372: Improving Your Local Digital Marketing

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Are you using Digital Marketing to its fullest? In our busy lives as business owners, it can be hard to know where to invest our time, attention, and financial resources. Thankfully, there are a lot of free options! We break down the four we love and how to get the most out of them. We also discuss how to know which to start in and the importance of balance so you don’t feel like you have to do everything. 

Main topics:

• What is digital marketing

• 4 free options

• Getting the most out of them

• Finding balance

Main takeaway: Start with what you can do and work at being consistent. Then, slowly invest more resources from there. You don’t have to dive into everything right away!

Links:

Something to chew on : https://whitespark.ca/local-search-ranking-factors/?ref=nearmedia.co&fbclid=IwAR3kkO70PYe6MJFShG4n7HbAFt6i4zO6UeuvnaEfPyS--v6PMXSvYl8Ld2s

SEO with Amy Toman: https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/120

Google My Business with Amy Toman: https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/267

Lead magnets: https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/334

Marketing with Jane Harrell: https://www.petsitterconfessional.com/episodes/250

ProTrainings: For 10% off any of their courses, use CPR-petsitterconfessional

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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE

Provided by otter.ai

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, google, pet, website, business, post, listing, email, pet sitters, clients, important, information, digital marketing, content, dog, services, seo, potential clients, link, email list

SPEAKERS

Meghan, Collin

Meghan  00:01

Hi, I'm Meghan. I'm Collin. And we are the hosts of pets that are confessional, and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter,

Collin  00:08

we are brought to day by pet sitters Associates, and our wonderful, amazing Patreon supporters. Thank you all so much for finding value in the show and contributing every month financially. If you're listening to this, you want to learn more about that or other ways to support the show, because it's not just financially it's sharing a show, it's finding a sponsor for the show, or just giving feedback, you can go to a pet sitter confessional.com/support. So we've been starting the shows by sharing a top dog walking or pet sitting tip. And we've had some really good ones recently come from listeners. And this week, I want to give one of mine one of my best tips for doing dog walking and pet sitting actually has nothing to do with dealing with the pets, but actually gaining entry into the home. If you are using a door code or a garage code pad. When you press the buttons, press them firmly and succinctly in the right order, don't rush through and tap through them really quickly. Because a lot of times it's not going to register. So pressing 135. And at that pace is going to help make sure that you have depressed in in order and correctly instead of skimming through and doing it too quickly. And then it not operating or opening. I can't tell you how many times this issue comes up. Where it's a matter of not rushing, pressing firmly. And moving on. We talk a lot

Meghan  01:31

about marketing. But we want to focus today on digital marketing and how to improve that in your local area. Because we need to achieve hyperlocal results as a service based industry, our community is essential. So we need to get out there. And yes, do boots on the ground and getting our name in print advertising. But ultimately, because it's 2023 digital marketing and digital media is very important. However, you may not want to pay for ads, we are not super fond of paying for advertising when there are so many free options out there. Yeah, thankfully,

02:05

there are just so many different ways to do this these days. And this is really where the power of digital marketing comes in. Because it is digital because it's going through the internet's there are. So there are a lot of different ways to now focus our efforts on to a lot of free resources.

Meghan  02:23

And so we'd like to talk about some of them today. The first one is Google My Business. And I feel like we've talked about this one a lot, because we have and we've had Amy Tolman, who is petsitter. Seo, she is the SEO expert and particularly in pet sitting and dog walking businesses. So if you don't know who she is, check her out. We've had her on a couple of podcast episodes, and she has always a wealth of knowledge. And

02:46

we'll have those links in the show notes so that you can listen to those past episodes with her.

Meghan  02:50

So if you don't know what Google My Business is, it is when you type in pet sitter near me or pet store, there are some options that come up and you see that map on the right side of your screen that has all of the different options in your area. And so each one of those businesses has a Google My Business listing. So it's a free tool that any business can have. Even if you're service based or brick and mortar, whatever it is, you can have one and all you do is it you just say hey, Google, I am a business, you give them some of your information. And they show they show you on Google.

