I met Chelsea and Dan this week. Chelsea said something that has stuck with me.
“I always knew, even before I owned a business, that you don’t skimp on marketing. Don’t try and do it yourself for a year, screw it up, and then hire someone.”
She and her husband Daniel run Canine & Co out on Western Drain Road in Te Teko, just outside Whakatane. Dog and cat boarding, a grooming studio, and their Social Club. A daycare pickup service so popular it runs a waitlist from a nineteen-seat bus they drive around the Bay of Plenty every morning collecting dogs. People talk about that bus constantly. I hear about it from clients who have never even met them.
The point is not the bus. The point is that Daniel and Chelsea have always understood something a lot of business owners figure out too late: the numbers are the scoreboard. Marketing is what actually changes them.
In this Beyond the Numbers piece, they share what has worked, what has not, and what they are still figuring out.
You can have good numbers and still feel stuck
Revenue is steady. Costs are under control. Profit is tracking where it should. But growth has slowed, and it is not obvious why. When this happens, most business owners look at tightening expenses or tweaking pricing. But often, the issue sits elsewhere. If the right people are not seeing you, nothing else much matters.
A lot of owners fall into one of two traps.
They either spend nothing on marketing and rely entirely on word of mouth, or they throw money at it without a clear sense of what they are trying to achieve. Daniel and Chelsea found a middle path: start with intent, build gradually, and pay attention to what actually lands.
Staying front of mind is a strategy in itself
Most customers are not actively looking for your service every day. But when they do need it, they choose from what they remember.
Chelsea was direct about this: “Social media doesn’t always bring in new clients directly. But it keeps us front of people’s minds when they’re thinking about going away.”
That is a useful reframe. Not every piece of content needs to generate an immediate booking. Some of it is just about being present.
You might consider:
- Showing up regularly. Updates, emails, or social content keep your business visible without constant selling.
- Sharing genuine moments. People connect with what feels real, not what looks polished.
- Keeping branding consistent. Colours, tone, and imagery should be recognisable at a glance.
- Playing the long game. Visibility compounds over time in a way that short bursts of promotion rarely do.
In a market like New Zealand, where reputation travels quickly, being remembered often matters more than being everywhere.
Relevance matters more than reach
It is easy to talk about what your business offers. It is harder, and more valuable, to talk about what your customers actually care about. The gap between those two is where most marketing falls flat.
Canine & Co learned this when they brought their social media in-house. Instead of a contractor coming in once or twice a week to stage content, they had someone on site every day who could capture a real moment as it happened. A funny reel. A dog doing something ridiculous on the bus. A carousel walking people through something useful.
Their highest performing video was not a polished production. It was Daniel pulling a face in response to a message, with a smiley emoji edited over him. A client told them it was not his style. It had more views, more interaction, and more laughs than anything else they had posted.
The lesson was not that funny content is always right. It was that content which feels authentic to the business tends to resonate more than content that feels managed.
Convenience is part of your marketing
Some of the strongest marketing is not what you say. It is how your service is designed. Daniel described it simply: “You can come for daycare, get your dog groomed, and get it dropped off on the bus. It comes home tired, smells nice, has had a haircut, and you never had to drive out to Te Teko.”
That is genuine convenience. And genuine convenience, when it is communicated clearly, sells itself. Their daycare clients become boarding clients because the trust is already there. The dog comes in for the day, stays the night, then a weekend, then a week. Nobody had to sell anything. The experience did it.
It is worth asking in your own business:
- Are you combining services in a way that actually reduces friction for the customer?
- Where do people drop off in the booking or enquiry process?
- Are your hours and access designed around real life, or mainly around what is easy for you?
Visibility does not have to be expensive
Canine & Co’s most talked-about marketing asset cost them the price of a second-hand bus and a wrap. Daniel and Chelsea did not set out to create a billboard. They needed a bigger vehicle. The billboard was a byproduct of thinking slightly larger than a plain white HiAce.
Consistency and clarity tend to matter more than spend. Some of the most effective tools are already within reach:
- Everyday assets like vehicles, signage, and uniforms all contribute to visibility.
- Being present in the community still carries weight. The Christmas parade, local events, word of mouth.
- Real photos and real stories outperform stock content almost every time.
- Showing up regularly beats waiting for the perfect campaign.
Content and conversion are two different things
Chelsea was honest about where they are still working this out. “Our social media doesn’t really sell our services. We’ve kept it light and fun. But this year we need to start funnelling things better and actually selling.”
That is a common gap, and it is worth naming. Content builds awareness. Awareness alone does not pay the bills. A few things that help bridge the gap:
- Add a clear next step to some of your content. Book a call, check availability, request a quote.
- Ask new clients how they found you. This simple habit quickly shows what is actually working.
- Align what you promote with what you want more of. If grooming capacity has just opened up, talk about grooming.
Bringing it back to the numbers
Daniel and Chelsea have built something genuinely impressive, not because they had a big budget, but because they made consistent decisions about how they showed up. A rebrand done properly from the start. Social media brought in-house at the right time. A bus that became a talking point across the whole region.
Growth is not just about working harder or cutting costs. It is about being seen, being relevant, and being easy to choose.
If the right people are not finding or understanding what you do, growth will always feel harder than it should. That is not a reflection of the quality of your work. It is just a gap in visibility, and gaps like that can be closed.
Curious how this might look in your business? Get in touch. Sometimes a fresh look at how you are showing up is all it takes to shift momentum.
