604: Marketing Pet Sitting in a Modern Experience Economy
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How should pet sitters adapt as client expectations shift? Camp Bow Wow is celebrating 25 years as a market leader in daycare and boarding. Their recent brand refresh and national pet parent survey offer valuable clues about where the pet care consumer mindset is heading — and what we, as dog walkers and pet sitters, can learn to better serve clients and compete in an increasingly emotional and experience-driven marketplace. In this episode, we explore insights from the survey, including the rise of the emotional experience economy, the power of community connection, and the growing demand for convenience and polished brands. We share why marketing outcomes—not just tasks—is now essential, and how refining the client experience can help us stand out. With practical examples, we discuss how small pet care businesses can thrive alongside big brands by leaning into our unique strengths.
Main Topics
Rise of the emotional experience economy
Shifting client expectations for pet care
Building community and client connection
Marketing outcomes vs. checklists
Streamlining client experience through tech and branding
Main Takeaway: Pet care is no longer about just checking the box of functional care. It’s about selling the emotional experience and outcomes.
Too often, we focus our marketing on what we do—feeding pets, walking dogs, refreshing water bowls. But today’s pet parents crave more than checklists; they want an experience. They want joy, enrichment, and peace of mind—for their pets and themselves. When you show them how your care brings happiness to their pets and reduces their own stress, you elevate your business beyond tasks. Don’t just market what you do—market how you make them feel.
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A VERY ROUGH TRANSCRIPT OF THE EPISODE
Provided by otter.ai
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
Pet care, emotional experience, client expectations, daycare, boarding, socialization, enrichment, peace of mind, community, convenience, technology, branding, client avatar, marketing, pet parent survey
SPEAKERS
Collin, Meghan
Meghan 00:00
Collin, Hi, I'm Meghan. I'm Collin. We are the host of pet sitter confessional, an open and honest discussion about life as a pet sitter. Thank you for listening today. Thank you also to pet sitters, associates and dog coat lounge for sponsoring today's episode and for our Patreon. People who find value in the show and support us. They are Adriana Amber and Barbie Beck and Erica Jan Janie and Jenny, Julie and Sarah, Catherine and Keith Liz, Laurie Lucy, Rachel Scott, Savannah, Teresa and Yvonne. If you are listening and love the podcast, you can go to pet sitter, confessional.com/support, to see all the ways that you can help out. Camp. Bow Wow is a boarding and daycare place, and they are just celebrated 25 years. They are basically the leading brand in the daycare and boarding space. They just launched a brand refresh and released a large national pet parent survey. Even though we are dog walkers and pet sitters that provide in home care, this matters to us because it highlights the client expectations, which are being shaped by the strongest, most visible brands in the pet care space. And even though we're offering a different suite of services, there are still lessons and challenges and ways to adapt in order to provide the best care possible. The first result from their survey was the rise of the emotional experience economy. They have this new tagline of Welcome to Camp life that plays really well into their name, but it celebrates joy and enrichment and fun. They said that 81% of pet parents believe their dog feels very happy when seeing dog friends. 79% say that they the pet parent, are living their best lives when their dog can socialize. It's that emotional of, oh, my dog's having fun. So I'm a great person, because I allow them to do that. And then 92% of regular daycare users report personal joy from seeing their dog make friends. Dog moms and dads love seeing their dog playing with others. It's the ooey, gooey feelings that they get. We experienced
Collin 01:46
this when we used to offer a daycare experience for our clients of oh my dog loves it. Coming around the corner, they get super excited. They jump on the car and see they're perked up right at the window, and they come rushing in, and they love to see their friends and their play friends. It was, it wasn't just a show up and do this thing. It was an entire experience and very emotional for that pet parent to see their dog acting in this way. And so in a lot of cases, they want this kind of care, yes, for their dog, but also it's for themselves as well.
