Marketing Your Dog Biz

Take a moment to think about your audience. Really think about who it is you’d like to call you for your services. If your answer is simply “dog people with enough income” you may be missing some marketing opportunities. Focusing more specifically on who your services are for will help you to market more effectively and less expensively.

Get the message right
If you know exactly who you’re trying to reach you can mold your marketing message more strategically. Want to work with families in your training business? Tell them how you’re going to make their lives easier, how you’ll remove some of their stress. Do you walk only small dogs? Tell small dog owners you understand their special needs, and tell them how you’ll keep their littles safer. Perhaps you offer exclusive boarding in your own home—tell those dog lovers who want the best for their dogs what their dog’s day will be like, emphasizing that they’ll be part of your family. Don’t just tell them you offer “in-home boarding.” Paint the picture, hour by hour, of all the fun things their dog will do, of how he’ll be treated. Make sure they understand they can leave all their guilt and worry behind.

In other words, your marketing message is not a list of your services (boarding, training, dog daycare). And it’s not a simple description of them (drop-in pet sitting seven days a week, small group training classes for puppies and adult dogs). It’s about understanding who your audience is and what concerns them. What problem can you solve for them? How can you make them feel better, take away some burden or frustration or worry? It’s about talking results and benefits—not what you offer, but what using your service will actually do for them. And the more you understand who your exact target audience is, the more focused you can make your message.

Location, location, location
Zeroing in on your audience will often suggest specific marketing outlets. Think about where your potential clients are likely to congregate, or what other services they probably use. Focus your marketing efforts there.

For example, if you are a trainer open to working with families or even specializing in baby prep or child-and-dog issues, market to boutique baby-and-toddler clothing or toy shops. Offer to hold a free talk in their shop and ask to place your newsletter or other materials there. Do the same at OBGYN clinics and moms’ groups.

Market to each other
Other dog professionals can be a great source of referrals, but marketing to each other is often overlooked. If your daycare or walking business caters especially to small dogs, woo the high-end grooming shops in your area. Do you pet sit for dogs with special health requirements? Local vets should know this, as should your fellow sitters and other dog pros in general. Do you walk dogs with behavioral issues? Tell the other walkers in your area, and the daycares and dog trainers, too.

This kind of networking is free and over time can lead to a steady stream of referrals. Email your fellow dog pros to tell them what you do and ask details about their services in return. Make referrals whenever you can—and email them to let them know you did. Ask them out to lunch. Email them to let them know about interesting speakers coming to town—do they want to go? You’re writing an article about pet sitting in your training newsletter—do they mind if you feature them, and can you interview them for it? In other words, use every excuse to be in touch on a frequent basis so they’re more likely to remember to send people your way.

A dedicated niche is always a good idea, but you don’t have to have one to do this kind of marketing. A trainer might market with one set of materials to baby shops and moms’ groups to target families, and another set of materials to grooming shops to target small dog owners, and then take materials focused on dog-dog issues to dog daycares. The point is to really think about who you want your clients to be and what their needs are. Craft your message to speak to those needs and then think carefully about where to spread the word.

So much goes into the building of a business: The name, the logo, the website, the marketing—just for starters. That’s a lot of effort aimed at gaining clients and referral sources. And as businesses grow and become more time-demanding, it’s easy to lose track of the details. Good follow-up practices often suffer—an ironic twist given how hard we work to get clients and referral sources in the first place.

A little weekly attention to follow-up can actually make your tight schedule easier. Follow-up is about protecting what you’ve accomplished and using it to build further. You can boost profits from 25-125% percent by retaining just 5% more clients, and satisfied clients will, on average, tell four to five potential clients about you. Combine that with a steady stream of referrals from other dog professionals and over time your marketing and sales responsibilities may feel a little lighter. On the other hand, ignore follow-up duties and you may find yourself struggling to build your business, or running a lot faster than needed to keep it where you want it.

