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How to Overcome Fearfulness in your Pet Sitting Business

One of my past students tagged me in a pet-sitting forum. I went through this thread, and the topic was about me as a coach and if my pet sitting business programs were worth it.

Some past students had terrific things to say, while others I have never spoken to or met were saying awful rude things. They said I was arrogant, full of myself, and anything I had to offer is a waste of money.

I was taken aback for a minute. I read through the thread, closed my eyes, felt it, and I said “How does this feel? It does not feel good. I’m not going to lie.”.

QUOTE - How to Overcome Fearfulness in your Pet Sitting Business

 

A couple of years ago, such judgment would have derailed me and have me in tears. I feared putting myself out there to start the coaching business and thinking about what people would say and if I’m good enough.

After all years of mindset work, working on my internal self and thoughts, and understanding what judgment means, I realized that I am good no matter what.

Do the internal work. Understand that not everyone will like you.

When you understand that no matter how nice, kind, and giving you are, there will be people who love you, those that are neutral to you, and those who will not like you, it is an inevitable fact. It would be best if you embraced it.

Embrace it and put yourself out into the world regardless. Understand that you are worthy.

How many pet owners can you service and take excellent care of their pets if you start working on this fear of judgment? Don’t let it hold you back.

Understand that for those people who are going to hate, let them hate. The ones who love you and are going to love your services are the people you want to attract to your business, and they are the ones you want to help.

As for the haters, wish them love, but be on your way.

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How to Get More Pet Sitting Referrals

Referrals Make The Very Best Pet Sitting Clients
This is the actual icon that Pet Nanny uses in our Welcome Email. Right from the get-go we want our customers to know that we love and appreciate referrals.

Why do referrals make the very best customers?

  1. Referrals are coming to you from someone that has already done business with you and is happy and pleased with the work that your pet sitting business has done for them.
  2. Pet Sitting Referrals that come from friends are also great, because they know that their friend has no ulterior motive other than to do what is best for them.
  3. Referrals are much more likely to buy because they have been given the green light by the 3rd party. They are pre-sold.
  4. You don’t have to spend money on advertising to bring them in as clients.
  5. You don’t have to sell yourself, because someone has already done that for you.
  6. Referrals are the customers who will be more loyal to your business. The psychology behind someone standing up for you and saying how wonderful you are, breeds the loyalty factor.

How to Get More Pet Sitting Referrals quote

 

How do you generate more referrals?

  1. First and foremost, you have to provide outstanding service. Nobody is going to refer any run of the mill business. These people’s names will forever be attached to you, so they are only going to refer your pet sitting business if your customer service and level of pet care is truly exceptional.
  2. Create a connection with your client’s right from jump street. All new Pet Nanny clients receive a Welcome to Pet Nanny greeting card, which thanks them for their business.
  3. Celebrate their Birthday! Send them a birthday card with a small gift card or discount code to your pet sitting service. I personally believe that Birthday card goes a lot further than a Christmas Card does. Christmas cards and gifts seem to get overlooked due to the hustle and bustle of the holiday season.
  4. Send them handwritten cards. In the digital age with which we live, the art of a handwritten note is becoming rare. If you take the time to do this, it will be noticed and appreciated.
  5. Send thoughtful gifts. Each year (not at Christmas) I send my highest revenue generating clients a gift. It’s usually a care package for their pets, but I’ve also done gift cards, wine and scotch. This will depend on how well you know the client. Take notice to the things they like and surprise them with it!
  6. Ask for the referrals. I know this sound strange, but some people just need to be reminded that you love and appreciate referrals. As noted above, we let our clients know right from the start. I then have reminders and promotional campaigns in place to continue to drive referrals.
  7. ALWAYS thank your clients for referrals. This is a MUST! Do not take for granted these people will continue to send you referrals. You must thank them. I know a painter who continuously received word-of mouth referrals from this one source. I continuously reminded him to thank her, which he did not. Can you guess what happened? That’s right! The referrals dried up. She has not referred him in over 2 years. I warned him.

In short, if your business provides outstanding service and you make your clients feel good and appreciated, you will create a continuous pipeline of the very best clients!

This is a short list of idea. If you have any great ideas to share, please comment below. I would love to hear.

Your Homework Assignment:
Make a list of the things that you currently are doing to generate referrals. Next, brainstorm some ideas which you can implement to greater fuel your referral pipeline. Trust me, you’ll be so glad you did. As soon as I learned the importance of referrals and implemented my own strategies, I saw a huge jump in the amount of new monthly business that Pet Nanny generated. Huzzah!

