5 Tips for Networking At the Dog Park to Attract New Pet Sitting Clients

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Marketing Monday The dog park is a place where people gather to let their pets run free and socialize with other pups. But what do the humans do while their dogs are having fun? They chat, get to know each others dogs and network! Really the dog park is just the real life version of online social networking and it can be just as valuable a place to meet the neighbors and market your pet sitting services locally.

Here are some tips for networking at your local dog park:

1. Visit regularly at the same times of the day so that you often run into people with the same schedule and get to know them personally BEFORE you introduce your pet sitting business to them

2. Strike up conversations with people by offering to watch their dogs, help with putting on leashes, offering them treats for their dogs, or just asking them questions about their pets

3. Make sure that your dogs are well groomed and well behaved. Obey the rules of the park and pick up after your dogs. You want to give other dog owners a good impression and look like you care for your pets and have some skill working with dogs

4. Carry your business cards at all times so that when you do get to know people and mention your buisness that you have them at hand ready to hand out

5. Wear clothing with your business logo to do some subtle marketing at the park. People will be sure to ask you about your business!

To find a dog park near you check out this national directory of dog parks - http://www.ecoanimal.com/dogfun/

If you don’t have a local park - why not start one? This is a great community project that your pet sitting business could sponsor and get a lot of great PR. Here are some tips to get you started setting up a local park or dog run.

Do you have any stories of new customers that you’ve met at your local dog park? Leave a comment and share them with us!

Marketing You Pet Sitting Business with Car Signs

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Marketing Monday On January 1st I will officially be changing the name of my Euless pet sitting business. It has been a decision that I have been wrangling with for about a year - ever since I discovered that I am not able to Trademark my current name - Claws Paws & Jaws Professional Pet Sitters. There is another pet sitting company in California who uses a very similar name ( make sure you do a good search before naming your business!). A couple of months ago I attended the Brand Power intensive to come up with a new name - and decided on Protecting Max - Your Pet Sitting Partners.

I have already had customers asking me the significance of my new name.

As pet sitters we are effectively the temporary guardians of our customers pets. Another name for a guardian is a protector - hence “Protecting” Max. I chose Max because I was looking for a name that is very commonly used as both a name for a dog or a name for a cat. I found that Max is the most popular dog name in the US and is also a popular cat name. The “Pet Sitting Partners” is especially significant for me as I believe that part of my job as a pet guardian is to work with my customers as their partner in the care of their pets. It is my job to ensure that the quality of life of the pet is continued even though the pet owner is not there to take care of the pets.

I have always been intrigued by the eye catching fully “wrapped” vehicles that I see on the highway. So .. I decided that with the change of name - it was a perfect time to try this marketing method out myself. Voila! - The Max Mobile was born. Here it is!

Protecting Max

I have been driving this around town for a few weeks now and it certainly gets a lot of looks and I saw a guy outside the bank the other day get out a pen and jot down something while he was standing in front of the car! So I hope that the bold statement will help to spread the word quickly and get me some instant brand recognition.

Of course I am awaret that there is a lot of debate about the use of car signs between pet sitters. Here are the most common opinions:

1) On one side of the debate are pet sitters that believe that car sign alerts potential burglars that the home owners are out of town.

2) On the other side are pet sitters who believe that burglars will actually be discouraged from entering a home if they know that the pet sitter may return unexpectedly.

I can see both sides of this debate so I have made the decision not to regularly use this vehicle when I am visiting homes for pet sitting visits. Luckily, we have a second car and myself and my husband can trade out.

I let my customers know that they may see me around town in the car - but that we won’t be turning up at their house to do pet sitting visits in this vehicle. I sent out this news in a letter to my existing clients with my Christmas cards and also let them know about some other changes to our services that they will see in the next year.

You don’t have to go the Full Monty and get your car wrapped like mine. There are several other less expensive options. You can get magnetic signs made with your business name and contact numbers or have some lettering added to your back window. The guys at 360wraps who did my car can also just give the same treatment to just a single section of the car (they were designing just a back wrap of a car for a lady with a beauty spa while I was visiting their office). If you search online or look in your local yellow pages I’m sure that you will find that there are many sign companies in your area that can quote on a partial wrap or window sign.

