Have you ever thought about starting your own petting zoo? Kids love them, and truth be told, so do their parents, because they encourage children to be interested in animal science. Petting zoo favorites include horses, cows, pigs, sheep and goats. More exotic animals, such as llamas, woodchucks and deer, are also solid choices. Most petting zoos do not charge admission, but instead sell items such as pet food pellets from dispensers. A typical dispenser will vend one-half ounce of pet food for $.50. That translates to $16 a pound collected for approximately $3 of food, creating a profit potential of $13 a pound. A modestly successful petting zoo will dispense 20 lbs of food per day, equaling a profit of $260 a day from just one source. Other merchandise for sale could include snacks, tee-shirts, and stuffed animals. With the right marketing, a petting zoo can pay for itself and even yield a profit. And in any event, a petting zoo will likely impart a love for animals and animal science to young children.
How do you market your petting zoo? You need a marketing plan, and will want to set up a web site for your zoo. Here are some suggestions for your pet zoo website:
- Design: The site should be kid-friendly, with a lot of cute pictures and videos. Start with a WordPress website and then customize it with a cheerful theme. Include puzzles, games, and other features that kids would like. The website should include forms to collect the names and email addresses of visitors so that you can set up an email marketing campaign, as well as a social media program.
- Content: Write in simple sentences that can be understood by youngsters. Include interesting facts, including ones that kids would find “gross” – kids love gross things. Write a weekly blog that talks about the animals in the zoo. This will motivate kids to visit the zoo and see the animals you feature. If writing isn’t your strong suit, hire a freelance writer to take care of the content for you.
- Backlinks: Hire a link seller to plant hypertext links in authoritative websites that link to your site. These links will help increase the traffic to your site by improving your search engine results for your chosen keywords. You can check backlinks with an Internet tool that will tell you who is linked to your site. You want links from sites with a high Page Rank – these are the kind of links that improve your results.
A petting zoo will bring a lot of joy to many young children. And if it instills a lifelong love for animals and animal science, so much the better.