03:24

Well, and that first one there is really the most important part about this is completing your profile. That's the first step in getting the Google My Business listing is the profile. And this is more than just your name and location. But that location part is critical because it is going to ask for an address. And there are a lot of particular components that you can and cannot use for an address. What's really important here is that you not use a Pio box or a shared listing for the address. So like a shared office space or things like that they want one business for one address. And it is okay to use your personal address which I know people may be hesitant to do. But after you get it initially set up, you can hide the address it by selecting that you are a service based business at which point it obscures the address and just sets a service area around you. But you fill out other information, like your phone number, give it a website, you can put in the category of business, the hours of operation is also really important. And a really good description of your business. This helps Google know how to surface you in relevant searches of as potential customers are searching on Google.

Meghan  04:37

And then you're going to verify your listing. So they will send you a postcard in the mail to that address that you put in there. And you will have to type in the code into Google will give you a website to go to a code to type into that website. And then you are verified your business will as soon after that will pop up and will be searchable.

04:57

What's critical about this is that you do verify it is to prevent other people from taking control of your business listing preventing you from changing or updating information as you need.

Meghan  05:07

And then similar to a social media post, or a social media profile, you are able to add photos on there. And you want to make sure when you do that they are crystal clear they are high quality because Google likes that they don't like blurry photos that you can't tell, is this a dog or is this a cat or what is happening in this photo.

05:26

And something that Google is doing with these photos isn't it's not just there to make it look pretty for potential customers. Google is also now scanning these photos and looking for relevant information in the photo using artificial intelligence, such that it can tell the activity of that photo. So for doing dog walking and pet sitting services, you're gonna want to upload a lot of photos of a person walking or being with a pet or a dog on a leash to show those activities. So that more than just putting in good keywords and having good text for the post, Google can now tag the photos with relevant information and surface that and surface you when people search for dog walking. And with

Meghan  06:05

those photos, you can include an update as well. That's why Google My Business calls them updates. And so it's basically what I do is basically just copy and paste your social media posts from Facebook or Instagram and put it into Google into your listing with the picture that you have for the day. You can even do this with blogs, because you can include a clickable website on there of if you want to learn more if it's a blog, or you can do book now for your exact booking link or you they they have a lot of options on there. But it's a good way for interaction within your Google My Business listing.

06:36

So getting the most out of the Google My Business listing really means making sure that things are up to date, and that you're actually using this. So if your hours change, if you want to have different contact hours where people can use you, or if you're going to be away for a holiday or not taking on services for a particular time, keep that information up to date so that it is relevant. That's a really big key for the Google My Business listing is relevant information for the people searching.

Meghan  07:01

You do have to be careful though, because I know that Google doesn't like you changing too much. Because that can often lead to them

07:08

needing to re verify you or is temporarily locking your account until you can get access to it again. So there is a fine line with this, that's for sure.

Meghan  07:16

Because people can review you on Google just like they can on Facebook, it is important to respond to those reviews in a timely manner, because Google likes that they say, Hey, this isn't engaged business owner, and we want to keep surfacing their information because they are doing a great job.

07:33

Another thing to do is whenever you ask your clients for reviews, ask them to talk about the services that you offer. Obviously, you don't want to be paying for reviews or prompting them too much. But if you reach out to somebody and say, Hey, I would really appreciate it if you could leave me a review about the dog walking services that I give fluffy or Fido or whoever that way because Google again, is looking for keywords looking for good information. And they they scrape not just your photos, not just your posts, but also the reviews. So if your reviews talk a lot about dog walks, or cats or particular types of breeds or fish, it will surface that when people search for fish care or a particular care for a breed. They know oh, these people are talking about this specific thing for this business. I will give their information to this person searching. And

Meghan  08:22

then the last thing about these listings is you want to analyze what insights they are giving you so every month or so Google will send you an email with a report about how many interactions you've had this month compared to last month. Is it up? Is it down? Are people looking more at your photos? Are you having more calls come to you more messages, whatever it is, but it's important to understand, okay, am I putting out good content? Are people actually searching for what I'm offering? Or are they going somewhere else?

