Building Your Email List

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Maybe you don’t understand the value of building your email list, and you don’t understand what it means to build an email list.

I know when I first started I sure didn’t understand what it was or the importance of building that list.

 

Briefly, an email list is a list where a person has given you their name and email in exchange for getting something of value from you—-for free.

Big hint here: what you give them for free must have high value to that person. In fact it has to have such high value that if you wanted to, you could sell it.

I can already hear you saying WHAT! Here’s an example. One of our free offers to encourage people to give us their name and email is to give them a free 7 day email course on 7 simple things they can do to make their dog training better. You can see how this works here.

Sounds simple right? It is. Plus the more than 500 people who have signed up to get that free information— think it is valuable.

Let me drive down deeper with the importance of this. I see a lot of dog trainers putting a lot of time and effort connecting with people on their Facebook page. That’s great but what happens if Facebook changes the terms of service as they constantly do? What if they delete your page with no notice? Then where are you?

If the only place you engage with clients and potential clients is on Facebook, then you’d better be sure to stay on the good side of Facebook.

Social media is great and certainly is an important part of your marketing plan. But the best way to market is to build an eager base of customers and future customers by emailing them regularly at least once a week.

This is done all the time by both online businesses and regular physical businesses.

When someone has shown an interest in your dog training, whether it’s online or offline, those are the people you want to build a relationship with going forward.

Once someone trains their dog with you the likelihood that they will work with you again goes way up. That’s why it’s so critical to send out regular emails to your list to let them know what you’re up to and what you have going on.

Having your own email list means you get to tell folks about upcoming special classes and more. Getting an email once a week from you keeps you always present in their mind.

And guess what? Your email subscribers share those emails.

We probably get at least 30 or more new people on our list every week because someone shared our newsletter with them. How easy is that to build your customer base?


Easy Steps to Build Your Email List

  • Get an email service provider. AWeber is the one we use and it’s very easy and not expensive. They have wonderful tutorials to teach you everything step by step.
  • Put together something of really high value as your give away.
  • If you have a website, and I sure hope you do, then you can easily put a form on your website to capture their name and email. Once they sign up and confirm their email your “dynamite free info” is delivered by AWeber to their email address they gave you.

 

I know this is outside the comfort level of many of you. But I want you to succeed and I know you can succeed. None of this has to be complicated. I know you can do this.

Leila Martin, is the brains behind the success of Jim Burwell’s Petiquette on the marketing side. She has run our online and offline marketing system since 2006. Leila’s ability to grow our online presence using both a website and social media in the dog training world has been a critical part of petiquettedog.com success .

She has tripled the number of visitors to our website and increased our revenue by 25% each year. Our appointment book is always filled.
Bottom line: We do what we teach and we teach what we do. In her spare time Leila can be seen in her office dancing with our black lab Sammy Burwell

Curated selection

Speak to What Clients Want

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If you speak to what clients want and not to what you think they want or need, you will connect with them better.

The problem is, we consistently have a tough time getting out of our brains and into theirs. In reality, we shouldn’t have that problem.

I mean we talk to our clients every day and we listen to what they’re complaining about. But then when we go write blog posts or post on Facebook it always turns into what we know they need!


I Don’t Know What Clients Want?



When I’m selling our dog training on the phone to potential clients, one of the main ways I connect with them is by listening to and understanding their needs; not what I know they need. It’s not hard to do, I just had to train myself to do it – listen to them, that is.

When you truly listen they will tell you exactly what they need. This allows you to speak to what clients want which in turn builds your dog training classes, workshops, writes your blogs posts and posts on Facebook in a way they’ll think you’ve been reading their minds!

Let Them Tell You

 

An awesome way to find how to speak to what clients want is to survey them. Once again, it you are not giving some great free training away to collect names and emails then you will have very hard time marketing to potential clients- as you won’t know who they are.

But let’s say you do have an email list – how to you get them to tell you what they want? Survey Monkey is a free tool you can use to survey your email list.

Here’s how you could ask a question that can bring to light many dog behavior issues your clients may be having. You would phrase the question like this:
What is your expectation of how your dog should behave when company comes over?

Do you see how many different behaviors this could uncover? What they do at the front door when the doorbell rings, how do they act when they people come in the door, how do they act when the people sit down, walk around, get ready to leave.

