Three options. Only one actually works for your business.
Mad Paws takes 20%. The recurring weekly client is where you actually pay the lease.
Dog walking is a two-funnel business and the platforms eat one of them. Mad Paws, Pawshake, Dogshare, Rover and Petbacker rank top-three for every 'dog walker [suburb]' search in the country, take 15-20% of every booking, and the customers they send you are the lowest-margin ad-hoc one-off walks. The work that actually pays the lease is the recurring weekly client (Monday-Wednesday-Friday at $30-$60 a walk, $100-$300 a week packaged) where the dog has known you for two years and the owner pays for ten weeks in advance. The aggregators can't service this because they're transaction-platforms, not relationship businesses. The specialty work (puppy walks, senior dogs, post-surgery rehab, reactive dogs, special-needs, multi-dog packs of 6-10) is the second leak: the platforms won't quote it and most independent walkers don't have a dedicated page for it, so it goes to whoever the vet last referred. Most dog walkers run a Mad Paws listing and an Instagram and lose both funnels to walkers who built the suburb-page library, the recurring-weekly funnel and the specialty pages.
Good dog-walker marketing has three pillars. Pillar one: a suburb-page library that outranks the Mad Paws and Pawshake listings on the long tail ('dog walker Bondi Beach', 'dog walker Newtown', 'dog walker Lake Macquarie', 'dog walker Sunshine Coast') with real pack-walk photos, named loops (the Bondi-to-Bronte coast loop, the Centennial Park morning loop), pricing bands by walk type ($30-$60 standard 1-hour pack-walk, $60-$120 private 1-on-1, $40-$80 puppy-and-junior, $20-$50 drop-and-pickup), and PIAA membership credential up top. Pillar two: a recurring-weekly-package funnel with a real schedule picker (Monday-Wednesday-Friday, daily, twice-a-day), a $100-$300 weekly-package pricing table, a 'pre-pay 10 weeks for X% off' lock-in, and a one-click 'skip a week' for when the owner is away (the missing skip-button is the #1 reason recurring clients churn back to ad-hoc). Pillar three: a specialty-walk page library (puppy, junior, adult, senior, post-surgery rehabilitation, reactive, special-needs, multi-dog pack) with the vet-referral pipeline plumbed via Sam-drafted monthly outreach to the three closest vets.
Six agents, working in your accounts.
Account Lead, Web, SEO, Advertising, Social Media, and Content. One platform, one bill, you approve the work.
Sets the plan around the three numbers that move the business: active recurring weekly clients (the lease-payer), new specialty walks per month (puppy, senior, post-surgery rehab, reactive), and corporate-office walking contracts (the lane no aggregator enters). Briefs the other agents so the suburb pages, the recurring-weekly funnel, the specialty pages and the vet outreach all push toward a full Monday-Wednesday-Friday diary and a steady specialty referral pipeline.
Imports your existing site, ships a suburb-page library for every suburb you walk in (Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Byron Bay, Lake Macquarie, Newcastle, Wollongong), a recurring-weekly-package funnel with a real schedule picker (Monday-Wednesday-Friday, daily, twice-a-day) and a 'pre-pay 10 weeks' lock-in plus a one-click 'skip a week' button, and a specialty-walk page library (puppy, junior, adult, senior, post-surgery rehabilitation, reactive, special-needs, multi-dog pack).
Owns the long-tail searches that actually convert: 'dog walker [suburb]', 'puppy walker [suburb]', 'senior dog walker [city]', 'post-surgery dog rehab walker [city]', 'reactive dog walker [city]', 'multi-dog pack walker [city]'. Complete Google Business Profile, Service + LocalBusiness schema, 'pet first aid certified' and 'insured' attributes, review prompts after every package week, and the technical fixes that keep the suburb pages indexed and ahead of the Mad Paws and Pawshake long-tail listings. Auto-applies low-risk fixes.
Runs three distinct campaigns. Google Ads on the high-intent suburb-and-specialty searches ('dog walker [suburb]', 'puppy walker [suburb]', 'senior dog walker [city]'). Meta on the recurring-weekly-package funnel, targeted at dog-owner demographics in your service-area postcodes with a free-trial-walk offer. LinkedIn-and-Google on the corporate-office-walking funnel, targeted at HR and office managers in dog-friendly CBD office postcodes.
Turns every pack-walk into a consent-gated Reel in your voice: a Bondi-to-Bronte morning-loop carousel, a 60-second 'why we cap our pack at 4 dogs and don't run 8' explainer, a puppy's-first-pack-walk Story, a senior-dog half-loop sit-down at the lawn. You film a 30-second pack-walk clip (with owner consent), the agent drafts the caption with the named loop and the dogs' first names, you approve.
Drafts the long-form pieces dog owners search before they book: 'how to find a dog walker who isn't Mad Paws', 'what's a fair price for a dog walker in [city] in 2026', 'puppy socialisation walks: what to look for and what to avoid', 'post-surgery dog walking: what your vet means by rehab loop'. Two a month, in your voice, that catch the careful researcher before the marketplace listing.
Your first 30 days.
- Existing Squarespace or Wix site imported, legacy hosting torn down; Mad Paws and Pawshake listings kept but linked from your own pages so the recurring funnel pulls the customer to you
- Suburb pages built and indexed for every suburb you walk, with named loops, real pack-walk photos and the four walk-type pricing bands
- Recurring-weekly-package funnel live with schedule picker, pre-pay lock-in and skip-a-week button
- Specialty-walk pages live for puppy, junior, senior, post-surgery rehabilitation, reactive, special-needs and multi-dog pack
- PIAA membership, Pet First Aid certification and public-liability insurance surfaced on every page and in the Google Business bio
- Google Business Profile primary category corrected from 'Pet sitter' to 'Dog walker', services expanded from 2 to 12
- Google Ads live on the suburb-and-specialty long-tail searches in your three highest-volume suburbs, Meta live on the recurring-weekly funnel with a free-trial-walk offer
- Vet-and-rescue referral pipeline live with monthly outreach to the three closest vets and the local rescue group
Dog walking is a recurring-relationship business that the aggregators try to turn into a transaction marketplace. The walkers who grow are the ones who fill the recurring weekly diary first (Monday-Wednesday-Friday packs that the dog has known for two years) and let the ad-hoc work fall to the Mad Paws and Pawshake listings. The specialty walks (puppy, senior, post-surgery rehab, reactive) are the high-margin lane the platforms won't touch, won on a vet's referral and a dedicated page.
Agencies are too dear to ship the suburb library and run the vet outreach for $2k a month. Tools are cheap but the specialty pages don't exist and the recurring funnel has no skip-a-week button. In-House is the third option: for $299 a month the agents ship the suburb pages, build the recurring-weekly funnel, write the specialty pages, post the pack-walk Reels, and draft the vet outreach. You film a 30-second pack-walk clip with consent, approve the week, done.