If you’re doing all the obvious marketing for your dog training business but not getting results, consider this: if it’s obvious, everyone else is doing it, too.
That’s why you’re not going to find “network with your local vet” or “get on social media” on this marketing tips list. We’re betting you’ve already thought of that.
Standing out to pet parents means thinking outside of the box with where and how to market your business, plus customizing services to your audience. Walk with us through 6 creative dog trainer marketing tricks that make clients sit up and take notice.
How to Get Dog Training Clients
Too many dog owners see problem behaviors as inevitable or even consider rehoming pets over easily fixable issues. That means step one of your marketing often involves convincing a client that they are, in fact, a client.
To meet customers who aren’t actively looking for a trainer, you need to be able to spot them. Understanding your client base and the unique needs of each part of your market can help you provide the tailored classes and services they didn’t know they needed.
Your potential dog training clients typically fall into one of these four categories:
Families With Kids
Millennials (32%) and Gen X (27%) top the charts of pet owners in the US and are also the most likely demographics to have both pets and kids in the house.
Woof-Worthy Ideas: Marketing Dog Training to Families
You’ll want to lean into dog safety around children, other pets, and strangers to convey the importance of your services in the situations this group faces.
Animal handling classes for kids that teach responsibility through animal care and accident-avoidance skills like “gentle hands” are a big win. You can hold these sessions in your own training space, or even through a local school or kids’ organization to reach a wider audience.
If you can supply a few of your own dogs, these classes might even net you clients who don’t have pets yet but want to give their child a chance to play with dogs, learn animal safety, and socialize. If they decide to adopt, your name will be top-of-mind for training.
Empty Nesters
Older adults often gravitate towards pet ownership to ease the transition when kids leave the house. (They also lead the nation in pet spending.)
Woof-Worthy Ideas: Marketing Dog Training to Empty Nesters
This crowd often gets a dog because they want companionship, exercise, and something to collaborate on with their partner. They have time to work with you and their dog directly, so use your marketing to show them that your training classes meet those needs. You might even meet at local community or senior living centers.
Classes that limit physically demanding behaviors like leash tugging are a big win for seniors. Training to stop at crosswalks for traffic safety or pick up dropped items can also make your services more appealing to those with restricted mobility.
Note: Training service dogs has no legal certification requirements. However, service animal training exposes you to more legal risks. If you’re unsure whether a skill might cross into service dog territory, check with your dog trainer insurance provider to make sure you’re covered and consider certification to provide the best possible advice.
Young Professionals
This demographic typically has the money to pay you and doesn’t have the time to train pets themselves beyond the basics. They need solutions to behavior problems at home and on the go.
Woof-Worthy Ideas: Marketing Dog Training to Professionals
A class angle like work-from-home etiquette for pets or tips for encouraging good behavior while pet parents are away could be a hit with this group. A dog behavior in public spaces class could also help young professionals the next time they’re at their favorite pet-friendly bar or restaurant.
Note: This is a busy bunch, so some how-to video content on your website or social media channels will likely be appreciated. In-home training packages or sessions that don’t meet during 9-to-5 work hours also make your classes feel more accessible to professionals.
College Students
Despite owning the fewest pets, 41% of Gen Z dog parents reported hiring a dog trainer — the highest percentage of any generation.
Woof-Worthy Ideas: Marketing Dog Training to Students
College campuses are increasingly welcoming dogs into public spaces and even classrooms, but finding student-friendly rental housing that allows pets is still tough. Dog training may open the door to more apartment options (or at least help them keep their security deposit this time.)
Emotional support animals (ESAs) are also increasingly common among college students, but registration gets complicated. Learn the process at local colleges and market ESA training for dogs and students, including how to register pets and network with other campus dog parents for walks, playtime, and making friends. It’s helpful for them, and a referral machine for you!
6 Fresh Approaches to Dog Training Marketing
Feeling inspired? Consider how you could reach clients with your message both in person and online with these six innovative dog training marketing ideas.
Low-Tech Dog Trainer Marketing
1. Go Where Your Clients Are (And Where Your Competitors Aren’t)
Finding clients already looking for a dog trainer on pet care apps, pet parent Facebook groups, or online dog trainer directories has plenty of value. But you’ve probably already thought about going where your competitors go.
Thinking about using an app to get clients? Check out our review of Wag! to help you make a decision.
What about meeting your clients in places where they realize they need your service on their own? Think about other public places where dog owners take their furry best friend and wish that their dog was a little more well-behaved. How could you market your training there?
Outdoor Bars and Restaurants
More pet-friendly businesses mean more options for dog owners to take Fido out on the town. However, interaction with strangers and bark-inducing lights, sounds, and smells still create obstacles to bringing dogs to their favorite spots.
A local pub that allows dogs might want to play up their pet-friendly cred (and promote a service that makes their lives easier, too) by partnering with you. Buy a little ad space on their menu or table cards.
Parks, Outdoor Shopping Malls, and Playgrounds
Free, leash-friendly outdoor spots are a favorite for dog owners and another opportunity for them to realize their dog needs training.
