Ideas to Promote your Dog Walking Business
In the early days of your business and possibly throughout the life of the business, you may want to offer promotions to acquire new customers. Here are some ideas to start you off.
New Customer Discounts?
One of the easiest ways of encouraging new customers is to offer a new customer discount such as a 20% discount for any new customer when they book their first ten walks or book five walks and get a 6th walk free. The great thing about a dog walking business is that most of your clients become long-term clients, so giving away some of your profit in the early days with a new client is generally recouped very quickly.
You could also offer a loyalty card, similar to those seen in your local coffee shops. These are pretty easy to make yourself, and you just stamp or sign the clients’ card every time they have their dog walked. Once the card is full, give them a free dog walk and a new card – this will keep customers coming back for more and more.
Word of Mouth
When you have a few clients and you do a good job for them, they will in turn become your greatest advocates. So why not ask them to ask their dog-owning friends if they need a dog walker? Then, if you get a new client, give both the new client and the current client a discount of some sort – after all, you wouldn’t have a new client if it wasn’t for your current client.
You could also offer seasonal discounts – such as ‘Black Friday’ discounts for all new clients.
For other Ideas to promote your dog walking business, think about what you could do by way of promotions to get new clients and try them out as soon as you can. If they work, then do more of them to build up your client base. If what you try doesn’t work out, then try something else. With these sorts of offers you have lost nothing but a little time.
Flyers
Where should you advertise? Where should you drop flyers? The simple answer is everywhere, but most importantly everywhere your customers are likely to be. Some of your perfect clients will work in offices and they could read your flyer on their office notice board and take action. Just one leaflet on an office notice board equals potentially dozens of clients. Other less obvious places to place your flyers are libraries, banks, post offices, convenience stores, gyms and kindergartens.
And here is a list of the obvious places you should also leave them: Dog trainers (who you do not compete with), pet stores, dog groomers and vets.
As mentioned earlier, your current customers will become your best advocates The best and cheapest form of marketing is word of mouth – it costs nothing and works the best of all. Do a good job for your clients and they will naturally promote your business for you. To help that process along in the meantime and reach a wider audience, you can ask for and use testimonials. Testimonials will re-enforce your trustworthiness and reliability.
With all your marketing, you constantly need to monitor your efforts. See what works and what doesn’t then do more of the stuff that works for your dog walking business.
For even more Ideas to promote your dog walking business, see this article: Free and Low cost ways to promote your Dog Walking Business