To avoid such a fate, and to take advantage of all your hard work so far, choose a one- to two-hour block of time weekly to dedicate to follow-up tasks. Make it the same day and time each week if at all possible to help build a lasting routine. Once you’ve got the time carved out, here’s what to do with it:

Client Follow-Up
Say thank you. Too often dog pros disappear from clients’ lives once the allotted service time is up. Take a moment to let your clients know how much you appreciate them. Send a quick hand-written card to thank them for entrusting their training goals to you or to let them know how much you enjoyed their dog while they were away. Such details leave a lasting impression. When you wrap up with a client, put her name on your follow-up list for the following week. Always keep plenty of cards, envelopes, and stamps at the ready.

Check in. One way to build a business that lasts is to make sure your services actually work. Are your clients seeing a difference in their dog’s behavior after a month of daycare or dog walking exercise? How’s that recall coming along? If you don’t know, you can’t make improvements. And taking the time to check in and show you care means a greater chance of positive word of mouth.

Use pre-set intervals to make your check-ins easy. For example, a one-month check-in for daycare and walking clients. Trainers, plan to check in at multiple intervals to check on progress and make sure the training is sticking. For example, place each client’s name in your follow-up calendar 2 weeks, 1 month, and 3 months after the end of your training contract. Doing so will increase case resolution as well as referrals to friends and family.

Potential Client Follow-Up
Make time. Make keeping up with daily correspondence easier by setting specific times for it each day. Let potential clients know when they will hear back from you by listing your phone and email time in your outgoing phone message and email autoreply. This relieves you from the worry of missing a call or message, shows your professionalism and provides incentive for potential clients to wait to hear from you, gives you structure to ensure all calls and emails are returned promptly, and allows you to turn off your email and ringer for higher productivity and better focus.

Return all calls. Respond to every inquiry, even if you don’t want or need the client. Don’t risk getting a reputation for not returning calls and emails. The word will get out that you’re too busy or full to take clients, and pretty soon you won’t be. It’s simple courtesy to respond to all emails and phone calls, and you can do your colleagues and your business a favor by referring on those clients you don’t take yourself.

Pat your own back. When you refer a potential client on, don’t rely on the client to say who sent her. Send your colleague a quick email with the name of the person you sent over. It’s a great opportunity to connect, to remind a fellow dog pro you’re there, and to set yourself up for future reciprocity.

Referral Follow-Up
Say thank you. Here’s another situation where a hand-written note (perhaps on a branded postcard) can do wonders. As soon as you’ve received a referral, jot the name of the client and the source of the referral on your follow-up list for this week to be sure you get a note out right away. Occasionally include a small thank-you gift with your note, such as a gift card for a nearby coffee house. For those referral sources who send clients frequently, forego the thank-you cards. Instead, place these sources on your follow-up calendar quarterly for a special treat. Send over a surprise pizza lunch for the staff, for example, or movie tickets, or drop by with your famous chocolate chip cookies warm from the oven.

Share results. Place each client and her referral source on your calendar again at a pre-set check-in interval. Let the vet who referred Trixie for boarding know how much she enjoyed her stay—complete with a picture or two. Or let him know how well Trixie is working out in your walking group or at daycare, and how happy Trixie’s mom is about her considerably calmer presence at home. Or tell him how well your resource guarding protocol went and that Trixie’s mom is now able to safely take things from her. Let your referral sources know how well you take care of the people and dogs they send your way.

Return all calls. It only takes one client telling a vet or other coveted referral source that she never heard back from you to dry that well up. Giving referrals can be a risky business; no one wants the behavior of another company to reflect badly on their own. Be sure to follow through on every referral sent your way, even if it’s to offer an alternate referral of your own.

Follow-up is time well spent. These maintenance tasks make building and sustaining your business easier by cutting down on the time needed to search out new clients and referral sources. You worked hard to get the ones you have; a little extra effort to keep them is worth it.

Email marketing gets overshadowed by social media a lot these days, which is a great shame because email is a terrific marketing workhorse—free or low-cost, targeted, and much less time-intensive than social media.

