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As a dog trainer, you’re probably used to giving commands to dogs. “Sit!” “Stay!” “Roll over!” Classics. Unfortunately, you can’t do the same for your customers. If you walk up to a prospect and simply say “Buy!” in a stern voice, it probably won’t go over too well.

When it comes to people, you have to rely on persuasion, not commands. That’s why your dog training business needs to market itself online. Digital marketing for dog trainers is essential to the success of your business, and to earn the clients you want, you’ll need to make sure you’re doing it effectively.

The question is, what is digital marketing for dog trainers, and what exactly goes into it? That’s what we’ll be addressing on this page, so read on to learn more. Then be sure to subscribe to Revenue Weekly — our email newsletter — to get more digital marketing info like this!

What is digital marketing for dog trainers?

Digital marketing is the process of promoting your dog training services online so that your target audience will learn about your business and become clients. You can market yourself through different channels, which we’ll explore in a moment. Whichever channel(s) you use, though, the goal is to book training appointments that earn you more revenue.

6 dog trainer digital marketing strategies you can use

Now that we’ve defined digital marketing for K9 trainers like you, let’s talk about how to use it. What are the best methods for promoting your services online?

There are six main k9 training digital marketing strategies that you should consider using, and we’ll go over each of them below. Those strategies are:

  1. Search engine optimization (SEO)
  2. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
  3. Social media marketing and advertising
  4. Web design and development
  5. Content marketing
  6. Email marketing

Keep reading to find out more about each one!

1. Search engine optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a marketing strategy where you optimize your website to rank in relevant Google search results. When people (especially those in your local area) search for keywords related to dog training, you want your website to be one of the first things they see.

One of the best ways to do that is to write content about dog training on your site (which we’ll come back to in more detail later). Crucially, though, you’ll want to include specific, dog training-related keywords in that content. That gives it a better chance of ranking for those keywords in Google.

Google search results for dog training services montana

You’ll also want to earn backlinks from reputable websites. A backlink is a link leading to your content from another site. You can earn backlinks by looking for broken or missing links on other sites, and then notifying the site owners and recommending that they replace those links with fresh ones to your content.

Specifically, you’ll want to earn backlinks from reputable, third-party websites that focus on dogs or dog training. When Google sees reputable sites in your industry linking to you, it’ll assume your site is reputable as well, so it will rank you higher.

The idea of SEO is to reach people who have questions about dog training. Some of those people might be actively looking for a dog training company, while others might be looking for information on how to do it themselves. Both of those types of people are good to target with your content so that if they do decide to bring their dog to a training service, yours is at the forefront of their minds.

2. Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising refers to a process where you display paid ads in Google search results or on third-party websites. It’s called PPC because you only have to pay when someone clicks on one of your ads. That makes it very cost-effective.

As previously mentioned, you can place your ads either at the top of Google search pages or in the margins of third-party websites. Search ads usually look similar to organic search results, while display ads — those on other websites — usually use images.

PPC ad on Google for Houston dog training services

PPC is one of the best K9 digital marketing strategies because it makes it very easy to reach your target audience. To start with, you can target specific keywords with your paid search ads, just like you can with SEO. And for display ads, you can choose to run them only on specific websites. So, you could target dog-related websites, which is where your prospects are most likely to be.

Better yet, though, you can do something with PPC that you can’t do with SEO: You can directly target specific groups. So, if your clients are limited to a particular geographic area, you can exclusively target people in that area. You can also target specific demographics that the majority of your audience shares.

Of course, the tradeoff of PPC is that you have to pay for it. Thankfully, you get to determine how much you pay by setting bids for each keyword you target. And you only pay that bid when people click on your ad. When they do click, they’ll be taken to a landing page that encourages them to convert.

3. Social media marketing and advertising

Social media marketing is a strategy that involves creating a profile for your company on different social media sites and regularly posting there. The idea is to spread brand awareness and give your audience a space to engage with you directly.

