#111 – Markeing Money Leaks in Your Dog Breeding Business

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Are you accidentally losing hundreds—or even thousands—of dollars on marketing? In this episode, we’re going to talk about the marketing money leaks that can drain your dog-breeding business, and what you can do instead to keep your program profitable and low stress.

Ever wonder what causes breeders to quit breeding? It’s something I look at from time to time. If we understand what causes us to quit, then we can avoid those things in the future. That’s the hope, right? Well, in my writing this podcast and meeting hundreds of breeders, I’ve found that marketing is a major component dictating if you’re considering quitting or not. I’ve felt it myself, having puppies to sell, and then they’re wonderful, cute, sweet, healthy, yet they are getting older and they don’t have a home yet. It’s stressful. My husband gives me that look like, “When are they going home?” And I can only answer, “I don’t know; they don’t have homes yet.” 

When you research online you see that, in business in general, when you need to make more sales, you spend money on marketing, advertising, and services around getting found. This makes sense, but it’s unfortunately not so simple with dog breeding. But you already knew that, right? I mean, nothing in dog breeding is super standard; it’s all a little different. 

Think of it this way. If you build widgets and sell them, then if you get more sales from advertising, you make more widgets. That’s pretty simple. You order more materials and you make more. It’s just not that simple with dog breeding. With dog breeding, it takes 1-2 years to bring up a new breeding female, and that means, when you’re keeping a female back or buying one, you’re planning for demand that will happen 1-2 years from now. That’s not simple to predict. Our product is limited compared with other industries. 

If we overdo our advertising budget, we waste money — either by bringing in the wrong buyers, or by spending far more than necessary to find great homes for our puppies.

In working with clients over the years, I’ve seen a few major areas that are costing them precious income in regard to marketing. Let me name them off in a quick list before we dive in:

• Paying for Google Advertising – Trying to sell dogs without a website; there is no long-term strategy here. – Paying a Brokerage Site or Broker, which is sometimes another breeder
• Paying someone to run advertising or social media for you when you don’t have a plan.
• Discounting your dogs. I see this one frequently, and it hurts often more than it helps.

We’ll dive into these and explain where they struggle to produce your end goal, and then I’ll share with you the problem at the root of it. 

Paying for Advertising

The number one place breeders are paying for advertising is with Google Ads. Sometimes the breeders are doing a little here and there, with a budget of $100-$200 per month, while others are paying thousands and thousands of dollars to advertise with Google. Often breeders are not just paying for advertising, but they’re paying a third-party service to run the ads for them. The combination has breeders averaging around $400-$450 per puppy sold using this method. Even if your dogs sell for $4000, that’s a high percentage of your puppy income lost in advertising. 

It’s also hard because Google Ads can swing from season to season in costs, just like our supply and demand of puppies. This can lead to a lot of unpredictability. You have to have your settings just right or you can go way over budget. 

Google Ads work for a lot of businesses, so I had to figure out what was different: why wasn’t it as effective for breeders, meanwhile, it was moderately effective for some breeders more than others; so what gives? What was different?

The major difference I found in watching success was the website the advertising was sent to. But before we dive into that, let’s dive into advertising a little. It’s difficult to target people who will be right for your puppies, especially when using demographics that are generally used for advertising. For example, if you have people in their 40s looking for a Labrador, there’s a lot to consider. Are these active people? Are they at-home people or travelers? There are so many lifestyles that people in their 40s looking for a Lab could be living. How that dog would fit into those lifestyles will be different. It is extremely hard to capture this lifestyle component on an advertisement. Because of this, there is a high probability that, even though the people who click on the ad will be of the right “demographics,” they aren’t necessarily the right fit for your particular puppies. 

So what does work better with advertising? When the website converts people. The website has to immediately help prospective buyers figure out if your dogs are a good fit for them or not. The job of a website is to sort people; and so many breeders aren’t looking at their website this way. 