Meghan 02:18
Now obviously operating on pretty much a one for one model of one home one pet care provider. Can be a little difficult to get to this emotional experience, but we have to realize that pet care is no longer about just checking the box of functional care. It's about selling the emotional experience and outcomes. So think about how you can sell that on your social media, on your website, pulling out emotional language that would really get to the heart of what the pet parent is going to experience and their pet as well. Clients, increasingly expect us to provide that joy, that enrichment, that peace of mind, not just okay, I completed the dog walk or the visit is done, but what feelings, what emotions? What experiences did their dog have out on the walk? How many different types of flowers did they sniff, or did the cat all of a sudden take an interest in a toy that she hasn't been playing with in a long time? We need to market these things and then deliver against these emotional expectations, and this
Collin 03:10
is actually pretty difficult. A lot of us like to market to the functional aspect of what we do. It's easy to talk about the photos that they get, or that we lock the door or that will we can feed and give medications and they stay up to date on everything that's going on. It's actually harder to connect at that emotional level. I actually just saw a post today of somebody talking about how, how are we raising the bar for what we do in a pet sitting visit or in a dog walking visit? You know, 510, years ago is pretty easy to stand out by just saying, I offer photos, and I always scrub out the food and water bowls, and I always refresh water, and I always will get checked the mail that. Now that's kind of table stakes, and everybody's doing that same thing. But what we can do from our perspective as businesses, instead of talking about the check boxes, we need to talk about, like Meghan said, those outcomes for the owner. When you talk about the emotions that they can get from our experiences and what we provide while we're over at their home.
Meghan 04:07
And we actually talked a lot about about this on episode 598 when we talked about selling what has to be experienced, it can be very easy to go down the check boxes of you get photos, you get a written report, but clients have these expectations of, ooh, I'm going to be an ooey gooey, feely pet parent that has all this great juju, because my dog is happy, and that's what I want. I get personal satisfaction of my dog being happy at the end of the day. So that's something that we need to convey at every step of the process, before somebody becomes a client during that and then even after, if they've moved away, we still need to be cultivating that.
Collin 04:40
Now we all recognize that not every dog, not every pet, is going to be a good fit for a daycare or a boarding option for them. However, clients are still going to crave and expect the enrichment, the joy, the emotional side of things for their pet. And so now we have to take, okay, a lot of. These decisions, these are being driven by what the client wants versus what the pet needs, or what's best in certain situations and scenarios. So we have to position our services by delivering that personalized joy, the personal fulfillment, the individual aspect that we can provide while also right. We do this through our one on one, walks our enrichment based, visits the individual care that we get, and talk into the peace of mind. And really, I think we have to focus on the end result and work backwards. The end result is a happy, joyful pet owner. Now, how do we walk backwards through that, through the pet care that we can provide, and all along the way, communicate what we're doing, what we do is exceptionally hard for people to connect with, because they're not there to experience it. The client doesn't see what's going on behind the scenes unless they have cameras, and even then, that's not the full experience of what we're providing. So it is upon us in order to communicate that effectively, both before they become a client, and then the entire time while they are one.
Meghan 06:04
And that's an important point. And the reason why you need to define your client avatar, because there really are two distinct types of the ooey, gooey, mushy pet parent who really feels the emotions and and draw derives joy from their dog's happiness. Well, on the other side, the pet parent who is still very emotional, but makes decisions because of their peace of mind. So you need to know who you are tailoring your message to. Is it the pet parent who is emotionally buying for their pet, or is it emotionally buying for themselves?
