How to Grow Your Dog Daycare Business

Growing your dog daycare business brings the opportunity to expand your revenue, client base, and make an impact in more communities. But as exciting as it sounds, it is also a daunting task. Growing too rapidly without a solid foundation can cause the business to falter or, in the worst case, fail. 

In this post, we discuss how to create a strong foundation so your dog boarding or daycare business can enjoy lasting growth.

Continuous Hiring

Since employees are the lifeblood of your business, ensuring you always have enough trained people to work is essential. There are multiple reasons for employee turnover, such as not being the right fit or needing to go back to school. When employee turnover happens unexpectedly, this staffing gap can harm the business and impact your ability to run a smooth operation. 

So how do you stay ahead of the turnover rate, ensuring you always have enough staff? The solution is to continuously hire, instead of only when you need a position filled. With this strategy, you will have enough employees and have time to find the right person for the job instead of rushing to hire anyone at the last minute. You can accomplish this easily by creating an application page on your website and system for tracking applicants.

Employee Cross Training

In any dog daycare business, you will have employees who specialize in different areas. For example, the employee who monitors daycare play has a different job description than a grooming technician or a front desk receptionist. Specialization is great for offering high quality service, but we believe that cross training is also important. If an employee is sick or someone quits last minute, having someone on staff who can help out in a different department is very helpful. 

In this way, simple cross training can turn a major staffing problem into a minor hiccup. On the whole, it will make your business more resilient.

Management Structure

Management structure is an important foundation for your dog daycare or boarding business. Without it, the owner has to directly handle every problem, which takes time away from other crucial duties such as developing marketing strategies or interviewing job applicants. With a more developed structure, the owner can focus on growing the business without being bogged down by daily problems. 

Argos recommends a General Manager, one or two Assistant General Managers (depending on your size), and a handful of shift leads. The shift leads solve most problems that occur on the floor, freeing upper management for other tasks. With management layers, employees have growth opportunities, which inspires a strong work ethic and elevates customer service. Growth opportunities also increase employee retention, leading to more experienced staff and satisfied clients.

Marketing Your Dog Daycare Business

If you want to expand your client base, then marketing is an important step. These days, having a strong online presence is crucial for any business. That includes a website, which displays your services and unique advantages in a user-friendly design. Using SEO (search engine optimization) to draw more visitors to your website is also important. On social media like Yelp, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, you can post business updates, promotions, client testimonials, and reply to post comments to boost engagement. In time, your social media following will grow, helping you expand your customer base as well. 

Make Select Investments

Inevitably, you must invest to keep providing top-tier value to your customers. As the industry evolves, new technology such as dog-specific turf, UV systems for HVAC, and scheduling software become commonplace. If all your competitors have turf to reduce mud and UV systems to fight germs like bordetella, then that becomes the new service standard. Investing early in crucial technology can keep your company at the head of the pack, preventing you from having to catch up later.

Conclusion

Growing your dog daycare business is not easy, but it is so rewarding. It takes time, energy, and often a financial investment to take your business to new heights. Argos is an experienced growth partner that can provide you with the advice and financial resources to take your dog daycare business to the next level. Interested in partnering with us? Start a conversation.