Collin  08:52

Well, that's a good point is it will tell you oh, we showed your listing to people who searched to these terms, basically. And then you can go oh, man, I'm really that's that's that's a no wonder that I keep getting requests for kennels or boarding even though I don't offer it. For some reason Google is putting my listing up there when people search boarding or kennel near me. I wonder what it is about my listing that is doing that. So what kind of words are people using? What kind of posts are out there? What kind of information what kind of category and tags does my listing have on it that may be surfacing it for the wrong reasons.

Meghan  09:26

Along with the Google's there is also SEO. So we've all heard about this. It's search engine optimization and it's focusing on your website and optimizing it for local searches, location specific keywords. So if you don't have a website, I would highly suggest that you get one because it really makes you look a lot more credible. And people love to know more about you and want to know more about your business before they give you a call or send you a message. You want to make it as easy as possible for them to know the most about you.

09:57

Well and having a good website trying to link a few these things together a good website will also help bolster your Google My Business listing as it starts tying more and more information there, you can reference the two between each other. But this SEO really is focused on your website. So it's about making sure that you have good location specific keywords, on your website and on your posts and on the pages that you have there. So things that are actually relevant to you, that's a big word that's going to come up a lot when it comes to digital marketing, in surface and especially for SEO is relevant information. Don't just spam with a lot of things. But if you live in Austin, Texas, make sure that you have the words Austin, Texas, on your website in several places in the title of each websites. So if you were doing dog walking in Austin, Texas, you would the title of your webpage would not just be dog walker, it would be Austin, Texas dog walker, because Google is going to look at that information. And other search engines do this as well. They look at the title of each page of your website. And that's information that they pull first and foremost, to see if there's anything relevant on there for people searching for you.

Meghan  11:05

Well, and Google loves to see, each service has its own webpage

11:10

exactly, because that allows them to parse out no more about you and that you're relevant to people. So if you offer wedding pet attendant services, if you offered pet taxi, if you offer dog walks if you offer pet sitting services, if you offer overnights, if you offer grooming make a specific page about each one of those with relevant information that people can read about you that have words about Austin, Texas groomer and then Austin, Texas pet wedding pet attendant and then Austin, Texas, it sounds a little bit repetitive, and it can get quite annoying. And that's the fine balance here is that a well, SEO optimized web page doesn't always read the best for a human. So we do have to take a little bit of creative license here and balance out going okay, this still has to be appealing to a client, I don't just need to make it appealing to a robot or to an AI, we still need to be creative here and telling a story with this.

Meghan  12:06

Google also likes to see a lot of buttons to click to book us specifically. So lots of call to action buttons, whether it's contact, and you can immediately call your business or book now buttons, they love to see the call to actions.

Collin  12:21

And on top of that, again, we're talking about local digital marketing practices here have good content on your website, not just keywords, not just tags, but good content relevant to people in your area. So if you're in Austin, Texas, make sure that you have some information about other pet friendly Austin, Texas places or restaurants or cafes or trails or other pet sitters, groomers, trainers, all that information, you can put in a blog post, and then tie that link, tie that information to other information on your website as well to make sure that it's all connected

Meghan  12:58

well. And speaking of blogging, I know a lot of times people are just terrified of it. And they don't know what to write about. And they don't know how often to do it. And it's hard to just sit down and write about it. But you really, if you think about it, there are what you just said there, there are like eight different blogs. You could do one about Austin dog trainers, Austin groomers, Austin pet stores, Austin, restaurants, whatever you just listed there. But they're each one of those could be a different blog for once a week or once a month, and you have an entire year's worth of content there. And and you basically kill two birds with one stone because you've not only shouted out those businesses in your community, fostering those partnerships. But you've also increased your SEO and gotten Google's to say, Hey, this is a local Austin dogwalker that people love and trust.

