5 Outdated Marketing Practices You Should Ditch
When it comes to marketing, times are changing. Keeping up with these changing marketing trends is especially important for pet business owners or dog trainers. Marketing ain't easy and isn't an instant gratification project.
In today's episode, Kristen sheds light on outdated marketing practices you should ditch asap. She dives into marketing strategies that when scraped off will save you time, energy, and money, and provides you with pragmatic practices that will instantly catapult your dog business to the next level.
Tune in as Kristen talks about:
… and so much more!
What's next:
To work with us on growing your Dog Biz or get a direct link to Kristen's calendar: https://www.dogbizschool.com/workwithus
Follow us:
Website:https://www.dogbizschool.com
Instagram: @badassdogbiz
5 Outdated Marketing Practices You Should Ditch
When it comes to marketing, times are changing. Keeping up with these changing marketing trends is especially important for pet business owners or dog trainers. Marketing ain't easy and isn't an instant gratification project.
In today's episode, Kristen sheds light on outdated marketing practices you should ditch asap. She dives into marketing strategies that when scraped off will save you time, energy, and money, and provides you with pragmatic practices that will instantly catapult your dog business to the next level.
Tune in as Kristen talks about:
… and so much more!
What's next:
To work with us on growing your Dog Biz or get a direct link to Kristen's calendar: https://www.dogbizschool.com/workwithus
Follow us:
Website:https://www.dogbizschool.com
Instagram: @badassdogbiz
Welcome to the, my dog business podcast. I'm your host, the leading pet business expert. Kristen Lee. Here's the thing I help dog business owners just like yourself. Become powerful as fuck without sacrificing more yet. No more sacrificing everybody. Like there's enough going on as a dog trainer, we'll be talking about growing your dog business through seven figure sales strategies, marketing that feels authentic as fuck and especially works. In the top topics you care about as a dog business entrepreneur and everything in between not to mention interviews, but some of the leading dog business owners out there today, get ready to grow and disrupt the way you do in the business of dogs. Let's do this marketing, marketing, marketing, your dog training, business marketing for dog trainers marketing as a dog trainer marketing fucking overload. Now as somebody that specializes and loves visa marketing, I love marketing more. So that works for you marketing that works for our dog BI fiscal students. And more importantly for dog business entrepreneurs ask me how one of our students had a 1300% return on investment in one of our marketing campaigns in Q2. This. She's gonna put some big Dick energy out there. Yeah. Lindsay kicked fucking ass with her fucking campaign that we designed for. Anyway, humble, Bragg. And guess what? It wasn't overcomplicated. It was one of the most simple ads in marketing campaigns I've ever run. You've probably even seen it. You probably just bypass it like me. What is that? And guess what guess? With that marketing campaign, it was not her posting 24 7 on social media platforms, lowering people into a free group or a complicated funneled system. Again, more to come on that since I'm working on a project for y'all, so stay tuned, but there is such a hyperfocus. I've talked about this in previous episodes before there's such a hyper focus on what to do for marketing as a pet business owner and doc trader, but there are few resources on what not to do. And my job today as the top fucking marketing expert in the dog training industry, this is what people pay me to speak on. And companies have me come in and do keynotes for corporations to learn more about how to market to dog owners. Hello. Hello is to tell you what not to do my job today and all the time is to protect your valuable time and energy. I know what it's like to put in all your energy into a project or goal from months, and then it fucking sinks harder than Titanic. It's defeating. It makes you think. Why do I even bother now? It creates a mental roadblock from creating future implementation. And if you're neuro divergent like me, if you don't get that instant gratification, well, marketing is not instant gratification. I should back that up. It just creates this whole cluster fuck, like the podcast. Like I was just talking to the podcast producer today. I'm like, if you don't sit me down and lock me in a room and do a podcast, like I'm not gonna do it because I've been defeated before in the podcast stuff. It just, it's crazy. Very similar, very similar. I know you all can feel that way. So it's like maybe you put in money into a Facebook ad or a social media ad before. And it tanked and you wasted a couple hundred bucks and you're like, what the hell? This doesn't work. And then I have to go in and you work with me at dog to school and be like, no. So, and so Facebook ads do work. This is the way you do it. And you're like, holy crap. This is so simple. Is this really gonna work? And I show you, yes. And