Spirit Dog Training are an online dog training course provider who are smashing it out of the park. Their marketing is off the charts, so I thought it’d be helpful to walk you through how their blogging strategy supports their course sales.
Table of Contents
Blog strategy
Spirit Dog Training has landed position 1 on Google for an awful lot of dog related search terms… How have they done it? Well, most of the pages on their website taking the top spot for search terms are blogs.
So if you were in any doubt about the power of blogging to increase your audience and grow your brand, hopefully you can now lay those doubts to rest!
But not just any blog will drive these kind of results. Spirit Dog Training have invested a lot into their content marketing and have an insane number of blog posts driving regular traffic to their website.
Let’s look at the top 3 types of dog blog content that bring them traffic.
Dog Breed blogs
From colour blogs to grooming blogs to complete breed guides and breed prices, Spirit Dog has a huge number of blogs dedicated to the most popular dog breeds. And these blogs bring them an enormous amount of traffic each month.
From German Shepherds to Collies and Poodle Crosses, they’ve picked breeds that are both popular and that are likely to need support with their dog training.
You can see from the small snippet below that the wealth of dog breed blogs created have the potential to bring Spirit Dog Training a huge number of dog lovers to their website. This goes well beyond what you can achieve with just your standard home and service pages.
Once you start blogging with purpose you can target so many more keywords and search terms, bringing you a huge amount of traffic.
Each blog has a sign up for their free dog training course within it, right there on the page. This encourages people to subscribe to their mailing list so they can continue nurturing site visitors towards sales.
You can learn more about lead magnets here and about email marketing here.
Reactive Dog Training Blog
Spirit Dog Training has an online training course for reactive dog owners, but that course page isn’t the page bringing reactive dog owners to their website organically.
This reactive dog blog is bringing them a ton of reactive dog owners looking for help with their anxious, fearful or nervous dogs. And when they land on this blog, it doesn’t disappoint.
This is what is known as cornerstone content. Cornerstone content aims to provide the most comprehensive and useful information on a topic, blowing competing content out of the water.
This blog is over 13,000 words long. It’s extensive and covers everything a reactive dog owner could be looking for. It has a handy table of contents at the top to help readers skip to the bits they’re interested in, and uses infographics to make the information easy to digest.
It also targets a ton of search terms that reactive dog owners would type into Google, and answers them comprehensively. Winning Spirit Dog Training the top spot for lots of reactive dog related keywords and long tail phrases.
Spirit Dog Training have optimised this blog for SEO, making the most of the mammoth effort they put into producing this stellar piece of cornerstone content.
Separation Anxiety Blog
This separation anxiety blog is a lot shorter than their reactive dog training blog, coming in at just over 2400 words. But it’s still a very comprehensive blog on a smaller topic. Which is bringing in a nice amount of traffic each month from the UK alone.
The global traffic to each of these blogs will be much higher than the screen grabs you’re seeing here, and since their dog training is online, they can benefit from all these international site visits.
If you take time to read through these blogs, you will see that one of the things Spirit Dog Training does very well is to give their readers value.
They don’t hold back on giving away dog training tips and advice, which ensures that people who click through to their blogs get what they were coming for.
When we think about winning organic traffic, it’s paramount that we remember Google’s biggest goal is to please the people searching. Don’t hold back on sharing useful answers and information to satisfy those searches.
Let’s take a closer look at some of their other marketing strategies
I’m by no means saying that blogs alone have achieved the prominence Spirit Dog Training has in the online dog training world. They use ads, social media, YouTube, affiliates and a lot of onsite optimisation for both conversion and SEO.
Let’s have a look at some of the things Spirit Dog Training is doing to market their online courses.
Free course as a lead magnet
This is visible when you land on the homepage with a nice shiny yellow button which draws the eye.
Plus, they follow up with a well-timed pop up offering free access to their mini-course.
Capturing these subscribers seems to be their main goal, and it’s a smart one! Whilst many rush to score a fast sale, smart cookies know that it’s likely to take a little more nurturing before your site visitors rush to part with their cash.
This is where your email marketing comes in. Stay in touch with relevant value-based content, make sure you have a welcome email sequence set up and move your blog readers towards becoming buyers.
If you’re using ads, then this is where your retargeting comes in too.
Scarcity Marketing
Spirit Dog Training run a lot of limited time offers, clearly highlighting the saving available at any given time.
They’re harnessing scarcity marketing tactics to encourage people to take action fast. There’s nothing wrong with this if it’s a genuine time-sensitive discount, but if it’s not, then I’d put this in the unethical marketing tactics bucket.
Over time, this can cause damage to your brand once people cotton on that you’re being dishonest about savings/time limited discounts. Learn more about ethical marketing vs unethical marketing here.
The scarcity marketing continues on each sales page at Spirit Dog Training. Using a countdown timer to spur site visitors on to buy before the discount expires.
Their sales pages feature FAQS to handle objections, a healthy dose of reviews for social proof, a 60 day moneyback guarantee to offer reassurance and a ton of ‘free’ bonuses to make it look like a no-brainer deal.
You can find a guide to everything to include on your sales page here.
Social Proof
Spirit Dog Training harnesses the power of social proof really well on their website, with reviews peppered everywhere from people who’ve taken their courses.
If you want to build trust and inspire action, using reviews and testimonials in your marketing is essential. Learn more about how to use testimonials in your marketing here.
Affiliate programme scores backlinks
Spirit Dog Training offers an affiliate programme, which is a brilliant way to win lots of backlinks to their website. Backlinks are links to your website from other pages on the internet, and when placed right they can really power up your SEO and traffic.
Their affiliate programme also acts as another element of social proof, if other dog trainers are promoting these courses then that adds authority in the dog training arena.
You can find other affiliate programmes in the dog training industry here.
Want to learn how to market your online dog training course?
Tap straight into my free webinar which walks you through the 5 essential steps to launching and marketing your online dog training course.
READ NEXT:
10 ways to increase your dog training income
0 Comments