You just opened a wonderful can of worms!

That’s an open ended question you can ask then you might want to ask one or two more that could be yes/no or even better, fill in the blanks.

Everything they say to you lets you hear their biggest struggles. You my friend have just given yourself a boat load of things to blog about, do classes on or post on Facebook.

Remember in today’s world, people check you out via your blog and social media before they do business with you. When what you say either on your website or Facebook is said in a way they can connect with, you will be their dog trainer of choice.


Leila Martin, is the brains behind the success of petiquettedog.com on the marketing side. She has run our online and offline marketing system since 2006. Leila’s ability to grow our online presence using both a website and social media in the dog training world has been a critical part of petiquettedog.com success .

She has tripled the number of visitors to our website and increased our revenue by 25% each year. Our appointment book is always filled.
Bottom line: We do what we teach and we teach what we do.

In her spare time Leila can be seen in her office dancing with our black lab Sammy Burwell

Don’t Ignore Facebook Insights in Marketing Your Dog Training

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I will bet that you ignore your Facebook insights data in figuring out how to market your dog training business. To you, it’s probably one more thing you don’t know how to do.

You know you should, but it all seems so complicated and time consuming. Besides, what is a Facebook page’s data going to tell you about marketing your dog training business?

If I had a megaphone I would be shouting to the rooftops: Know your target market! If you don’t know who your target market is you are:

  • operating with a blindfold on in a world of visual opportunity
  • shortchanging yourself and
  • stunting the growth of your dog training business.

Your insights data is a goldmine of highly relevant facts about who is visiting and engaging on your page. They practically scream at you what they like and don’t like and what their needs are. Sounds me to me like the perfect place to begin to understand what to give your clients and how to connect with them.


So Back to Ignoring Your Insights


I can pretty much guarantee you ignore them because of one or two reasons:

Reason # 1: you don’t even know what to do with them and it looks like Greek

Reason # 2: you don’t realize the wealth of marketing information Facebook insights hold to help you build your business. Facebook has made it a lot easier to understand all the information they can give you about who is interacting with your page. Now if you don’t have a Facebook Business Page you are missing a huge opportunity to get more business. It’s really simple – put up your Facebook Business Page.


Trust Me


Ignoring these insights is like marketing your dog training business blindfolded AND with one hand tied behind your back. An engaging, relevant Facebook page is a wonderful marketing opportunity and it literally costs you nothing but some time.


3 Areas of Facebook Insights You Must Not Ignore


Your Page Insights:

This piece of the Insights Data let’s you see the number of likes your page received and when you received them. A smart dog trainer will then look at the dates you received the most likes and go back to your page and see what was going on. If it did well, rinse and repeat How many likes were “organic” in other words you did not do an ad to generate those likes. Facebook Ads are a workshop for another day.

How many unlikes did you get. This is important as Facebook will not show your content if you are getting a lot of unlikes. They think you’re spamming folks. Where the likes came from: mobile, on your page, an ad, a page suggestion.

The # of likes you got on any given day – again go back and look what you were doing on your page that day – rinse and repeat.


Your Posts :

How many people were “reached” with your post which would include shares of your posts-this shows you just how many people saw your posts What type of engagement did you get via clicks, shares, likes etc? When your fans are online What kind of post did they like the most videos, pictures, link, status update. Again, a smart dog trainer will realize that certain posts get more likes to it might be a good idea to do a few more of those types of posts.


Your Audience (megaphone shouting here!)

What’s the age range of folks who like your page? Are there more men or women? Where do your fans live broken down to the City level? The bottom line is that using Facebook appropriately, can be an inexpensive, results driven way to build your business. Take the time to understand what’s behind the “social aspect” of Facebook and use that knowledge.


Leila Martin, is the brains behind the success of petiquettedog.com on the marketing side. She has run our online and offline marketing system since 2006. Leila’s ability to grow our online presence using both a website and social media in the dog training world has been a critical part of petiquettedog.com success . She has tripled the number of visitors to our website and increased our revenue by 25% each year. Our appointment book is always filled. Bottom line: We do what we teach and we teach what we do - always have. In her spare time Leila can be seen in her office dancing with our black lab Sammy Burwell

Market Your Dog Training: Your Bottom Line

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We’ve all heard the saying, “Business is all about the bottom line.

