For pet boarding services

Book out the Christmas runs in September. Fill the kennels in February.

In-House is your AI marketing team. It launches the Christmas and school-holiday booking campaign in mid-August (eight weeks before the competitor down the road), surfaces the PIAA Pet Care accreditation and the C5 vaccination requirement on every booking page, and ships the daily report-card-with-photos programme that Mad Paws and Pawshake structurally cannot match.

No charge for 7 days Cancel in two taps Live in 9 minutes

Three options. Only one actually works for your business.

Agency

$2,500 to $4,000 / mo

Slow. Expensive. Removed from your business.

You get a glossy website redesign, a quarterly Google Ads report, and twelve generic 'we love your pets' Instagram posts a month. Meanwhile Mad Paws and Pawshake hoover the in-home customer in your suburb and the kennels sit half-full from late January to mid-March.

DIY tools

$120 to $250 / mo + your evenings

Cheap, but it just hands you a dashboard.

Wix, Google Ads, Later, Mailchimp, a Facebook page you post on between feed runs. Cheap, but you photograph the play group at 4pm, write the captions on Sunday evening, and forget to launch the Christmas ad campaign until late October when the runs are already booked solid by the competitor down the road.

ACTUALLY DOES IT

In-House

$299 / mo flat

Cheap, and it actually does the work.

The AI marketing team writes the captions, ships dedicated pages for kennels, cattery and luxury runs, runs the Christmas and school-holiday Google Ads four months ahead, and posts the report-card photos parents actually share. You walk the kennels, approve the week, get back to feed time.

Christmas and school holidays are the year. The rest is winning trust early.

The reality

Pet boarding is a peak business with a trust ceiling. Christmas plus the four school-holiday windows do most of the revenue, and the families who matter most book those weeks four months in advance, sometimes longer. Miss the run-up and you're chasing the leftovers in November. The trust ceiling is the bigger problem: leaving your dog with strangers is a hard ask, and the families who'll spend $80 a night on a luxury run want to see the kennels, meet the staff, walk the play yards and read the report cards from other people's dogs before they commit. Add Mad Paws and Pawshake siphoning the lower-price in-home customer and the picture is: peak weeks won or lost six months early, off-peak weeks won or lost on the trust signal your website and Instagram either build or don't.

What good looks like

Good pet boarding marketing is three things, in this order: a dedicated service-page library that splits the kennels, the cattery and the luxury resort-style offering (and the in-home if you do it), each with its own H1, vaccination requirements, pre-stay assessment day, photos of the actual runs and a price-from band; a Google Ads and Meta campaign that launches in mid-August for Christmas and four weeks before each school holiday, on '[suburb] dog boarding' and 'cat boarding [city]' with a 'book your Christmas run today' angle; and a weekly stream of Instagram and Facebook report-card posts (the dogs in the play group, the cat in the sunny window, the photo the parent gets while they're on holiday) that builds the trust signal the in-home apps can't fake. The boarding businesses that book out Christmas in September are the ones who treat the autumn shoulder as the booking window for summer, not the lull they hope to fill later.

Christmas books out four months early

The families who matter most book the Christmas runs from August. By October the website and ads need to be telling them you have one run left, not asking them to fill in a contact form. Wait until November and you're chasing scraps.

Trust is the entire purchase decision

Leaving a dog with strangers is a hard ask. Families want to see the runs, meet the staff, read other people's report cards. PIAA Pet Care accreditation, the C5 vaccination requirement, the pre-stay assessment day, all of it needs to be on the website.

Mad Paws and Pawshake aren't going away

Lower-price in-home sitters take the dog-down-the-road customer. You can't beat them on price; you beat them on supervised social play, individual runs, medication management and the report cards Mad Paws can't deliver.

Real work. Not a slide deck.

In-House publishes to your real accounts and your live site. Here is what a pet boarding business sees in the first weeks, in the actual format it lands in.

Web Agent

Live · yourbusiness.com.au/dog-boarding-kennels

yourbusiness.com.au/dog-boarding-kennels

New dedicated kennels page: 'Individual runs, supervised social play, twice-daily walks' H1, vaccination requirements (C5 required, kennel cough within 14 days), pre-stay assessment day callout, six photos of the actual runs and the play yards, the report-card example, PIAA Pet Care accreditation badge, $65 from per night band, and schema marking the page as a pet boarding service. Indexed in 48 hours, ranking page 1 for 'dog boarding kennels [suburb]' inside three weeks.

One page per offering (kennels, cattery, luxury, in-home)

Advertising Agent

Live · Google Ads · launched mid-August for Christmas

Ad · yourbusiness.com.au

Christmas Dog Boarding · Book Now

Individual runs, supervised social play, qualified staff on-site overnight. C5 vaccinated dogs welcome. Pre-stay assessment day free. PIAA accredited. Christmas dates filling fast: 6 runs left for Dec 22 to Jan 5. Book today.

