Welcome to APSE

Though Pinterest launched over 2 years ago, it has grown faster than any other site in the U.S., reaching nearly 10 million unique hits per month. This is yet another social media app where people share things they like… but it IS much different.  How is it so addictive? Why are user sessions longer than on youtube? It is an extreme in visual enjoyment.

So does it have use for your pet sitting business?  It might. As usual, a new method of marketing can be useful depending on the time you have to put into it. Keeping that in mind, sitters do spend their days with a dream that so many others have: ‘Playing with dogs all day.’ Perhaps you can let them escape to a fun-filled life while at work… through you.

Unlike Facebook or Linkedin, your posts are seen by anyone looking for something under a specific pinboard. For example, if you created a ‘board’ called ‘cute dogs’ and began posting pictures of cute dogs, anyone could repost those pictures.

The focus comes in with creating useful pinboard names with pictures / articles people want to reshare. For example, you could put the name of your business… or ‘Cute Dogs in (enter town here).’ Be creative. With so many people now on Pinterest, it is worth it to see if it would work for you.

Here are some statistics of pinterest. Review them and see if it fits the current demographics of your clients.

• About 50% of Pinterest users have children.
• 28.1% of users make over $100,000 per year.
• 68% of users are female
• Average session time for users: Twitter = 3.5 minutes, Facebook = 12.1 minutes, Youtube = 16.4 minutes, Pinterest = 15.8 minutes.
• 1.36 million users per day
• Between July and December 2011, retailer traffic grew 289%
• Pinterest receives more referral traffic than LinkedIn, Google+, and Youtube combined. (More people get to a post on Pinterest than from a referral to the others combined.) People are sharing!
• 27.4% of users are between 24 – 35.

(Source Modea –  http://www.modea.com/)

In sum, the typical Pinterest user seems to be young, upper-middle class, and female.  It just so happens that this demographic is pretty similar to those who also have a passion for dogs.

Do you use Pinterest?

Awww — How nice! Someone made a computer desktop wallpaper for APSE with ‘pet holiday’ reminders on them. That was so nice, we’re putting them all here so you can download them and use them for your computer screens.  Read More …

This month APSE has focused on client retention and customer satisfaction. We had the Director of Operations at Zappos come and chat with us about creating a culture client’s love. So far we have had tips to satisfy clients, updates to our media library, forms for pet sitters, and marketing reports all based on improving client retention.

The basic idea of client retention is to be there for them; be empathetic and do whatever you can for them. People have a general need to feel connected and acknowledged. So many business owners tend to focus on getting new clients rather than improving relationships with current clients. It is easier and more cost effective to focus on current clients than on getting new clients.

Here are some specific things you can do to improve customer satisfaction: Read More …

To fly without a place to land… or drive to an unknown destination without a map just sounds crazy, doesn’t it? In the age of GPS, it’s so easy to pick a location and go. Would you drive to a new client’s house without an address?

The 2011 APSE Pet Sitter Industry Survey showed that only about 50% of people have a written plan of where they want their business to go. However, almost everyone had Read More …