then you make $24,000 after spending $1,200 on ad. Anyway, I'm here to protect your energy and your time as a fucking pet. I'm here to protect your valuable time and your energy and not to mention the money that you invest in marketing. There's nothing more than a kick to the bits. When you invest your hard earned cash into something and it ends up breaking even, or worse it down the fucking toilet, you get have to flush the couple hundred bucks on the toilet. Now, if you're doing anything I'm listening today, that works for you. Good, good, good. I'm I'm fucking happy for you. Like, honestly, that makes my job 10 times easier. You are an outlier. There's always gonna be outliers. Fucking congratulations. I will send you a sticker. Okay. And I'm not being facetious. Like it works for you. Great. Don't change anything. and anything I'm about to list triggers you and you feel like I'm judging you. I'm not here to judge you. I I'm, that's not my job. Like if you wanna be judged, go sit with your father or go sit with my mom. Who's always, who's always judgemental of my life choices, but I'm not here to judge or look down and be preachy almighty at you. Like marketing is not easy. Like it isn't like getting fine tuned with your marketing self isn't art in the science. This comes from a place of love and action. I want you to be able to take actionable steps and cut the shit. If you need to cut the shit and connect to the right dog owners through your hard earned marketing efforts. Okay. So let's dive into these outdated practices to ye the fuck out of your dog business. All right. The first one, this is the hill. I will always die on. I will. There's a hill for me to climb and die on it. It's gonna be this. Okay. Again, this is not judgment. This is not shame. I don't care who you learned this from free Facebook groups for dog owners hosted by you. Yes, I went there couple years ago. This is the strategy man strategy was to get people into your Facebook group and then provide value and sell them. You know, those free Facebook groups for the dog owners, a group moderated by you. Sometimes it includes your friends or colleagues or peers that are in your local area. And that's designed for your local dog area owners. You know, the one, a group moderated by you. And sometimes you put in your peers, your friends, your colleagues, maybe a partner or spouse that are designed for dog owners that are local to your area. You've probably seen them in your colleagues' Facebook profiles, such as join my free Facebook group with a Bitly link profile. Again, still, I'm gonna die on everybody out of all the marketing practices. If you're doing today, please cut the shit with this word, please. If it's working for you again, great. You're an outlier. That's amazing. Keep it up, keep doing it, but just be very aware of some of the things I'm gonna list about this. And if it starts to eat up more of your time, cut the shit with this and get out of it. It usually goes like this. You create this group with the intended process of building value. AKA you show up in there, you show your pretty face, do some dog training tips and advice. Let people ask questions and you build value, and then you sell them AKA dog owners. Then you nurture the dog owners either by consistently posting. Maybe you've done a freebie webinar, maybe do a post. Hey, I have four training spots open for August. Getting them on your email list with the end game of getting them on a consult AKA sales session, I call it the landing page effect, bring people in, engage with them, build value, and convert them into paying clients simple in the answer to your prayers. Right? This was like a huge thing back in 2020 during the pandemic. That's I see a lot of people doing them and it's still running rapid today. And at first it works maybe even really. But then you find yourself spending way too much time moderating it. It's like babysitting it's ends up babysitting. So you probably enlist some friends to help. And because you still have to train and run a business, train dogs and develop programs and, you know, eat, sleep shit piss. Then the quality of people coming in declines, you have a whole rush of like really crappy unvetted dog owners. You spend so much time freaking trying to fill your funnel of the free group and posting everywhere. Maybe even try and add to the group, put it on your website, put it on your Facebook profile. Or if you're another free group, you're like, Hey, join my.free dog training group for so and so dog owners, but the people coming in ask the same questions and won't commit to connect with you. And then those people start coaching. Other dog owners. So you get frustrated and resentful at the free talk training advice that you have to babysit now and delete and block, and you feel like you need to respond 24 7 and it's like, you're on demand without getting fucking paid. Now it's getting filled with other dog trainers too. What and they're posting about their business. So on top of bad, shitty advice from other dog owners to other dog owners, to people that are posting about the rescues and fosters to people that are asking the same questions, and you're