The bottom line is certainly a big part of running your own business. However, if that is your primary or only goal and belief, than you will struggle.

If, on the other hand your goal and your belief is that your business is to serve your customers and give them the best you have, your business will reflect that.


What Do I Mean


A belief that your business is only about the bottom line, means that what is always first and foremost in your mind is money – not your customer.

This shows up in how you speak with people on the phone, how you act with them during your training lessons and most importantly how important their goals are to you.

I’m not saying we should not worry about making money in our business. That would be a ludicrous statement. What I am saying is that only concentrating on the money end of your business will come back to bite you in the end.

We are in a people business. We go into their homes, we work with their dog, their children, their spouse. Those relationships and how we handle ourselves and if we care, is what is going to truly make or break your business.


Here Is a Bottom Line Dog Trainer Scenario


You’ve booked lessons with a family. You show up precisely at start time and you end precisely at the finish. Even if there are unanswered questions, un-addressed concerns, their hour is up and you are out of there.

Your lessons are over with a client and they send you an email maybe a week or so later asking you to explain something you said or maybe another issue has cropped up. You require them to book another lesson.


Here Is a Customer Focused Dog Trainer Scenario


You’ve book the lessons with the family. You show up early, and you stay a little later if they have more questions. When you get an email from them after the lessons are over, you are as helpful as you can be within reason. Of course if they need more lessons you would advise that.

You even leave a long line or a Kong toy with them at first lesson so they have some tools to work with right after you leave.

Your focus in the second scenario is the success of the family with the dog training you provided.


Don’t Kid Yourself

People know sincerity when they see it. They also know insincerity when they see it.

Only focusing on that bank deposit becomes simply working to get money. If only making money is your goal it will be very hard to build a business that can sustain itself.

We are truly blessed that the way we make our living is by doing something we love. When you build your business based on being the best for your customers, that gives your business a higher resolve that will push everything you do forward!

Rather you believe it or not, getting up in the morning and beginning your day with the desire to help and serve your clients will not only keep you going and keep you happy a lot longer it will also make deposits in your bank account.

So let me ask you - which one are you?

 

Leila Martin, is the brains behind the success of petiquettedog.com on the marketing side. She has run our online and offline marketing system since 2006. Leila’s ability to grow our online presence using both a website and social media in the dog training world has been a critical part of petiquettedog.com success . She has tripled the number of visitors to our website and increased our revenue by 25% each year. Our appointment book is always filled. Bottom line: We do what we teach and we teach what we do.

In her spare time Leila can be seen in her office dancing with our black lab Sammy Burwell

Market Your Dog Training: Focus on What Is Not Easy

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As anxiety producing as it can be, when you focus on what is not easy in growing your dog training business, that’s when you will see bigger success.

It’s easy to talk with clients about how we can help them get their well-behaved dog back, or get all our paperwork done for the next month.

What is not easy, is to focus on the one thing that makes you the most anxious and uncomfortable but at the same time will really build your business


Depending on who you are that could be a lot of things

  • Writing articles
  • Marketing on Facebook
  • Putting together an opt-in to get folks on your mailing list
  • Introducing yourself to vets
  • Getting your website done properly so it can work for you
  • Doing videos
  • Writing your newsletter
  • And more


All of these things that make us uncomfortable become really big problems in our mind and the more we avoid them, the bigger problem they become. Then the vicious cycle sets in of feeling guilty because you didn’t do the stuff you should have done to grow your business.


We spend our entire day doing what my mother used to call “piddly little tasks” that get you nowhere.

 

 


Here’s something I have learned to do that has helped me really focus on getting done what is not easy for me.

When I first get to my office (I work out of the house) so not a far commute. I take out my mini white board and write down 2 things I will get done that day.

One of those things is something that will be hard or out of my comfort level, and the other is something that will be easy and a little fun.

It doesn’t matter which I write down first. The point is, it is ONLY 2 things, so immediately I don’t feel overwhelmed. The other reason for me to put only 2 down is that I’m the one that speaks to dog owners, sells our services and does all the paperwork on booking the lessons. So my day is full.

For me I pick what is not easy for me as my first task. I know I can procrastinate so I tackle that one first. But here’s the thing, I go as far with that task as I can, till I start getting exasperated because I’m having trouble figuring it out, or I reach a point where I need more information. Then I stop.

