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By Beth Stultz-Hairston | February 17, 2017

When you first started pet sitting, you likely expected to care for dogs and cats (and the occasional guinea pig) while their owners were on vacation. Unless you specialize in daily dog walks, it’s likely that vacation pet-care visits still make up the bulk of your pet-sitting requests. As you’ve built your client base, however, you’ve likely also discovered that many of your clients have found a variety of other times outside of their annual beach trips to request pet-sitting visits.

Why do pet owners use your services?

PSI conducted a brief online survey in January 2017 that asked members to indicate the reasons for which clients had booked their pet-care services. Nearly 1,330 members responded.

Based on the survey results, the top five reasons clients use pet-sitting services are:

1. Client out of town on a personal trip/vacation (98 percent)
2. Client out of town on a business trip (90 percent)
3. Client working long hours (82 percent)
4. Client in town, but at a special event such as a concert, party, etc. (66 percent)
5. Client has special-needs pet(s) that needs medication or fluids administered at specific times (63 percent)

But, these aren’t the only reasons. More than half of members responding to the survey indicated these additional reasons pet owners had used their services:

• Client has puppy in need of more frequent visits (63 percent)
• Client is hospitalized and/or sick/physically unable to care for pet (58%)
• Client has senior pet in need of additional care (58 percent)
• Client is busy caring for a sick family member—either in town or out of town (55%)
• Client away from home for children’s sporting events/tournaments (55 percent)
• Client away on honeymoon (52%)

How can you market these services to gain new business?

Just as you anticipated providing pet sitting for vacationing pet parents when you first started your business, pet owners may be thinking of your pet-sitting business as one they’d only need if they take out-of-town trips. As PSI’s survey indicates, vacation pet care is only one of many reasons pet owners can benefit from your services—so you need to let them know!

Successful advertising identifies a problem and then offers a solution. As a professional pet sitter, you likely offer a great solution…but sometimes you need to educate clients about the “problems” you can solve!

Let’s take a closer look at a few of the top-five reasons for using pet-sitting services listed above. How can you incorporate them into your advertising to better market your business?

Pet owners who work long hours:  Are there large companies in your area you can reach out to and offer a special discount for daily dog walks? HR directors are often looking for new perks to promote to current and prospective employees—and may be happy to promote a discounted rate for their employees who want to book daily dog walks with your service.

If you offer daily dog walks or have the flexibility to perform last-minute requests for pet owners who unexpectedly have to stay at work late, be sure you clearly indicate this on your website, on your social-media pages, etc. Pet owners may not automatically think of this option if you only mention “pet sitting.”

Pet owners who are in town, but will be attending a special event such as a concert, party, etc.: If you are a pet owner yourself, you know that nothing ruins a good time more quickly than worrying about your pet(s) at home—but many pet owners may never think to contact you for service when they are in town but away from home for several hours. If a sold-out concert is being held in your city (or a nearby city), for example, how can you use this to generate business? Concert goers will be excited—they’ll be posting about the upcoming concert on social media, looking up information about it online, etc., so you want to make sure your content can be found in their searches as well. Let’s say that there’s an upcoming Adele concert in your area. How could you incorporate this into your promotions on Facebook? You could post a cute pet image of a dog howling with the post “While I won’t be able to see #Adele live in Portland, I can make sure your pet gets the celebrity treatment while you’re at the concert.” Or if you have a blog for your business, consider writing a post that incorporates Adele’s Portland concert so that it could potentially show up in Google searches by concert goers.

Pet owners with special-needs pets: If you offer services to pets needing medication, fluids, etc., focus on building strong relationships with your local veterinarians. While building these relationships takes time and effort, being the go-to pet sitter vets in your area recommend will be invaluable in helping you increase your pet-sitting requests from pet owners with special-needs pets. Ask about placing business cards or brochures in vet’s offices and veterinary hospitals. It’s also a good idea to follow social-media pages of your local veterinary practices and comment on and share their posts, when applicable. However, it’s important that you never take advantage of their pages to overtly promote your services—it’s unprofessional. Simply engage with their pages and it will help make their page followers more aware of your business. If you specialize in special-needs pets or want to start building this segment of your business, be sure you highlight this on your website and social-media pages as a service you offer. You may even occasionally share a sample of the medication logs you complete at visits (be sure you are only posting a sample and not a medication log that reveals client information) or, with a client’s permission, share a “success story” of a pet you’ve sat for that required regular medication and has now recovered, is doing well, etc.

Because there are a multitude of situations in which pet owners could benefit from your services, the possibilities for advertising are endless. As you plan out your upcoming promotional efforts, take some time to review the reasons shared in PSI’s survey and shape some of your social-media content or advertising efforts to provide solutions to these specific pet-sitting needs.

Additional resources:

If you are looking to add any of the services above or need additional ideas for promoting your business, the resources below can help:

What Every Pet Sitter Should Know about Senior Pet Care
The Top Pet-Sitter Advertising Ideas
PSI’s 2017-2018 Pet-Sitting Industry Forecast
SEO Tips for Pet Sitters: 5 simple steps to rise above the competition (Webinar)
Assessing a Pet’s Health at the Pet-Sitting Visit (Webinar)

Be sure to check out PSI’s complete list of available downloads, e-books and webinars. (PSI members, log in to the Members area to access the complete selection of free members-only resources.)

Your turn: Are there specific “segments” of pet owners you advertise to—those getting married, pet parents with human children who play sports, etc.? How do you tailor your advertising to reach them and gain their business? Share your feedback in the comments below.