Collin 06:34
Yeah, that's a fantastic distinction, and we see it all the time in our own business as somebody who calls and the way they've shaped the questions the way they phrase what they're looking for. It's very easy to pick up. Does this person want what we offer because it's going to what's be best for their pet, or it's going to give them that peace of mind. And we often think, Oh, well, everybody has the best interest of the pet at heart, right? That's where we all start. But I think if we peel back a few layers, we find that there is going to be and this is totally fine. A lot of pet owners have these selfish desires, right, of what feels good to them, what are their expectations for, what they want to see happen and see the outcome for and we can meet that need, but we have to understand that if we are talking about best interests of the pet or best interest of the owner. Those two are speak different languages, and it is sometimes hard to get our message across. If we come up and we're like, best for pet, best for pet, best for pet, best for pet, best for pet, and the owner saying, Okay, but what does that get me? I'm part of this. I'm the one paying it's my animal. They are part of my family, and I'm making this decision, and so we can try. And a lot of what we do is unintentionally, we cut the owner out of our discussions and our marketing and our language, and they feel isolated. They don't feel seen. And so when we can, when we do, hone in on our client avatar, we speak their language, it means that they feel heard and that it's easier for them to see how we can help
Meghan 08:01
them. There is no right way or wrong way to go about this or right client avatar. So you just have to look at your business model and who you are attracting and who you want to attract your ideal client avatar should definitely want you to have pet business insurance. All professionals should have specific pet business insurance. And as a pet sitter, you know how much trust goes into caring for someone's furry family member, but who's got your back for over 25 years, pet sitters Associates has been helping pet care pros like you with affordable, flexible insurance coverage, whether you're walking dogs, pet sitting or just starting out. They make it easy to protect your business. Get a free quote today at pets@llc.com and as a listener, you get $10 off your membership when you use code confessional at checkout. That's pets@llc.com because your peace of mind is part of great pet care. From the survey, we can also learn the power of community and friendship. The survey said that 54% of pet parents believe their dog has its own friend group. 63% said that their dog hangs out with dog friends more than they do with their own friends. Now obviously we need to couch this in this is from a boarding and daycare perspective, right? So the questions and the pet parent answers are obviously going to be biased and heavily influenced towards a boarding and daycare setting camp. Bow wows new focus is now going to be community and relationships and friendship, and that's very similar to how we should be as well. What events in the community are you doing? How are you bringing people together? How are you fostering relationships among clients and then with you to the client? Clients are now drawn to community narratives. They want to feel like they are giving their dog a rich, connected life. So it's no longer just you putting on an event to help rescues be adopted. That is a great way to give back to the community, but the clients want to feel that connection themselves. How can you draw them in together to be connected with each other, so their dogs can have a great life too? You can even offer this in a private care setting, like we do, where we go into people's homes, of by marketing enrichment walks or sniff adventures as mentally and socially stimulating, this is something that they can't really get in a boarding and daycare. Faci. Ability of lots of time in the grass and sniffing everything and walking the neighborhood so they can sniff and pee on a lot of mailboxes. We all love sharing client photos, but using those in social media stories, it can really foster a sense of being part of a larger community of cared for pets. The trap we can fall into there is just posting 15 photos of random dogs and not really sharing anything about our day or their experiences or emotions tied to what we get to do.