Why Use an E-Newsletter
Here are four reasons you should put out an email newsletter:

1. Sell your services. Being front-of-mind increases the likelihood of sales. Yes, existing clients know what you offer and can use your services whenever they need to. But so many things vie for time, attention, and resources these days it’s easy to be forgotten. Getting back on people’s radar can mean getting back on their priority list.
2. Get repeat business. Clients are a built-in audience for new services. Already loyal to you, they’re the most likely to try the latest thing you’ve added. Assuming they’ll find out through other channels is risky, and people are more likely to respond to a direct message from someone they know.
3. Build customer loyalty. Checking in creates a sense of community and increases brand loyalty, which means you’re the one they come to when they need dog-related services.
4. Get referrals. The combination of brand loyalty and a gentle nudge that you’re there makes it more likely clients will think to refer a fellow dog lover to you. If their experience with your company is buried in the past, referral opportunities are easily missed. Staying in your clients’ consciousness keeps you on the tip of their tongues.

E-Newsletter Tips

Be useful and entertaining. If your newsletter doesn’t provide information and entertainment, people won’t keep reading. Talking too much about your business and services turns your newsletter into a glorified brochure. Yes, these topics belong in your newsletter. But unless you also include articles of general interest people will soon treat your newsletter as they would any other advertising material: Maybe a glance, then the trash button. Your end of the deal is to entertain and inform, not just sell your services.

Sell your services. Though you want to avoid too much focus on your business, the purpose of the newsletter is to promote your business. Don’t make the mistake of not including information about your services—particularly their benefits. Make contact information—website, email, and phone—clearly visible. Don’t hesitate to include a call to action. For example, “Fall classes are filling quickly—sign up now!” Or “The holidays are just around the corner—make your boarding reservations early to ensure your dog’s spot with us.”

Keep it short. Your email newsletter should be monthly and short. Share a quick tip, or an excerpt from an interesting article about dogs, or a humorous or thoughtful anecdote from one of your walks. Put together a fun profile of one of your daycare dogs, complete with a picture. Include a short call for referrals to friends and family or a schedule of upcoming classes. That’s it. Keeping each e-newsletter short and entertaining means clients are more likely to read the next one—and hopefully to pass it along, too.

Actively build your list. You’re going to put some work into getting your newsletter out each month, so the more people reading it the better. First of all, have a prominently displayed sign-up field on your website. Also include a ‘Forward to a Friend’ button in the newsletter itself. Most e-mail marketing services (and you should always use a service, such as Constant Contact or Mail Chimp, for example) offer this option as standard.

Also include a benefits-oriented call to sign up for your newsletter on all your materials, however mundane. Class sign-up sheets, handouts, brochures, postcards, rack cards, even business cards and invoices. Include it in your email signature and on your stationary. If you write an article for a local paper, mention it in your bio blurb. If you are on Twitter, tweet about an interesting newsletter item and link to the sign-up box on your site. On Facebook, post the entire newsletter and include a sign-up box beside it (a free, downloadable application lets you do this). Ask your brick-and-mortar referral sources (vets, shelters, pet supply stores, for example) to keep a sign-up sheet on their counter or in their lobby. And don’t forget to include it in your printed newsletters, too. In other words, never miss an opportunity.

 

Want the power of a newsletter without all the work? Check out our Newsletter Service.

If you’re a typical class trainer you’d rather think about what you’re going to do with students once you have them in your classroom than what you’re going to do to get them there. For most of us, teaching is much more fun than marketing — and it comes much more easily. But given the difficulty of teaching without students, it’s best to make sure you get the most from your marketing time and dime.

Here are some tips for getting your classes filled:

Class Titles and Descriptions
Everybody and their aunt teaches “Puppy” and “Basic.” You may be tempted to jazz up your class titles, and you should. But be careful that prospective students can still tell what you’re offering. Clever class titles may accidentally camouflage your classes, causing them to be overlooked. And many people will look for classes online. If a potential client searches for “Puppy Class” and yours is called “Surviving Your Dog’s Toddler Years,” they may not find you. So if you have a way with words, try subtitles. For example, “Basic Manners: Channeling Your Dog’s Inner Lassie.”

