I took your marketing opportunity assessment to show Tom at his office. Tom liked the assessment but reminded me that we still have to consider many issues. We still need to come up with a strategy to get these willing customers in the door—and to keep them coming back. I think we have a pretty good idea of the kind of message that will resonate with our target customers, but we need to think about the tactics we’ll use to get that message though to them.

From my experience at Care n Clip, I have a pretty good idea of how to develop relationships with clients and keep them coming back for more grooming visits. It’s really important to develop a relationship with each customer and each dog. There are also some easy ways we can help keep Petopia at the top of their list. We should definitely send reminder postcards for future grooms and make reminder calls to customers who haven’t yet scheduled their next appointment. I also like to give away cute bandanas or bows—we could put our logo on them. My experience at Care n Clip shows that if we do these things, we can bank on at least 70% of our first-time customers coming back at least once. I also remember that we used to “convert” about 60% of the people who called—that is, about 60% of people calling us for the first time would actually make a grooming appointment.

That said, I haven’t ever had to develop a marketing plan from scratch before. Tom let me copy some information they had at the SBA about different media outlets in Empire City. I’m attaching those documents to this email. We also talked about how much Petopia should plan to spend on advertising during our first year. He suggested that we aim to spend about $1,500. I heard through the grapevine that the Fleaing Circus is spending around $100 per month on advertising—mostly on hand-delivered fliers.

So, our job now is to figure out how to reach the most people in our target market using that marketing budget. I created an Excel document that summarizes some of our options. But I’m having a hard time making decisions here. I’d really like to get your thoughts on the best strategy for Petopia. How can we reach the most people in our target audience while spending as little money as possible?

Have a look at the workbook and let me know what you think,

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