Launched 16 weeks before peak, not 2

SEO Agent

Auto-applied · approval rules

Google Business Profile expanded with accreditation and offerings

 Services list expanded from 4 → 21 (boarding kennels, cattery, luxury runs, social play group, individual runs, pre-stay assessment, medication management, drop-off and pick-up windows, report cards, C5 vaccination requirement, +11 more), 'PIAA Pet Care accredited' attribute added, primary category corrected from 'Animal Shelter' → 'Pet Boarding Service', operating hours updated with drop-off and pick-up windows. 

Live in your profile within the hour

Your direct line

Email Sam from the yard. The Christmas runs book out four months early.

Sam is your AI Account Lead. Email Sam a photo from this afternoon's play group, a Christmas availability update, a new offering you've started (Pet First Aid, hydrotherapy, day care), a question about pushing the cattery harder. Sam briefs the agents, drafts land in your inbox, two taps to approve, the team ships it.

A play-group or report-card photo from the yard A peak-week availability update to push live A new offering or accreditation to launch An ad budget shift between Christmas and school holidays A bad review you need a hand replying to

Mail

From you@yourbusiness.com.au · To sam.walker@use-ih.com

Christmas: down to 6 runs for Dec 22 to Jan 5, want to push it

Hey Sam, just took two more Christmas bookings, leaves us with 6 runs for the Dec 22 to Jan 5 window. Want to push the urgency in the ads and on social. Play-group photo from this afternoon attached. Also thinking about a day-care offering for February to fill the post-Christmas dip, if that's a sensible call.

Sam Walker · Account Lead

sam.walker@use-ih.com

Replied

On it. Advertising Agent will swap in a '6 runs left, Dec 22 to Jan 5, book today' urgency variant on the Christmas Google Ads and Meta retargeting tonight. Social Media Agent will draft a play-group post with the urgency callout for Friday. Web Agent will ship a day-care offering page for review by Monday so we can launch off the back of the February dip, with its own ad group on '[suburb] dog day care'. I'll also brief Content Agent to draft a 'day care vs full boarding' explainer this fortnight to feed the new page. Drafts in your inbox by 9am.

Preview the day-care page draft

$299 / mo

Flat. No tiers, no markup.

9 min

From sign-up to live marketing.

60+

Pieces of content a month.

Contracts. Cancel any time.

Six agents, working in your accounts.

Account Lead, Web, SEO, Advertising, Social Media, and Content. One platform, one bill, you approve the work.

Account Lead

Builds your annual plan around the peak windows that actually matter (Christmas, Easter, April school holidays, July school holidays, September-October school holidays) and the off-peak trust-building cadence. Briefs the other agents so the runs page, the Christmas ads, the report-card social posts and the PIAA accreditation push all reinforce the same trust-and-supply story rather than fighting each other.

Answers: christmas books out four months early

Web Agent

Imports your existing site so you stop paying for the hosting bill plus a CMS subscription, and makes shipping a new offering page a five-minute job. Builds out dedicated pages for kennels, cattery, luxury resort-style runs, and in-home if you do it, each with vaccination requirements, the assessment day callout, photos of the actual facility, and the report-card example, to your live site in two taps.

Answers: trust is the entire purchase decision

SEO Agent

Goes through your live site for the things that actually move boarding rankings: '[suburb] dog boarding' and 'cat boarding [city]' on the H1, pet boarding service schema (not generic animal shelter), PIAA accreditation badge, vaccination requirements visible. Reconfigures the Google Business Profile from 'Animal Shelter' to 'Pet Boarding Service' with drop-off and pick-up windows. Auto-applies the low-risk fixes.

Answers: trust is the entire purchase decision

Advertising Agent

Launches Google Ads and Meta campaigns in mid-August for Christmas and four weeks before each school holiday, with a 'book your run today, six left for Dec 22 to Jan 5' urgency angle. Bids on '[suburb] dog boarding', 'cat boarding [city]' and 'luxury dog kennels [city]'. Pauses spend the day the kennels fully book out, restarts on the next window.

Answers: christmas books out four months early

Social Media Agent

Turns the play yards, the runs, and the report cards into a weekly stream of posts in your real accounts: the morning play group, the cat in the sunny window, the medication routine that reassures the anxious dog parent. Builds the trust signal the Mad Paws and Pawshake in-home sitters structurally cannot match. You take photos on the yard, the agent drafts the captions in your voice, you approve.

Answers: mad paws and pawshake aren't going away

Content Agent

Drafts the long-form pieces parents Google before they leave their dog or cat with strangers: 'how to prepare your dog for first-time boarding', 'kennel cough vaccination and what C5 means', 'is luxury boarding worth it', 'cat boarding vs in-home pet sitting'. Two drafts a month, in your voice, that pull in the careful researcher months before they book the Christmas run.

Live in your accounts, fast.

The heavy lifting comes off your plate the day you sign up. Here is what you see by the end of week one.