Collin 10:28
But clients do like seeing that you are doing other pets, other than themselves, right? You become known as that pet person, that dog walker, and seeing that other pets that you're seeing throughout the day, they do feel connected now to those pets, through you, we can become that kind of conduit. And so whether you stay doing solo walks and these these individual visits, you offer small play groups or small play dates, as is acceptable for you, know where you are and what you're insured for and all of those things, we can still provide this connection to a broader community, because it can feel limiting to us. We can feel like we can't compete right with those group plays or what they're experiencing in daycares and boarding all that stuff. However, we have to work hard to reframe this. We are providing the individualized, expert led enrichment. You know, it's a superior fit for many dogs, and it actually is more beneficial in many ways. So we have to, you know, layer on these things. If we have people who are looking for this community, looking for this enrichment, looking for these play groups, how do we use similar language to start talking to them? And I think this, this enrichment led this individualized, this personalized experiences. Remember, link this back to step one, clients are looking for experiences, not just for themselves, but for their dogs and their pets too. We can talk about that and link these two things together
Meghan 11:49
with this survey that Camp Bow Wow did. They're also doing a complete rebrand, a refresh of they want to be a modernized brand now with a new website, a new logo, digital presence, they really they are emphasizing the frictionless experience for clients, which is also something that we've talked about, of trying to create as little barriers as possible between somebody knowing about you and then wanting to be your client and then becoming a client. We know that this can be easily done with software. The client books the visits they want when they want. They don't need to call us. They don't need to wait until 9am the next business day, they can book at 11pm at night, in their bed, whenever they want. Their survey revealed, 68% of pet parents prioritize convenience. That's what they want. There's an app for everything. People have been saying that for 10 years they want to be able to do things instantaneously. 54% of pet parents surveyed said they want app based booking. Well, that's great if you use apps like time to pet the client. Expectation baseline is rising. Clients have more expectations now than ever, not because of other sitters, but because of brands like Camp Bow Wow and Uber pet and rover. They want this modern, seamless experience. They want to be able to do it at a click of a button. They want easy booking, automated confirmations, regular communication. I feel like in our business, we're seeing more helicopter parents now more than ever. Some clients still want a set it and forget it method, but a lot of them want to book and keep track of what's happening and making sure that you are staying up to date on watering the plants and pulling in the trash can. Clients are looking for brands with a polished image. These are their kids that you're taking care of their babies. They want to know that you are going to show up and do a job.
Collin 13:26
And that's often communicated through our brand, and how it is positioned, and the colors and the logo and all of those things, the language that we use, that is what can be used to help put pet parents at peace of mind. Give them peace of mind, put them at ease before they even use our services, and this these findings from this survey, the they want an app based they prioritize convenience. This is a huge reminder that a lot of client and consumer behavior is trained somewhere else. It's trained out in the open market. And then they find your business, and they bring with them these expectations. They bring with them these previous experiences and these biases of what they think it should, quote, unquote, look like or do. And this is, this is for our benefit a lot of kind times it's also a lot of you know can be to our detriment. In some cases, when they have expectations that we can't meet or don't want to meet. Is wonderful when they come in with high expectations, and we can meet those and knock them out of the park with ease. And so it does take some education on our part, as people come into our business, is our intake process educating them on how our business functions? Does it educate them on the expectations of being a client of ours and how we want to serve them, that is a process that we really have to line out and be very intentional on to make sure that these are in alignment, and that if they're not, can we bring them into alignment? Can we bring the client expectations into alignment with our expectations for how we are going to operate? What those boundaries are, what the booking process is, what the cancelation process? Places, you know, I don't know if you've got this in your business, but we get it all the time, right? Well, my previous person I used, they let me book, you know, cancel same day, and they give me a full refund. Well, that's, that's not how we operate and, and here's where it is in the onboarding process, and here's where it is in the agreement, and here's where it is where you book again. Here's all this places for touch points in education. But this mismatch we can use to our advantage, when we can say, you think you're getting this, but actually we can surprise you by embracing technology like tying to pet or precise pet care or pet pocket book or whatever that is for you, right? We need to be investing into that, into technology, into marketing and branding, so that we can come across as as polished and professional to give that person confidence. So if you have a website, if you have a logo, make sure that you give it a good look. Make sure that it looks modern and it looks like it's reflecting well on your brand and what you want people to experience before they even show up. This extends all the way out into the language, the copy that we're using in our marketing messages on our website, in our social media posts, in our emails, in how we talk with clients. Does that match the feelings, the emotion, the experience that we'd like people to have? And yes, that booking process, that intake must be low friction. It must be polished, it must be easy. That is just the growing trend for client expectations. I think oftentimes we can think that this means it has to be impersonal. It has to be where we are not getting the information that we need. We're not saying just go all the way down to want dog walk, click Yes, click No, and then we just show up magically, like that's not where we're headed here. But what can we take away? What can we refine? What questions can we simplify? What do do we are we asking for the right information at the right time throughout the process to not overload anybody? Is it educating them in a nice way through seamlessly from step to step so they know the expectation and how long this is going to take? If you've never done your onboarding and intake process, I strongly encourage you to go test those buttons and see what that's like. Have a friend or family member go do it, or maybe have an existing client go back through it and give you some feedback on how you can improve that we do have to balance of I need to make this low friction, but we also have information that we must have that are deal breakers for us, because we can't just dive in. But where do we place those throughout the process to place less burden on the pet parent and make sure that we get all the information that we need before we move forward? This is a constant balancing act, and your client avatar and where you are will act and behave differently and have different expectations than somebody else, and that's also important to remember too of how we meet these needs over
Meghan 17:42
time. And now a word from Michelle from dog co launch.
