Top 5 Pet Business Marketing Mistakes

Filed Under Pet Business Tips | August 5, 2008

Pet Business MarketingAn effective marketing strategy for your pet business is worth its weight in gold.  It can mean the difference between long term success, steady profits and cash flow, and a business which can sustain itself during economic slow periods.  Marketing is in effect the fuel that drives your business.  No fuel and you’re going to stand still and watch the traffic go by.

So what is an effective marketing strategy?  It differs for each business and target market however there are a few mistakes every business owner can avoid to get, and stay, ahead of the curve.  Here are the top 5 pet business marketing mistakes to avoid:

#1  Not listing your website with the search engines. 

Even if you do not have an online business you cannot afford to skip listing with the search engines.  More than 80% of internet users search online before they buy a product or service.  That means brick and mortar stores, in addition to online stores, benefit from having an online presence.  

In addition to the big three search engines:  Google, Yahoo, and MSN it is a great idea to list with the local search engines.   Each search engine has a local division where someone can search by city or state and their keywords.  For example, “Boulder, Colorado Organic Pet Care”

The good news is if you have links coming to your website you’re quite likely already listed with the search engines.  If you’re not, visit each search engine and follow the process to submit your website.

#2  Not having a niche. 

Niche marketing gives you leverage in the industry.  Niche marketing, having a specific category within your industry, for example, organic pet grooming as opposed to the broader ‘pet grooming’ category, gives you the potential to become the expert in your industry. It reduces your competition and gives you a USP - unique selling point.  Niche marketing makes your marketing much more powerful.

#3  Not having an opt-in list. 

An opt in list, if you don’t already have one, is a list of prospects who have expressed an interest in your products or services.  Typically it is a list of email addresses because email is inexpensive and immediate however snail mail works too.  Your opt-in list is used to send information and promotional messages to potential and current customers.  

The theory, and it works, is that if you stay fresh in the mind of your prospects, they’ll be more likely to make a purchase.  Communicating with your opt in list doesn’t have to be a time consuming process.  A monthly newsletter, or more frequent is fine.  The key is to get that list and to start using it.  

#4  Failing to have a marketing strategy. 

Many business owners simply ‘wing it’ when it comes to marketing.  (They do the same thing with their budget and then end up with negative cash flow.  Not good for business)  Planning takes the struggle out of running a business and the great thing about a plan….you can change it.  It isn’t set in stone.  If you don’t have a marketing plan, sit down with a piece of paper and outline a year’s worth of ideas and strategies to communicate with your prospects and customers.  From that outline create a plan for each idea.  Now you have a marketing strategy - not too hard, right?

#5  Not knowing your market. 

Who are you selling to and why would they want or need your product?  If you don’t know the answer to these questions then it’s time to get serious about your pet business.   If you don’t know who your customer is then how on earth are you going to sell your business?  

If you have customers begin there. Who are they and why are they using your products or services?  If you don’t and you’re just starting a pet business outline who you think your customers will be and what problems they have.  Then you can go about solving their problems with your products or services.  

Marketing is a process and everyone makes marketing mistakes however if you can manage to avoid these five biggies you’re well on your way to marketing, and business, success.

In the next couple of weeks I’ll be announcing a new program that I’m about to release that will be a full 3 month e-course to teach you how to develop a marketing system for your pet business. I’m excited about it - and will be giving away a free whitepaper next week to kick off the program. Stay tuned! 



Leave a Comment 

Did you enjoy this article? Click here to subscribe to recieve email or RSS updates

Pet Business Interview - Petaholics New York City Dog Trainers

Filed Under Pet Business Interviews | August 4, 2008

This week I have the pleasure of interviewing Jordan Kaplan from New York City Dog Trainers . Jordan has a dog training business in New York City that offers private in home lessons, group classes, and puppy playgroup and socializaton classes.

1. What kind of business do you run?

I personally am a dog trainer in New York city, I also own a dog walking business.

2. How long have you been in business?

I started pet sitting in 2001 and training in 2004.