Use a bulletin board, bench, or bus stop ad with a QR code that takes clients straight to a specially made page on your website. Use the page to discuss dog behaviors they might currently be experiencing and link to your booking calendar.
You might also consider holding class in a public spot like a park. Passing dog parents see a real-time demo that advertises your business, and your clients’ pups learn skills around the same environments and stimuli they’ll experience with their owners.
Pet-Friendly Offices
Pet-friendly businesses and co-working spaces are a growing trend, but they come with new challenges. Everyone loves the office’s Labrador Retriever, but not when he bounds into the conference room during a meeting. Hold demos on how to establish boundaries for office pets to keep productivity up while still enjoying the morale boost pets can bring.
2. Set Up Reciprocal Referrals
You’re probably already networking with other pet pros like groomers, vets, breeders, and local pet stores (if not, get on that!) But what about other types of businesses?
Any business that regularly deals with dog owners is a candidate for a reciprocal referral partnership. If you offer a helpful service to their clients and they solve a problem for yours, constantly sending each other business is in everyone’s best interests.
Animal Shelters
Humane societies and animal rescues connect you with clients who need to acclimate dogs to new environments, people, and expectations right away. These are also likely pups with more trauma-based behavioral issues that need specialized and compassionate training.
Non-profits like rescues and shelters frequently don’t have the resources to help new dog parents as much as they’d like. If you can provide value to the shelter for free (and lower the return rate of adoptions that didn’t work out), promoting you is a win/win.
Offer a coupon for one free or discounted class to new customers who adopt a dog or call about problem behaviors. A successful demo session can make trial students into paying clients. You might even partner with the shelter to offer classes in their facility at little or no expense to you.
Photographers
Pet photogs have special skills to get the best shots, but those who want to expand into pet photography but don’t have dog-handling experience might need help.
Consider teaming up on pet shoots for a commission fee or giving demos to build relationships with local photographers. They may keep repping your service or employ you if they see firsthand how you can help their business grow.
3. Distribute Dog Training Business Cards & Resources
What about putting a new spin on classic marketing? Design and printing services like Vistaprint (above) can make producing dog trainer business cards a breeze.
Other pet or pet-related businesses are more likely to promote you if you make them look good by providing a valuable, relevant resource to their customers. This means more than just plopping a stack of dog training business cards at your vet’s front desk.
How can you give that resource immediate value? Here are a few ideas:
- QR code business cards for rescues and breeders: If your dog trainer business cards include a QR code link to a series of training videos on your social media page, breeders and rescues might actively promote and give them to clients with new pet paperwork.
- Pamphlets for landscaping companies: Make a brochure about choosing the right outdoor plants or landscaping design for different types of dogs and behavioral issues. Brand it, print copies, and provide them as a free resource to local lawn care companies. You make answering pet questions easier for them and get a free plug for your business.
- Discount coupons for apartment complexes: Landlords don’t want their units destroyed, and renters want their deposits back. Help them both reach their goals by providing local dog-friendly apartment complexes with branded coupons to give to renters who make a pet deposit. You get business and help them solve a common problem.
Digital Marketing Tricks for Dog Trainers
Word of mouth and local referrals are a big part of dog trainer marketing, but digital marketing for pet businesses is full of creative (and cost-effective) options. As more trainers offer online courses, keeping up with the digital side of your marketing and reaching broader audiences becomes more important.
We bet you’re already aware of common online dog training marketing ideas, so we’ll run through the best practices quickly:
Build a user-friendly pet business website. (Our guide for designing dog grooming websites offers tons of useful tips that also apply to trainers!)
Create dog training social media accounts, update them regularly, and interact with followers.
- Engage and update your customers with pet business emails.
- Keep repeat customers’ tails wagging with pet business loyalty programs.
- Encourage your megafans to refer their friends with referral programs.
But what could you do next? You can apply many ideas for offline audience awareness and creative marketing to your digital strategy, too.
4. Promote Your Business Insurance on Your Website
Your expertise makes your training business best-in-show. What qualifications do you have that others don’t or might not think to promote?
Along with certifications, licenses, associations, awards, and testimonials, consider discussing your dog trainer insurance.
Did you know that 80% of pet parents are more likely to hire a service with pet business insurance? (We know because we asked almost 500 pet parents from around the country.)
Dog training involves unpredictable behavior, which means risks to people, property, and animals. We tell our policyholders to add their Pet Care Insurance badge to their About page for credibility and peace of mind that makes them stand out from the pack.
The smart trainers and doggie daycare operators at Bark N Barrel show clients they’re responsible pros by displaying their insurance badges.
5. Guest Post on Pet-Friendly Websites
Writing a guest post for a pet blog or business website can get your name out in the places where dog owners are most likely to see you. Many blogs let you include a relevant link, so a guest post can bring users to your site and establish you as a training expert.
Train Your Marketing Brain: Example Guest Posts
An idea like this tip list for owning a dog in NYC on realty site Rent Betta would make an effective guest post written from the trainer perspective. It’s specific to one city (so it’s likely to attract local clients), it reaches an audience with a need you could fill, and it gives you a chance to deliver useful info that’s in your wheelhouse.
