World Animal Day was created to raise awareness of animal welfare. Many animals share their lives with humans, offering help, labor, resources, love, and companionship. Unfortunately, they are not always treated well in return. This October 4th, take the opportunity to appreciate our four-legged friends, celebrate how much they enrich our lives, and campaign for animal welfare with a World Animal Day promotion.
How to run a World Animal Day promotion
Everyone loves animals. Almost all of us had a pet when we were young, and can share happy memories of the times we’ve spent with our favorite creatures. And everyone can participate in World Animal Day, too.
Get involved with:
- Your brand or organization. Animal charities, non-profits, and brands will naturally take the lead with a World Animal Day promotion. Raise awareness of your cause, or run a promotion of your products and services to celebrate the day.
- Your online audience. Even if your brand doesn’t work with animals, we bet your customers are animal fans! Ask them to share photos, stories, and videos of their pets. You’ll boost engagement online, and show your brand’s fluffy side.
- Co-branding and sponsoring. If you’re still struggling to make a connection, then think about teaming up with a charity or brand. Sponsor an animal shelter, offer pet food discounts, get involved in an event… the possibilities are endless!
When it comes to online engagement, your goal is to build a relationship with your community. The best way to achieve this – and get the most out of social media algorithms – is through spontaneous, original interactions.
Encourage your followers to talk to you and share their photos, videos, or stories. Tap into memories of childhood pets and uncover customers’ empathy for mistreated animals. Finally, don’t miss the opportunity to educate them about animal welfare, what you can do to help, and the products and services you offer. Take a look at the suggestions below to design your World Animal Day promotion.
Run a World Animal Day social media giveaway and boost engagement for your brand
The first place to start is on your social networks. Think carefully about your audience on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Giveaways are really popular on all these platforms. You can run a quick contest, and use it as an extra chance to reinforce product promotion by advertising the prize with photos and videos.
Here’s an example of a giveaway that you can organize to celebrate World Animal Day on Instagram. Four local brands teamed up to together raffle a prize bundle for dog owners – snacks, color portraits, and other freebies were up for grabs. Participating users liked the giveaway post, tagged a friend who would have loved to win, and followed the accounts of all the organizers.
Here’s another example of a giveaway that wasn’t organized precisely for World Animal Day but shows everything that World Animal Day giveaways should include. Take a look at this fun and creative picture that informs the users of the giveaway. The title, colors, dog, and prizes shown on the image grab the user’s attention, which is the first step to participating. In this case, Zesty Paws asked participants to tag two friends, follow the organizing accounts, and like the giveaway post.
At last but not least, here’s another example of a giveaway that any brand can organize right in time for World Animal Day. Remember, you don’t have to be directly linked to pets or animal products because we guarantee that there are pet lovers among your followers and clients. Just put together a basket full of gadgets and snacks for dogs or cats, and run a World Animal Day giveaway on Instagram.
Each social network has different rules, but we always recommend a giveaway based on comments, as it’s the best way to increase engagement. Ask your followers to share stories, tips, tricks, and opinions with you. Then you simply import the comments to your Easypromos account, and randomly pick a winner of the competition. And if you don’t know where to start, make sure to use our World Animal Day giveaway template for Instagram.
Want to connect your online communities? Don’t want to create a separate contest for each social network? Use the Multi-Network giveaway app to run a single giveaway across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Gamify your World Animal Day campaign and entertain your audience
You might know by now that gamification is the most innovative and effective form of digital promotion. By giving your audience a chance to participate in a playable campaign you get a chance to expose them to your logo and products while providing entertainment, engagement, and information about your brand. Therefore, adding branded games to your World Animal Day campaign is also a great idea. Let’s take a look at this Hidden Objects game organized by a pet shop.
This specific promotion was created by MyPetBuddy as part of their Christmas campaign but it’s a fantastic example to show you how branded mini-games can be used by pet shops. The brand was giving away a Christmas-themed goodie bag with toys for dogs. Participants registered by filling in the registration form and concurrently expanding the brand’s mailing list. Then the fastest participants were entered into a random prize draw.
