Getting Started with Google AdWords at Your Doggie Daycare

Google Ads, formerly known as AdWords, is a powerful tool for small business owners, including those in the dog daycare industry. It allows you to reach a large audience and attract new customers to your business.

If you're not familiar with AdWords, it's those ads you see at the top of Google when you do a search. If you search for "car insurance" on Google, you'll most likely see an ad for Geico and Progressive and then you'll see the first "organic" search result which normally is a Wikipedia article.

That said, how does a dog daycare business owner like yourself get started with Google AdWords? In this blog post, we’ll guide you through the process and show you why it’s a valuable investment for your business. For a small amount of money, you could potentially see a large increase in clients.

Define Your Target Audience

Before you start creating your Google AdWords campaign, you need to know who your target audience is. Who are your ideal customers? What are their interests, habits, and needs? This information will help you create ads that resonate with your target audience and increase the chances of them clicking through to your website. In the case of a dog daycare or boarding kennels, the target audience is pretty simple, pet owners that are looking for daycare services or boarding services. If you're a dog groomer, your target audience is going to be pet owners looks for haircuts, nail clipping and other grooming services for their pet(s). If you're a business that does both daycare, boarding and grooming, you're going to want to create different advertising campaigns for each one. If someone is looking for dog grooming, there's no use showing them your dog boarding ad.

Set Your Budget

Google AdWords operates on a pay-per-click model, which means you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. This makes it a cost-effective advertising solution, but you still need to set a budget. Consider how much you’re willing to spend on advertising each month and what your goals are. This will help you determine the budget for your Google AdWords campaign. Here's an example of how PPC (pay per click) works. Let's say we create a AdWords for our dog daycare in Chicago. We uses Chicago dog daycare as our keywords (you'll learn about those below) and we launch the ad. When someone on Google types in dog daycare near me and they happen to live in Chicago, our ad will show up on the search result page. If they click on our ad, we'll be charged a fee, since there is a chance they'll become a new client. If they see the ad but do not click on it, we don't pay.

Choose Your Keywords

Keywords are the words or phrases that people search for when looking for products or services related to your business. You want to choose keywords that are relevant to your doggie daycare, but also ones that are not too competitive. Use the Google AdWords Keyword Planner to help you find the right keywords for your business. It's best to organize your advertising campaigns into different categories. You can create one for grooming (if you provide grooming), one for boarding, one for daycare, and perhaps just a general catch all. Using the keyword planner, you can start assigning keywords to each one. Make sure you add some negative keywords as well to each campaign. These are the words that you DO NOT want to show up in the search. If someone searches free dog daycare in chicago I don't want my daycare to show up there, since that person most likely isn't going to want to pay. So, by adding free as a negative keyword, my ad will not show up for that search. Simple!

Create Your Ad

Once you have your target audience, budget, and keywords, it’s time to create your ad. Make sure your ad is attention-grabbing, but also provides valuable information about your doggie daycare. Highlight what sets you apart from your competition and why customers should choose your business. You don't get a whole lot of space when you're writing PPC ads. Usually you get around three lines of copy, each around 100 characters. Regardless, try to get your point across quickly. For our dog daycare in Chicago example it could be something like:

Launch Your Campaign

Now that you’ve created your ad, it’s time to launch your Google AdWords campaign. You can choose to run your ad on Google Search, Google Display Network, or both. Monitor your campaign regularly and make adjustments if needed. This will help you get the most out of your advertising budget. It's best to start with the search network versus the display network. This will show your ads when someone is searching for something on Google. The Display Network is best for building brand awareness, as these are just display ads that show up throughout the AdWords network. You can read more about their differences here. Now get out there and get started!

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