Focus your class descriptions on human-oriented outcomes. What will students be able to do after taking your class? How will they feel different? How will their lives be improved? A list of behaviors — the typical meat of a class description — does none of these things. It just lists behaviors, and so does everyone else’s class descriptions. Make yours stand out by telling potential students how they’ll be able to walk down the street with ease — no more embarrassment and no more back aches. Tell them how it will feel to have the dog that everyone covets. Wouldn’t they like to be the person asked, “Wow. How do you get your dog to be so calm and well behaved?” And wouldn’t it be less stressful to know they were coming home to a dog who hasn’t destroyed the house? Tell potential students that your class is the first step toward these goals.

Marketing Projects
We’ve written more than once about the power of community- or content-based marketing for dog trainers. Your time and money are better spent on projects that give people some sort of direct experience of your expertise, professionalism, and efficacy rather than on passive forms of advertising in which you tell them how great you are. (This is particularly true for positive reinforcement trainers, with whom we work exclusively, as they are less apt to feel comfortable singing their own praises — and, accordingly, are less apt to do so well.)

Think beyond fliers. Fliers are fine, but they’re passive. Instead, embed your class schedule in a content marketing project such as a quarterly newsletter or branded tip sheets. Dog owners are more likely to act on the class schedule printed on the back of a great Building a Solid Recall handout than to respond to a class flier. Why? Because the training tip on the front gives a taste of your expertise and style.

Give referral sources a taste. Referral sources who have directly experienced your classes are more apt to remember to recommend them — and to do so enthusiastically. Give pet supply stores, vet offices, and any other referral outlets you’re after a free class pass or two for staff members to use. (This will also help to fill new classes so you can run them for your paying students.) Or even offer a class just for the staff of a particular clinic or daycare at a day and time convenient to them.

Help referral sources help you. Once you have a referral source on your side, make it easy for them to refer to you. Provide them compelling material to give to their customers. Business cards are easily lost and brochures are commonplace and passive in nature. Your newsletter or tip handouts are more likely to finish the sale and less likely to find their way to the trash.

If you’re ready to take a referral relationship to the next level, ask them to include information about your classes on their website and in their email list blasts. (This is particularly appropriate in cases where you’re teaching classes in their space or engaging in any sort of cross-promotion.) Again, make it easy. Email language to use and any visuals you’d like them to include, such as your logo file. Your information will go up on their site and out to their email list faster if they don’t have to create the content themselves.

Optimize your website. If a dog lover can’t find you she can’t take your class. If your site isn’t performing well in searches for the classes and services you offer, it’s probably because it hasn’t been properly optimized. Don’t assume if you had your site professionally designed and programmed that it’s also been optimized. Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a niche skill set and, unfortunately, many programmers do not pursue it. SEO can range a great deal in simplicity and complexity, and in cost. But even a small amount of attention and money paid to it can bring significant results. Just be careful to seek out qualified, ethical practitioners, as the industry is sadly rife with scams. (dogbiz provides free SEO referrals if you are unable to find a local professional–just email and ask.)

Get caught in the act. What better way for people to experience you than to literally see you in action? Look for opportunities for public training. Post short YouTube videos of your classes. Provide demos or hold 15 minute mini-classes at local events and festivals. Take your advanced students on the road — hold class in front of the local mall or supermarket or in a popular park. It’s great practice for your students and gives onlookers a first-hand glimpse of what they and their dog might be capable of.

In all of these in-person situations, bring along someone to pass out class information to onlookers and answer their questions while you teach. At events, offer a 10% discount to anyone registering on the spot. And outfitting yourself and your students in logo t-shirts is a great way to increase brand visibility.