like, Hey, listen, get on a call with me. And they're like, no, I can't afford it. You abandon it or use it to chat with the dog trainers that ended up in there. And it's ending up to be like a networking group or shit on the dog owners after posting after so much time, invest. So on to chase the next, so on to chase the next people you can fill up seeking the unicorns of dog owners. That's usually what happens when you fo heavily focus on lead generation efforts through Facebook groups for dog owners, it sucks. It sucks. Like again, it can work really well, but it's like a freaking, uh, snowball going down the mountain. It just gets momentum and gets momentum till it crashes and burn. I'm gonna be honest, free Facebook groups for dog owners are a waste of time and energy. That's super high end client that wants to pay you five to $15,000 for a dog training program is most likely not hanging out on Facebook in free groups waiting to be sold to from generic content. They're not there. They don't have time to be in there. Sure. Maybe some of their friends are, but when you lure people into the promise of free and free over people expect. It's like pulling teeth. This is where quality over quantity comes into play when using social media platforms. So the first thing you're gonna Yeet out of your dog business marketing practices is the free Facebook groups. And before you're like, well, Kristen dog to school is free Facebook groups for industry people. You're contradicting yourself. See that grassroots. They always contradict the. Yeah, but we're not in there up your sasses pitching you anything every goddamn day. Shit. We're barely in there unless it's for something we wanna be rude and crude and make a joke at the expense of ourselves or the industry. And maybe we'll share an event once in a while, but it's not for marketing and lead generation purposes. Like, no, like I'll deserve a good spot. Like did chill and not be sold. Shit. Did I ever tell you about, oh my God, I'm gonna go on a tangent, not a tangent, but a little story time here. When I first became business partners with Maggie in 2019, we went to an industry conference and we were vendors there and we literally were not pitching anything. We were not taking any email addresses. We were just there for support and hang out. Like it was, Hey, come to our booth. Sit down. Um, it was in Denver, smoke some weed with us. If you wanted to do that, get a couple notebooks, get some stickers, like have some, we literally brought popcorn we literally brought popcorn. It was like, Hey, come hang out with us, come hang out with us. That's how we approach our Facebook group. And people kept walking by and dog trainers and other business owners are like, what are you selling? Like, what are you selling? And even the vendors were like, what are you selling? And it got to the point of where you put a sign. It says, come by, say hi, we're not selling shit. And the other vendors raised such a sting. They said we implied that the other vendors were selling shit and we weren't, we were selling something that wasn't. Oh, my God, it was fucking hilarious. It was one of the, that was the moment I was like, I made the right choice to become a business partner at grassroots and it was just so funny. And that's the thing, that's the purpose with the dog, this cool group. We like, we're not selling you shit. We're not here to pitch you stuff or post motivational content. Like we don't have time for that. We're here busy focusing on our clients. She says you should be right. just like very similar. Should you focus all your valuable information expertise to people that aren't paying you? Or focus on the focus on getting really high end people and, and delivering cont, uh, delivering really good service to them that are you're being paid for same principle, same principle. Okay. So y'all deserve better. Y'all deserve better and we need to yeah. Need to stop it. Stop giving advice for free it's recipro. You don't want a transactional relationship if you're trying to commit community. Okay. So ditch the free Facebook groups. Now the next outdated market. Practice and I might trigger some of you, but it's okay. I'm not talking to any of my school students, cause I know you y'all are doing this. And if you, you are, I probably already spanked you in the group on this is re-sharing your content over and over and over and over and over again. Raise your hand. If you reshared com content from your Facebook to multiple pages in Facebook groups to increase visibility, my hands raised that might look like having a promotion. AKA, you should never promote fucking sales on your fucking platforms. Don't do that. That's another outdated marketing practice, but we're not gonna talk about that today, but you say you're having a summer sale and you, we share it into 80 different fricking Facebook groups. Okay? All your local Facebook groups, your BI, your child, say the moms of your local area communities. From the standard Facebook group, uh, township to, you know, buy 12 shades. Once I see it all the time, it's spammy as buck and it's ineffective. There's also no quality control in your targeting. So you're