Hi Boox Popular Magazine 2024
One major challenge most animal shelters face is getting pups into good homes. While this may look like a daunting task, a couple of tips can help make it happen without stress. With a little bit of effort and creativity, you can put your animal shelter on the map and help more dogs enjoy a caring and welcoming environment from a good family.
In this post, we have provided you with 6 effective tips that can help you promote your animal shelter without having to spend a dime at all. Read on to see what’s included in each point and see how you can put them into use to your shelter’s benefit.
How to Freely Market Your Animal Shelter to Get More Homeless Dogs into Good Homes
1. Keep the shelter clean
Yes, this is a very important, yet underrated way of marketing an animal shelter. When the environment of the shelter is clean, you won’t be struggling too much to market the shelter for cat or dog adoptions. Keeping your dogs or cats in a smelly, dirty environment will discourage guests and volunteers that might want to visit your establishment to adopt the animals.
So, market your shelter in the best possible way by making sure the first thing on the list is checked – keeping the environment clean. This will make potential adopters feel more at home and also assure them that they have come to the right place to adopt a dog.
2. Follow the life of every animal that comes into your shelter
Everyone is touched by a well-narrated animal story, and fortunately, every strayed and homeless animal has a story. So get people more interested in the animals in your shelter by telling the stories of the animals as well as their struggles. How did you manage to come across the little dog? How is her temperament and how has she been coping at the shelter?
To effectively promote your animal shelter with storytelling, you will need to know a lot about each pup and be able to communicate their stories to potential adopters.
3. Write compelling adoption bios for the animals
One of the things that attract potential adopters is the bio of the animal – they all want to know what the personality of the dog is. So, it is your responsibility to present your dog in the most presentable way by helping to showcase her personality through compelling and well-crafted adoption bios. Attract more adopters by uploading the bios on your website or social media page, showcasing their favorite treats and activities. To add humor and flare to your marketing, you can make the bios written in their “own voice”.
For example, you can put up something like, “Hello! I’m Joey. I’m 2 years old and weigh 40 pounds. Though I may look like a tough guy, I am actually a champion snuggler. I enjoy peanut butter and always ready to take on any exercise I can get.”
Having compelling bios written with so much fun will not only help adopters have good insight into the personality of the dog but will also whet their desire to take in such a dog. If you will be putting up the bios on a website or social media page, remember to pair it up with an appealing photo or video. It makes potential owners more interested in adoption.
4. Get the dogs out into the community
When it comes to promoting your animal shelter, the more people see your pets, the better chance they get of being adopted. So consider setting up an eye-catching table or booth at a local event. Ask if it is allowed to bring adoptable dogs to such an event. If it is allowed, prepare your pups well, and get ready to showcase them to the public.
However, remember to dress the dogs in vests on which it will be boldly written, “Adopt Me”. In such a situation, you will also need to keep plenty of flyers about your shelter and other adoptable dogs in there. That means even if adopters cannot adopt a dog at the spot, they can always visit your shelter later to pick one.
Apart from getting your animals down to local events, there are other ways to showcase them to the public. One of such is taking your pets on walks in public areas like hiking trails or parks where they will have the chance to meet people and also be seen. The exposure will surely go a long way in helping to promote your animal shelter.
5. Promote using social media
This is another free tool to promote your animal shelter. If properly done, it can be a game-changer for your establishment. It will not only help put your shelter in the spotlight but will also shine a light on the animals for adoption.
When looking to use social media to promote your animal shelter for free, focus your efforts on Instagram and Facebook. Create engaging content that will help market your shelter. To make this much easier for you, you can take advantage of a tool like PosterMyWall to make social media post for your shelter. The tool has some really interesting pre-made templates you can just customize and use on your page right away.
To take more advantage of social media for your animal shelter, you should check these tips:
- Regularly post appealing and creative images of the animals on your page
- Keep your followers updated about every pet in your shelter – even after adoption
- Let them see your ready-to-adopt pups
- Post happy moments of the animals once in a while
- Use Instagram stories to promote adoptable animals and upcoming events
- Don’t be afraid to ask for help
- Create a poll to engage with your followers
- Use relevant hashtags to increase visibility
6. Put up a fun adoption event
No, this won’t cost you a lot of money as you might have thought. But there is a level of planning required to put up a successful event. What you want to achieve with the event is to draw a crowd of potential adopters and increase the animals’ chance of getting adopted into a home.
To host a successful fun adoption event, here are some tips that could help:
- Give the event a really catchy theme
- Get volunteers on board to help during the event
- Conduct a fundraising campaign to generate money for the event
- Use social media to promote the event
- Post flyers and raise awareness in local stores
Final Note
Getting your pups into good homes you will be proud of doesn’t have to cost you a fortune. You can make it happen free of charge. Leverage the tips in this article to help market your animal shelter and get more homeless animals into loving families they deserve. It will make a whole difference for you and the animals.
