362: Marketing a New Service
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How do you market a new service? Whether you’ve created a brand new service, or reconfigured an existing one, getting it in front of your clients is the biggest hurdle. Sometimes, the same marketing tactics don’t work for a new service, so as business owners, we have to be aware of what our options are. We walk through why marketing a new service involves a mindset shift and why you should start marketing before you launch your service.
Main topics
Knowing when to refer out vs offer a new service
Role of employees in the services you offer
When to start brainstorming
Meeting client needs
Main takeaway: Outline not just the problem you’re solving, but HOW you’re solving it.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
service, clients, offer, pet, people, pet sitters, dog, benefits, reconfigure, business, potential clients, waitlist, overnight, switching, existing clients, walks, associates, marketing, boarding, options
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:02
Welcome to pet sitter confessional an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter.
Collin 00:07
Thank you to our sponsor today, pet sitters associates and our Patreon supporters, including our newest Patreon supporter, Mary. firecrackers.
Meghan 00:17
Thank you very much for your support, we really appreciate it.
Collin 00:20
If you would like to learn more about what it means to support us on Patreon, you can go to pet circle festival.com/support, and learn of all the ways that you can support the show whether it's financially, whether it's leaving us a review, or rating wherever you're listening, or they're just really sharing the show with somebody who you think would benefit from it.
Meghan 00:37
We are busy preparing for the National Association of Professional pet sitters conference here in a couple of weeks in New Orleans, Louisiana, and we cannot wait to see everybody. Yeah, it's gonna
Collin 00:47
be a lot of fun. So we're really excited. on Episode 360, we talked about why we removed one of our services that was core to our business. And we were really wanted to continue that conversation and talk more about selling your new service and adapting your marketing as you start to add new services or reconfigure them.
Meghan 01:09
Yeah, we got a lot of great feedback about episode 360. So we just recently switched from boarding and daycare to only out call services. So dog walks petsitting and adventure hikes. And a lot of people actually said they're doing away with house sitting. And so that's great. And then we also had some feedback that people are switching from pet setting to dog walking solely, which is also wonderful. You make your business however you want to
Collin 01:35
Yeah, one of the things that we mentioned was how we don't always have to totally remove a service. But we got some feedback on how you don't don't remove that service, but just reconfigure it to make it a little bit better for your clients, maybe for your goals or for your clients needs. So for example, if you were switching over from overnight care in a client's home, but are getting burned out, and you don't like being gone from your house and your pets and family all the time, well, you could reconfigure that into something called an almost overnight, and I've seen these popping up more and more from senators. And basically what this is, is you stay kind of late in the evening. So instead of just coming in for 30 minutes, maybe you come in and stay for a whole hour, I've seen some people who would do a two hour talk in between eight and 10pm. And then they come back over at six or seven in the morning for an extended stay to wake up the dog and get them ready for the day.
Meghan 02:30
Yeah, these are great for senators who are just tired of the house sitting staying at somebody's house for 12 hours and getting virtually no sleep, you know, how's it been is this great thing where, you know, a lot of people enjoy it, some people don't. But a lot of times you are not comfortable in your own bed, the dogs have a different routine, sometimes they get up at three or four in the morning. And I know a lot of sitters are just trying to get away from this. So almost overnights is a great way to do that. Or if you have a team and you have employees overnights really aren't an option unless you charge an obscene amount of money. And if you can get that and you can get your clients to pay for that, please let us know. So we can interview you to talk about how you get clients to pay several $100 a night for that.
Collin 03:13
But you have to understand what your clients are ultimately wanting, it may be hard to really convert them over to an almost overnight if they are truly expecting an overnight experience. Plus, it's additional to what you want and what you want out of your service. So you have to ask yourself before I try and reconfigure this service, ask what do my clients want out of this service? Would they actually want this thing that I am going to offer? Or I think this other thing is is am I switching to an entirely new service? No, maybe you're offering a 15 minute potty break, but you're finding that those are a big headache to schedule or really make financial sense for you? Well, you could offer a more inclusive 3045 minute package and talk about language of exploring and socialization. But this is where that fine line it comes between reconfiguring an old service and just straight up offering a completely new service because the kind of people who are looking for a 15 minute potty break, probably are not the same kind of people who would be okay with a 45 minute extended exploration and socialization service.
Meghan 04:17
Well, and again, you have to think about your clients if your clients really want you to keep a 15 minute service, but you just don't think they're worth it any more than you ultimately need to do what's best for you and your business. If 15 minutes isn't enough time in your mind, you personally do not believe that you can provide the best care in only 15 minutes. But your clients desperately want that. Well, then maybe it's time to let them go. Like, like we said on episode 360. With our boarding and daycare, a lot of people the vast majority of people did not move over to this new service with us because they didn't believe in it or it didn't match up with what they wanted for their dog anymore.
