494: Staying Top of Mind
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Are you struggling to stay top of mind with your clients? We share our effective client engagement strategies, from personalized interactions to consistent communication. Discover the power of community outreach by building relationships with local businesses and participating in events. While in-person marketing is important, enhance your online presence through live social media sessions, email marketing, and SEO-friendly content. As always, it’s about exploring a variety of marketing strategies to ensure your business remains visible and relevant, even during slow periods.
Main topics:
Client Engagement
Community Outreach
Online Presence
Marketing Strategies
Main takeaway: People don't need you until they need you. We have to remind people that we’re still there for them.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, business, pet sitters, clients, messaging, person, potential clients, marketing, pet, flyer, hear, postcards, inundated, talking, community, work, email, years, options, points
SPEAKERS
Meghan, Collin
Meghan 00:01
Hi, I'm Meghan.
Collin 00:02
I'm Collin.
Meghan 00:03
And we are the hosts of pet sitter confessional and open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you also to pet sitters associates and our Patreon supporters for helping to keep the show going. Our
Collin 00:15
Patreon supporters contribute money every month, because they have found value in the show. And we have two levels, the Doxon. And the great thing, the Doxon support is if you have found value in the show, and you want to give back in some way, the Great Dane level is if you would like to be involved more in a community get episodes a little bit earlier and get some extra goodies along the way. If you'd like to learn more about that and see everything involved, you can go to pet sitter confessional.com/support. On
Meghan 00:39
Episode 490, we talked a little bit about what to do and how to react if you are in a little bit of a slump in your business. Part of that response should be staying top of mind. So think for a minute, how are you staying top of mind when we say that phrase? What does that mean to you? We just went through our slowest first quarter ever. I'm laughing but it's it was not funny at the time. It it was a reminder of how important marketing and staying on messaging truly is we really double down on our efforts. I pumped out tons of social media content, we hit the pavement to say hi to other businesses, whether they were pet related or not. We really changed up our online approach. We worked on our email marketing and tried to find new ways to connect with potential clients and messages for our existing clients on how they can keep using our business.
Collin 01:27
It really was going okay, let's lean back into these channels that we have the in person, the online the email, social media, all our website, all of that. But how can we revamp the messaging? What are the words and phrases that we are using? Are we actually connecting with the people that we want to be connecting with all this process was we were trying to make sure that we were staying top of mind. Because you know, again, we had a terrible first quarter worst when ever, we're going into the summer busier than we've ever been. Because people don't need you until they need you.
Meghan 02:00
And that can be a really hard concept when you are down in the dumps about your business. And either personally you're trying to reflect on where you've been, where you're going, how you're you're doing. But also as a business of Oh, like my clients don't really need me this week, my dog walks aren't there, or my pet city, nobody's traveling and these winter months, it can be really defeating when you're doing all of these things, and they seem to not be working. But it is true. When clients need you, then they're going to book if they don't need you that week, then they're gonna say no, thank you, clients may have seen you five times through your various advertising and marketing methods, or even just word of mouth referral, they may have heard about you five times. But they didn't really see you until they had a need. And we experienced this quite a lot. When we go out into the community, and we wear our shirts that say dog walker or pet sitter or we sit to we tell people at a networking event or even just when we're at dinner talking to the waiter and we get to talking about what we do. They say, Oh yeah, I've seen you around or I know you from Facebook, or whatever it is. But so it's true that people may have had these various touch points with you. But they don't really see you of solving their problem until they actually have a problem. And
Collin 03:13
this is different than the conversation around how many touch points does it take on average before somebody is going to buy with you or go with your services, I know it's anywhere from seven, it's at least to seven I've seen all the way up to 13 or 19 touchpoints. That is really part of an education of a new client. But what we're talking about here is you may have somebody who's looking at your company going, those are great people, I understand what they do, I know what they offer, but I don't need you yet. I don't need that I already have everything taken care of I don't there's no pain point in my life for this person to solve. And from a business perspective, that's really frustrating. Because you can't ever quote unquote, convince that person to go with you. There's no marketing message. There's nothing that you can get at that person to get them off the fence and into your company because they don't think they need you. And what we run into a lot of times and what Megan's what you've already said is, people don't need you until they need you. Yeah,
Meghan 04:12
it's not until the college girl goes home for the weekend. And the neighbor is not available or the client doesn't want to impose on the neighbor anymore, because they've done it for the past five years. It seems to be that until they go through their list of potential people then they go, Oh, I think I've heard about this company. Let me Google and see what I can find. And then they go Oh, yeah, I've known about you from Facebook, but I didn't need you until now. All right.