Speaker 1 17:45
Are you attending the dog co Business Summit located in Winston, Salem, North Carolina, September 26 through the 28th This is a place for scaling pet care companies to come together, learn from industry leaders, and level up your pet care business to the next level. Go to dogco summit.com to learn more and to purchase your ticket before they are all gone. I think
Collin 18:08
it's really important that we take a moment to just make sure we understand why we're trying to learn from a boarding and daycare facility these lessons, and how we can apply it to dog walkers and pet sitters. Well, the first one is that they spent a lot of money, and they did this market research, right? So we can take advantage of that. We can see what are the client expectations, where market trends were, these growing, and what do we do with that? Then, I don't have the capacity as a small business to survey 1000s of pet parents across the entire United States. That's not something within my within my purview. So this gives us a little bit of understanding of what are the expectations out there. This is good for us to know, because if we keep using the same talking points that we've been using for the last 10 years, and honestly, I caught myself doing this the other day, Meghan, we've been in business for we've been doing this for over 13 years now, and a lot of our talking points that we use to this day to clients who call us on the phone are still things that I would have mentioned a decade ago, and so that can quickly lead to irrelevancy and missing the mark on language used and emphasis on certain things when we can understand that people are looking for experiences and emotions for both themselves and their pets, that should and inherently does change on how we talk and communicate to other people, and so when we look at this information, it's not a well, that's for them. I'm going to do something completely different. It's not Well, that's my competitor, and I need to compete against that. It's a this helps me understand the mindset of the modern pet owner and the modern pet parent, and now I can take that information and infuse that into my business to make me better and make me better able to communicate and connect with my client avatar, because the
Meghan 19:53
only way to know if we need to grow and adapt to something new is to have the information of what is expected right now. Yeah, there's also several marketing lessons that we can learn from this pet parent survey. We can sell joy, safety, trust, you know, they have a new slogan of making happy campers, and that's for both dogs and pet parents. They are committed to the joy, socialization, safety, comfort and fun. You know, we're we are committed to that as well, just in a different setting, and then, obviously, can't bow out. Huge brand. They have huge social proof. They've served over 55 million dogs. The takeaway here is that most successful brands sell they sell joy for the pet peace of mind for the pet parent. Again, defining exactly what that means, because everybody uses that in throughout the entire pet care space. We all give pet parents peace of mind. But for your specific business, what does that mean? What does that mean for your client? What does that mean for their pet? When you can define that, when you can sell that emotion, they will put their trust in your professional hands, in your safe care hands. Sometimes our marketing leans too far into the reliable care aspect, which is expected. It's expected you're going to show up. When you say you're going to that's what they want. That's why they're paying you money. But instead, we should market enrichment and happiness for pets. How our services relieve owner guilt. Again, they're the dichotomy of which pet parent are you talking to, the one that's concerned ultimately, for their pets happiness, or for their own happiness, that they're able to take their vacation and not have to worry about? Is somebody going to show up. We should also be talking about how we can support the owner lifestyle goals, whether that's freedom or flexibility or, again, that peace of mind tag.
