by Nancy Hassel, American Pet Professionals
After over two long years, pet events are now back in full swing across the country, and it’s a great thing to see! One way to celebrate the season with your dog (or cat) is by hosting a festive events for them. Check out these 5 Fall events that you can host at your business, whether it’s a pet supply store or another type of pet business. Even if you don’t have a facility, who can you cross promote with to host events? Or what upcoming events near you are looking for vendors? Many pet parents are looking for fun fall and holiday pet events to do with their dogs! Start planning now for a successful event!
- Host a Fall Pet Photo Shoot! – Host a weekend where you have a pet photographer come to your store with a fall themed backdrop or set depending on your space. Have them handle setting up the appointments, and cross promote it together. We often think of photos with Santa, but offering Halloween, Thanksgiving, Autumn themed photo shoots will make your pet business stand out. And who doesn’t want a picture of their pet professionally taken with pumpkins and fall leaves? Brings new customers in your store who will likely shop as well.
- Pumpkin Spice Celebration – Join in on all the pumpkin spice promo’s and host your own Pumpkin Pup Cookies tasting event. This could be done in a yappy hour theme, and invite people to your store to have their dogs taste different pumpkin flavored treats, you could even have a pet nutritionist or veterinarian talk about the benefits of pumpkin for your dog. Serve Pumpkin Spice Coffee for the humans!
Click the picture below to grab our 200+ Pet Event Ideas for even more inspiration, and plan your year of pet events out!
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Spooky Haunted House tour that is pet friendly – Many towns have haunted house tours that are outside (a walking tour) contact them to see if they could do a pet friendly tour with your organization. This would be a great cross promotion for your local community and animal rescue, proceeds of the tour going to a local animal rescue. Having areas along the tour that are Instagram worthy to create that FOMO if you plan on doing the event a couple of weekends, have your guests help create that fear of missing out! This could also be done in a holiday themed tour with historic houses decked out for the holidays.
- SantaCon – but for the pets! Host a pet parade around town with dogs dressed in their best Santa costume. You could partner with local businesses along the route to judge the best pet Santa outfit (in different categories), and have the parade return to your store, dog training facility, grooming shop, veterinarian hospital and continue the fun with yappy hour and prizes for the best Santa. This will take a bit of planning but can easily be done for this year. You could also do this for a Thanksgiving themed vs. SantaCon.
- Tree Decorating Event – This can be something that is done in your store, or decorating a tree at a local animal rescue with pictures of the pets for adoption. Or as ornaments or pictures of ‘wish list’ items that the animal rescue needs – and patrons can take an ornament and go and purchase that item for the animal rescue. There are many possibilities to this. You can do a one day event or month long celebration of this.
The possibilities are endless when it comes to creativity and hosting pet events that are fun for the community, give back, bring in more revenue and new customers to your location. If your stuck on ideas, or have never hosted an event before check out our step-by-step course at www.PurrfectPetEvents.com. We have hosted and co-hosted, and promoted well over 1000 pet events in the past decade and have attended thousands of pet events across the country!