3. How did you choose to start a pet care business?

I have always been an entrepreneur ever since I was a kid charging my neighbors to shovel snow off their driveways in the middle of winter. I enjoy helping people and after 9/11 I was working in corporate and the time seemed right to make the jump back into entrepreneurship.

4. What advice would you give someone about to launch a new pet care business?

Do your homework, make sure there is a need in your area. Scout out your competitors to see what they are doing. If you can, start while keeping your full time job and slowly make the transition.

5. What has been the greatest challenge in growing your business?

Competing in a hyper-competative marketplace.

6. What are the pros and cons of your profession?

Pros - make my own schedule, choosing who I work with, flexibility, joy of making people happy. Cons - Potential lawsuits, getting bitten by a dog, people with unrealistic expectations.

7. What daily tasks do you enjoy most?

Speaking to first time dog owners and helping them bring a dog into their lives

8. If you could have done anything differently what would it have been?

Started my business sooner!

9. Did you have a mentor or business coach? If so how did they help you?

I had both, my mentor is Steve Diller, a well known trainer who has been in business for 30 years. I worked with a Fabinenne Fredrickson from Client Attraction, she was very helpful in creating systems to attract new clients.

10. Are you a member of any professional organizations? How have they helped you?

I am a member of many organizations, Assoc of Pet Dog Trainers, Intl Assoc of Canine Professionals to name a couple. They have given me geat exposure to learn from other professionals in the dog training community. the annual convention is a weeks worth of seminars and is worth the cost as you get a lot of hands on work with the top trainers in the country.

11. What forms of marketing have you found most effective in reaching pet owners?

Working with veterinarians has really been great, mainly referrals and word of mouth.

12. Do you offer clients incentives for giving referrals?

Yes

13. At what stage of your business growth did you choose to take on help?

When I was loosing potential customers because more time had to be spent on back office work

14. Did you choose to use employees or independent contractors?

We use independent contractors and hired a human resources consultant to make sure we were compliant with IRS regulations

15. What have you found is the best way to find new staff members?

Referrals from current staff or clients. Craigslist is not bad but you have to have a good system set up to find your ideal staff.

Thanks Jordan for sharing that information with us.  If you would like to be interviewed at Working with Pets please send me an email with your contact details - daniellechonody@gmail.com.



Leave a Comment 

Did you enjoy this article? Click here to subscribe to recieve email or RSS updates

Using Postcards to Attract New Pet Sitting Clients

Filed Under My Pet Business, Pet Business Tips | July 29, 2008

Yesterday I shared with you a plan to motivate employees that included a incentive for marketing your business. Today I’m going to show you the postcards that I’m giving to my sitters so that they can distribute them and generate referrals.

In the past I have sent out similar postcards via direct mail to selected neighbourhoods.  I used a website www.Zillow.com to find addresses to send them to. This was pretty time consuming and of course I had to pay for postage too.

This time around I wanted to give my sitters an opportunity to get more local clients by distributing in their neighborhoods and leaving in local stores.  I have had a lot of success leaving flyers in restaurants, pet supply stores, and vets offices.

Here is the postcard (my scanner would only make the image black and white and the quality is not great - normally the front logo and text is in color and printed on gloss card stock):

Marketing Postcards

I had these done at www.Vistaprint.com. It is very easy to use their design tools and they do a great job at a very reasonable price - I got 1500 of these for around $150 including shipping. 

You can see that on the front I have my business logo, a description of what we do (Professional In-Home Pet Sitting Services), a tag line, our phone number and website. Without turning the card over they know enough about us to make a decision to keep the card or to toss it out.

On the back left hand side I give them some detailed information about the service and a mission statement.  It’s also important to let them know if you are insured and bonded as it lets people know that you run a professional service.

It is the right side of the card that I really wanted to discuss.  This is the first time that I’ve put a special place on the card for sitters to write in their name to collect referrals and the first time I have directed people to my website to collect free gifts.

You can see that I’m offering new customers a special discount of 10% on their first group of visits if they can tell me who referred them (ie who wrote their name on the card).  This gives customers an incentive to tell me which gives my pet sitter re-assurance that they will get credit for the referral and recieve their bonus. So really it’s an incentive for both the sitter and new customer.  If you don’t want to discount your service your could offer a special perk such as some extra time, a bath, a small bag of treats - anything you think your potential customer will value. You could even partner with a pet store in your area, or pet service, and offer a free promotional gift from them, or a small discount on their service. 