I shift my focus and change my environment. I get up, leave the office and go do something I like for about 15 minutes. Then I come back into the office and tackle the fun task.

The fun task I know I can do and it’s a “re-set” for my mind to be open to tackling what’s not easy for me.

When we work for ourselves, the accountability factor of having that boss whose deadlines had to be met is gone. Some of us are so used to being accountable to someone else, we find it hard to be accountable to ourselves and our business.

Allow yourself the grace to roll with the punches. Growing your dog training business is hard work. You will not get everything right and not everything will come easy.

Your job is to PRESS THROUGH. Do whatever it takes and don’t be afraid to take risks and don’t be afraid to make mistakes. And most of all give yourself a pat on the back for all the new things you’ve learned and all the accomplishments you’ve had.

 

Leila Martin, is the brains behind the success of petiquettedog.com on the marketing side. She has run our online and offline marketing system since 2006. Leila’s ability to grow our online presence using both a website and social media in the dog training world has been a critical part of petiquettedog.com success . She has tripled the number of visitors to our website and increased our revenue by 25% each year. Our appointment book is always filled.
Bottom line: We do what we teach and we teach what we do. In her spare time Leila can be seen in her office dancing with our black lab Sammy Burwell

Self-Doubt Can Sabotage Your Dog Training Business

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I don’t think there is a dog trainer out there that does not have some self-doubt about succeeding in their dog training business. Whether it is doubts about your dog training skills, your business skills, your marketing skills or your people skills

The problem is, self-doubt makes you shrink into yourself. When you allow yourself to feel smaller, that smallness permeates every part of your life and your business. You’re setting yourself up to sabotage your dream of having a successful dog training business.


So How Do We Get Rid of Self Doubt

 

It’s not about doing a 180 degree turn and go from being somewhat shy or timid to be the biggest blowhard in the room.

Yes, you do need to stand out from the crowd to grow your business but do it in a natural way that is comfortable for you. When you do that, you’re being true to yourself and not trying to be someone else. That is what will help you succeed.

Here’s How to Do This

 

You love what you do and you’re lucky, dog training is a hot business that has a lot of emotion attached to it. I remember when I first came from corporate America to work with Jim. I was so anxious about talking to prospective clients on the phone. I was scared to death they would ask me a question I didn’t know the answer to. What if, what if, what if.

One phone conversation I had with a lady made me sit straight up and stare my self-doubt straight in the face.

I realized that not only did I know more than I thought, but the fact that I love dogs and dog training came through the conversation. She told me that I was the only person she had called that was glad to talk with her, she could hear the excitement in my voice. I got her excited about fixing her dog and she really wanted to meet Jim based on our conversation.


What Was My Magic Bullet?


Very simply, I spoke with her about things I knew we could help her with, I was sincere, I acknowledged her feelings and frustrations, and best of all I was truly interested in helping her. None of this was false, it’s really how I felt and she picked up on that.

It all came out so naturally because it was a natural feeling for me to want to help her with her dog. In turn the words and tone that came from me were honest and they were mine. They were not someone else’s speech I had memorized and tried to make mine.

When you speak with truth, integrity and knowledge you don’t have to worry about “getting it wrong”. There’s nothing wrong with you being you.

People will be drawn to you and want your services when they feel you are

  • Happy to speak with them
  • Truly interested in helping them with your knowledge
  • Honest

Coming across as genuine, caring, knowledgeable and having integrity earns their trust and respect. When you speak about what you love, that in itself gives you strength and takes away those self-doubts.

With each phone call and lesson you get better and better. Let them know what areas of dog training you specialize in, what benefits your training will bring them. Give yourself some grace. With each encounter, each phone call, each dog, each owner – you get better each time!

Remember you can’t help people if you don’t make yourself heard and help your business to be found.

Leila Martin, is the brains behind the success of petiquettedog.com on the marketing side. She has run our online and offline marketing system since 2006. Leila’s ability to grow our online presence using both a website and social media in the dog training world has been a critical part of petiquettedog.com success . She has tripled the number of visitors to our website and increased our revenue by 25% each year. Our appointment book is always filled.

Bottom line: We do what we teach and we teach what we do.

In her spare time Leila can be seen in her office dancing with our black lab Sammy Burwell

Market Your Dog Training: Article Content Burnout

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Finding new and interesting subjects for our article content can be difficult at times. It seems like we’ve written about everything at least once. The same question keeps coming up, “Just how many ways can I say the same thing over and over?”

