If you are starting your dog walking business with just a shoestring budget, it may be necessary to get creative with advertising. But, actually, you don’t need to get creative so much as you need to get a little brave. The single best advertising available for small service businesses is word of mouth, and that means referrals. “But how do I get referrals?”, you ask, “I don’t have any clients yet.”
You get these trial referrals by offering free walks. You should give each referral at least three walks so they have a good basis to refer you on. And you should have at least six different people for references. Ten is better. Then you can get their permission (ask twice… people will be calling them).
Only then do you make up a sheet of paper with their names and contact information, both email and phone. Make three different versions of this, rotating the names so on version two the top third of people from version one is now on the bottom. Do the same for version three. People will tend to call the names on the top of the list, so rotating like this will help make it so the same person is not getting called all the time.
Then, when your new clients do start calling, check in on your reference people every so often to make sure they are not getting beleaguered by all the calls. Beleaguered referrals do not give shining references. Besides, as you add new clients, and impress them with what a great dog walker you are, you can start using some real clients on your referral list.
In addition to rotating clients on our referral list, it is also a good idea to rotate the type of dogs you are walking. Have the names of a few owners with older dogs on your list, and a new owners with new puppies. Showing that you can handle different kinds of dogs with help new clients trust you, because they will all think their dog is like no one else’s.