Get covered. Find out who covers goings-on in your community for the local paper and invite that reporter to take pictures of one of your classes. Better yet, have her show up for the class you hold in public. If she has a dog herself, give her a free pass to take your class so she can write about her own experience. And don’t overlook events calendars in the local paper. It’s often free to submit, so get your classes listed. Check with the local radio station about free event listings, too.

Put it in writing. Nothing says “go-to expert” like your name in print. Ask the editor of the local paper about carrying an Ask the Trainer or Training Tips column. Or offer the same to run in school, church, neighborhood association, or senior center newsletters or bulletins. Such smaller publications may also be happy to print your class schedule alongside your article.

Class Offerings and Structure
As we’ve written about in other articles, the structure and content of your classes can play a critical role in their success, too. One-shot teaser classes, shorter topics classes, open enrollment, and curriculum focused on real-life application all help first-time and retention sales. If you’re still teaching behavior-based classes following the old “explain-demo-practice” model, it may be time to shake things up a bit.

For more ideas about success with group classes:

• Look at the dogbiz University course Best Classes in Town
• Read about Group Classes That Really Work

Think of a three-legged stool. It stands—and supports your weight—only because each leg has been built to do its part; it’s perfectly balanced. Remove, or even shorten, just one leg and the stool topples. Like the stool, a balanced marketing plan requires three legs. Unfortunately, it’s rare to see a dog business marketing plan that gives careful attention to all three.

More often dog businesses put emphasis in one area, ignoring or underserving the others. Sometimes the focus is on marketing to referral sources, sometimes on getting out in front of the general public of potential clients, sometimes on staying in touch with current and past clients. But the most powerful marketing plans balance a bit of all three, because each has a specific role to play in the success of your business.

Referral Sources
Referral sources—other dog professionals who send clients your way— are the most critical audience when you start out, and they’re what will feed your business for long-term sustainability as well. Get a few good referral sources on your side and your business will build much more quickly.

Referral sources such as veterinarians, dog trainers, dog daycares, dog walkers, pet sitters, pet supply stores, shelters, and rescue groups tend to come into contact with people at points of need. This means that potential clients are likely to hear about your services from these sources precisely when they have need for you. They may complain to a veterinarian or dog trainer about their dog’s destructive or hyper behavior, be told by a daycare that their dog isn’t a good fit for group play, or worry out loud to a pet supply clerk about an overly long stay away from home. You want fellow dog pros to have your name on the tips of their tongues when this happens.

Court referral sources with content-rich adoption or behavioral wellness folders they can provide to clients for free (great in particular for shelters, rescue groups, breeders, and veterinary clinics), free staff training presentations, a glowing article about them in your newsletter, free or reduced-price services for them and their staff members, a surprise pizza lunch on a busy day. In short, think about what you might do for them, rather than asking for referrals. Those will follow if you make their lives easier and find ways to show them your expertise and professionalism.

Potential Clients
Marketing to potential clients is about building your brand awareness and recognition. It takes time for people to become actively aware of a new business or service, so start early and be consistent. Success here requires staying in front of people so they’re already aware of you and know just who to go to when they decide it’s time for a trainer or need to board their dog. So the more marketing you do, the more effect it will have.

Writing articles for the local paper, distributing a printed newsletter, providing tip sheets or “how to” fliers to local dog businesses, staging public demos, wearing logo clothing when out training and walking, using effective signage for your facility—these are just a few examples of public marketing projects you might employ.

Current And Past Clients
Retention marketing is key to longevity. This should be the smallest portion of your marketing plan as you start out, because you have few people to keep in contact with at first, but should grow in importance as your business grows. You’ll be spending quite a bit of effort getting your clients; it makes no sense not to keep them in your marketing loop. This is not only good customer service, it’s also how you build word of mouth over time. Get enough happy clients talking and you’ll end up with more happy clients.

E-mail newsletters, blogs, and social media outlets like Facebook are the most common forms of retention marketing. If you’re just getting started and you’ve put all your weight on this leg of the stool, back off a bit and make sure you stabilize the referral and public legs of your marketing plan—you have to get clients first before you retain them!