13:45

And what's really cool now that you've done that what you can do at the bottom of each one of those blogs is you can say, if you're interested in this topic, you should check out this information about bakeries or this information about dog friendly trails. And what this is called this is called backlinking. backlinking is linking to other pages on your website, within your website. And Google loves this because it means you're referencing yourself referencing information and tying a lot of things together. So if you've ever read a blog and and said, Hey, continue reading with the next article or keep going with this same information. That's exactly what they're doing. And we love to do this. We've actually created a page on our website that has since we are in two different service areas. We have a web page for each service area that we're in with all of the relevant blogs and content for that particular service area is a great thing to share out on social media, which I know we'll talk about here in a little bit. But it's a great place to just centralize everything and create a lot of backlinks and good SEO content as well. And I will say that back linking is also a term that can be applied if your information is tied to other outside resources. So not just internal links. But when you link to content that is on A local news organization or community posting page or other businesses, now you start tying that. So you are Google is able to see that you are connected with others. And what it's doing is it's verifying that you are real, and verifying the relevancy that you are to others. So if there is a news article that talks about great dog walking companies, and they post a link to your website, well, that's a reference point for Google to go, Okay, this Austin dog walking company, they are actually a dog walking company, not just because they say they're a dog walking company, but because there's a news article over here that talks about them being a dog walking company. So there's this there's the building of criteria, there's this building of self and identity in Google that's really important for our local listings.

Meghan  15:45

We'd like to tell you about our friends at 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 in running your business. Learn why pet sitters Associates is the perfect fit for you and get a free quote, at pets@llc.com. You can get a discount when you join by clicking membership, pet sitter confessional and use the discount code confessional when you go to checkout, check out the benefits of membership and insurance once again, at pets@llc.com. When we talk about digital marketing, we cannot forget the social medias. Nope, nope. So using Facebook and Instagram to really engage with your local customers. I know some pet sitters use Tiktok, some use LinkedIn, some of us Twitter, we have not found that those are super beneficial for our particular businesses. But you really need to know where your audience is.

Collin  16:46

And that's so key, especially when we're talking about marketing here is that there's there's a lot to do, there are so many options out there, which is great, because again, most of these are free, but all of them are a big time suck or at least can be. And so really looking at social media as not just one big thing. But a bunch of little options is going to help you understand where to invest your time of going. Okay, let's say I put 95% of my time into Facebook. Well, that seems to be paying off. So I don't need to or right now I don't have the mental bandwidth or time in my day, to expand into making Tik Tok videos or Instagram or LinkedIn or Twitter, or whatever social media comes around the corner. But going, what can I invest in a little bit right now for at least a little bit of payoff back towards me? And that are saying, Where are my clients? What

17:37

kind of people am I serving? Or what kind of people do I want to serve? And where are they going to be? What kind of demographics are using each one of these social media platforms, and then that's where you know, to invest your time, instead of trying to think I need to all of this all of the time,

Meghan  17:53

it sometimes can feel like a drudgery when we think I have to create content every day, it has to be new, bespoke content that I've never created before. And I need to do this because I have to interact and engage with my clients and my potential clients on there. And I have to get my name out there. And it can feel really daunting. But know that you don't have to do it every day. I mean, let's take the pressure off of us, let's take the weight off of us. So that of that is not necessary, you do not have to do it every day, you do need to have a presence on there and be somewhat consistent with it. Because the it is true, the more that you post out there and the more that you have high quality, good, shareable, engaging educational content, the more people are going to know about you, and the more that the algorithm is going to push you to the top.

