Marketing··15 min read
How to Get More Dog Boarding Clients (India Playbook)
The 7-channel playbook Indian boardings use to get clients — vet referrals, Google Business Profile, WhatsApp, Instagram, ads, retention, and reviews.
By Sunny Luthra
The 7-channel playbook Indian boardings use to get clients — vet referrals, Google Business Profile, WhatsApp, Instagram, ads, retention, and reviews.
By Sunny Luthra
Most year-one boardings in India are not under-pricing themselves. They're under-marketing themselves — and the marketing they do attempt is the wrong shape for the country. They run Meta ads in month one when reviews are zero. They post generic dog content on Instagram and wonder why nothing books. They quote ₹950/night on a phone call to a parent they never spoke to again.
This article is the marketing playbook for an Indian dog boarding in 2026. Seven channels, ranked by typical contribution to bookings, with India-specific tactics — including the WhatsApp scripts and the "parents become marketers" wedge that doesn't show up in any US-shaped marketing guide.
Key takeaways
- 35–45% of new bookings at a healthy Indian boarding come from vet, groomer, and dog-walker referrals — the highest-leverage channel in year one. Three solid vet relationships outperform ₹50,000 in advertising.
- 20–30% come from Google Business Profile (Maps three-pack + organic). Claim and verify on day one of your lease.
- 10–15% come from WhatsApp word-of-mouth, driven by the 7pm daily photo update — the single most-shared marketing asset in this category.
- Don't run paid ads in months 1–3 — wait for 25+ Google reviews at 4.5+ stars. From month 4 onwards, ₹6,500–11,500/month split across Google Search, Maps boost, and Meta retargeting.
- Existing clients drive ~80% of revenue (Pet Marketing Unleashed). Most operators spend 90% of their marketing energy chasing new clients — invert it.
For the broader business context, see running a dog boarding business in India.
Here's where bookings actually originate at a healthy 12-month-old boarding in India:
| Channel | Typical share of new bookings |
|---|---|
| Vet / groomer / dog-walker referrals | 35–45% |
| Google Business Profile (Maps + organic) | 20–30% |
| WhatsApp word-of-mouth (parent → friend) | 10–15% |
| Instagram (reels + parents tagging you) | 8–12% |
| Google + Meta ads | 5–10% |
| Direct repeat (existing clients re-booking) | not in "new" but ~70–80% of revenue |
| Reviews-driven discovery (JustDial, Practo, etc.) | 2–5% |
Source ranges: aggregated from operator-reported data in the bos.dog community across Bangalore, Pune, and Delhi NCR; corroborated against Pet Marketing Unleashed which reports existing clients drive ~80% of revenue, and 93% of consumers say reviews influence their purchase decision.
Two things to read off this table.
First: the vast majority of your bookings come from people you already touched — vets you know, groomers you know, parents who know parents who know you. That's why the first six months of marketing is mostly about building those relationships, not running ads.
Second: paid ads are tiny in this category. They work, but only as a 5–10% contribution layered on top of the rest. If you're spending ₹15,000/month on Meta ads in month one and the rest of the channels are empty, you're spending in the wrong order.
This is the single highest-leverage marketing activity in your year one. A vet in your neighbourhood gets four to six "can you recommend a boarding?" calls every week. The vet's answer becomes the booking — about 60% of the time without the parent even calling a second boarding to compare.
The triangle is vets, groomers, and dog walkers. All three sit in the path of a parent who needs boarding within the next 7–14 days. None of them are competitors. All of them benefit from a boarding that returns dogs healthier than they came in.
The setup, in the month before you open:
The maintenance, ongoing:
Three solid vet relationships in your neighbourhood are worth more than ₹50,000 in advertising. This is non-negotiable in the Indian market.
If the referral triangle is the foundation, Google Business Profile (GBP) is the magnet. It's the one place where parents in your area can find you without anyone introducing you.
The minimum bar:
The Google Maps three-pack is the bookings engine for new clients in most Indian metros. It's worth getting right. For the deeper GBP and WhatsApp tactical playbook, see WhatsApp and Google Business specifics (coming soon).
There is no equivalent of WhatsApp in any US marketing playbook for boarding, which is why most US marketing playbooks fail in India.
Indian pet parents share WhatsApp messages liberally — daily report screenshots, photos of their dog at the boarding, contact numbers. A single happy parent can be worth 3–5 referrals in their building, their family WhatsApp group, and their friends' circle. This is the highest-leverage channel after vet referrals, and it costs you nothing except the discipline to send the right messages.
The cadence that works:
| Trigger | Message |
|---|---|
| Booking confirmed | Welcome + what to bring + facility address + emergency number |
| Day before stay | Reminder + "anything we should know about [Dog name]?" |
| Day 1 of stay (7pm) | Photo + 2-line update |
| Each subsequent day (7pm) | Photo + 2-line update |
| Checkout day | Report card + thank-you + referral pitch |
| Day +14 after checkout | "Hope [Dog name] is settling back in. Here's a small thing for the next stay." (referral or repeat-customer perk) |
The 7pm photo is the single most important message in the chain. Parents who get a daily photo tell three friends. Parents who don't tell zero. There is no shortcut to this — discipline beats automation here.
Sample referral pitch (sent at checkout):
Hi [Parent first name], thank you for trusting us with [Dog name] this week — she had a great time, especially in the morning play sessions.
