This weeks post is part of a two part series on advertising your business on a budget…
If you want to expand your dog walking business, there’s really only one way to go about it – get the word out. Depending on where you live, this can mean a few different things. In a village, this is as simple as spreading the word on the grapevine. In a large city you have room to be a little bit more creative – the potential clients are figuratively endless.
Wherever you live, advertising doesn’t have to mean spending money, and even if you do have to you can promote your business very effectively on a relatively small budget. With that in mind, I’m going to talk about a few advertising methods that are effective in this industry. These methods will suit those on a small budget, or no budget at all.
First of all, lets get the shameless plug out of the way – you can advertise your service on this very website for free! And if you haven’t done so yet you can by signing up here. We are continually promoting and expanding Dog Walkers City so we hope you’ll join us!
The internet is an invaluable tool for any small business owner. In the modern age, the web should be the starting point for any advertising campaign. In fact (although I’m a little biased) I’d almost go as far as saying that you can get all of the customers you need online. With that said, we’ll start off with the (2nd) biggest of the Internet’s websites – Facebook.
Facebook is the perfect tool for a Dog walker, as most customers come from friends of friends and of course, it’s free. I’m going to assume you have a Facebook account at this point, as you’ll need an active account to utilize it as a promotional tool. The first thing you’ll want to do is set up a ‘Facebook Page’. To do this, go to https://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php and follow the instructions.
You can add details of your service and images, links, maps etc. Once you’ve set this up you can invite all your friends to ‘like’ your page and when they do, their friends will see that they’ve liked it and so on – viral advertising. You can also ask questions, post updates and post photos, which I recommend you do regularly as they appear on the news feed of whoever has liked your page.
Your next visit online should be to Google Places. This is another great free tool for free exposure. With Google Places, you can mark where your service is based on Google Maps and anyone searching Google in that area can see your listing. To get started head to http://www.google.com/places/ and follow the instructions.
Another good place to advertise online are classified websites. These are country specific but in the UK – Gumtree is the industry leader (http://www.gumtree.com) and in the US – Craigslist (http://www.craigslist.org). Both of these sites are free to post to and are searched on a lot. Simply browse to your local area and follow the instructions to place an advert. The older your advert gets the further down the list it will fall so I recommend posting regularly. You can also go super local by searching Google for terms like ‘my town+classifieds’. A real life search would be ‘New York Classifieds’. There will almost definitely be a local classified site for your area.
If you have a bit of extra cash to spend on advertising, we highly recommend joining us as a premium member here at Dog Walkers City. For less than the price of a couple of cups of coffee you can upgrade your membership and reap the benefits of being a premium member. These benefits include being shot to the top of our results page, having your own profile page that can be found in Google and having a wealth of extras at your disposal: Contract templates, appointment software, advertising guides and more. If you get just one extra regular client as a result of the premium membership you’ll be making your money back.
To find out more log into the members are and click the ‘Upgrade’ tab. Next week we’ll talk a bit more about advertising on a budget and concentrate on more offline methods.
Do you have any advice for people looking to advertise cheaply? What’s worked for you? What hasn’t? Let us know in the comments…
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Tags: advertising, advice, customers, dog sitting, dog walkers, dog walkers city, free advertising, general, guides, online advertising, promotion, tips, your business
On the subject of advertising can I warn small businesses about a popular scam wherre someone rings up purporting to be from your “local police” or similar inviting you to advertise in (for instance) their community magazine which will “go through the letter-box of every door in your area.” There are different varities of this but they are all scams. There is either no magazine or it is only distributed to such advertisers. The real police would not ring you up asking for your bank details. I got caught and I would hate anyone else to lose their hard-earned money.
I had a phone call that was the same asking if i would donate money to the local youth clubs run by the police community officers. I told him to send more details & asked to meet in person. No reply back. Thanks for making people aware of it.
Great ideas. Lots of pet owners need to know about the availability of services in the area. Lots of pet owners and not aware of service offerings, and keep asking neighbors, friends and family to walk and sit. It is our job to increase awareness.
I have listed for free on reddogclassifieds.com
Online advertising is good either on websites dedicated to dog walkers such as Dog Walkers City or classified ads however I would also suggest putting business cards in local pet shops and veterinary clinics, these will usually do it for free. Also consider charity shops and newsagents, they will often ask for a small fee. Also when on a job talk to people mentioning that you are a dog walker and remember to carry some spare cards to hand out to anybody interested…
Check out business groups in your area. Groups like Le Tip, Professional Business Network, Business Networking International and other Professional or Networking groups. These groups will allow you to attend one or two of their breakfast, lunch or dinner meetings free, it gives you an opportunity to meet a lot of business people who can help you spread the word, the food is usually good, you may make new contacts, find new customers you might even find the group is an excellent venue for you to spread the word about your business.
Great ideas and initiatives. I’m overseas (Tel Aviv, Israel) but lot of your suggestions relevant to dog walkers sitters worldwide.
- Best of course are word of mouth from satisfied and repeat customers who recommend to their friends and neighbors. I leave notices at vets and work on mutual referral service, with trainers as well. Local pet sites, online classified lists.
- May I suggest an international section as well. Many people travel with their dogs and I’ve had doggies from as far away as Los Angeles, Washington, London UK, Finland and the Philippines. Unlike the US and Europe very few hotels here (besides country inns) are dog friendly and I had an anxious call from the Tel Aviv Hilton concierge requesting space for a Poodle (Parisian) Paris whose folks came out to marry en bloc but forgot to check whether dogs are welcome. They are not and they were desperate.
Best to all dog friends and colleagues worldwide and anyone visiting the “holy and” welcome to make contact.
Dov
I am in the sacramento california area. if you are looking for a dog walker, house sitter or both I would love to hear from you. I do have references upon request for each of the services I provide. I reliable. Would love to hear from you
rjulierogers@me.com
Hello all,
Great advice!
I would also like to recommend finding some time to volunteer at your local shelter, or rescue group. By doing so the shelter or group will gladly promote your services! I also attend the events that they have. They allow me, sometimes for free, other times a small fee, to set up a table to promote my services. I have also found that when asking vet offices to allow you to set out biz cards, making small goodie bags works better than just a card or flyer.
PETCO, Care-A-Lot and PetSmart have community boards for advertising and they also have adoption weekends that you can attend.
Local housing associations and civic leagues, ask to be a part of their newsletters and/or websites. The local schools in your area, check in with the PTA’s about advertising in their newsletters/and or websites.
Offer networking on your website. They promote your site, you promote theirs. Especially small business owners!
BringFido.com offers a free listing.
Hope this helps!