Collect World Animal Day user-generated content with Photo and Video Contests
World Animal Day Photo Contests
Another popular option is to collect user-generated content in a Photo Contest. You can display all the adorable entries in a public gallery and invite your followers to vote for their favorite photos. In many cases, voting can double your engagement with your World Animal Day promotion.
Here’s an example we love from Ottawa County administration. They wanted to celebrate pets – and keep them safe. So the county ran a photo contest for local dogs. However, only licensed dogs could participate. When users clicked on the contest, the app encouraged them to check their pets’ licensing status, and quickly renew their documents if necessary.
As an incentive, the county offered over $500 in gift cards. They awarded the prizes in several different ways: by voting, by a jury, and through a final grand prize draw. Offering a range of prizes – especially versatile prizes, such as gift cards – is extremely popular with online users.
World Animal Day Video Contest
Video Contests work exactly the same way as photo competitions. Users submit their entries for a chance to win. Or like in the following case, make their dogs famous! DOGTV incorporates user-generated content quite a lot in their TV programs. Every couple of months they encourage their audience to take create videos of their best friends for a chance to be featured on the TV channel.
Once users submit their entries they ask their family and friends for votes. This makes the promotion go viral and increases brand awareness and visibility. The audience also feels more attached to the organizer and their brand loyalty is reinforced, too.
Writing Contests for World Animal Day
Another way to obtain user-generated content is Writing Contests. They’re fantastic tools to gather stories, views, opinions, and feedback from your online community.
Virox Animal Health decided to give back to their community, to be exact, to animal shelters. They asked followers to nominate their local shelters for a chance to win a Rescue Disinfectants kit. Interested participants fill in the entry form and explain how winning could benefit their nominated shelter.
So what are the benefits of text competitions for World Animal Day? In this case, apart from building relationships with their community, the brand is also obtaining user-generated content that can be reused for future marketing purposes. Let’s not forget about all the good they’re doing and how that generates trust and loyalty from the audience.
Ask your followers to pick a favorite
We know, we know – it’s impossible to pick favorites when all the candidates are so cute! But Pick Your Favorite contests are very popular online, and a great way to boost engagement with your brand.
Take a look at this example from a federation of animal rescue centers in New York. Every year, they release a calendar as part of their fundraising strategy. So they ran a contest where users could vote for their favorite calendar cover.
They used the Easypromos gallery design to share the calendar cover photos, as well as each animal’s adoption story. The promotion was extremely effective. Online engagement increased, and the fundraising calendar got more publicity.
Looking for ways to increase engagement? Discover how to do it with Easypromos solutions.
Challenge your customers with a quiz
Promotions aren’t just about prizes and publicity. Online quizzes are a powerful tool to educate and inform your followers. We were really impressed by this campaign from PDSA, the UK’s leading vet charity.
They wanted to raise awareness about cat flu. The goal was to educate pet owners about symptoms, treatments, and vaccinations for this damaging disease. So they designed a quick, four-question quiz.
As you can see, they kept the questions simple. When users chose their answer, they’d see a pop-up that explained the correct answer, plus some important tips for taking care of their pets.
At the same time, PDSA also ran a quiz to raise awareness about parvovirus for dogs. This had a similar goal, but they could target a different sector of their audience: dog owners.
Make your World Animal Day promotion go viral with our Refer a Friend app
Looking to increase brand awareness and online presence? There’s nothing better than Refer a Friend contest. How does it work? Registered participants get more chances to win for every friend they recruit. This dynamic encourages social media sharing. And you can organize such a promotion for World Animal Day!
Dog Grooming Services wanted to promote to increase their brand awareness so they decided to go for a Refer a Friend contest. Participants entered for a chance to win a variety of different dog care products. The more people they recruited the more chances to win they had.
Create your own World Animal Day promotion
With all these ideas and inspiration, you’re ready to run your own World Animal Day promotion! It’s free to create an Easypromos account and start drafting your promotions. And if you get stuck don’t hesitate to contact us. Our Support Team is always ready to assist!