Collin 04:38
Well, we are recording this episode in the middle of the Memorial Day weekend here in the US. It's a very busy kickoff to the summer season. And the number of people who reached out this week was phenomenal. We always get those people who have a last minute booking or maybe as Megan's already described, they've had their primary sitter fall through, but a shock Dingley number a number of people, they already had our information. They were already familiar with us, but they were just reaching out right now. So how did they find out about us? Well, many had heard about us, they had seen us online, they'd seen us on Facebook, they had seen our website, they'd seen us on Google, they weren't going to actually use us because they went, Oh, that's cool. They do that I have this other solution over here. And until they didn't have that solution anymore, and then they had to go and go now, who are those people and what this process is of staying on top of mind, what it actually is really doing, it's just reminding people that you're there, that that's all this process is is just hey, we're still here, we're still doing that thing. We're still that's all that staying on top of mind actually is.
Meghan 05:46
Well, and it does really link back to the episode 490 that we did about in a slump of there are lot more pet care businesses out there. And so while we're waiting for them to kind of disperse more to continue these marketing tactics to continue to get your name out there and try your best to not feel defeated. Because it's really the long game here, the longer that you can be in business is really going to help you gain that traction for you to stay top of mind, you'll be able to interact with more people more eyeballs on your stuff over time over the years.
Collin 06:14
So how do we actually do this? How do we actually stay top of mind and remind people? Well, we've already mentioned a few of these. But the first one that's even more critical, even more important now than ever is door knocking on businesses, not just pet business related, but any business in your area, that you may have a connection with that you see what they're doing on social media that you like, or that you just know, the person already, or you don't know them at all is completely cold call of you walking in saying, Hi, I'd like to introduce myself, and I'd love to hear about what you do. These in person interactions are more valuable than they have ever been. When everything online is so flippin, so ephemeral, that when you actually build that relationship with somebody, it's extremely powerful, so that when somebody asks them, or they see somebody online, or they actually have an issue that you can help with, they know who to talk to, because they've actually met you, it's easier for them to recommend you or talk about you or reference back to you. Because they can put a face to a name. They've heard you speak, they know where you're coming from, that that really does help. It's really powerful. And then while you're out there going on going talking to businesses and going from door to door, is sending out flyers, this tactic is helps you have a physical presence in a world where service based businesses really struggle to be seen and heard and known about. That's where partnering with local businesses can be extremely beneficial. So that you can have that presence, you can have that storefront option where people are going to have eyes and ears on what you're doing by your flyers. And this really takes it does take a close partnership, because you're asking a lot of that local business of that coffee shop of that barber shop of whoever that is, you're asking a lot of them to take up counter space to take up window space with your particular flyer. And so asking politely and that's where building that relationship first really goes a long way to allowing this to happen. And it's not just putting out a flyer and every aspect that we're talking about. It's not just yep, I put out flyers. Yep, I went and talked to people. Yep, I did these other things. It's actually the content that really matters. It's not just that you have a flyer, it's what's on your flyer? Is it easy to read? Is it simple? How big is the font? To the photos show what you actually do? Do you have a phone number? Do you have a QR code? Is it easy for people to get a hold of you once they've seen your message? Or is it too overloading? Is it too burdensome? Is it too busy? Is it not eye catching enough people just going to pass over it.