If you also have some crazy car signs make sure you link to a picture by leaving a comment. Otherwise leave a comment and let me know what you think of having signs on your vehicle that you are using for pet sitting visits.

10 Spoke Marketing Model - How to Use it To Market Your Pet Sitting Business

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Marketing Monday This week at her blog Janet Pettit introduced the Wheel and Spoke marketing model. Put simply, Janet proposes that you use 10 marketing methods to feed new prospective clients into your business and maximize your profits.

You can get a copy of her model free at her blog post:

Wheel and Spoke Marketing Model

or here is the direct link to the model diagram:

http://smallbusiness-bigresults.com/MypnModel.pdf

I love this model and plan to use it when I start on my marketing plan for 2009. I wanted to give you a few examples of how you can use the 10 spokes to attract visitors to your pet sitting business.

1. Referral Strategy

Set up a system to encourage your customers to refer your pet sitting business to their friends and family. You could offer them a reward for each customer they refer that makes a reservation - perhaps offer a discount on their next pet sitting visits or a gift card to a local pet store so that they can spoil their pets. Let them know about your program in your regular follow up communications such as your online or offline newsletter. You could also host a special recognition party for every customer and their pets that has referred business to you in the past year.

2. Marketing Strategy

A marketing strategy puts on paper the methods which you plan to use to market your business. Janis recommends that you choose 3 strategies for 2009. It should outline what you are going to do to each week to implement each stategy and also detail how much you plan to spend on implementation of each strategy (your marketing budget). Of course marketing strategies may not have any cost - take for example online social networking.

3. Time Strategy

You time strategy is a plan that outlines how you plan to spend the time in which you work on your business. It will show how much time you will dedicate to marketing tasks, customer follow-up, or actually performing pet sitting visits. How much time you spend on each will be determined by the stage that you are at in your business and whether you have outsourced tasks to a virtual assistant or have contract or employed sitters.

When you put together a time strategy keep in mind that you want to spend your time working on the tasks that make you money - and eliminate time wasting activities. The 80/20 rule states that 20% of your efforts will make you 80% of your profits. Do a time study and documenting how you spend your time each week will help you find and focus on the 20%. Focusing on these tasks next year will help you increase profits and grow your pet sitting business.

4. Client Retention Strategy

Once you have great pet sitting clients you need to have a plan to retain their business so they always use your service when they need a pet sitter. A couple of good questions to ask yourself when forming this strategy are:

a) What are you going to do wow your customers and make your service indespensible? How does your service go beyond standard duties to make sure the pets are comfortable and happy. How do you make their lives easier or caring for their pets more convenient?

b) How are you going to follow-up with customers so that you are always part of their pets life and you are at the top of their mind when they need your service? A great way is to keep in touch via a regular newsletter that you deliver by post or by email. Offer them valuable pet care tips and news about local pet events and activities. You will soon become a resource that they rely on.

5. Joint Venture Strategy

Joint ventures are partnerships formed with other pet business owners where you create a win-win relationship to promote both your businesses. One example of a joint venture could be giving out discount coupons to a local grooming service to your pet sitting customers in exchange for the groomer giving out coupons for your pet sitting business to their clients. Another example is partnering with other business owners to jointly organize and promote a local pet event. There are many ways that you can tap into the clients of a similar business by using joint ventures.

6. Message Strategy

You message strategy should detail how you plan to communicate with your clients to make sure that your communication is consistant with the image or brand that you want to convey to clients. Messages to clients can include the daily updates that you leave during pet sitting visits, your regular email correspondance, what you tell them in your newsletters, or how you follow up using cards or direct mail. You brand image should also shine through in your advertising that you do so that your message to clients is consistant.

Your message stategy may also detail how your communication to potential and existing clients introduces them to the upgraded services or products that you sell in addition to basic pet sitting services.

7. Viral Strategy

Viral marketing involves the use of fun videos or informational e-books that can passed from person to person on the internet or offline. The videos and e-books contain a link or promotion for your business so that they create traffic to your pet sitting website. A great example of this is the latest JC Penny video “Beware of the Doghouse” or the free ebook that I told you about last Friday in this blog post. Think about how you can use viral marketing in 2009 by creating your own valuable information that you give away and allow others to distribute on their website, via their blog, or to their customers.