Collin 04:57
And you might be sitting here listening thinking going well I don't want to go through the hassle of reconfiguring a service or even offering a brand new service. And so we got some good feedback from that episode about, well don't go through that hassle, just refer out, take that service that you were offering no longer offer it and tell your clients if you are looking for this service, please go to XYZ people, or here's a list of people who I would recommend that you work with. This can be hard, because again, we would love to keep and retain our existing clients, because we all know that it is very costly and time consuming to bring on new clients into our companies. So if we have them, we want to keep them. However, if they are asking for a service that you just cannot or do not want to offer anymore, and you don't want to try and reconfigure or create a new one to meet their needs in a slightly different way. Referring out is really your only option at that point. And that's okay, right, that's part of building the community of pet sitters and pet professionals across our areas and in our communities to know that we have people who offer services that we don't offer, or they do things that we wouldn't want to do that aren't a good fit for us. And we can continue to provide an excellent customer service because that's at the end of day we want our clients to be served well, whether it's with us or somebody else.
Meghan 06:15
We mentioned on Episode 360, that if you have employees, the decision to drop a service is a little bit more nuanced than if you are solo. So when we dropped our service, it was just us who were doing that. And so it didn't really matter. But if we were dropping petsitting for strictly dog walks, and we had people working in, you know, 6am to 10pm, it would be a little harder to talk to them about, Hey, these are the benefits and you can either come on board with us or not
Collin 06:46
well, and Isabel Alvarez Radha brought up a really good point about having staff is that the staff that you currently have, if you have staff, they were attracted to your company, because of your culture, and possibly because of the services that you were offering, because they saw that as a good fit for them. So we have to understand that our services are a good fit for our clients. And if we have staff, our services are a good fit for our staff. So the staff that you currently have may not be a good fit for a new service that you're trying to offer. They might not have the skills or the passion to do that service. Well. If you're offering midday dog walks and you want people to work for you that have their own pets that have that passion and that culture in your team, it would be really hard to transition those staff members into doing overnights in client's house because they won't be able to take care of their own pets, or maybe if they have families, they won't be able to do that. So it's a really good reminder that the employees that you attract to your business should match the services that you are trying to offer. And that when you make changes, you need to present these that change to them in a positive way or in a direct way so that they can see the benefit to them, and understand that it might not be a good fit moving forward.
Meghan 08:03
The decision to drop a service needs to be one that aligns with your mission and values. And so when you go to present a new service, or think about a new service, that also needs to align with your goals for your company.
Collin 08:16
But fully understanding that while it could also not be a good fit for your clients, we talked about that last week of the new service might not be a good fit for them. If you have staff that new service might not be a good fit for them either. And to find other alternatives or talk to them about what options they have to continue to work for you. If that's not going to be a good fit for them.
Meghan 08:37
Something that is an amazing fit is pet sitters associates. As pet care professionals, your clients trust you to care for their furry family members. And that's why pet sitters Associates is here to help. for over 20 years they have provided 1000s of members with quality pet care insurance. Because you work in the pet care industry, you can take your career to the next level with flexible coverage options, client connections and complete freedom and running your business. Learn why pet sitters Associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote today. At pets@llc.com. You can get a discount when joining by clicking membership petsitter confessional and using the discount code confessional at checkout to get $10 off, check out the benefits and membership once again at pets@llc.com.
Collin 09:18
We've walked through why you might want to change a service, we've walked through some of the pros and cons of adapting the initial services and meeting client needs and how meeting your staff needs is a little more nuanced than just dropping and moving forward. But once you've decided that it is time to offer that new service, depending on how drastic of a shift that you make, changing your talking points and selling your new service may actually be pretty foreign and weird to you. And I know that this was an experience that we had moving from I felt like we were really good at selling boarding and daycare options to potential clients that that came very easily and naturally to us. And then when we shifted and started changing it to pure Early alcohol services, that was a little bit of a struggle, because we were having to come up with new things, new talking points, new terminology. It was it was a whole mind shift change into how we were going to approach and tackle that problem.
Meghan 10:15
So it's important to get out of the mindset of how your old service helped people and really start replacing that language, that terminology with what you now can offer. So if you are going from your home to the client's home, you can say, well, now I can take care of your home, if you are going from the client's home to your home, you can now say, Hey, I will be around your pets more. If you are moving from House setting to pets, any visits or dog walks to adventure hikes, you will really have to rearrange and change who exactly you're talking to, because that person is different.
