#104 – 4 Dog Breeding Marketing Problems and Their Solutions

Marketing in dog breeding is an evolving world. It’s been fun. I’m enjoying the journey, the ups and the downs. Today I want to share with you four common problems in marketing and the root cause behind them, and, naturally, I’ll give you some solutions. I dive into these solutions in depth in my marketing MasterClasses inside the Dog Breeder Society and I’d love to see you on the inside! 

Recently I posted on my Instagram stories a poll about what was the biggest marketing struggle people were facing. These were the four options and their respective percentage of votes:

• 35% voted the buyers didn’t want to pay their price
• 32% voted not enough people were contacting them
• 21% said they didn’t know where to advertise
• and 11% said the wrong people were contacting them

In this episode, I’m going to review these four problems and the roots of them, so you can see where you need to take action. 

Not Enough People Contacting You?

If you don’t have very many people contacting you at all, this generally means you are not in enough places. People don’t know you exist or you don’t come up when they search for what you offer. 

The solution is to get yourself out there. Easier said than done. 

Of course I recommend you have a website, but I also recommend that you optimize your Google Business Listing to direct people to that website. And that you select some version of social media to start to get traffic to your website. 

You can also try some brokerage websites to see about getting traffic to your website. These are all ways you can start to build momentum towards building up a waitlist. 

Some people have had luck messaging inside breed-specific Facebook groups, but I find those are hit or miss and will depend a lot on the community guidelines, ones not just set by Facebook, but by the group itself. 

Other places you can go are local events. Maybe set up a booth at the Farmer’s Market, and don’t forget to collect emails for your email list there. You can also take your adult dogs to events and social gatherings with you, such as your child’s soccer games. This would allow more people to get to know your dogs, what they’re like, and to give you an opportunity to talk about the dog who will soon have puppies. 

Inside Breeder Copy Hub we release a Marketing Maneuver with every edition and we design these to give you quick traction in your marketing. Inside there are lots of ideas on where to post your email newsletter sign-up, how to get more traction on your social media posts, and planning out your content for better results. 

However, there’s one other possibility: you might be getting a lot of traffic to your website, but it’s not converting into people contacting you. Then there is the possibility that your website is poorly converting, OR what gets people to your website is misleading. As a result, when they get to your website, because they weren’t expecting what you are, they bounce and click back. 

The Wrong People Contacting You

Are you getting people contacting you, but they aren’t a good fit? This happens frequently enough and it stems from a few things. Let’s sort out which one might describe your situation the best, so you can get to the root of the problem.

The majority of the time, when you are attracting people who aren’t a good fit to your breeding program, the root is an Ideal Puppy Buyer that isn’t well defined. As you may recall, the Ideal Puppy Buyer is the person you ideally want to sell your dogs to. However, many people think of this person by demographics, such as age, income, and number and ages of children, and while this is a part of the picture, it’s far from the whole picture. 

We don’t sell dogs, we sell the lifestyle they provide, and people’s demographics don’t help you understand them in the way they want a dog, and how they want to share that lifestyle with the dog. For example, you may think you are targeting people who are empty nesters: kids are in college, they don’t have grandkids yet, and they are financially stable. Great group of people, but also a HUGE group of people. 

The people in this group may love to travel all the time and are looking for a companion dog they can take everywhere, a dog that easily fits under the seat of the airplane. However, they may be looking for a bigger dog to take running or hiking, maybe on the boat at the lake, a dog that loves water and has a go button. Yet, another demographic may be worried they aren’t as spry as they once were and they want a dog that can be a guard of the house and yard, so they may do well with a German Shepherd. All of these people fit the empty-nester, financially stable group, but have vastly different lifestyles. 

Understanding your people and what they want in a dog is the key to success with your marketing. This all comes down to selling the right lifestyle, not just the dogs. 

When people are calling you and messaging and they aren’t a good fit, this often means you aren’t clearly showcasing the lifestyle. One of the biggest indicators of this is having the wrong people contacting you; that is, they aren’t repelled by your marketing. Sounds crazy, right? Why would I want to repel people from my dogs? But you do! You want the right people contacting you, and so a part of that equation is pushing the wrong people away, using your marketing to help them conclude that your dogs will not be a good fit for them. 

You might be newer to the game, and that’s fine, we all start somewhere. But sometimes when you are getting the wrong people contacting you, you won’t immediately know they’re wrong. Rather you’ll feel that you are worried about the situation; they might seem to be missing your advice because they’re responses to your words aren’t right. Or maybe you are worried they won’t take good care of the puppy. These are all signs that your Ideal Puppy Buyer isn’t dialed in yet, and if by chance it is dialed in, then this person isn’t your Ideal Puppy Buyer. 

Very occasionally this could also stem from your breeding dogs. They may not be the kind of dogs that jive with the Ideal Puppy Buyer you’ve selected or would like to work with. I ran into this with my hunting dogs: they were too much hunt and not enough focus on people—but I loved my buyers. I opted to take the next few generations and bring down the drive a pinch, while also improving their desire to be with people; and that made the best bird dogs I’ve ever produced. 

One other caution … sometimes we intimately know our Ideal Puppy Buyers, BUT we don’t take the time to cater our marketing to them. For example, my hunting dogs can be terrors, they are athletic and clever and that can cause them to become escape artists. If I only ever posted cute puppy photos of them sleeping, I would be showing people that they’re like stuffed animals; they’re not, they’re wild animals. This might lead me to attract a lot of people that are not the right fit because they’ve been sold the lifestyle of simple and easy-to-manage dogs, which mine simply aren’t. 