For more information about my sitter incentive plan see my blog post:

How to Use an Incentive Plan to Motivate Your Staff

There is no reason why you couldn’t use the same card in a customer referral bonus program. You could give these cards to your exisiting customers - get them to put their name in the place provided on the right side, and have them give them to friends or leave them a local stores for you.  When a customer gets a referral you could reward them with free visits or a gift card for products from a local pet store.

I have added the free pet services guide and pre-travel checklist as an incentive for people to visit my website.  When they get to my site they will need to fill in a short form and give me their name and email address in order to claim the gifts.  You can see the page at www.clawspawsjaws.com/petguide.html.

When potential customers sign up and get their gift they are then automatically subscribed to my monthly newsletter.  This lets me follow up with them and build a relationship with them. 

This is important as many people who recieve the post card won’t need pet sitting services right away.  They may lose the card before they ever need me!  Getting their name and email and permission to contact them means that I can keep in touch with them, provide them with useful pet information via my newsletter - and hopefully when they do need a pet sitter, I will be the first service that they think of and they will call me.

To use this technique in your advertising all you need is a simple web site with an opt-in form and then a gift to offer people for signing up as an incentive for them to give you their name and email address.  The gift must have enough perceived value for them to part with their personal information.  When someone signs up on your site you send them the information. 

You can set this up to run automatically by using an autoresponder service like www.aweber.com.  Aweber lets you set up an email list on their server. When someone signs up for the list you can then have the program automatically send them emails and attach your free gifts.  This service is excellent if you plan to deliver a monthly ezine (email newsletter) to your clients as a follow up tool. 

Try this out with your business and see what response you get with it! I’ll update you in a couple of months and let you know how it works for me.

If you have any questions about getting the cards, setting up your website, or using an autoresponder service please leave them under this post as a comment.



Leave a Comment 

Did you enjoy this article? Click here to subscribe to recieve email or RSS updates

How to Use an Incentive Plan to Motivate Your Staff

Filed Under My Pet Business, Pet Business Tips | July 27, 2008

Incentive planAt the end of last year I decided that I needed a way to get my pet sitting staff to feel more involved and connected to the

business. I wanted them to feel that they would be rewarded for good work and their income would be determined by how committed they were to helping me to grow the business.

So, I set up my first pet sitting contractor incentive plan. It is now part of the package that I give to prospective pet sitters at their intial job interview. So far I have found that everyone I have interviewed has been receptive to the idea, and love that they have control over how much work they get and how they are compensated.

Let me explain how I put together the plan.

When I was working out what to put in the plan I really thought about what I wanted from my pet sitting contractors. I decided that the things that are important to me are:

1) Pet sitter retention - once I find a great sitter I want them to stick around. They know the routine, I am comfortable working with me, and we have built up trust. It is a lot of work to continually seek new staff and then build a good working relationship.

2) Pet sitter availability during our busiest holiday seasons. I want my sitters to make themselves available to work on major holidays as this is when we really need them.

3) Ability to care for pets during an emergency. I want my sitters to have some basic first aid knowledge so that if an animal is injured during their visit that they could give first aid until they can take them to a veterinarian.

4) Willingness of pet sitter to help find new clients. I want my sitters to actively promote the business in their local area.

As I work with independent contractors I am not allowed to provide training to them and pay them a flat percentage of whatever the customer is charged for the visits that they make. I also give them any tips left by the customers.

Based on the 4 important characteristics I then put together my incentive plan so that it rewards my sitters for the behaviors that I want them to give me.

The 4 modules are:

1) A pay scale that is based on length of service. When a sitter starts they are payed X % of the client charges. After 1 year with us they then get a 5% increase (ie X + 5 %). After 2 years they get another 5% increase in pay ( X + 10 %). I make the start date for each sitter their first visit or the first time that I issue them a check.

2) A skills incentive that rewards them for taking a pet specific first aid course. I offer to increase their pay percentage by 5% upon completion of the course which will be active as long as their certificate is current.

