greater return for less saving the brand money in the long run.
Not only did the campaign generate a high volume of high-quality ratings and reviews, but the NextStar® campaign led to a 50% boost in sales on Chewy.com, a trend that Davis notes PetIQ continues to see.
“We were impressed with how quickly we were able to obtain the volume of reviews – all within the span of a month. And the quality of the reviews and the images that were collected were a big win for Chewy.com, bringing another level of brand authenticity to the forefront,” said Trevor Davis, Senior Director of E-Commerce Sales for PetIQ. “And of course, we’ve seen positive feedback from a demand perspective.”
Another noteworthy “win” was the two-tier nature of the sampling for reviews campaign, which allowed product testers to leave a review both on the VetIQ® website and on Chewy.com.
Working with PowerReviews
Previously, PetIQ partnered with another vendor for its ratings and reviews program.
“The decision to switch to PowerReviews came down to the type of service the company needed,” explained Manuel Perez, Digital Marketing Manager. “The PowerReviews offering is a great fit for us; we can easily leverage everything PowerReviews offers.
“Working with PowerReviews has been very smooth. In contrast to my work with countless vendors, I have found the PowerReviews team to engage in a very authentic way – not sales-y, but in a very consultative way, offering advice, best practices, and recommendations that have been advantageous to building out our ratings and reviews program,” said Perez.
“I like that the PowerReviews platform makes all the data easily available; exporting data is not time-consuming, and you can easily dive into the data to understand how people are consuming review content on our display, as well as other key insights such as the keywords they are searching for. This information allows us to enhance our product descriptions and improve our SEO rankings”.
“As the sales guy, I just want results,” said Davis. “The reviews come, they come quickly with high quality and the sales increase, so I’m happy.”
