J.D. Antell's Professional Dog Walking Blog

In my book, The Dog Walker’s Startup Guide I discuss ways to increase marketing through business partnerships. This is a great way to improve your visibility and reach; while also increasing your business’ trust factor by associating with other local well known businesses. Trading clientele between others in the same industry is hardly new, it’s called referrals. One look at the home improvement sector and you’ll know what I’m talking about. Contractors refer work to plumbers, electricians, masons, structural engineers, etc.

A dog walking business is no different. Groomers, pet stores, veterinarians, shelters, and others regularly get inquiries about dog walking and dog sitting services. Your goal is to get on those lists and preferably at the top of them! How do you do this?

Many businesses, like pet stores will allow you to place your name on a bulletin board in their store, and many vets offer this service too, but this simply gets you a little visibility, it lacks the pizazz of being specifically recommended.

Getting the recommendation of your fellow business owners isn’t very hard if you offer them something in return, and show them what you’re worth. Some options include offering your services to your local vets for discounted walks for the sick and/or healing. You may also purchase your dog-related gifts from your locally owned pet food store and reminding them who you are and that you’re in a related business—ask them to consider recommending your services. You might also offer to pass out specific coupons to your clientele from related businesses which could be useful to dog owners. When your clientele bring the coupons in and do some shopping the store owner will realize you’re helping him/her out and will do the same for you.

Working at a shelter is just a good thing morally speaking but it can have huge beneficial effects on your business as well. Why not consider doing what Cheryl Staab, of DogCentric Inc. did and volunteer your services free of charge for a few hours a day at your local shelter in return for being the exclusive dog walking / sitting service they recommend to their dog’s adopters? It seems to be working out very well for Cheryl! You can read more about this story in the Wall Street Journal by clicking here.

There are a lot more ideas than this but I hope you can see that there is a lot of potential for making friends and increasing your business at the same time. Word-of-mouth is alpha in the dog walking service industry!

Over the past few weeks you’ve learned about seasonal advertising, understanding your clienteles’ needs, creating a campaign that highlights those needs and addresses them using language that elicits an emotional response. We’ve validated, to some degree, our suspicions about the seasonal trends of our market using keyword trending resources. We’ve discovered which keywords are most often used to search for our type of services and we’ve used those keywords in our advertisement copy. The last step is the testing phase phase of our marketing campaign. Since we don’t have much time left we’ll have to limit our test to 5-7 days. During this testing phase we will of course be driving qualified traffic to our website so it won’t exactly be lost time! Let’s get started.

If you have not already done so, please create a Google AdWords account by visiting http://www.adwords.google.com Once you have your account you will need to create a campaign and a keyword list. Creating a quality keyword list is no easy thing. I suggest you read Google’s help documentation as you set up your campaign. With a local advertising campaign (like yours) you may want to start out with “broad match” keywords.

There are  four keyword matching options that will determine which searches can trigger your ads to appear.

Keywords can have one of the following four settings. The following keyword punctuation examples are standard to Google, MSN, and Yahoo. To use a matching option, add the appropriate punctuation to your keyword:

1. Broad match: keyword
   Allows your ad to show on similar phrases and relevant variations. For example, if your broad match keyword was dog walking services your ad could be triggered by searches for dog walking business, dog walking service, and even pet sitting services in some cases. It depends on Google’s algorithms and that’s why you must be vigilant in your monitoring of your broad match keyword campaign. If you notice your ads are being triggered by irrelevant search terms you will want to add those terms to your AdGroup or campaign as negative keywords to keep your ads from showing for those searches. For example, if you notice a lot of searches for dog kennels, you might want to ad -kennels as a negative search term, since you don’t offer that service.
2. Phrase match: “keyword”
   Allows your ad to show for searches that match the exact phrase. For example, your keyword is “dog walking services”, and someone searches for dog walking services in Los Angeles, your ad would be triggered.
3. Exact match: [keyword]
   Allows your ad to show for searches that match the exact phrase exclusively. Unlike phrase match, exact match will only match the keyword if it’s entered exactly as the one in your campaign. So a search for dog walking services will not trigger your keyword [dog walking service] because they aren’t exactly matching.
4. Negative match: -keyword
   Ensures your ad doesn’t show for any search that includes that term. As explained above in broad match. For example, adding the negative keyword -kennel to your campaign or AdGroup will stop your ad from appearing when those terms are included in a search.

Depending on the options you choose you will receive more impressions, clicks and potential clients, while others you may get fewer impressions but your targeting will be more precise. There is a lot of testing and I wont pretend that it’s easy to create a winning campaign on your first try. There is some trial and error. I would not advertising in Google’s content network until you have created a profitable search targeting campaign.