3) A holiday bonus. I pay sitters an additional $5 per visit for working on major holidays. I pass this $5 per visit increase on to the customer.

4) A marketing incentive. If sitters will distribute flyers or postcards advertising the business then when I get clients that call and tell me that they were referred by a specific sitter, then the sitter will be guaranteed that job, and also receive an increased percentage payment for the first week of visits that the customer books with us. I have designed flyers and postcards that give our clients an incentive to tell us who they were referred by just to make sure sitters get credit.

Make sure you call back in to read my next blog post as I will be showing you a picture of my postcard and you’ll see how this works.

You could use this same incentive method to encourage any other staff behavior that is desirable.

Here is an action plan that you can use to set up your incentive plan:

a) Write down the behaviors that you want to encourage

b) Work out what your staff want or need the most. Incentives don’t have to be pay based. People are also motivated by recognition, giving them more hours / or work, allowing more flexibility, benefits, etc . You want to design your incentives around what you think drives them to give you their very best.

c) Design an incentive that will reward your staff for each of the behaviors listed in (a).

d) Put together a document that describes each incentive and exactly how each works.

e) Distribute to existing staff and give to prospective staff at initial interviews. You may also want to talk to them as a group or individually to get their feedback and make sure they understand each incentive.

f) Track your results. Are you getting better behavior from your staff? Are they earning the incentives that you offer? If you find they are not interested in obtaining the bonuses you offer, ask them what bonuses they would prefer. Modify your plan if you feel they are reasonable.

Incentive plans can really benefit both you and your staff.

If you would like to see my full plan - I will be giving members of my Pet Business Success Circle Coaching and Mastermind a copy of my pet sitter incentive plan for our monthly expert call in August. We will also be talking about finding great staff and my hiring process. If you’d like a sneak peak at my business this is your opportunity. Sign up now for just $7 right here.



1 Comment - Leave another comment 

Did you enjoy this article? Click here to subscribe to recieve email or RSS updates

Can Blogging About Pets Become a $10,000 a Month Business?

Filed Under Pet Business Opportunity | July 23, 2008

With demand for pet products growing the potential of starting a blog about pets is huge.  If your blog solves a problem for which pet owners are looking for a solution then you will attract a loyal readership, and you can market related pet products as an affiliate and make commissions on each sale. 

A great example of this is the blog Raise a Green Dog that is written by Leslie May of Pawsible Marketing.  At her blog Leslie weaves in product promotions with evironmentally friendly dog tips.  The trick is to target you blog to a very specific target audience with a specific problem or need and promote related products. 

If you have ever wondered how someone makes a six-figure income online using a blog, I have a video you just HAVE to watch.  I have followed an Australian called Yaro since I started this blog at Working with Pets. His advice has helped me a great deal with set up, content ideas, and getting Google rankings.  The best thing is that his blog advice can be applied to any industry.

Yaro has just released a free video which will show you how you can set up and market a blog where you sell pet products and earn money without carrying inventory.

Here’s the link:  Click here to watch the video Using his blog, Yaro generates a steady $10,000 to $20,000 each and every month. 

His system is not your usual story of using a blog and sticking AdSense on it - he’s taken a much more BUSINESS focused approach.

He calls his system “Conversion Blogging” because it combines a blog with an email list to
create consistent income. 

Inside the video you will learn -

- Why blogs are the only Web 2.0 marketing tool you will ever need 

- Exactly how Yaro uses his blog to build a MASSIVE email list 

- How just a blog can turn you into the No. 1 authority in your market 

- What methods Yaro uses to translate his blog into a steady cash-flow stream 

- How you can replicate Yaro’s methods using just one blog and get started in minutes

I loved this video because it’s not full of marketing hype, just a very down to earth and
practical presentation.

I guarantee you will enjoy this and learn something too.

If you are interested in a pet blogging business set aside 32 minutes now, grab a drink, sit down and watch this video - 

Click here to watch the video

Let me know what you think by leaving a comment after this post.



Leave a Comment 

Did you enjoy this article? Click here to subscribe to recieve email or RSS updates

« go back — keep looking »