How to Upsell: Dog Daycare Services
How to Upsell: Dog Daycare Services
What are the services you can upsell at a dog daycare and what are the benefits of upselling?
At your dog daycare, consider upselling services like specialized playtime sessions, one-on-one attention, and personalized training to provide tailored experiences for each furry guest. These offerings not only enrich their time at the daycare but also address individual needs and preferences. By upselling these services, you're not only ensuring a happier and more fulfilled pup but also creating an additional revenue stream for your business.
What is upselling?
Upselling is a business technique that enables you to sell more services and features to your clients in order to increase profits, average order value, or customer lifetime value. You can upsell services (for example, a dog stays at a doggy daycare and while they’re there, receives training from you), or cross-sell services (you own a dog daycare service and owners can separately purchase dog toys).
How do I know what to upsell?
The best way to figure out what services your clients (pet parents) might be lacking is to chat with them. Ask them what would make their lives easier as pet owners. Is the groomer too far away? Does their dog have too much energy after they come home from daycare? Is daycare too far away? You can offer services that address their concerns head on.
Upselling Techniques
There are three main ways a business owner can upsell services. First, you can upsell on your website or in person, when the customer signs up for doggy daycare. You can offer packages that bundle services for daycare, dog walking, grooming, or training. Finally, you can upsell services after they purchase daycare. You can email or text customers about your new offerings. And you can even offer incentives to employees who successfully upsell for you. You can even offer packages of daycare and grooming, giving the customer a little discount for buying appointments in bulk, but resulting in an overall higher lifetime value for the customer, a statistic that many investors look into if you’re looking to sell your business. But what types of services could you feasibly offer that pups (and their parents) would do flips for?
Dog Daycare Upselling Ideas
Dog Walking Service
Pet parents don’t just want their dogs to show up at your facility and mope around all day, and what dog doesn’t love going on a walk? If you offer dog walking, pups get exercise, mental enrichment from all the sights, sounds, and smells, socialization by interacting with other dogs and people, and of course, personalized attention from your trainers. Since walks are part of a dog’s daily routine and their pet parents see the benefits of a tired out and enriched pup, it’s natural and simple to upsell this service.
Outdoor Activities
While pet parents are stuck at the office or appointments, they probably wish they were outside getting exercise with their dogs. They’d love to hear that you offer outdoor activities that stimulate your pet’s mind and body. This could include playing fetch outside, having a trainer run with the dogs, creating agility courses where pups can run, jump, and play, or other fun outdoor games.
Extended Playtime
All pet parents think their pets are special, and they might love even more special attention and playtime for their rambunctious pups. Keep the fun going with extended playtime: increased daycare hours, increased one-on-one time with dogs and trainers, or extra outings and walks. Pet parents know a tired dog is a happy dog, so they might opt into extras that help exhaust their furry friends.
Grooming Services
Pet parents would love the idea of a dog coming to your facility with matted fur and too much energy and emerging a calm, clean, fresh version of themselves. You can offer grooming at your facility as an upsell, and even upsell within that by offering different grooming services like nail clipping, gland expression, and haircuts in addition to washing and brushing. And if you want to invest in premium shampoo, conditioners, brushes, and other grooming products, you can upsell the higher price items as well. If your staff is artistically minded, you can offer nail painting, fur accessories, and other beautifying processes. You can even think about selling those items in your storefront so pet parents can use those same products at home. And if you’re thinking of expanding daycare into grooming or vice versa, having a great pet care software like PetExec will help you grow your business easily.
Dog Webcams
When a pet parent is bored at work or misses their pup, they’d be excited to check in and see how Fido is doing. Installing a webcam is an easy solution, and it’s even easier if you have a dog daycare software like PetExec. PetExec integrates with iDogCam, the pet industry’s leading webcam provider, to provide reliable live video footage. Pet parents get to see how much fun their pets are having, and grow to trust your company more since they know what you’re up to. A webcam could be a facility upgrade, so you could increase your general daycare prices and advertise it as a feature, or could be an upsell, where pet parents pay for webcam access. You can set them up in dog feeding areas, play areas, and grooming areas, if you have them. Pet parents can view the webcam action from their phone using the PetExec Mobile App.
Dog Training Service
Wouldn’t it be amazing if dogs left your facility knowing new tricks or coped better with separation anxiety? You’d be surprised at how many owners want a trained pet but don’t have the availability to be there during training. If you have qualified staff, you can consider adding on dog training services, anything from teaching puppies how to walk on leashes to learning how to shake and roll over.
Pet Taxi Service
Some pet parents would use dog daycare services more if the facility was closer to where they live or work. But if you offer a pet taxi service, you can meet pet parents where they are and pick up their pets from home or the owner’s office. At the end of their session, you can drop the pets off at home as well, creating a door-to-door service.
Commonly Asked Questions
How to start a dog daycare?
Starting a dog daycare or boarding facility can be overwhelming, but there are some tips you can utilize to get started. First, performing market research is essential to understand your target customer, industry, and competition. Second, you’ll want to establish and stick to a budget. Third, you can write a business plan including an executive summary, company overview, market analysis, competitor analysis, services offered, marketing plan, an organization list, and financial strategy. You’ll need to plan out where your facility will be located and how you’ll divide it up into various areas, like playtime and feeding. You’ll need to address legal, health, and safety requirements, create a marketing plan, and hire great staff.
How to market my dog daycare?
You can market your dog daycare by utilizing various marketing channels, like content marketing (establishing a high quality website that promotes your business), local SEO (building a Google Business profile) social media marketing, email marketing, paid advertising on social media or as advertisements through Google Ads, referral programs, direct mail advertisements, branded merchandise, and event marketing.
Dog daycares can be profitable, if you take key factors into account like location and rent, high quality services, and good pricing strategies. If you open a pet business where there are many pet parents, your business is more likely to be profitable. To ensure proper margins, you’ll have to manage costs, have consistently efficient operations, and of course, take amazing care of the dogs who walk through your door.
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