The Best Ways To Grow and Expand Your Pet Waste Removal Business

So you decided to take a plunge and be a small business owner.

With this blog, you’re going to have a concrete plant on how you can expand your pet waste removal business and maximize as much money as you can make.

Using these strategies i’m on track to make ten thousand dollars in my first year of poop scooping!

Whether you’re doing pet waste removal as a side hustle or you want to eventually grow this to a full-time business, make sure you read till the end of the video so you can learn from my mistakes and make as much money as possible!

In order to effectively market and advertise your pet waste removal services we first need to identify your avatar.

Now i’m not referring to those blue aliens that are one with nature or that elemental warrior with a blue arrow on his head, but your Avatar. Your Target Audience.

In business and marketing, an avatar is a little back story you create that helps you understand who your ideal customers are so you can more easily find them.

Consider it a detailed profile of your perfect customer so you can identify who you are selling your services to.

I bet your default answer was dog owners but avatars can go so much deeper than that.

Try brainstorming what other activities dog owners participate in or other kinds of services that they might need for their dogs.

• Dog owners may frequent their favorite pet store like petco or petsmart or your local pet store so they can buy food and toys for their dogs.
• If their dog is having behavioral issues they may go to a dog trainer.
• If their dog is sick or needs medicine they may seek out veterinary services or a clinic
• or if they want to rescue a dog they may go to their local humane society or an animal shelter.

This is just some of the services dog owners can look into but you can flush out your avatar even deeper!

What are some locations that you may find more dogs than usual?

A dog park is the first thing that pops in my head but when you start to think about it there are a variety of areas where dogs tend to be.

If an owner wants to get their dog more exercise they may take them to a public park or trail.

They may live in trailer parks or their apartment is part of a homeowners association or an HOA.

With all of these services and locations there’s only one thing you need to remember.

They are all managed and owned by one person or entity and you will need to speak with this individual so you can tell them about your poop scooping services and potentially hire you on!

Let me know in the comments below what your ideal avatar would be!

Now that we’ve identified your avatar the next step to expanding and growing your pet waste removal business is by bringing awareness of your services.

You will be surprised to find out how many people don’t know poop scooping as a service they can hire to make their lives a little easier.

Awareness should be your primary goal to grow your business as more people know you exist the higher the likelihood someone will reach out to hire you.

Regardless of how you plan on bringing awareness to your business this will take up either time or money, sometimes both.

We will split awareness strategies between two buckets: traditional and digital campaigns.

Before i go over the different awareness strategies just Skadoosh the like button on this blog so we can share this message with as many people as possible, that they too can scoop their way to financial freedom!

Traditional campaigns involve sending marketing materials to people via traditional methods like printed media on newspapers or on flyers and business cards you create.

You may consider creating flyers or business cards that you can hand out at a vet clinic or animal shelter so they can pass to their customers.

Whatever kind of printed media you create remember to specify several things:

• the name of your business,
• what kind of service you provide,
• and the best method to contact you.

Please remember to always have on you something you can provide to a prospective client who is looking for more information.

I’ve had several instances where i am scooping at a client’s house and one of their neighbors sees me and asks me what i’m doing.

After i tell them about my services sometimes they’ll ask me for a business card or the best way to get in contact with me.

Don’t lose a potential customer just because they don’t have a way to contact you!

Another traditional method is having yard signs you can add on someone’s property.

Yard times are an interesting strategy as it will give you the possibility to bring awareness to your business as long as there are a lot of traffic whether people walking by or cars driving.

Most people won’t let someone just randomly put a yard sign on their lawn so you may consider starting some sort of customer loyalty program.

You can offer your clients a free or discounted scooping appointment if they add your yard sign to their lawn.

This would allow you to gain more visibility as well as reward your customers for helping out!

Customers love to help out especially when you provide them excellent service.

There have been many times where after i do two appointments with a customer i asked them for a review on my facebook page and if they would consider supporting a local business i’ll do their next scooping appointment for free.

Almost every single time my customer left me a review and they still offered to pay Always focus on the customer experience and doing the best job that you can!

Your happy clients will recommend you to their friends and leave you positive reviews and the more reviews you have the more visibility you have for a new client.

Now that we got traditional campaigns out of the way it’s time to talk about digital campaigns.

Digital campaigns involve sending marketing material to people via digital methods like social media or websites.

When you’re first starting out you can consider using classified websites like ksl or craigslist.

Classified sites are really useful as they’re free to use and as long as you’re posting in the correct section like pets or pet services you shouldn’t have a problem.

Just note that this website may be a little spammy and you may get a bunch of emails from random people just trying to waste your time.

Your post may also get flagged for spam but because it was free all it costed was your time invested.

Since classified sites can be hit or miss, some businesses decide to build their own website or hire a freelancer to build them a really good website.

Even though i have a programming background, i did not feel comfortable enough to build my own website.

So what did i do?

I created a facebook business page!

My facebook business page is one of the biggest contributors to the success and growth of my pet waste removal business!

With a facebook business page you can leverage the tools on the platform to expand your professional network.

You can first start with your friends and family and see if anyone would be interested in hiring you or sharing your business page with their network.

If you can’t find someone to hire you find a friend with a dog and ask them if you can do a scooping appointment for free just for the sake of taking before and after photos or videos.

Humans are visual creatures and having before and after comparisons of your service will help drive the value you offer to your clients.

Once you have a before and after picture on your business page you can next leverage the different animal and service facebook groups available in the towns you plan to service.

Most of these groups will require you to sign up and request permission to join and will also have rules on when you are allowed to advertise your services.

Make sure you follow these rules that don’t spam your business on these groups to avoid getting kicked out or banned.

The most powerful tool you could leverage for your facebook business pages is using the facebook ads feature!

Remember the avatar we created in the beginning of the video?

Facebook ads allow you to create a targeted audience based on keywords or interest and they will only send your advertisements to these kinds of people.

With my avatar i identified the different kinds of interests for dog owners like pet stores pet services dog magazines and created a targeted audience.

I then scheduled an ad campaign of my before after photo and selected my target audience so my ads will only be shown to people who are most likely to have a dog.

Although using facebook ads is a pay-to-play system, it expanded awareness of my pet waste removal business as fast as i was willing to spend.

Even if you spend $100 on a campaign and only get one new client, remember to consider the lifetime value of your customer.

That one client may want your weekly service and after a few weeks or months that passed by you would have recouped the money you spent on the initial ad and then have more funds to spend on more ads and repeat the process.

Now that you have a bunch of new clients, how do you make sure that you keep all of them?

By subscribing to my channel and clicking on the next blog to learn the best customer service and experience strategies i’ve learned throughout my career!

And i’ll see you on the next scoop!

And As Always, Acknowledge The Now. Bye!