Here is What You Tend to Forget

If you are always getting new traffic to your website and consistently building your newsletter list, you always have fresh eyes waiting to read your articles.

Remember, not all your clients are going to read everything you write. Putting a new spin on an already discussed dog problem will be new to them.

We have close to 500 articles written by Jim up on Petiquettedog.com and I’ve never had a single customer complain that we already wrote about a specific topic.

Still, sometimes the imagination just won’t kick into gear and we’re stuck for article content. One thing that helps me is to quit thinking about it so hard and it never fails, an idea will pop into my head.

I also pay close attention to what dog trainers are saying they struggle with. I read discussions on LinkedIn, Facebook. The emails people send to us are a goldmine. There really is a wealth of information out there if we take the time to look.

Here’s a Quick Tip for You That You Could Use Right Now

Don’t forget to make use of seasonal and event specific topics.

Here is an example. Right now in Houston it is very hot and very humid. Lots of dog owners are still out their jogging with their dogs. An article written about jogging with your dog in this heat would be very timely and informative.

We could write an article entitled: “Jogging with your dog in Houston’s Summer Heat – Caution!”

This is how we would do that

We would write it in such a way that it would connect with Houston dog owners and educate them. That means we would make sure that not only do we alert them to the dangers but also give them alternative things to do with their dog.

Another overlooked perk of writing seasonal or event specific articles.

IF you write a good article, title it correctly, assign appropriate key words and write in a style that attracts your readers, your chance of Google showing your article is pretty high.

It really isn’t as painful as we think to consistently publish great content.

Still Can’t Come Up With Ideas

Another tip: set up Google alerts for dog training, puppy training, dog behavior and see what others are writing about. At a minimum it will get your brain working on ideas to present that same topic differently. Please remember you can’t just take someone else’s article and rewrite it on your own blog –copyright infringement and plagiarism. You can, however, take the idea and make your own article.

You do not have to be a professional writer. Give yourself credit for knowing your profession. The article content is there if you let yourself see it.
Leila Martin, is the brains behind the success of Jim Burwell’s Petiquette on the marketing side. She has run our online and offline marketing system since 2006. Leila’s ability to grow our online presence using both a website and social media in the dog training world has been a critical part of petiquettedog.com success . She has tripled the number of visitors to our website and increased our revenue by 25% each year. Our appointment book is always filled. Bottom line: We do what we teach and we teach what we do.

In her spare time Leila can be seen in her office dancing with our black lab Sammy Burwell

Dog Business and Facebook Power

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Facebook power has just helped your dog training business even more.

Short recap: Facebook needs to make money for its investors. They will make money by doing everything they need to do to help businesses on Facebook succeed. Businesses on Facebook spend money on Facebook advertising, which is very cheap by the way—but I’m not saying you have to do Facebook ads!

Let’s look at the newest thing Facebook has put into place that will help you grow your business.

I don’t know if you do this or not, if you don’t you should start

 

Whenever we put up a post on Facebook we always add at least one, if not two hashtags at the end of the post.

If you don’t know what a hash tag is- it looks like this: #dogtraining or #dogtrainer. It’s always the # sign then keywords relative to your niche, which is dog training. We’ve been using hash tags on our Twitter posts for a long time and now Facebook is using them.

But here’s the best part, the hash tags on Facebook are now clickable. What’s that mean? It means that when someone on Facebook is talking about dog training or dog behavior or whatever your keywords are that you use related to dogs and they put a hash tag at the end of their post such as #dogtraining or #shelterdog etc. then if you have a Facebook post relative to that topic your post will show up.

Also if you do a search on Facebook and say you put in #dogtrainer, if you have tagged any of your posts with this hashtag you will show up. As a local business you could put #dogtraining(whatever your City name is) and again if you have an active Facebook page you should show up).

Caveat. Right now the related posts are showing up in chronological order but soon they will pop up as a relative post (ignoring the date) IF you have an active, high quality Facebook page.

Value? Again more eyes on your business.

 

Let’s dissect this a little more to help you see the value in this piece of social media.