Meghan 08:45
If you want to learn more about our approach to physical marketing and and getting your name out there and door knocking. We talked about it on episode 384. Another way to stay top of mind and something that Colin and I really need to work on is going live on Facebook. It is scary. It is not the most fun thing in the world. But it's very important. It allows your clients to connect with you better, especially stories as well. Getting your face getting your employees faces out there, letting them know, Hey, we're still here. It's snowing outside, you may not be traveling, but we're still out here walking dogs and taking care of cats. And
Collin 09:17
I know what this it's hard. When I think of going live on Facebook, I think of preparing, you know, a 30 minute or 45 minute an hour long presentation, having lots of interaction and back to back to back stuff. But really going know what is one topic that I can talk about, like in present, what's one tool that I can show to people to help educate them on exactly what it is what we do and how we do it allows you to give them a little bit behind the scenes look into your business. But it's more than that. Because it's actually developing that relationship with you. They're going to see you they're going to hear your voice. They're going to hear your perspective. They're going to hear your expertise. They're going to be able to look at what you're referring to see how you operate. All of that happens before that They decided to go with you or maybe they've been looking at you, they've been watching you, they've been seeing it. But now they're learning from you. They're getting insights from you. They're they're going to you now repeatedly for information, you become a source of information for them something that somewhere, they just start to depend on you being there.
Meghan 10:17
And that's why blogging can really help you out. Not only does it help your website with SEO, you can use it for your email list, you can use it to build a lead magnet and get potential clients email addresses. You can also use it on social media. I know Facebook doesn't particularly like you going off platform and linking to your own stuff and your own website. But it is an option. writing a blog, even once a month is going to be beneficial. You can use it in so many ways.
Collin 10:43
And like you said, begun linking that to your email list so that that way of staying top of my email marketing is not dead. As a matter of fact, it's more important than ever, as we look to control how we can talk to our clients and our potential clients not relying on social media not relying on that algorithm to send out to what we just put out there what we just posted. Instead, we can send that directly into somebody's email inbox, and a well crafted email with a well curtailed email list can generate a 40% 50% open rate. If you're actually sending out info good information to the list.
Meghan 11:18
Yeah, as long as you provide value through your emails, people are going to continue opening them and enjoying them, and not unsubscribing from them, you can also include tips or booking reminders. And if sending out weekly emails or monthly emails is scary to you, we break it all down in Episode 336. staying top of mind also means participating in events, whether it's physical or online digital events, raising money for causes getting connected with other businesses and rescues. Letting people know that, hey, we don't just provide service, but we help the community at large. That way the rescue will also know about you can get your name out there as well, you can it's kind of like this continuous cycle of you're always doing marketing, you're always doing advertising to always stay top of mind to people to remind them, hey, we're here, we're not going anywhere in five years, we're still going to be walking dogs and taking care of cats. Little
Collin 12:12
things like leaving notes or magnets or whatever little goodie bags to your existing clients when they do use you. So they're these physical reminders of your business, when you're not there, or things like reaching out to wish their pet a happy birthday, whenever they have a birthday, whether you have an automated thing that you put together to send out postcards, or it's just a simple text message that you send through your phone or your software or an email list. Whatever that looks like, you're finding these little these shorts, these brief touch points that just refresh people's mind about you.