8. Sales Strategy

You sales strategy involves the way in which you lead your prospective pet sitting clients through the process of getting to know you and your business, see samples or your work, and then make the decision to buy your services or products. This may include getting them onto your email or newsletter list by giving away a free pet resource, then showing them more about you by communicating to them in your newsletters, and then making them a special offer in your newsletter - for example offering a discount or free upgrade to entice them to buy.

9. Online Strategy

You online strategy details how you will attract potential clients to your pet sitting website and build traffic. You can build traffic by getting others to link to your site by placing online ads on related websites, placing ads in pet related ezines, posting in pet forums, or writing articles or press releases that you write online. Some other ideas for creating traffic and attracting visitors are to build your own blog, Squidoo lenses, or Hub Pages with valuable pet information.

You can also attract traffic using Google Adwords advertising - the ads you see in the right margin when you do a Google search. The most cost effective way to get more traffic is to optimize your website to attract natural search engine traffic. Learn how tomorrow night in the Pet Business Success Circle monthly call.

You’ll notice that I only listed 9 spokes. For some reason Janis has Time Strategy listed twice on her wheel. I’m not sure it that is intentional or a mistake. If you are interested in getting some more information about the 10 Spoke wheel Janis is hosting a free teleseminar later this week - http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=38431133482

Don’t forget to sign up for my call tomorrow night with Jordan from Petaholics to learn how to use search engine optimization to get your pet sitting website listed in the search engines. You can find all the information you need about the call right here:

Interview with Jordan to disuss website SEO

5 Keys for Getting Clients During a Recession

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Freebie Friday This week I wanted to tell you about a free report that was released by Advocado Consulting. The report is downloadable and the techniques discussed in the report are based around using the internet to attract new customers.

If you have a website for your pet sitting business you can definately use the information in this report. Using a newsletter that is distributed by email is one example of how you can use the internet to keep in touch with customers and market your service online. The report will give you tips to use to build your newsletter subscriber list so you can keep in touch with more pet lovers.

Here is what you will learn in this information-packed special report:

- How to create a marketing mindset that will help you bring droves of clients to your business

- The best marketing techniques to use in recession

- How to find a target market filled with people hungry for your products

- Five keys to building your email list easier and faster

- Two questions to ask yourself to make your social networking extremely profitable

- Why niching is even more important now than it was ever before

You can download it from http://www.effectiveonlinemarketing.com

Let me know what you think and tell me what you learn’t from the report by leaving a comment!

5 Ways to Connect with Customers Via Community Groups

Filed Under Pet Business Marketing, Pet Sitting Business Tips | 2 Comments

Marketing Monday Unfortunately, there is not as much interaction between neighbors as there once was in our area. We don’t see our neigbors very often, don’t have block parties or holiday parties. I don’t think I’d recognize everyone that lives on our block. We really need to make more of an effort! Luckily it’s not the same everywhere.

In communities people gather to share advice, organize neighborhood garage sales, and organize crime watch groups. Many areas also have home owners organizations (HOA’s) that meet regularly and often provide members with monthly newsletters.

Today, some even have community online forums and noticeboards where they share advice about the best pet services. I had my first experience with this last week. I had 2 new clients book pet sitting services for Thankgiving after one of them asked a question of their online HOA forum and my service was recommended by a former Claws Paws & Jaws client. This type of forum is a great referral source for you!

To find local HOA’s type in “City Homeowners Associations” into the Google search box. Insert your services areas for the City. It will bring you back a list of websites for the HOA’s in your city.

The websites will tell you about the HOA, if they have a newsletter, and you can investigate and see what events are coming up for them, and if they accept advertising by local businesses on their site. They should also give you contact information for the HOA President or at least the website manager.

There are many ways to connect:

1) Ask if you can make a short presentation at the next HOA meeting

2) Ask to place an ad in their monthly magazine

3) Ask if you can provide an article for their newsletter on a pet care or health topic

4) Ask to place an ad on their site

5) Ask if they need sponsor for upcoming community events

Forming a relationshipship with key members of the HOA can lead to further opportunities for your business and if you keep in touch regularly you will be the first service that they think of when one of their residents asks them if they know a good pet sitter.

If you have any other good ideas for making neighborhood connections please leave a comment on this post and let us know!

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