18:39

Well, that's an important distinction here have previously up until this point, we've been talking about search engine optimization, and Google My Business listing, which is a broader internet. But now we're talking about social media posts, which are all siloed from one another of your content on Facebook is going to stay on Facebook and the content that you post on Instagram is going to stay on Instagram. And now we are trying to understand and learn the algorithms for each one of those social medias, which is different than Google or Google My Business and SEO. So it is a different ballgame at that point. But yes going, the more predictably I post, the more reliably the more consistently I post that's going to help feed the algorithm to let them know that I'm still active. I'm still here and to surface your content to the people who are interacting with it.

Meghan  19:25

Well I will say one thing about what you just said is Instagram Stories can be shared over to Facebook stories automatically. But yes, you different audience for a different platform. The Facebook and Instagram stories are great for going behind the scenes and showing more of the day to day stuff. You know day in the life of a dog walker day in the life of a pet sitter, how you feed or how you get pill a cat or how you give medication or you driving to a client to client these things that clients or potential clients don't often think about that we do. They just think oh, we just go and throw some treats on the ground and or put a leash on a dog and go for a walk like there, there are these aspects to our job that people don't really understand until we show them, this is what we do. And then you can also share community events or local news or pet activities going on. So it's the end of summer and the pools are about to close down. But you, your pool has a dog event, a dog dive for the last part of the pool being open, you can share that no matter what community you live in, there are aspects, there are pet friendly aspects that you can take with you and share those on social media. Well, there's

Collin  20:34

a couple parts of this too. Social media is obviously meant to be engaging to people. So encourage your existing customers, your existing clients, to engage with your post or share their experiences with your business. And make sure and tag you with that when they post about that when they post a photo of their dog or their cat or getting ready to leave or whatever that is for them have encouraged them to do that to create that engagement, which social media companies really love. And then this is talking about having a Facebook page for your business. And since engagement is so important, don't forget about being involved, active and posting in local community groups on Facebook, where there are eyes, ears and attention being devoted to local resources or local questions that people are going to have. And that's the whole point of this local.

21:24

So if there's a local dog moms and talk dads group, or there's a local health group or a local QUESTION GROUP, or local, welcome to the area group, be involved in that not just with your personal page, but with your business page and your business profile as well.

Meghan  21:39

Yeah, always include a call to action on your posts, whether it's an Instagram, you know, click the link in my bio, or, you know, go to this website links aren't clickable and Instagram. But you know, you can say you can go to this website, or just click the link in my bio for more information. And then on Facebook, you can actually include the link, if it's a funny meme or a picture, you know, say caption this, what do you think this pet said in this moment, or give it show us your pet in their craziest costume or doing their dance move or whatever it is. But again, drawing that engagement out of people is good for the algorithm.

22:12

We've talked about Google My Business, we've talked about having good local SEO for your website and having a solid social media presence. There is one last digital marketing technique that we wanted to talk about. And it's one that I feel like gets a lot of bad rap

Meghan  22:26

sometimes because people think email is dead. What you do not agree with that. So yeah,

Collin  22:31

email marketing, to your clients or potential clients. Basically, you do have to build an email list. But email marketing is a great way to be, it's shown to be highly effective to engage with your customers, because they're local, and it's a great way to promote your business. But it all starts with building that quality email list.

Meghan  22:52

Yeah, for the podcast, we have a senator confessionals Facebook group, and we say, Hey, if you want to be included, in order to join the group, we say, Hey, if you want to be included on the email list, you can give us your email here. And then we also have a sign up on our website as well, people can go and sign up there. And for our personal pet business, we have the same where on our website, there is a pop up that can you can include your email in there, we also put all of our clients on our email list, we gather their email, when we when they sign up with us and when they onboard with us. And so we just input all of their emails into our weekly email list.