sharing it. It's like kind of like people driving by a billboard on the, um, highway and they see, you know, it's like, you're going through like a speed trap area. And then you see the big lawyer there and it's like, Hey, have you got, got ticket? Call this person? It's ineffective. And here's the thing too about resharing your content consistently like that into different Facebook groups and not getting an engagement or likes or looks, or even like people commenting on it. It hurts your reach. It hurts your reach, especially it shows Facebook. Oh, I should say meta. It shows meta that the content you're creating is not engaging enough to show it to more people. Right. And we know how meta is. Like, basically it's super hard to get organic reach. Even just sharing it over and over and over and not getting an engagement is just gonna hurt your organic reach even more. And your page is gonna get buried down even more. Now it's not that I'm recommending you. Go ahead and do an ad to a post. Okay. Don't twist my words on this one, but an ad would even be more of an effective strategy because at least you can control the audience that you're targeting versus going ahead and spamming all these local Facebook groups. Again, I'm not saying, please, don't go do this, please. Don't do. Go and do an ad because there's a lot behind the scenes whenever comes to running an effective ad. But for the love, that is all holy stop. Re-sharing everywhere. Hey, Hey dog, business owner. I see you listening and nodding your head. Do me a hot favor. If you are loving this episode and are feeling like, fuck, I need to talk to Kristen or the dog BI school team. Do yourself. And your business, a huge favor, go to dog based school.com/work with us this way. You can see what we're all about. Fill out in a simple application and get direct line to my calendar. Yeah. Like even my assistant really doesn't get access to my calendar. That way we can shoot the shit. See what's working in your dog business, what's not working. And then make your dog BI goals into a fucking reality. And. Go to dog BI school.com/work with us. See you there. Okay. The third thing, the third outdated marketing practice is not knowing your dog, owner audience and demonstrating that publicly. Do you ever have issues with marketing? This marketing confuse you, have you ever worked as a business coach to help marketing? Do you have no time for marketing? Do you have a dog that pulls is your dog? Is your puppy biting you? Are you having trouble with house break? You're doing the same shit with your dog owner. Okay. If you're using any questions in the primary messaging of your marketing, no matter where it is, it could be on Instagram. It could be on me. It could be on your website. It could be on a Google ad. It's time to throw them out with the, if you're using questions in the primary messaging of your marketing, it's time to throw it out with the rest of the outdated trash. You need to know what your audience's true pain points are. True pain points. You need to lean in on them. You need to make a connection through your copy, knowing your niche, right? So it could be like, Hey dog owners, I see you struggling with your dogs. Leash pulling ouch, your shoulders. Taking a walk around the block should be a relaxing activity. But it's filled with embarrassment, frustration and shame. Can you see how much of a difference that is versus do you struggle with your dog? Walk your dog, pulling you on the leash. Do you struggle with this? Do you struggle with that? No. You need to get in bed literally in bed. I always say what keeps them up at night with your dog owners and market to that? Know your pain points. Okay. But don't overly, overly paint the pain points because then you should sound like a Dick too. So it's a little bit of a delicate balance. Now, the next marketing outdated practice, you might not necessarily be doing this, like with your full knowledge. I can't think of the word consciously, but I see it being showed up every. Shaming dog owners, because listen, your dog business is you. You are your brand and your brand is everywhere. Now the rise of shaming dog owners has reached a boiling point on all platforms. Now you might not be directly shaming them through your business, but when you repost that TikTok of that famous dog trainer TikTok, you are in the shaming dog winner club. When you post at resentful, they should have gotten a goldfish comment on your Facebook profile that trickles into your content. It does. And people see that shit. I see that shit. I see that shit. It's not just because I have a lot of dog owner friends, but I see that shit all the time. It's insidious. It's disgusting. When you post content making fun of a dog owner on TikTok or reels for the validation of other dog trainers. Yeah. I see you. I see. So when you post content that inadvertently shames a dog owner, because you want validation from other pet business owners or whatever else, and you wanna be in that bro club. Yeah. Yeah. That's an outdated marketing practice. And the only thing that's self-serving is yourself. That's a hard one. I know here at dog to school, we've actually fired