Use those criteria to spark other smart guest posting concepts, like these:
- How to Choose the Right [Local Company] Fence for Your Dog’s Breed, Age, and Needs
- The [Your City] Guide for Pet-Friendly Rentals (+ Training Tips for Indoor Dogs)
- 5 [City] Offices That Allow Pets & How to Train Dogs for the Workplace
- 7 [City] Destinations to Take Your Dog (+ Training Tricks for Public Spaces)
- 4 Tips for Training Senior Pets from a Certified Dog Trainer and [City] Animal Shelter
If writing isn’t your thing, there are other ways to raise your visibility online.
Apply the same logic you used for traditional marketing to finding creative spots to publish your digital content:
Where do your customers visit, especially while thinking about their pets?
Consider pet business sites and blogs but also services dog owners regularly use because of their dogs — for example, flooring, upholstery, furniture, and cleaning companies.
What resource would your potential customer and the owner of that online space value?
Take the example of a cleaning company. They likely deal with destructive dogs and field pet-related questions outside their expertise.
Pitch them a how-to video reel for their Instagram account about house training a puppy or how to avoid damaging or messy behaviors like chewing and accidents. You provide a solution for the company and build a partnership with them while introducing yourself to their clients.
What resource could you create or offer?
- A little artistic? Design an infographic or brochure.
- Handy with a camera? Record a short how-to video.
- Gifted in gab? Guest as an expert on a pet podcast to promote your online course.
- Have budget to spend? Partner with a related local business for a social media contest with their product and your service as prizes.
6. Get Creative With Your Dog Training Ads
This playful trainer TikTok ad from Saige’s Way Dog Training got almost 125k likes, proving that the most important part of an ad isn’t slick delivery — it’s showing your customers what you can do for them. Trainer Whitney takes off a dog’s leash in a common public spot and demonstrates how training keeps the dog calmly obeying commands despite distractions.
Advertising is a smart choice for industries with clients who don’t realize they need your services, like dog training. Tools like Google Ads and social media ad platforms can seem intimidating, so fewer of your local competitors will saturate the dog training advertising space. The good news is that making an ad is easier than you might think.
Consider where your customers would welcome seeing pet-related content. Here are a few ideas to get you started:
Instagram and TikTok Ads
Social media was practically made for dog content, so cute, fun, and useful video or photo ads can be a big hit. What about locally targeted dog training ads that demonstrate stopping a behavioral problem in its tracks? End with a call to action that lists other issues you can fix, and you’ll have them hooked!
Facebook Ads
Use a Lookalike audience to send your ads to the people or groups most likely to want your services. This free tool lets you input your existing followers and finds users with similar demographics, interests, and online behaviors so you can show your ads to the most relevant people.
Display Ads
You can pay to place display ads (like images and videos) along the top or side margins of many websites. To find highly effective ad placements, check your referral traffic in Google Analytics for the pages users visited right before your site. Chances are good those sites made them realize they need a trainer!
Pro Tip: Need help with your dog training advertising? Canva’s free ad templates let you filter to find the type of ad you want and create a drag-and-drop design that looks polished and professional.
Put Your Best Paw Forward
The best strategies for how to get dog training clients and stand out from the competition don’t cost a fortune or require a marketing degree. The most important marketing move is your willingness to know your clients and think outside the box for ways to talk to them. Run with these marketing ideas to unleash your creativity.
Dog Training Marketing FAQs
What digital marketing strategies work best for dog trainers?
Dog trainers frequently see success in marketing on platforms where they can show how training works and engage with clients. Visual social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook are especially effective. Consider posting video ads or photos of your training in action and user-generated reels of clients successfully repeating commands at home.
How can I use social media to market my dog training business?
Social media advertising with demo reels can be an effective way to show your training skills in action. Use a short clip of you explaining and correcting a common behavior to demonstrate your expertise, then promote your service as the solution.
How-to videos, follower polls, and video testimonials can all make your social media account pop and invite engagement.
Which cost-effective marketing techniques are successful for dog trainers?
Creative marketing like an engaging how-to video on social media or a well-placed flyer for children’s pet safety at a local sports center can be impactful without breaking the bank. Keep costs down by leaning into your existing strengths and using free or low-cost DIY tools like Wix to build a website and Canva to design ads.
How do I measure the success of my marketing?
Setting SMART goals for your marketing can help you determine whether your approach is helping you achieve what you set out to do. A SMART goal is:
- Specific: Does your goal define what you want to achieve with this marketing strategy?
- Measurable: Can you track progress toward achieving your goal using numbers? For example, charting metrics like reach, impressions, and share of voice over time tells you whether your social media marketing is building brand awareness. To measure your revenue from ads, you might track conversion rate or cost per click instead.
- Achievable: Is it realistic for you to achieve the goal with your current resources?
- Relevant: Does meeting this goal contribute to your business’s success?
- Timely: Does the goal include start and end dates for your marketing campaign?