Meghan 12:42
But as I mentioned earlier, when you're going through a slow period, it can feel defeating. I'm doing all of these things. It feels like it's not working. But you have to remind yourself some of these are long term things, your Google My Business, it's always running constantly in the background for you. Yes, you should go in at least on a weekly basis, and to give a little update in there for Google that they know you're still a company and you're still in business, but know that different advertising and marketing avenues are going to have different periods of time, where they're working for you. Some are much longer, it's about having that mindset of perseverance thinks six months down the road thinks one year down the road, you're not marketing for now, I mean, sometimes you are you immediately want a client or you're immediately doing a Google Ad today that is going to target this person tomorrow. And you're gonna get an immediate return on that potentially. But you're really in marketing for the future, it is very unlikely that you start a business today and you're going to have 100 clients tomorrow, that just doesn't happen. Let's say you send out postcards to a particular neighborhood, you don't know when they'll need you. But you do need to have that constant communication, those touch points of online, digital, physical, these different avenues that people know that you are around
Collin 13:55
it because it's a crowded field, there are a lot of pet sitting options out there both formal and professional and informal with the neighborhood kids or the people from college or just an acquaintance that person knows. So people are kind of flush with options for who they're going to turn to. So how do they know who to say yes to. So in addition to that, people will just Google they will Google Hetzner. And they'll click the first link and this happens. Even, it's definitely actually mostly with people who forget your name. They'll say, Okay, who are you? And they'll have your business card, but they lose your business card and say who are you and they forget what your website is. And so what they do is they go into Google petsitter. And they're scrolling to hope to find that person that they talked to, or scrolling in hopes that they find the person that they saw at that event, or the postcard that they saw somewhere else. We actually just had somebody sign back up with us after they had not used us for two years. And I'm pretty convinced that this person had just straight up forgotten our name based off of the some of the information that they had submitted. But they Googled pet sitter and they scrolled, they hunted, they packed around until they went, Oh, these are the people that I remember. That's who I want to stay connected with. And unfortunately, this person got on board with us two years ago, before we were really doing the heavy email, blogs, emails, and blogs and all that stuff. So they had just slipped through our fingers, because otherwise they would have been in contact with us, but they would have been receiving all these things would have been easier for them to remember who we were, because we would have been talking to them this whole time. When you
Meghan 15:30
are marketing, it is important to remind your potential clients and your clients that you have insurance. 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 when you run 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 petsitter confessional and use the discount code confessional when you go to check out, check out the benefits of membership and assurance once again, at pets@llc.com. When you stay top of mind, it does require a lot of little touch points, which sometimes can be aggravating for people. Like on social media, for about a year and a half, I would constantly post in this group. And we were paying to be part of the group and there were like 60,000 members of the group. So it was incredibly beneficial for us and really got our name out there very quickly in front of a lot of people. But over the years, I have noticed that some people have blocked our page. So that is a drawback to basically blasting your name out there really fast or over a long period of time as some people potentially are going to get annoyed, they are tired of seeing our posts. The same is also true for the physical space. If you have branded T shirts or a car wrap, people sometimes get tired of being marketed to and that makes total sense because ultimately, marketers ruin absolutely everything. So we do need to be careful with not bombarding people too much with our business and what we do pick your places, be strategic, try as hard as you can. And I am preaching to myself here. Don't beat people over the head with what you do. It's not a foghorn and a flashlight, it's a conversation. It just needs to be more personal.
Collin 17:22
It is on us as the business owners as the marketers to vary our message over time. Think about it, if you were walking down the side of the street every day for a year, and there was just one person on the corner with a bullhorn, screaming at you that they sell hot dogs. I personally I would personally not buy hotdogs from that person just to spite them. Because I was so annoyed with their messaging and their kind of marketing.
Meghan 17:51
Well, that's not very kind. It is a good reminder that, yes, sometimes we can be I'm not, again talking to myself, sometimes we can be obnoxious with our marketing, and we need to pull back. And ultimately that's going to help our business rather than beating people over the head,
Collin 18:08
when we come in with the right messaging for the right time for the right reasons to the right people, that is much more effective. And it means you're not going to get blocked means people aren't going to be as annoyed because they're going oh, that's not for me, I'm fine with that. So finding that voice, finding that language and finding the right things to share out with people. And as always understanding Megan, you said it's a conversation, we're not beating people about the head, we are having a conversation with them about us and how we can help. Because on the flip side of this, we can get out to ahead and we don't actually know what the demand is like on the other side of these marketing efforts. We just know as business owners, we've got to market market market market always be marketing, always be talking to people because we never know what's going to happen. And we've got to stay ahead of this. But you may actually create a demand that you cannot personally fill in six months, you may actually talk to enough people that you will be inundated with requests and inundated with with potential clients. So much so that you are now drowning in opportunities. We're running into that right now we pumped out so much over the fourth quarter because we had the time and B we were a little nervous about what was actually going to be happening that we market and we actually built a demand that we are holding together right now with staff and everything but going okay, we have hit our max again, this is too much we need to be bringing on more employees, we need to be saying no to people. Now a side benefit of this is actually that as you get inundated with more requests, you can become more picky. This allows you to have the confidence to say Oh, I can say no to that dog because I don't like their their behavior and the client is kind of a jerk. And I'm gonna say no to that one because right next to them over here I've got the perfect client for me. So we're kind casting our net broad, we have to be prepared to be inundated. But then we can't feel guilty when we actually have to say no to people.