clients for that behavior because it is zero tolerance here. I know, listen, I know people can be super fucking frustrat. Super frustrating, not all your content or nor should ever be, be the super happy joy, joy, like everything's great in the world, right? Like it doesn't need to be that way. You can be real, you can be gritty and you can show the dark side of what you do. But when you do something at the expense of a dog owner that capitalizes under shame, nah, that ain't marketing, that's being a Dick bro. And the millennial gen Z dog. They are a different breed figuratively. And literally I saw this video this morning and it was reposted on TikTok and it was also reposted on reels of somebody that is journaling their story of their reactive dog. Sure. If we look at it, a dog trainer perspective, she's making a lot of fucking mistakes, right? Like she needs a professional dog trader and the trainers in the comments. Yikes. You were all over her. I was like, oh my God. But then the other day, she shared another video of her reactive dog being free in a field secure without other dogs. She shared her feelings, her excitement of being her. She shared her feelings and the excitement of her dog. Being able to experience something that rarely gets freedom off leash without other dogs and her being a fucking nervous wreck around it. And the comments were exploding with other dog owners like her. Now, what type of content would attract, be better? Dog peeps y'all are better. And the last one, and we're gonna wrap it up. Community events and trade shows up to 2020. These used to be super popular with dog trainers and other dog business owners. Forget the enormous trade shows like. The RV expos and the home expos and the wedding expos, like those things don't waste your money, going to those at all ever, ever, ever, ever, like it attracts so many people in. And the thing is it attracts people from all different areas and it's just a waste of time and energy. Okay. So even the pet, the local pet expo, like people are there to sell a product and dog owners are there just to like buy a product and like be in kind of the crowd and, you know, feel the crowd, feel the vibe. So don't, don't bother going to this big expos and wasting your. But the community events, you know, those community events, usually your local shelter has 'em maybe your local college, maybe a local, uh, charity has 'em community events are usually expensive in two different ways. Money, you have to rent a vendor booth, get a booth set up dog treats, et cetera, and time and energy you spend an entire weekend at. At the booth Manning, the floor, answering questions, demoing, it's freaking exhausting. And then only at the end, as you're packing up, you find your brochures and cards in the trash. It's full of lucky lose it's full of people that are just there to have a good time with their dog and not necessarily purchase or seek dog training advice or help. It can be also really emotionally painful again, when you find. Your brochures and your email, like email cards or business cards in the trash. It like, it sucks. It sucks. Right? They only open the little tree of baggies just to get the dog tree and then trash everything let's think of, of this way. If you're a dog trainer that specializes in behavioral mod, would the client that has a dog with behavioral issues, be it an event like that enjoying time, like enjoying it and having fun. Most likely not, they are probably stuck at home or they are not going to an event where they cannot be without their dog. The only time I recommend doing an event with you as an vendor with your dog business is when you can give back to your local community and causes without the goal of getting clients in like attending and supporting an event that is near and dear to your hearts without a transactional relationship. So for example, where I live, we do one every fall in it benefits. So for example, for my husband's dog training business, we do one every fall. That's local in the downtown. And it benefits a local nonprofit that gives back into the community that might our lower income and then builds fences for dogs. We are a vendor there every year. We support it. Actually. I'm not gonna say that one. The only time I recommend doing an event with you as an vendor with your dog business is when you can give back to your community and local causes without the goal of getting clients in without. KPI of breaking even on your time and your energy in the investment in the event, attending and supporting an event that is near and dear to your hearts without expecting a transactional relationship. So ditch the events. If you wanna give back to one of them. Cool. You can definitely do it. If you have some time and energy or you can just be a sponsor and just throw money at it, but ditch the events, go there. Enjoy them as a dog owner. That's what we started doing years ago. It's amazing. It's fucking amazing to be able to go to one of those events. You feel bad for the vendors there, but yeah. So there you have it. The five outdated marketing practices you can immediately take out of your dog training business. I'll touch you all later. Bye.