Check yourself, your marketing, and see if you’re mistakenly marketing your dogs as a lifestyle that they aren’t. This is especially common in social media. Many breeders review their posts and see what worked well and what didn’t work so well. Most of the time a cute puppy photo will get more likes than a photo of your dogs doing something gross, so you’ll be inclined to post more photos of cute puppies. The problem is that it doesn’t give the whole picture and this is why you’re attracting the wrong people. There will be a group of people who think my dogs tearing it up in the mud is really appealing, and those people will do surprisingly well with one of my dogs. 

Remember, you don’t need to appeal to everyone and you don’t need a ton of people who love what you’re producing. You just need enough people who love it to come to your site and buy your dogs. For me, I need 4 good leads a month and my numbers are met. So maybe that’s 8 people contacting me and 4 following through and getting a dog. 

Don’t be afraid to share the struggles and solutions that come with your dogs. That’s all part of the lifestyle and setting clear expectations for your buyers, which will, in turn, set them up for success. 

Want to Get the Roadmap to a Successful Breeding Program?

I Don’t Know Where to Advertise

If you aren’t sure where to advertise, you’re not alone. This is one of the most common questions I get from breeders in my email, probably one every day or two. Marketing puppies for sale seems like it should be simple; everyone loves a puppy, right? Well then you have puppies and it’s like crickets, no one is calling. So what do you do? Where do you advertise?

First, I want to say the heartbreaking news: there is no place where you can simply list a puppy and sell it to the right people, for the price you want. It doesn’t exist. There is no magic bullet. 

I recommend you have a website. It’s simply the only place you can give your potential buyers a real experience of what your breeding program has to offer. It’s where you can showcase your puppies, what’s available, and why you’re different. Add in your branding and it really is an experience. 

Having that said, the problem with a website only is that no one knows it’s there. That’s why you need other avenues of marketing to tell people it exists and direct people there. This is why you need to use some other marketing avenues to meet people where they are. For many of you that’ll be Instagram or Facebook, and I know some of you are having luck on TikTok. You should also set up your Google Business Listing so, when people search Google for dog breeders of your breed in your area, you’ll come up! All of these things are useful in directing traffic to your website, which should then do the heavy lifting of selling the dogs. 

They Don’t Want to Pay My Price

Maybe people are contacting you, but they don’t want to pay your price. This happens a lot in the beginning. The root cause of people not wanting to pay your price is that they don’t understand why your dogs are different, better, or what’s included in the price. In some instances they may not have an understanding of the benefits of a well-bred dog, or how getting a dog whose temperament is aligned to your lifestyle is important. 

To rectify this problem, you have to help them understand why you’re different and what you have to offer with your dogs. 

A couple things to check. You’ll want to make sure your price is reasonable for your dogs. Check the market, other local breeders within your breed, as well as what’s online with some of the brokerage services like Good Dog. This will help you clarify that you are in the right bracket. 

If you aren’t, just simply change your price a little lower to accommodate. People ask if they should show dogs “on sale,” but that’s not really necessary. In fact, an on-sale dog often looks like a dog who will be a pain to have, or unhealthy, so if you need to adjust price, just change it like it was always that way. 

I made this mistake with my Rat Terriers when I first added them to my breeding program. I had them at a higher price because my German Shorthairs were higher, and I felt I was a good enough breeder to earn that cost for the dogs. But, while I was able to support higher pricing with my shorthairs because of experience and testimonials, I couldn’t do that for the Rat Terriers. I had to lower my price to be competitive within my state for a while before branching out to higher prices. 

Next, check to make sure you aren’t inflating your price with “stuff.” What do I mean by that? Well, a lot of breeders have very elaborate puppy packs that cost hundreds of dollars. People don’t want to buy a dog at a high price and get a lot of stuff, because they’ll take the price of that stuff and subtract it. So the extra stuff will devalue the price of the dog. If you want to have that stuff, I recommend you upsell them on it or at least explain the benefits. 

Lastly, there’s a great chance you’re coming into contact with these people in a setting that isn’t conducive to selling all that the dog is, coming from you, an honest breeder. For example, it’s 10 at night, you’re laying in bed, just about to set your phone down and sleep, when ‘ping’ you get a message on Facebook: “Do you have any puppies available?” You say, “yes,” and then they ask, “How much?” You tell them the price, then crickets, they ghost you. Or worse, they tell you you’re crazy. 

Not your buyers, clearly, BUT, how could we change that? Well, we could use Facebook to discuss our program, its benefits, and how to get a puppy, and, of course, why they’ll love one. Then use Facebook to get people to our website and sell our breeding program as a whole, instead of making Facebook the avenue of sales in and of itself. 

If we reframe that the purpose of social media is to get people to our website, it’ll help you figure out what to post. Of course you can always use Breeder Copy Hub, where we help you plan out an entire month’s content every month.

Thank you for joining me for another episode of the Honest Dog Breeder Podcast, with me, your host, Julie Swan. Thank you for taking time out of your precious day to spend with me! Thanks again, I hope to meet you inside the Dog Breeder Society, and I look forward to seeing you in the next episode!