Collin 21:29
Well, Meghan, you mentioned that phrase reliable care. And I think this is a really important point. If you said basically, this is state table stakes. Pet owners would not hire somebody who's going to be openly and unashamedly unreliable. That is just the baseline expectation. A really good thought experiment is to go through your marketing, your messaging, your language, your copy, and ask yourself, are any of these words something that you would consider table stakes? Are any of these considered baseline level? Are any of these considered something that everybody technically should be doing if so, remove those and replace those with that emotional connection, replace those with that desired outcome, replace them with that support of the pet owner. This really will help educate people on exactly what they get from you, and it elevates your language and how you're talking to people. You're
Meghan 22:20
not just saying I'm dependable, I'm reliable. I have experience. That's the one that I feel like I see everybody use, and I give peace of mind. Well, ultimately, if everybody is using those words, it really doesn't mean anything at all, and it dilutes the language. Figure out new words and new phrases, how you can be distinct from everybody else. If we are basically saying the same script as everybody else, we're going to get lost. We're going to be treated the same as everybody else, whether they're professional or not. Use the differences in your business to highlight the level of excellence you bring to the table.
Collin 22:49
If you look at how Chevy markets their cars and trucks against Ford, at no point during the commercial will you see somebody saying, Yes, we have four doors and we have four wheels, and the car will not fall to pieces when you drive down the road, right? These are just no these are expectations. These are these we know that they're going to be safe. They know they're going to be secure. But what feelings and emotion what you see? A lot of things talk about craftmanship and heritage and lifestyle, and that's why you see all of the cars going off road and taking families and doing these vacations and stuff that nobody will actually end up using. Actually end up using these vehicles for, but it's to give them an aspirational thing to search for and look for and lean towards their buying into this vision that they have for themselves. We can give that to our clients when we talk about the lifestyles that they could be leading if they used us, the life that their pet could have if they used us, and it becomes this aspirational, that's what I want. That's what I need for me as the pet owner, instead of talking about the nuts and bolts and the number of tires that we have, it's the feelings and emotions and outcomes that we want for them and their pet.
Meghan 23:59
So using those client testimonials as emotional stories that you can tell. Instead of just putting up the words of the Google review, maybe tell the story and use pictures of the pet to convey the happiness of the owner. Use those emotions and the imagery of happy pets and relaxed pet owners. Try to avoid the cold or clinical marketing language that warmth really matters to people, sometimes we can come off as too professional and too polished. So it is a fine balance of wanting to be professional, wanting to separate ourselves, and wanting to raise the standard of what it means to do a pet sitting or dog walking visit, while also knowing that there does need to be this warmth, this comfort that we bring to our digital presence and our clients. Ultimately, though, national players like Camp Bow Wow are really shaping the consumer expectation. There are millions of dogs that go to Camp Bow Wow every single day, and they're not just shaping daycare expectations. They're really shaping the pet parent experience as a whole. So because we are in home pet care providers, we need to adapt and we need to thrive through this by. Outcomes, not tasks, really embracing that frictionless tech and the strong branding, offering an individualized enrichment and joys, something that big box daycares just can't do. We also need to be building that client community and loyalty specific to what our clients are expecting, and then communicating that safety and trust clearly of if we are this known entity. We have lots of clients. We've been here for many years. We are established, and we're not going anywhere. We're not this fly by night company. We're going to be here for the long haul. No matter who it is in the pet care space, it's important to watch what the big players are doing. They can inform the decisions that we make, not saying we need to copy them, but to understand what clients are now expecting and what they crave, what they want for their pets, and then deliver that with your vision of that rooted in your strengths, your mission, vision and values, where you want your company to go, because when we know what clients want and where the industry as a whole is going, we're better able to make more informed choices. We hope this episode has been helpful, and if you have any ways that you are implementing some of these things in your business, we'd love to hear from you. You can email us at Pet Sitter confessional@gmail.com We'd like to thank our executive producers on Patreon. Thank you for supporting the show and also pet sitters associates and dog coat launch for sponsoring. We will talk with you next time bye. You