Not Having a Website

Which brings me to my next point: you need a website. I’m surprised how many breeders want to have a breeding program and not have a website. A website is like putting a flag in the ground saying, “I’m here, I exist, and I’m not going anywhere.” When you invest in a website, you tell your buyers that you aren’t some fly-by-night breeder, that you’re going to be around, that you care, and that this is an important part of your life. 

When you only have a Facebook or Instagram, or even a listing on Good Dog, you look like you aren’t going to be around; and that chances are you haven’t been around a while. Neither are a good look, and will hurt your overall impression of your dogs and breeding business. 

I have to mention it, although I know you’ve heard it before; you don’t own your Facebook nor Instagram page. At any moment, for any reason, they can delete it and all of your audience with it. I’ve spoken with so many breeders who know this, but delay building the back-ups; and when their social media page is deleted, they’re stuck, losing hundreds, if not thousands, of potential warm leads. The sad thing is that no one will know you’re gone. They will stop getting notifications from you and begin to forget about what you’re doing. 

So, without a doubt, you have to have a website and an email list; they’re simply non-negotiable anymore. I do have help for these things inside the Dog Breeder Society, as well as one-on-one services for them if you want more guidance and quicker results. 

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Paying a Brokerage Site or Another Breeder For Leads

I hear it quite frequently that breeders will often pay a broker or another breeder for leads. Paying another breeder is the more common. In this case, it tends to go one of two ways: the breeder with the leads will either give the contact information from their waitlist to the other breeder, and suggest their buyer go with the other breeder; OR the breeder with the waitlist will sell the puppy to the buyer as though it was their puppy all along. The difference in these is who is taking responsibility with the owner should something go wrong and the puppy needs to be replaced. 

I’ve seen all sorts of pricing on these. Depending on the situation, the brokering breeder will take a sum of money–sometimes it’s free, but usually it’s a few hundred dollars, up to 50% of the price of the dog. I am not usually a huge fan of the arrangements where the breeder sells the dog on behalf of the other breeder, mostly because then you aren’t dealing with the buyers directly and you aren’t there to support them and learn about their struggles and successes. 

However, the exception is if you sold a breeding dog to a buyer, they bred it with your stud, and so they are more an extension of your breeding program. If you are selling for another breeder and you are warrantying the dog–meaning, if it needs replacement, that’s on you–then you will want to get a good sum of money. 

However, if they give you a name, that shouldn’t be hundreds and hundreds of dollars. Many new breeders get caught in this loop and lose a lot of money. I understand getting the litter sold is important, but you want to be able to talk with the buyers and vet them yourself. 

At the end of the day, you should be working with your buyers, preparing them, supporting them, and being available to them after the sale. If you decide to use a broker, be careful that the leads you’re getting are a good fit, and that you have time to work with those people and educate them on their new puppy so they can be successful. Too often these brokerage arrangements leave gaps in information which isn’t good for anyone. 

Paying for Social Media Assistance

In a bit of a throwback to part two of this series, another place breeders lose money in marketing is paying for someone to run your social media or advertising. Especially when you don’t have a plan, this will generally cost more money than the benefit. It is extremely hard to run advertisements when you aren’t familiar with the dogs and breeding program, and most social media people aren’t living at your home, interacting with your dogs every day. This means they are detached from your program and how it works. This disconnect feels disingenuous and will subtly repel buyers, while costing you money. 

We are told to hire someone to ease our workload, but, as you now know from the last episode, this only works with a plan. More times than not, it’s not a new team member that will “solve” the marketing problem,;rather, it’s a messaging problem, the message isn’t hitting home. More is not better, but intentionally designed social media will work. Breeders are loving Breeder Copy Hub to make their social media easier to execute and take the thinking out of it. You can learn more here. 

I will note that, if you’re running the plan and someone is simply executing it for you, that works a lot better. 

Discounting Your Dogs

Lastly, and I see it quite frequently, breeders often discount their dogs, dropping their price over and over until someone comes by and thinks they’re getting a super great deal. Here’s the distinction. I want people to get value, which is a lot of greatness for the amount of money they paid, but I don’t want them to get a “deal.” We don’t want bargain shoppers coming for our dogs. 