Howdy, Pet Lover! Are you struggling with attracting new clients to your pet sitting business? Would you like to have a consistent pipeline of new clients coming to your business? Well, wait no longer, my friend. Grab my FREE report, 125 Ways To Get More Pet Sitting Clients. This resource is 100% FREE and is my gift to you. Enjoy!
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Crush Them With Social Proof!

Are you looking to get more pet sitting clients? Of course you are! One best way to bring in new clients is to provide them with social proof. What do I mean by social proof? I’m talking about reviews and testimonials from happy clients that have used your pet sitting service.

Testimonials are a Powerful Client Attraction Tool Click To Tweet

Testimonials from happy clients will put your prospects more at ease about working with you. Let’s face it, hiring a pet sitting service to come into your home while you’re not there to care for your most prized possessions can be a scary thing for people. You will ease their worries by showing them the amazing results that other clients of yours have received. The testimonials will prove that your company is trustworthy.

You should have an entire page on your website solely dedicated to reviews, which should be updated often. The more reviews the better! You can never have too many. Take a look at Pet Nanny’s Reviews’ page.

If you don’t have testimonials yet, go and get them! Remember when I talked about shifting your mindset from… “I don’t have that, so I’m not going to do that.” To… “I don’t have that, I better go and get that!” That is the mindset of a successful entrepreneur. This is your perfect opportunity to put this into practice. Go ask your clients for testimonials!

pet sitting clients

Your Homework Assignment: Create your plan of attack for collecting testimonials to get more pet sitting clients.

  1. Make a list of the clients you love the most and who you know have received fantastic results from working with your pet sitting service.
  2. Type a personal letter to each of them telling them how much you enjoy having them as a client and that you’re looking to fill your client roster with clients just like them. Then ask them if they would be so kind as to share their positive experience with your company in the form of a testimonial?
  3. Request that they include a photo of their pet.
  4. Post it on your website, on your social media channels and anywhere else you can think of.
  5. Thank your clients for writing the testimonial. Send them a greeting card with something like a Starbucks gift card or a free visit. You must never forget to personally thank your awesome pet sitting or dog walking clients! This will breed loyalty.

Howdy, Pet Lover! Are you struggling with attracting new clients to your pet sitting business? Would you like to have a consistent pipeline of new clients coming to your business? Well, wait no longer, my friend. Grab my FREE report, 125 Ways To Get More Pet Sitting Clients. This resource is 100% FREE and is my gift to you. Enjoy!
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How to Create a Powerhouse Pet Sitting Website

Last week I wrote a post about the 5 elements of on-page search engine optimization. My hope is that you quickly turned around and implemented the strategies I laid out for you, but my guess is that many of you tuned out the moment you read the term “SEO.” If this was you, don’t worry! I get it! I too used to wander off to lala land whenever high-level technology conversation began. It was just so overwhelming to me that I’d rather pretend it wasn’t important.

Well, I have some good news for you. You don’t need to know how to do these types of overwhelming tasks. WOOHOO! Isn’t that a relief? You should delegate them to a team of skilled professionals who know what they’re doing and can complete the tasks in a fraction of the time it would take you to learn and then implement yourself.

Personally, I didn’t even know that these types of services existed until about 5 years ago. I mean, I knew that there were people who would make changes to your website, but I didn’t know that you could hire a team of professionals who were skilled in ALL things technology. Once I made this fascinating discovery and I hired my first web team, I saw my business pick-up a ton of momentum.

Repeat after me… “My pet sitting website is the cornerstone of my business.”

Say it again… “My pet sitting website is the cornerstone of my business.”

If you want to see your pet sitting business reach new heights, you need to have a pet sitting website that is client attractive, meaning it pulls in your ideal prospects and pushes away your non-ideal prospects. You need to design a FREE offer, so you can capture the information of your prospects and follow-up with them to turn them into paying customers. You need to write regular blog posts so that you are adding fresh new content to your website and therefore ranking higher on Google. The list goes on and on.

How to Create a Powerhouse Pet Sitting Website

A team of website professionals has the ability to…

#1. Create a beautiful and functional web site design that is also mobile responsive

#2. Design an opt-in for your free offer

pet sitting business

#3. Design web forms that your clients can submit directly from your pet sitting website

pet sitting website

pet sitting business

#4. Create a blog design that is simple and easy to read and SEO friendly

pet sitting website

#5. Create an E-Commerce Store

pet sitting business

#6. Add video to your pet sitting website

pet sitting business

#7. Create beautiful PDF’s, ECovers and Infographics

pet sitting website
A team of website professionals will also…

Help with SPAM, page loading speed, Google Analytics, search engine optimization, social media optimization, article marketing, video editing, marketing material creation, keyword research and mail merges. You name it, they can do it!

