Contrary to popular belief, owning a dog business is no walk in the park. Your margins are tight, you must be more flexible with your clients than a circus contortionist and, let’s face it, the impact of global events can flip your business on its head in a moment.
Great service, fair price, trustworthiness and punctuality are all as important as ever, but due to the unprecedented increase in dog ownership from the pandemic, new dog businesses are popping up everywhere. By nature, new businesses are likely to undercut their competition, so future-proofing your business has never been more important.
Here at Wooflinks, we know that building a digital presence can seem like a daunting prospect; spending thousands on a website is simply out of the question for a lot of small companies and technical language can be baffling at the best of times. But our job is to make sure that your dog business can be seen online without breaking the bank.
So here are our 5 tips to boost your business for FREE!
- Google Business Profile
Formerly known as Google My Business, this is an essential and brilliant tool to manage your online presence.
89% of customers begin their buying process with a search engine.
That’s right, nearly 9/10 people will go to Google before doing anything else to seek out a new purchase or service. Social media is fantastic, and we’ll come on to that, but the truth is that if you’re not on Google, you’re missing out on 90% of your potential customers.
Google Business Profile enables you to be seen in these searches. Google has recently shaken its game up so that local businesses come up in more searches, so making sure your location, services, opening hours and contact details are on there will make sure you are seen by your customers.
- Reviews, Reviews, Reviews
Placing your dog in the hands of a stranger is a leap of faith, and we all know how important personal recommendations are for dog businesses, so stand out and get all your customers to help you by leaving fab reviews for all your new customers to see.
79% of consumers trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations.
You probably already have reviews on your Facebook page but given that 90% of your customers are Googling your service, they really need to be on Google too.
- Up to date images and videos
Nothing stops social media scrollers in their tracks more than dog content, so make sure you are using this to your advantage. Regularly posting to your Instagram and Facebook profiles and stories keeps your brand fresh in people’s minds. Again, adding fresh images to your Google Business Profile will enable the other 90% to see what your brand is about. Use the same ones as you do for your social media. Easy peasy.
- Social Media – keep it professional
There’s an age old saying; “never mix business and pleasure”. The same could not be more true when it comes to your online presence.
Make sure your business is just that, a business. Your Facebook and Instagram should be separate dedicated business pages, not personal ones. And for goodness sake please never use your personal page as your business page. Your clients don’t need to know that you’re on your 6th cocktail of the night or that you’ve broken up with your partner for the third time since Christmas.
Make sure your business pages are up to date, have multiple ways to contact you, and use a professional and friendly tone when writing your posts, just as you would in real life.
- Create a logo
All businesses need a logo. It’s what defines you, your brand and what you are about. You absolutely do not need hundreds of £s or graphic designer for this. There are some fantastic free tools online e.g.: www.canva.com that you can play with to create a simple, fresh logo that you can use on your social media pages, and even your clothes, van, front door, business cards, and whatever else you’re using to advertise your business.
You can also create branded social media posts, video and stories on Canva too. It’s a really worthwhile (and fun!) tool to get your head around and can make your business profile look super professional.
So, there they are, Wooflinks’ 5 top tips to boost your dog business for free. We aim to list ALL the dog businesses in the UK on our site www.wooflinks.co.uk. See if yours is listed, and if not, add it to our directory for another free way of getting your business seen online.