Collin  23:25

And what's important in this process is that you make it really easy and and have a lead magnet. So what that is, is it's something that your clients are going to want or a potential client is going to want. But you keep it behind instead of a paywall. You keep it behind an email wall well, where they give you their email, and in return, you give them a link to download something. So for our personal pet business, our lead magnet is a pet photography guide. And it's just a few tips that we have put together on a PDF. A little popup comes up on our website, people enter their email. And another part about making this really easy is that if you have a website, you can actually use the Google CAPTCHA where instead of having to enter or confirm an email that sent to them, and then you get it and go back and forth, that CAPTCHA that comes up and it says, Hey, identify the bicycle or identify the bird or identify the crosswalk, you can actually have that installed on your website. So they do that. Then it goes directly to the download page and they can click download to get to the thing that you have for them. And then you have that email that out you can do things with

Meghan  24:28

we talked all about these in Episode 334.

Collin  24:31

Now to get the most out of your email list, a power move that you can do is you can actually break your list into smaller subsections you can break out the groups based on interests or location or history with you so you can you can break down your list into groups of people who have only ever booked dog walks for you or people who've only ever booked pet sitting services or grooming services or other things for you from you. And now you can target specific information to those groups of people obviously have One big list that goes out to everybody. And that's great for announcing things about the business entirely, or bookings or cancellations or openings or things that people need to remember as far as changing policies and procedures. But with these smaller lists, you can target them with information and actually upsell them on other things that they might not know about your company because they haven't used those services before.

Meghan  25:20

With anything, you need to provide the ultimate level of value and content. So don't make this just all about you, pulling your blogs, pulling those community resources into your email list, pull in pet care tips and tricks, pull in anything pet related that you maybe it's an interesting article that you found in the news this week, pull that in and use it to educate your pet parents.

Collin  25:44

And one way about providing valuable content is to make sure that your emails are personal, depending on what email provider that you go with. For this for sending emails, they have different tools for this, we use the email services that come with our website, which is perfect done by Squarespace. But in there, when people sign up, they can enter their name, and then their email address. Well, when they enter their name, there's actually a special tag that I can put in an email that will include their name in the email. So if you've ever gotten an email that you sign up, after you've gotten on an email list, and it says, Good morning, Colin, welcome to this. Well, that name there. They didn't go in the person who sent that did not bespoke Lee type your name in there every single time that they send out these emails to their hundreds of people, there's a special tag that you insert that and it knows okay to this email, there's a first name associated with that email, and I'm going to insert it in this location. And it's a great way to make it more familiar and more personal. And people are actually more likely to engage open and interact with those kinds of emails.

Meghan  26:44

We didn't talk about this with social media. But I do want to circle back to this real quick is when there are posts that do really, really well for you, maybe there's people walking dogs or faces or just a celebration posts that you did one time for some incredible, awesome thing. It's okay to reshare that stuff again and re celebrate that event or go back and say, Hey, this, we want to acknowledge this person again, or tell about this great thing that happened. It's okay to reuse content, because truthfully, there is so much content out there that probably a few weeks, or a few months will go by and nobody even remembers that you posted that thing. You know, a lot of times people will announce I'm going away for social media. And I don't know when I'll be back. And then they make a I'm back post, you know, a few months or a few years later, and I go, Oh, wow, I didn't even realize I missed you on social media, because I didn't realize you were gone. There's just so much content out there. And not to get discouraged about you know, you're going to be drowned out by everybody else. But choosing to put out valuable things educate people, they're going to remember you there, I can't tell you how many times I mean, we don't even put a whole lot of stock or a whole lot of effort and work into our social media posts. I feel like we could do a whole lot better. But there are people who come up to us just out in the wild in the world and say, Hey, I know you from Facebook. And so it is a good reminder that this does actually work. When you put in the effort when you provide that value that people see people resonate with it, it does come back tenfold.