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3 Low Cost Marketing Strategies For Professional Pet Sitters

First, I need you to understand that you must think of spending money as professional pet sitters as an investment. For example, say you spent $50 in a month on Google AdWords and those ads brought you in only 1 new client and the lifetime value of a new client is $1,000. You can easily see how that $50 is money well spent. You paid Google to bring you that new client, which you may not have gotten without them and you can expect that on average, that client will spend $1000 with you over their lifetime of using your service. Make sense? Investing in your business is a good thing. That being said…

There are some very effective low cost marketing strategies for professional pet sitters.

professional pet sitters

 #1. Get a website

Nowadays you can create a website for free and pay less than $1 per month for hosting, so there is no excuse why in the digital age we live in, you should not have a business website!

For FREE websites try, Tumblr, DoddleKit or WordPress.

Here is a video on how to easily create a free Tumblr blog site.

Here is a video on how to create a website using WordPress.

For inexpensive hosting, here is a list of the cheapest hosting companies.

 #2. Crush them with social proof.

Testimonials are one of my favorite low cost marketing tools, because they cost you nothing and they do all the selling for you.

Create a page on your website dedicated solely to rave reviews and direct your client prospects there. You can also create your own PDF handout with your very best testimonials. If you want to get fancy, go to www.fiverr.com and have someone create an attractive PDF for you. $5 is serious low-cost!

 #3. Send out a Warm Letter

A Warm Letter is a personal letter written by you to everyone in your address book. Your letter should be “warm” and it should tell your peeps all that’s going on with your business and the best way for them to refer you.

Make sure that the letter is written to the person (don’t make it general) and sign the letter. You can use a Word Doc Mail Merge to personalize the letters. Again, if you don’t know how to do a mail merge, go to www.fiverr.com, search for “mail merge” and hire someone to do it for $5. When choosing who to hire to do your work, make your choice based on their user rating. They can also create your mailing labels template from your list of contacts. Fiverr gives you the ability to have tasks like this completed for next to nothing, so there is no reason you should waste an entire day trying to figure out how to do it on your own.

Your Homework Assignment:

  1. If you don’t have a website, go get one. A website is an absolute business must-have!
  2. Start collecting testimonials from your clients and post them on your website and package them in an attractive PDF handout.
  3. Write a warm letter and mail it to your contacts.

Howdy, Pet Lover! Are you struggling with attracting new clients to your pet sitting business? Would you like to have a consistent pipeline of new clients coming to your business? Well, wait no longer, my friend. Grab my FREE report, 125 Ways To Get More Pet Sitting Clients. This resource is 100% FREE and is my gift to you. Enjoy!
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The Top 3 Pet Sitting Marketing Mistakes

Before we start, I want to make something very clear… If you are looking to scale your business, you need to adopt a certain type of mindset.

You must do your pet sitting marketing consistently to have a flow of new prospects come to your business.

Once you make this shift in consciousness you are going to jump to the next level of success quickly.

MISTAKE #1. Not knowing the average lifetime value of a customer (LTV.)

Learning this one piece of valuable information, completely changed the way I thought about my business and about my customers.

So, what is the lifetime value of a customer? In short, it is the projected revenue that a customer will spend during their time with your business.

A very simple math equation that you can use to figure this out is to divide your lifetime gross revenue by the # of lifetime revenue-generating customers.

LTV= Lifetime gross revenue ÷ # of lifetime generating clients

NOTE: This is the most basic way to figure this out. You can most definitely calculate a more targeted number by doing some more advanced math, but if at the very least you figure this equation, you will have a basic understanding of this concept.

When I did this math, I was astounded at how high that number was. Now I don’t feel badly about offering discounts or running promotions to pull-in new clients.

MISTAKE #2. Not having your company’s Unique Selling Propositions clearly defined.

What are Unique Selling Propositions? They are what set you apart from your competition. It is crucial that you spell out what makes you different, so that your business becomes the only clear choice. There are tons of pet sitting businesses out there all saying the same exact things. Get clear on your USP’s and you will shine in comparison. I named Pet Nanny’s USP’s The Pet Nanny Peace of Mind Blueprint. Take a look. You’ll see that I have clearly listed and explained how Pet Nanny is unique. Until you do this, your company will be like any old vanilla pet sitting service out there.

MISTAKE #3. Not setting goals and mapping out a plan to achieve them.

Here is a simple method for you.

Let’s say you want to make $75,000 next year. This is your annual goal.

Divide this # by 12 and you will get a monthly goal of $6,250.00.

Next, figure out how many clients you need or how many visits or overnights need to happen for you to achieve this.