Meghan 20:06
And I know this isn't what we're talking about here. But just because now we're super busy doesn't mean we can stop being top of mind. We always have to keep this going. Now there are ebbs and flows to our businesses that are busier seasons is lower seasons, and we need to be pushing more sometimes and pulling back just a little bit on other times, but we should never stop the funnel from working. And that is, of course, unless you want to shut down your business, you're saying bye, or you are totally capped out, you don't want to hire employees and you are maxed out on your client list and you're running at 100% all the time. That is a different story. But for those of us who want to keep our businesses going and keep that engine moving, we do need to be reminding people that we are here and this is what we do. It is important though not to be obnoxious about it, as we just talked about, don't go back to old Facebook posts of people asking for pet sitters and asking if they found one yet, particularly if the post is from six months ago or a year ago, that just looks desperate. Don't do that. There is a point though, that wearing your T shirts is a good thing. Because if you don't work at your own business, no one else Well, of course, there are things like word of mouth, and it's good. But during slow times, it can be hard to just rely on word of mouth because you don't have as many people using you so they are less likely to share about you. So I think it is a balance between knowing that you need to get your name out there while also trying your best not to be annoying. And
Collin 21:28
ultimately understanding that you may be marketing for a business that just can't exist or is not supposed to exist in your community. You know, sometimes we want to be this 80 foot oak tree, we're not in an 80 foot oak tree environment. So we have to be ready to adapt and change the expectations of our business, you have to change your expectations of your business. As you see the results of your marketing efforts out there. You may want to market and you may want to build for that five day a week dog walking company or become a cat only company. But if your community can't support that, you have to pivot and change or change your expectations. At least were the timeline that it's going to take to get there and what those marketing messages actually are. Because the whole point of this is we want to stay on top of my what's a top line for the people who can use our services, because there aren't enough people to use our services. Or if that's going to take a long time, we have to go okay, what is my business look like knowing the kind of feedback that I'm getting from everybody around me.
Meghan 22:27
But if you really do believe in that model, and you want a five day a week dog walking company, and you're not going to settle for anything less, but your community is not going to support that, then you may have to move somewhere else. And that's perfectly fine. You get to run your business however you want. But sometimes our business does look different than we imagined. Five years ago, we thought we were going to be a boarding and daycare place. Now we are the exact opposite out call only our personal lives change, and so do our businesses. And that is okay.
Collin 22:58
So when it comes to staying top of mind, make sure that you understand your business, that you have a clear vision for what you're trying to grow and the people that you're trying to connect with. Then design and find those channels through which you can connect with those people with a messaging that is going to work. And this is all a little bit of yes, you can do some market research. Yes, you can pull your existing clients, but it's a little bit of trial and error as well. And that's where also having that long term view that long term mindset comes into play. Not just when am I going to see an ROI on this. But what's my timeline for actually getting this to work and being patient with yourself through that process because again, if we're not marketing for today, we're marketing for years down the line. That means I have a little bit of time to figure out what my messaging is, and how best I'm going to communicate with other people. All the while remembering this is my business is our business that we can do with what we want and we can change it up as we need to.
Meghan 23:57
If you have tips or tricks that help you stay top of mind for your clients and want to share those with other pet sitters. We would love to hear them you can email us at feedback at Pet Sitter confessional.com. or look us up on Facebook and Instagram at Pet Sitter confessional. Thank you for taking your time and listening to this. We hope that it's been valuable. If it has we would love it if you would share it with a friend. Thank you also to pet sitters associates for sponsoring today's episode and we will talk with you next time. Bye