When you discount your dogs, you convey that your original price was asking more than your dogs are worth, like you were trying to take advantage of people, or that you don’t really know what your dogs are worth. 

The other side of it is that, if you are producing a lot of dogs and selling them for a variety of prices, as some go early at full price and others are discounted, then people will ask, “Why are you producing so many puppies? If you always have to discount them, then they aren’t worth what you’re asking, or you’re producing too many.” Neither look good. If you produce too many, by their assessment, then you’re a puppy mill. If you are always discounting, then you’ll come across as overvaluing your puppies, while appearing as attempting to take advantage of the people you do sell your pups to at full price. 

Let’s look at the implications on your bottom line. If you normally sell your puppies at $3000, but to get them sold, you drop the price to $2500 or $2000 on 3 puppies in the litter, then you’re losing $1500-$3000 with every litter. That adds up in no time. It is so impactful on your numbers that it would be better to reduce production and sell them all at full price. 

What’s worse? When you consistently discount your dogs month after month, or with every litter, buyers get trained to wait for the discounts to hit, preventing them from contacting you earlier, when the puppies were younger. I do the same thing with sales on my favorite brands. I know which ones will run a sale every holiday weekend and which ones only do it for Black Friday. I track it all, and your buyers will too. Train them to get their deposit in early; don’t train them to wait until you’ve discounted prices. 

If you aren’t consistently getting leads, then something is wrong. Figure that out before you throw money at it. Rarely is it ONLY a traffic problem. 

Ultimately, I see these things happen time and time again with breeders, often in combination where multiples of these tactics are being used at once, capsizing finances and cash flow, while leading to endless frustration and stress. The same patterns occur over and over. We have to break that cycle and make marketing less taxing both in time and finances. 

The Root of It All

All of these problems tend to fall under the category of not having the ideal puppy buyer dialed in, as well as not catering to that ideal puppy buyer in your marketing efforts. 

Remember, we don’t sell a dog, we sell the lifestyle the dog provides. When we focus on the selling of the lifestyle in our marketing, especially on our website, then the website does all the marketing for us. It gets us out there. It shares what we have to offer, why we’re different, why our dogs are worth it, and it repels those who aren’t a good fit for our dogs. 

Most breeders I talk to think they know who their ideal puppy buyer is, but in reality, they have not articulated the lifestyle of the ideal puppy buyer, and therefore they struggle to share that lifestyle in their marketing. 

It means you’ll have to talk to so many more people, prospective buyers. You’ll have to do the extra vetting, all the extra work. Whatever your marketing is missing, you’ll be responsible for managing. Take that off your plate and get this stuff sorted out. 

Imagine the difference in how you’ll feel when all of your puppies are sold at full price and go home as soon as they’re ready, to buyers you adore. Wouldn’t that make this all better? It feels like relief to me. Last weekend I sent home a whole litter of GSP puppies, and it was wonderful. I did a delivery the day they turned 8 weeks old, everyone was happy, I got my price, and the work of puppy-pen cleaning was over. I want you to have this. 

I’m working on a new marketing course, Breeder Marketing Mastery, designed to give you the tools and understanding to build a marketing plan that brings in the right buyers—so you can sell every puppy, in every litter, without dropping the price. 

If that sounds like what you need, you can get on the early-access list (and grab a 20% discount) at honestdogbreeder.com/earlybird.

If you fix this — if you dial in your marketing and stop these leaks — your breeding program becomes not only more profitable, but more enjoyable and less stressful, because you aren’t constantly scrambling to sell. I know you can do it; it just takes a little diligence, intention, and planning. 

Thank you for joining me for another episode of the Honest Dog Breeder Podcast, with me, your host, Julie Swan. I know that taking these tips into account will only make things better and easier for you! I want you to have that breeding program that makes you smile in the middle of the day for no reason. I’m here to help you get there. Thanks again, and I can’t wait to see you in the next episode!