So, let’s say you would need to have 9 daily mid day walks (with a monthly mid day customer averaging about $340 per month)= $3,060.00

$6,250-$3,060= $3,190

$3,190 is the leftover amount that you would need to generate with your pet sitting visits, house sitting assignments and any other extra services you offer. You could also aim to bring on more monthly customers and hire another walker to help with the walking.

QUOTE - The Top 3 Pet Sitting Marketing Mistakes

 

Once you have these #’s all figured out you can move on to the marketing piece where you map out exactly what needs to be done to bring in new clients and keep your current pet sitting customers happy (this is so important and often forgotten.)

This is where you need to execute your Pet Sitting Marketing Power Wheel. Each section of the wheel will help you reel in new, ideal customers.

Map out on a calendar exactly what you will do every week/month to bring in new leads. Include social media, blogging, article submissions, networking groups, stay-in-touch marketing, direct mail, referral partners, strategic alliances, promotional campaigns, video trainings, giveaways etc. Once you get clear on what marketing needs to happen, you simply plug it into your calendar and it’s done with for the year. You just need to follow the calendar. The key is to do it systematically and automate as much as you can. If you do this, you will always have plenty of clients. Remember to track your goals every week. What you track, grows!

Your Homework Assignment:
You have a lot to do this week.

  1. Figure out the Average Lifetime Value of Your Customer.
  2. Write down your Unique Selling Proposition.
  3. Get clear in your numbers. Set an annual goal and monthly goals and then map out a strategy to achieve them.

Howdy, Pet Lover! Are you struggling with attracting new clients to your pet sitting business? Would you like to have a consistent pipeline of new clients coming to your business? Well, wait no longer, my friend. Grab my FREE report, 125 Ways To Get More Pet Sitting Clients. This resource is 100% FREE and is my gift to you. Enjoy!
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YES! Send Me The Complete Checklist of 125 ways to get more PET SITTING CLIENTS!

 

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Stay-In-Touch With Your Pet Sitting Customers

If you want repeat business from your pet sitting customers, you MUST stay-in-touch with them

Before my business coach taught me this concept, it really never occurred to me. In my naive mind I only thought about marketing as a way to bring in new business. I certainly didn’t think about marketing as a way to create repeat business. This was not smart thinking!

Stay Top of Mind With Stay-in-Touch Marketing

The idea behind stay-in-touch marketing is to always be “top of mind” with your ideal pet sitting customers. Meaning, you want to be the very first person they think of when they’re in need of pet care or they hear of someone else who is in need of pet care. Most pet sitting business owners take this for granted and just assume that their past clients will call them. This is not always the case. By keeping in touch with your customers you can count on the fact that they will think of you when the need arises.

Stay-In-Touch Marketing Builds “The Know, Like and Trust Factor” With Your Pet Sitting Customers

There’s that “know, like and trust” thing again that I’m always harping about. If you stay-in-touch with your pet sitting customers, over time you will build a relationship with them. During your communications with them, they are learning more about you and will ultimately come to trust you and your pet sitting business implicitly. If you continue to build these solid relationships with your pet sitting customers, you will never have to worry again about the phone ringing. I can promise you this!

Stay-in-Touch Marketing Increases Your Pet Sitting Customers Lifetime Value (LTV)

What is the lifetime value of a customer? In short, it is the projected revenue that a customer will spend during their time with your business.

An easy math equation that you can use to figure this out is to divide your lifetime gross revenue by the # of lifetime revenue-generating customers.

LTV= Lifetime gross revenue ÷ # of lifetime generating clients.

By simply staying-in-touch with your customers, you will drastically increase the LTV of your pet sitting customers.

Here are some ways for you to stay-in-touch:

  • Ezine
  • Direct mail campaign: birthday cards, pet birthday cards, warm letter etc.
  • Handwritten notes: congratulations, sympathies etc.
  • Gifts: birthday, pet birthday, baby etc.

Remember, you don’t have to touch base with your pet sitting customers for a specific reason. You can always reach out to them just to let them know you’re thinking about them and their pets.

 Stay in Touch With Your Pet Sitting Customers

Your Homework Assignment: Create a system for staying-in-touch with your pet sitting customers. Who are you going to reach out to this week? Write their names down and get moving! If you are always consistent with this marketing strategy, you will always have clients.

Howdy, Pet Lover! Are you struggling with attracting new clients to your pet sitting business? Would you like to have a consistent pipeline of new clients coming to your business? Well, wait no longer, my friend. Grab my FREE report, 125 Ways To Get More Pet Sitting Clients. This resource is 100% FREE and is my gift to you. Enjoy!
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YES! Send Me The Complete Checklist of 125 ways to get more PET SITTING CLIENTS!

 

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