So how do I test my ad copy?

Once you have created your keyword list you’ll want to start creating ads. Considering our target market for this campaign you’ll want to craft your campaign around that theme. You’ll want to mix and match headlines, body, and call to action statements. You’ll also want to set your ads to ROTATE. Google’s default setting is to show the best performing ad more often. You don’t want that. You want to see the data for your self and figure out which copy is outperforming the rest, and why. Take a look at this example:

Dog Walking Services
Don’t Let Icy Winter Streets
Keep Your Locked Inside!
www.example.com

or

Dog Walking Services
Don’t Let Icy Winter Streets
Keep Your Dog Trapped Inside!
www.example.com

The above example is testing one word vs. another, “locked” and “trapped” on the negative theme of avoiding ice and winter cold. Another example could be:

Dog Walking Services
Our Walkers Brave The Winter
So You Don’t Have To!
www.example.com

In this example we are testing a variation on the theme which avoids severe negatives like in the above examples. Lastly a more traditional ad would include a direct call to action such as this:

Dog Walking Service
Professional, Reliable And
Affordable. Visit Us Today!
www.example.com

You can then test different variations of each theme. Try substituting different words or ways of saying the same thing.

Once you’ve created your ad variations you’ll want to activate your campaign, setting an affordable budget, and monitor it closely adding negative keywords if necessary. Once you have enough data you can decide which copy is performing better and create some new ads incorporating the best copy from all your ads into one super ad which you will use from that point on while deleting the old ads. This copy can then be used in other advertising mediums such as newspaper, email, classifieds, Craigslist, fliers, mass mailings, etc.

To continue the discussion from last week… Guilt, when understood and properly used in an advertising campaign, can be a highly effective means for driving customer conversions. The “feelings” associated with “guilt” are unpleasant and most people try to relieve them somehow. In our example you will provide the quick and easy means to that end. This becomes the core of your autumn advertising campaign. For those of you who feel that this is somehow manipulation, remember, we did not inject this “guilt” into our audiences’ lives or minds, it was there to begin with. We are simply uncovering, acknowledging, and providing support for this condition. In fact, we are helping folks afflicted with guilt enjoy a fast, easy and affordable recovery. Far easier than the shrink’s couch I dare say!

So, how do we use this knowledge? First we want our advertising to acknowledge the malady (guilt). Then we need to provide the solution (our products and services). Then, we want to show our advertising audience the results they can expect. Finally, a “call to action.”  How might this look?

Winter Winds Keeping You Locked Up Inside?
(acknowledges that it’s beyond their control and implies they are trapped)

Poor Fido…
(but… what about the dog, he doesn’t understand, and so we find the guilt)

Tri-City Dog Walker’s Can Help!
(the solution)

Providing, Safe, Reliable, Professional Dog Walking Services in Just About Any Kind of Weather.
(how it solves their problem)

Call For A Free Information Packet or Visit Us on The Web: Contact Info
(call to action, offering free information will generate more immediate results rather than them pinning it on their fridge or tossing it, and once you have their mailing information or email you can keep in constant contact)*

Fido Will Thank You!
(hints at the relief from guilt and that they WILL actually profit from this transaction**)

So this is a fairly basic, and not particularly creative, example of what I mean. In some advertising mediums you can use images to get your point across. Think about this in terms of before and after shots. The before shot might be a bored or sad dog, the after picture might be a happy dog or “satisfied” person curled up next to a fire with their dog… Pictures are powerful… remember the crying Native American?

More to come next week!

* Note: Never provide your detailed information on your website for “free”. What do I mean by this? I mean you need get something in return. What you want is an email address. So you need to set up an automatic email delivery service on your site so that once they enter their email address your service will send them your “informational packet”. You might even consider having them fill out a BRIEF questionnaire so that you can better understand their needs and create an offer that works for them.

** Note: If you are new to business you may have been brainwashed to think that business is bad. If you have icky feelings about charging people for your services or if you feel that you should always charge less to make up for some feelings of inadequacy you definitely need to address these feelings. The first thing you must understand is that a business is NOT bad. It is good. Most businesses offer a FAIR and EQUITABLE trade for your hard earned cash. Profit is not bad. Profit is the payment for your intangible expertise. Whether you offer a product or service, it doesn’t matter. The profit (the money you charge over and above the hard costs) is payment for the use value of a product, and in the case of a service, your expertise and time. It’s what puts food on the table and allows you to survive. Learn to start embracing the idea that business transactions are never a one way street. Your customer is profiting from the exchange at least as much as you are, and in some cases more!