Collin 10:50
Well, and this can be really uncomfortable, just at the personal level, because you are talking about something different, you are talking to new potential clients. And we can feel less secure about this, especially when talking about those benefits. Because they're new to us, we just figured that out. And we're still piecing this together,
Meghan 11:06
especially if it's not something directly in your wheelhouse. So if you are going to school to be a groomer, and you're wanting to start nail trims and little bits of grooming here and there during your pet sitting visits, it can feel strange at first to go okay, well, I am new at this. And I, I don't want to call you guys guinea pigs with my new services. But you know, I'm still in the training phase or you know, whatever the case may be with your business
Collin 11:30
well, being honest and upfront with potential clients who are new and letting them know that you if if you're comfortable with this, saying, This is something that's new to me, this is what I'm doing, this is how I envision it going. And this is how I would like to work with you and the benefits that it provides. Being upfront about that is really going to help open a lot of doors, and being transparent with them in that way is going to be very refreshing to people whenever they come in to contact you for your services.
Meghan 11:58
As long as you're not oversharing I think that's something we're big onto of, of not, you know, writing this long screed of, I'm really, you know, I need this huge change in my business. And I really want to start this new thing and I'm excited about it. I mean, you can you can go into a little bit about that of the benefits of this new thing. But you don't need to, you know, justify why you are making these changes.
Collin 12:19
But really, it's all about outlining you outlining what are the benefits and more important here, what are the problems that you are solving with your new service. And honestly, some of the problems may still be the same as your old service, but you're solving them in a different way. Yeah,
Meghan 12:35
a dog walk is kind of the same as an adventure hike. It's just longer, but you're solving a different problem, maybe the dog needs to work on some stunt work or some different mental stimulation than just a neighborhood dog walk.
Collin 12:48
Which means it's really important to lean into those differences that you can now offer and not necessarily do a compare and contrast. Because I know Megan and I are really big proponents of always focusing on the here. And now when you're communicating to clients. So you have a really clear message. new clients will have no idea what services that you use to offer. So there's no point in saying, Well, I used to offer these things, or this is what I used to do. Or this is what I this is how I operated a couple months ago. They don't know and really they don't they don't care. They want to know Okay, can you help me today. And so that's where you can focus on of going well, no, this is the new me, this is my new identity. This is how I'm serving people. Right now, all that old stuff, it never existed. We're only keeping eyes moving forward.
Meghan 13:34
Again, it's all about the language you use. So if you are switching from boarding to pet sitting visits in the pet home, you can talk more about the security of the home and you can mention the details of what you're going to be able to do and provide for them new services that you hadn't before, like watering plants, taking out the trash, getting their mail, all these little things that they may not have thought about, you know, the home security aspects of is somebody having eyes and ears on your home and making sure that no doors are unlocked and windows are closed and nobody's breaking in. You know, eventually, you will get the script the you know, the 32nd sales pitch memorized again, but it is going to take a while to have that mindset mindset shift of I'm no longer offering the service. I'm now doing this and here are the benefits that I can now say
Collin 14:23
so seriously have written bullet points have a written script out on your phone or on a piece of paper or post a note at your desk in your car. So that you know exactly Okay, somebody calls and they're going to talk to me and they're asking about drop in visits, what are my talking points, what are the things I'm going to say what am I going to focus on and these help not just with on your phone call because we keep saying that but these help with your social media posts these help with your email marketing these help whenever people are DMing you and asking questions that way where you know, okay, I can hit three four things that are really big benefits that are different than What I used to talk about and that's really what this is, is, it's fine to drop an old service. And now we're gonna replace it with a new one. But now I have to change my business has to change and how we talk about how we approach how we think how we plan, how we train, the resources that we have. There's all these other ancillary things that come along with that with that new service.
Meghan 15:22
And I think the planning is the biggest aspect. So when you have that first inkling of, I'm going to potentially do this, or I want to now offer this, write it down on a piece of paper, and then basically brainstorm everything. So your new ideal client, who is that? Where do they go? What do they do? Is it different from your existing clients? And so how are you now going to reach and target and market to this new client? Or if it's the same? Well, that's great, but also, but also realize that not all of your existing clients are going to come over with you, it's very likely that they're not. And so knowing I have to now reach a different person, how am I going to do that? Is it going to be more targeted? Is it going to be more broad? Is it going to be digital or physical?
Collin 16:11
Well, and I would say, really, one of the things I would do is when you first have this inkling of, am I going to offer this new service, as does my insurance cover that new service? Well, back to
Meghan 16:22
if you want to do pet taxi, and you're not covered for pet taxi, well, you need to look into that.