Here are the stats for our page:

  • Women are the majority of people who comment on, like and view our Facebook page.
  • Women are the majority of folks who call us for dog training.
  • The age range of 35 to 62 is the majority of the folks who comment on, like etc. our Facebook page.
  • Of the women who call us for dog training who “purchase” this is pretty much the exact age range.

Does that help you see how Facebook can bring you business?

Don’t forget Google scans the social media sites. If you’re active and you have folks engaging with you, that sends a strong signal to Google.

In today’s world you cannot ignore social media. As I teach in my course on getting local internet traffic, there is a “triangle” if you will, that works together beautifully to increase your visibility on the internet, thereby allowing your business to be viewed by more and more and more people.

This is not difficult but it does take a commitment of some time each day. You may not realize that you can “pre-schedule” your posts on Facebook. Jim does this. The night before he will schedule 5 or 6 posts to show up at different times during the day. He does this because he is out training all day. He will then put in a “live” post a couple of times a day and answer any questions, when he has a moment.

Remember: more “eyes” on your website will bring you more business.

 

Leila Martin, is the brains behind the success of petiquettedog.com on the marketing side. She has run our online and offline marketing system since 2006. Leila’s ability to grow our online presence using both a website and social media in the dog training world has been a critical part of Jim Burwell’s Petiquette success . She has tripled the number of visitors to our website and increased our revenue by 25% each year. Our appointment book is always filled.
Bottom line: We do what we teach and we teach what we do.

In her spare time Leila can be seen in her office dancing with our black lab Sammy Burwell

Dog Training Business: Online Newsletters –really!

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I received quite a few emails from my last article and there was a lot of grumbling about using online newsletters.

Let me explain the power of online newsletters and the effect they can have on your dog training business. Then, let’s see if you feel the same way.

The Power of Online Newsletters


  • A newsletter brings you into the home of your client, the dog owner, at their convenience and their timetable. It’s there, in their email, waiting for them to read it on their schedule. They don’t have to go “look for it” or remember to try to find one at the vet’s office.
  • When you consistently publish your newsletter you are in front of your existing clients and potential clients regularly. You are sharing great dog training information with them to help with their dog.
  • Online newsletters are easily shared with friends and family.
  • As I mentioned before, there are clickable links in online newsletters. Those clickable links that go back to your website from an email—-those are spidered by Google. I repeat: those incoming links from an email to your site are spidered by Google.
  • Your newsletter helps you send out announcements about upcoming events, class openings or new training programs you have. This keeps your clients up to date about all the things they can get from YOU.
  • Dog owners will respond to your newsletter with questions or comments. That is a goldmine of information on what their concerns and needs are— that you could fill!
  • When you share your newsletter on your social media channels this brings more eyes to your business.

Best for last – your newsletter, which originates from your blog, is part of the beautiful trilogy of your Website, Your Social Media and Your Search Engine Results.

When you understand how to make this trilogy work together, the power of that collaboration just builds and builds, as does your dog training business.

Hopefully you can see how each part of this trilogy can work independently but when they work together it’s unstoppable.

 

The main thing is to take it step by step and realize that it’s not difficult and it’s not expensive.

I use a system called AWeber to distribute my newsletter and I also use that to get new names added to my newsletter list.

We add new people to the list daily.

We’ve been doing our newsletter regularly now for about 2 years and we have over 2,100 people on it and our open rate stays between 38% and 51% consistently.

So at 51% that’s about 1071 people —twice a week—reading about us, learning about us, seeing our skill set—-primed to do business with us.

There’s a lot more to share about the power and use of newsletters but I wanted to write this to get you to start thinking how something so easy as a regular newsletter can have such a huge impact on your dog training business.

Got a question? Just comment below.

Leila Martin, is the brains behind the success of petiquettedog.com on the marketing side. She has run our online and offline marketing system since 2006. Leila’s ability to grow our online presence using both a website and social media in the dog training world has been a critical part of Jim Burwell’s Petiquette success . She has tripled the number of visitors to our website and increased our revenue by 25% each year. Our appointment book is always filled. Bottom line: We do what we teach and we teach what we do.

In her spare time Leila can be seen in her office dancing with our black lab Sammy Burwell

Dog Training Business: Do You Give to Get?

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One of the great things about having a dog training business is that it’s such a deep well of information that you can share, for free, to help people.

I can already hear you! You want me to tell them how to fix their dog for free? Why would I do that?

