Boarding is a seasonal, high-ticket business that most marketing treats as if it were steady and cheap. Here is what our own data says about it, and how we run it differently.
Get a free auditSearches for "dog boarding near me" peak in June for summer travel. The broader term "pet boarding" peaks in December for the holidays, swinging 124% from its August trough. They need different lead times: summer gets planned early and casually, Christmas gets booked late and desperately.
Google reports $2.24 to $9.00 top-of-page bids for boarding against $0.95 to $4.01 for grooming. That is rational, because the booking is worth far more. It also means wasted spend hurts you twice as much.
Bidding hardest in peak week means paying the most to reach people who have already chosen a facility. The budget belongs in the planning window, six to eight weeks earlier, when the decision is actually being made.
Figures from our own research: seasonal demand, ad costs and the 1,446-site website audit.
We raise spend into the planning window ahead of each peak and pull it back through the trough, instead of running a flat monthly budget against a demand curve that moves 49%.
Summer travel and holiday boarding are different searches with different urgency. They get their own campaigns, copy and landing pages.
Without them you pay for "dog boarding jobs", "how to start a dog boarding business" and every student writing a business plan. It is the most common leak we find.
Most boarding enquiries are calls. Judging the campaign on form fills alone is how owners wrongly conclude ads do not work.
Most single-location facilities do well between $1,000 and $2,500 a month in ad spend, depending on market and how many runs you need to fill. At a $4.50 blended click that is roughly 220 to 550 clicks. We will tell you what is realistic for your area before you commit.
October. The December boarding spike is real, late and predictable, and the cheapest way to capture it is emailing your existing daycare clients in October before anyone starts searching.
Google Ads management is a flat $500 a month for one location, not a percentage of your ad spend. Multiple locations are priced custom. Everything is month to month.
We will run a free audit of your site and your ads. No cost, no obligation.