Collin 16:27
But that way you can. That's where that research comes in for the new service. So it's not just this, oh, I think I'll do this. It's, there's a whole new suite of things that I need to learn about before I can go confidently into this new service from what I was offering before. And when I do my research, when I do my due diligence in researching the best practices, the pricing, the insurance, the equipment that I need for that, what that process does is that actually builds a lot of your confidence in talking to people about your service, because you have done the research, you have done all of the back end work to get things set up and ready to go. And then you can start talking and promoting about it. But after you do have that question about insurance, asking the other question of is there a market for this service? Okay, I don't want to do boarding anymore. Is there a market in my area for drop in vacation visits? Well, how do you go about doing some market research like that, and I think the first one that you can do is you can start to try and build a waitlist. So this is a way of instead of you diving headfirst into this, dropping the boarding and going straight into drop in visits with the clients home, you can start promoting that with a waitlist so that you people can reach out and contact you. And you can simply say things like, look, we're building a waitlist. Enter your email here, we'll let you know as soon as our services become available in your area. Well,
Meghan 17:51
and we had done this with dog adventure hikes. Yeah. And I mean, there's no cost to just put it on your website and see what happens. And we actually did get a couple inquiries just by having it on the website, we had done zero promotion of this. And so it does, in fact, work with, you know, people go to your website and scroll to find that page and are interested in that service. Yeah, so
Collin 18:10
that gives you some idea of people are searching for this. They're finding me already, and they're asking me questions about it, that should be a really good sign that there is interest. And there's a market for what you're trying to offer. Additionally, you can always pull your existing clients about services that you could offer. We talked about doing quarterly or annually, surveys of your clients. This is a great one to add of, of the services that I could offer of the services that I could offer, which would you be most interested in using and then list out three or four different services that you don't offer now to see, okay, how much of my current client base could I pull forward into that new service before I make that switch?
Meghan 18:48
Along with that research, you need to do research into your own budget and your own finances and knowing your numbers for your business. We had talked about this on episode 360 of removing a service. But it's also the same for adding a service. So if this is you're going to start doing pack walks and adventure hikes, and you're going to be needing backpacks and water bottles and long lines and all of this type of equipment. Do you have the budget for that?
Collin 19:11
Also add just click on the group walks if you are going to be taking dogs on group box check with your insurance to see what the deductible is. Because most insurances will have a deductible per dog. So if you want to say okay, I'd like to take these dogs out on a pack walk and we're going to be adventuring. I want six dogs with me. Well, if you have a deductible of what $500 $1,000 per dog, in the worst case scenario where all of those dogs get some sort of injury, you could be looking at $6,000 worth of liability, just to cover those. And so asking yourself, do I have that? How will I get to that point? Is that something? Is that a liability that I want to take on? Well, maybe I don't wanna take on six, but I could cover three. So let's do it. We'll help you adjust some of your expectations and the risks that You're willing to take on as well and your business
Meghan 20:02
well. And then of course, if you're basically doing anything with your car, anything additional with your car, you're going to have the maintenance of the car. So oil changes, windshield wipers that need to be replaced all of this wonderful stuff that comes along with a car. If you're doing pet taxi, or you're doing lots of adventure hikes or traveling to see clients, if you want to start offering services in a different town from you, all of these other things, all these other expenses need to be taken into account before you start marketing that new service. Well,
Collin 20:31
we talked about the importance of starting early so that you can communicate to your clients about this change. And that shift is before you completely cut it off. The great part about starting early with the process of developing your your marketing, developing the avatar, developing all of the budgetary things for your new service that you're going to replace for it. The really great part about starting that process early is that you can start refining everything before you launch. And so you can have a much smoother launch than you would have otherwise, if you just started cold one day. And it can help you build into having something that's really polished, really well thought out really well done high touch really involved in really nailing the marketing messages. And you can sit there and you can ruminate on those things. And you can think about them, you can send them off to friends. You can have other pet sitters, look at the language, look at the colors, look at all the things that you're thinking about developing and pouring into this while you continue to operate your current business in the model that you have right now, which makes ultimately launching it that much easier. Talked about pulling in that boat a little bit closer to shore as far as finances so you don't have a big jump. Well, same thing about our learning the learning curve of how do I talk about marketing message, this new service that I want to offer? Well, I need a little bit of runway to lead up into that so that I can launch confidently so that when I am taking phone calls or messaging people online, I know what I'm talking about.
Meghan 21:58
There's nothing to say that you can't all of a sudden one day flip on a switch no and just say hey, now I'm offering this, but I don't think it's the wisest choice. I do agree that having a plan and knowing what you're getting yourself into before you get into it is going to make your company look more professional and you're going to be more respected by clients,
Collin 22:17
right? Yeah, that's right. You don't have to go gangbusters right away. This can be a slow build, both tearing down an old service and then building up that new one.
Meghan 22:26
If you have found an easy way to market a new service and you've done it successfully, we would love to hear it you can email us at feedback at Pet Sitter confessional.com Thank you
Collin 22:35
so much to pet sitters associates for making today's show possible and our wonderful, amazing stupendous patreon supporters off
Meghan 22:42
the Doxon level and the Great Dane level. Thank you very much. And thank you also for listening today you taking your most valuable asset your time and listening to this today. We very much appreciate you and we will talk with you next time. Bye