28:20

Right? So analyzing the results of what you have coming back to you is really important of going okay, I did this kind of post. Now I got this kind of response. Same thing with your emails, okay, I sent this kind of information. And this is the kind of open rate that I've gotten, as far as open rates go on emails, you're looking at, you know, what did they say like 10 15% is really good. Honestly, with the kind of businesses that we run it with a small group of people who are really dedicated and love your services, you'll probably get more open rates than that, as long as you're providing good quality information. And it's relevant to those people. Again, there's that word again, as relevant. And part of that is making sure that you are you are making things usable and friendly to people that your emails look good, not just on a big desktop, but also on mobile. So it's mobile optimized, same thing for your website, things that same thing for your social media posts, keeping that in mind of going, Okay, people are going to view this on a little tiny screen at arm's length from them, Does it still look good there? Or is it readable? is do they get all the information that you need from it? Because often we can cram too much in one little space. And people just kind of skip right over that.

Meghan  29:23

I think it's very important to tie this all together. I think it's important to know your limits with all of this, because it can very easily skew to I'm a challenge. Now there's nothing wrong with challenges, but you can challenge yourself to do one social media post today. But then you get to week three, and you're like, oh my gosh, this is a drudgery. I do not want to do this anymore. Why am I doing as I hate doing this? And so just knowing your personal limits of going if you set a goal for once a week emails, but that becomes too much. It's okay to take a step back. Know when you want to take something on and know when it's important to pull back because ultimately consistency is key here and as consistent as you can make it for people, they're going to respect you and trust you more to know that, hey, every Friday afternoon, I'm gonna get this email or maybe they don't even realize it, but they go, Oh, every, every week, I get something from this company, or, you know, every day or two or week, I get a great, awesome social media post that's really has a lot of pet care tips for me, or I get a blog that's all about cats. And I have a cat. So I love I love getting this content from this company

Collin  30:31

that's so important is that recognizing that there are companies who have entire teams of people devoted to digital marketing, they have degrees and training in this. And that's all they do for a full time job. And sometimes they're only focused on social media. And here in this episode alone, we've talked about making sure that your Google My Business is up to date that your website has good SEO, that you're posting regularly on social media, and we're talking about blogging and sending out email newsletters to people, it can feel really overwhelming because it is really overwhelming. So finding out where are my people? Where are my potential clients? How do I want how do I, as a business owner, want to stay in touch with them and make sure I'm having a conversation with him so that I can do it? Well, it is important

Meghan  31:15

to know your strengths, and where you may not be as strong in some areas. And maybe you really still want to do that if you just hate blogs, and you do not enjoy it, but you feel it's necessary. And you need to get the information out there. Maybe outsourcing that to somebody else, maybe one of your employees, we have our employees right or on our website, or blogs, or maybe it's just hiring a virtual assistant, there are ways to still accomplish what you want to do, even when you personally don't want to be doing it.

31:44

Or maybe just recognizing I don't want to do that. And it's not going to get done. And that's okay to you. We all have our strengths. And we all have our ways where we connect with people I know there are plenty businesses who are on Facebook, and that's how they communicate with their clients. And that's how they send updates. And that's that's, that's what they do. That is their bread and butter is a Facebook page. Other people are on every social media platform blogging, sending updates and have email newsletters, there's no right or wrong way to doing this. It's what's going to work best for you and your business and making sure that you are still serving your clients. Well, we don't want to go all in on social media and let the Petcare slide or not be as responsive to our client needs or updating or our trainings as well. There is a very holistic approach to this. But these four alone again, there are there are a lot of a lot of other options that we can go on. But we focused on these because they are approachable, they are doable, and they are not something that you have to invest a ton of time in every single day or pay for them. It's a work at your own pace and do it your own ability. And that's what's so wonderful about these. If you

Meghan  32:48

have found ways that digital marketing is awesome and works for you, you can let us know at feedback at petsitter confessional.com.

32:55

And we really would love to share your feedback on the show. So if you send in feedback, send in your tips and your things. We want to be able to read these out and share them with other people have on future episodes as well,

Meghan  33:08

because you have awesome things to say you too. We want to thank our sponsor, pet sitters associates and our lovely Patreon members for financially supporting today's show and we thank you for listening and taking your most valuable asset and listening to this today. We hope that it was valuable to you and we will hope that you join us next time. Thank you. Bye