Social media marketing is a great strategy for any business. But for dog trainers, it’s a particularly good option.

Think about how common it already is for people to share pictures of their pets on social media, and then consider the prime opportunity you have to show off the animals you work with while simultaneously showing how effectively you train those animals. People will come for the cute animals, and they’ll stay for the stellar quality of your training services.

And many of those people may one day need a dog trainer of their own, at which point you’ll be the first business they think of. That makes social media a top choice when it comes to digital marketing for dog trainers like you.

Instagram post from a dog training company featuring a woman with blonde hair and a Rottweiler

Plus, you’re not just limited to organic social media posts. You can also run paid social media ads, which work similarly to regular PPC in the sense that you can target specific groups of people and promote your paid posts in their feeds. That allows you to reach an even wider audience.

4. Web design and development

SEO, PPC, social media marketing — all of these strategies lead people to your website. For that reason, it’s imperative to have good web design. Your website should be well-designed both in the visual sense (it should look appealing and draw users in) and in the technical sense (it should be functional and well-organized).

Dog Training Elite homepage

As a dog training business, you’ll want to take advantage of images in the same way you do on social media. Be sure to feature plenty of photos of not only the animals you work with, but also the people who work with them. Clients will want to know what types of people are working with their animals.

You should also be sure to follow more general web design best practices, including:

  • Mobile-friendliness: Make sure your website is optimized for mobile devices as well as desktop computers. That will help you retain mobile traffic, plus it will help you rank higher in search results.
  • Page speed optimization: You want your pages to load quickly (ideally, within one or two seconds) so that people won’t get impatient and click away.
  • User-friendly navigation: Your site’s layout should be intuitive and easy to navigate so that users can easily find their way to what they need.

A well-designed website should keep visitors engaged and guide them toward conversion.

5. Content marketing

We’ve already talked about the importance of having informational content on your site for the purpose of SEO. But it’s also important that that content be optimized to appeal to users’ needs and interests. It doesn’t matter how well you optimize a page for SEO if there’s nothing appealing about that page in the first place.

So, how can you optimize your website content? Well, first of all, it shouldn’t be about just anything. It should address topics and questions that your audience would likely be interested in. For example, you might write a page with some dog training tips. Or, you might address the question of why dog training is important. You could even write a guide to different breeds of dog.

Whatever you do, make sure you focus on addressing search intent — that is, the reason that users are searching for certain keywords. If you target the keyword “how to choose a dog trainer,” don’t just throw a page together and stick that keyword into it.

Instead, check out current search results for that keyword to find out what people want when they search for it. Then write a page around that keyword that addresses that search intent.

You can also use different formats for your content. You can write blog posts, in-depth articles, or short Q&As. You can even produce video content for your site.

6. Email marketing

The last dog trainer digital marketing strategy on our list is email marketing. As you can probably guess from the name, email marketing is a strategy where you send out emails to your prospects to encourage them to convert.

But that’s not to say you should send out emails to just anyone. You only want to email people who are actually interested in hearing from you. For that reason, the first step in email marketing is to create forms on your website where people can sign up for your emails.

As people begin to sign up and your email list grows, you can send out emails to those people that promote your services and provide helpful info about your business. It’s up to you how salesy you want these emails to be. You could just send out casual updates that introduce the latest dogs you’ve trained, or you might make a point to openly encourage people to become clients.

WebFX can help you manage your K9 training digital marketing

Digital marketing for K9 trainers can be a lot of work. Trying to manage all of the strategies listed above isn’t easy, especially when you consider that there’s a lot more to each of them than just what we discussed on this page. That’s why a lot of dog trainers opt to partner with a professional agency like WebFX.

WebFX has over 28 years of experience with online marketing, so we know how to drive results using all of the strategies on this page. With our dog trainer digital marketing services, you’ll be able to upgrade your campaigns and reach your target audience to much greater success.

Interested in partnering with us? Just give us a call at 888-601-5359 or contact us online today!

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