Hang on, we thought the same thing. Here’s what happened, they kept coming back, telling their friends, calling for training and our business grew so fast it wasn’t even funny. It wet their appetite for Jim to come train their dog.

Why? The term is reciprocity. What this means is when you give something to someone, they are more inclined to want to give you something back. For the majority of people this is an ingrained, common feeling to want to do or give something to someone who has been kind to them or helped them. As long as this is not abused it can be the beginning of creating a community around your business.

Here’s how we give something away and get something wonderful back – a community of dog owners we can serve.

We have, on our website (the one for dog training in Houston) a 7 day email course we give them for free. They simply give us their name and email and Jim shows up in their inbox for 7 days in a row, helping them fix 7 very common training mistakes they are making. It solves a problem for them.

This Causes a Couple of Things to Happen.

It starts the process of allowing a dog owner, who does not know us, to begin to see how we train and to begin to start connecting with us. It starts a connection that begins right off the bat with the dog owner getting something they need. It was easy for them to get, simple for them to do —and it cost them nothing.

We then receive their name and email which allows us to send them our outstanding helpful newsletters. Remember that newsletters are a marketing tool that gets eyes on your business.

You Are Doing Newsletters Online? Aren’t you?

The goal of a newsletter is to display your knowledge and expertise, as well as build trust among your readers.

If you’re still doing newsletters the old fashioned way of printing them out you are missing so many opportunities to have more and more people learn about your business, and you’re spending a lot of money on printing. Doing online newsletters is very cost effective. We send out over 2,000 online newsletters two times a week to our dog training clients and to those who received our free training. It costs less than $30 a month to do this. How much do you spend printing newsletters?

PLUS and yes, here I go again, a printed newsletter does not have links that are clickable that take them to your site right then and there. I so want to impress upon you how critical this is.

Also remember this, when you are done training a customer’s dog, you immediately get them on your newsletter list. Why? Having them receive your newsletter consistently, allows you to always be on their mind when they get a new dog OR a friend asks for a referral.

Remember the article I wrote called “The Eyes Have It”. The point of that article was to get you to realize that the more people that “see your business” the more your business can grow.

Giving away free information and then following up with an online newsletter is one, of many ways to accomplish that.

The other amazing part of giving free info and then being able to communicate to those folks is that they share their online newsletters with their friends.
So one pair of eyes that read your newsletter now multiplies by the number of times that newsletter is shared. All of a sudden, you have a whole bunch of “eyes on your business” that you didn’t have on your business a month ago and it cost you almost nothing!

Guidelines for giving away free info.

You must give something away that has high value and is aligned with your business. Think of a common question you get and make your give-away how to fix that problem. I think as dog trainers we immediately think about some major behavior problem to fix. Reality is, the majority of dog owners out there would prefer a “how to” on one simple thing that can solve many problems.

You would be surprised how many people do not know how to teach a proper “sit”. Your job would then be to put together a step by step of how to get a great sit, show what problems it can solve, then you put it up for free on your site.

BUT: you don’t call it “how to teach your dog to sit”. Make it interesting. Something like:

One command that solves multiple dog problems. Then your report would show how a sit can fix those problems. Pick maybe 3 common problems that a sit can fix and explain step by step how to achieve that. Make it good and you’ve got a potential new customer.

See how ours looks on our dog training site. Look at the upper right hand side of the site. Hint: it’s proven that when someone looks at something like a website, the first place their eyes go is upper right hand corner. That is where you want you opt-in to be.

All of this allows you to begin to build a community that revolves around how you can help dog owners and build your dog training business.

Please notice that I put helping dog owners first and build your dog training business second.

Your first and foremost goal should always be to serve your client.

I hope this has helped you think about growing/marketing your dog training business in a way you might not have thought of but a way that is also easy to do. Just like all the other ways we market our dog training. If it’s not easy and something Jim and I can do, we don’t do it.

Leila Martin, is the brains behind the success of petiquettedog.com on the marketing side. She has run our online and offline marketing system since 2006. Leila’s ability to grow our online presence using both a website and social media in the dog training world has been a critical part of our success. She has tripled the number of visitors to our website and increased our revenue by 25% each year. Our appointment book is always filled.Bottom line: We do what we teach and we teach what we do.

In her spare time Leila can be seen in her office dancing with our black lab Sammy Burwell