Christmas and school-holiday booking calendar push live 8 weeks out, on '[suburb] dog boarding' and 'cat boarding [city]' with urgency-led 'runs left' copy.
PIAA Pet Care accreditation badge surfaced on the masthead, the booking page, the Google Business Profile and every ad.
C5 vaccination requirement explainer live on every booking page (with kennel cough within 14 days spelled out).
Report-card-with-photos-during-stay programme live: parents receive a daily photo, the play-group cast list and the medication routine update.
Pre-stay assessment-day booking flow live so nervous first-time boarders can walk the runs before committing.
Dedicated kennels, cattery and luxury-runs pages indexed (the generic 'we do everything' page split apart).
Google Business Profile primary category corrected from 'Animal Shelter' to 'Pet Boarding Service', services expanded from 4 to 21.

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Your first 30 days.

Existing Wix site imported, hosting and CMS bills torn down; booking enquiry capture re-embedded
Annual plan set by Sam against the five peak windows (Christmas + four school-holiday blocks) plus off-peak trust cadence
Google Business Profile primary category corrected from 'Animal Shelter' to 'Pet Boarding Service', PIAA badge added, services expanded from 4 to 21
Dedicated kennels, cattery and luxury-runs pages indexed (the generic 'we do everything' page split apart)
Christmas Google Ads live 8 weeks early on '[suburb] dog boarding' and 'cat boarding [city]' with 'runs left for Dec 22 to Jan 5' urgency copy
Report-card-with-photos programme live: parents now receive a daily play-group photo and medication update during every stay
C5 vaccination requirement explainer live on every booking page; pre-stay assessment-day booking flow live for first-time boarders
Play-group and report-card captions queued in the kennel staff voice; 'how to prepare your dog for first-time boarding' guide drafted

The bottom line

Pet boarding businesses don't lose Christmas to a better facility. They lose it to a competitor who launched the ads in August while they were still building the website. They don't lose the off-peak to Mad Paws on price; they lose it because the website has a stock photo of a golden retriever and no photo of the actual runs, the actual play yard, the actual staff. Both are fixable in a fortnight.

Agencies are too dear to actually run the offering-page library, the four-months-early Christmas ads and the weekly report-card social cadence for $3.5k a month. Tools are cheap but the Christmas campaign that should have launched in August stays in your drafts. In-House is the third option: for $299 a month the agents ship the pages, launch the school-holiday ads on time, post the play-group and report-card photos, and keep your Google Business Profile flagging the PIAA accreditation Mad Paws can't claim. You stay in the driver's seat, two taps to approve, minutes a day. Stop watching the competitor's Christmas runs book out instead of yours.

See everything In-House does

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Frequently asked.

We do mostly kennels. Is the marketing different if we also run a cattery or in-home?

Yes, and that's the point. Each offering gets its own page, its own keyword set, and its own ad group. A 'cat boarding [city]' page outranks a generic 'we also do cats' line on the kennels page every time. The Account Lead asks during onboarding which offerings matter most and weights the spend accordingly. If you add in-home pet sitting later, Sam ships a new page and ad group in a day.

How do we compete with Mad Paws and Pawshake on price?

Not on price, on trust signal. Mad Paws sitters can't post a daily report card from a supervised play group, can't show you the C5 vaccination requirement, can't put PIAA Pet Care accreditation on the listing, and can't manage twice-daily insulin injections for a diabetic cat. The Social Media Agent posts the report cards, the Web Agent puts the accreditation and vaccination requirements front and centre, the Advertising Agent leans into 'supervised social play, qualified staff overnight' as the moat. The dog-parents who care will pay more for that, every time.

Will the captions sound like AI?

They will sound like you, because the Social Media Agent learns from your existing posts during onboarding and you approve every draft before it ships. You take a photo on the yard (the play group, the report-card moment, the cat in the sunny window), the agent drafts the caption from what's in the photo (the dogs by name, the morning routine, the staff on the yard), you approve in two taps. Voice updates with every correction.

We fill up Christmas naturally already. What does the marketing do for us?

Two things. First, it pulls the Christmas booking window forward so you fill up in September instead of mid-November, which means the regulars who book late get pushed to the off-peak weeks rather than your competitor. Second, it fills the off-peak: the February shoulder, the May lull, the weekday business-trip boarder. That's where most boarding businesses leave money on the table and where the Mad Paws app is quietly winning.

We're qualified pet-care staff, not marketers. How does the approve-the-week bit work?

Two taps on your phone, usually on the yard between feed runs. You see what the agents drafted (an offering page, four social posts, two ad changes), tap approve or tweak, done. The whole week's queue takes about ten minutes. Anything urgent (an ad pause, a bad review needing a response) sends a notification.

Can I cancel if it isn't working?

Two taps, any time, no exit fees and no notice period. You keep your imported site, your offering pages, the Google Business Profile work and the social grid. There is no $3.5k-a-month agency lock-in and there is no six-month minimum.