Quick favour: if you know anyone planning a trip in the next month, send them my number — and your next booking is at 50% off. We're a small team, so word-of-mouth is how we keep the lights on.
Tell [Dog name] we miss her already.
This single message, sent consistently to every checkout for 12 months, has produced 30–40% of new bookings at the boardings that take it seriously.
Instagram in India is reels — not feed posts. The boardings that grow on Instagram in 2026 do two things:
Boarding-day vlogs — 30-second clips of the day at the facility, dogs playing, caretakers in motion, a feeding moment. Real-time, unscripted, branded with your facility's signage subtly visible. These convert. Generic dog reels do not.
Parent-tagged content — when a parent posts a reel of their dog returning home calm and tired, re-share it as a story and tag them. Half of new Instagram followers in this category come through this re-share cycle, not through cold reach.
Things that look productive but don't book stays:
Things that do book stays:
You don't need a content calendar in month one. You need consistency: 2–3 reels per week for 12 months will outperform any single agency-produced content drop.
Paid ads work for dog boarding in India — but they work small and they work late.
Don't run ads in months 1–3. You haven't built reviews yet. Conversion will be brutal. Save the ₹15,000.
Start ads at month 4–6 when:
Starting budget for tier-1 metro India:
| Channel | Monthly | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Google Search ads on local keywords | ₹3,000–5,000 | "dog boarding [neighbourhood]", "kennel near me" |
| Google Maps boost (via GBP) | ₹1,500–2,500 | When GBP offers it in your area |
| Meta retargeting (visitors who didn't book) | ₹2,000–4,000 | 5–10 km radius, dog-parent interests |
| Total | ₹6,500–11,500 | Scaling up only if revenue is growing |
Keywords that convert vs ones that don't:
| Convert | Don't convert |
|---|---|
| "dog boarding [city]" | "best dog kennel" |
| "kennel near me" | "pet care services" |
| "dog daycare [neighbourhood]" | "dog hotel" |
| "dog boarding open today" | "vacation pet care" |
The keyword pattern: specific location + specific service. Anything generic burns budget on irrelevant clicks.
Geo-target radius: 3–5 km in tier-1 cities, 5–8 km in tier-2. Wider is wasted spend; tighter misses the long-tail of parents who'll drive 20 minutes.
The Pet Marketing Unleashed data is unambiguous: existing clients drive ~80% of revenue for healthy boardings. Yet most operators spend 90% of their marketing energy chasing new clients.
The retention plays that work in India:
The 14-day rebooking nudge. Two weeks after checkout, send a low-pressure WhatsApp — "Hope [Dog name] is settling back in. Just letting you know our weekend slots for next month are filling up." Conversion: 15–25% of recipients book within the next 30 days.
The seasonal pre-booking push. Three weeks before Diwali, before summer vacation, before Christmas — send a "Diwali week is filling fast — would you like me to hold a kennel for [Dog name]?" message to every parent who's stayed in the last six months. Repeat parents convert at 40–60%.
The repeat-customer perk that costs you almost nothing. A free daycare day after every five paid overnights. Direct cost ~₹100. Perceived value ₹600. Behaviour shift: parents stop shopping every booking.
The "did we drop off?" check-in at month 4. If a regular parent hasn't booked in 4+ months, a single "everything okay with [Dog name]?" message recovers ~30% of them. The most common reason for the gap is a friend's-place arrangement that fell through; you don't know about it unless you ask.
For the article on the kind of software that handles these retention nudges automatically, see software that supports daily updates and reviews.
The Pet Marketing Unleashed survey reports that 93% of consumers say reviews influence their purchase decision. In dog boarding, the number is functionally 100% — no parent books a stranger to keep their dog without checking reviews first.
The discipline:
A boarding with 50 reviews at 4.7 stars converts at 3–5x the rate of one with 8 reviews at 4.9. Volume matters more than rating above 4.4.
Mid-article note: GBP + WhatsApp + the review chase is exactly the workflow that breaks the spreadsheet operating model. By month four, the operator can't remember which parent got which referral pitch, which bookings were tagged for the rebooking nudge, or who hasn't been asked for a review yet. bos.dog tracks all of this against each parent and each dog so the marketing engine keeps running while you focus on the operations.
There's a marketing channel that doesn't show up in any of the seven above, and it's the one that most differentiates a boarding people talk about from a boarding people use.
Branded daily updates and report cards that parents post to their own social channels.
Every report card shared in a family WhatsApp group is an unprompted, high-trust referral. Every Instagram story tagging your facility from the parent themselves reaches an audience that no paid ad can. Every screenshot of a daily care log shared with a friend planning a trip is a booking that was effectively closed before it started.
This works only if three things line up:
Boardings that nail this end up with the lowest customer acquisition cost in the city — most of their growth comes from parent-shared content, almost none from paid channels. This is the wedge bos.dog is built around — branded report cards, photo-rich daily updates, parent portal — for exactly this reason.
For the pricing structure that supports a marketing budget growing this way, see set prices that match the channel mix.
If you want every booking tracked back to its source, every parent visible in a single timeline, every report card branded, and every retention nudge automated — that's the entire point of bos.dog. Free for one location for the first six months for new boardings. We're invite-only at the moment; if you've read this far, you're who we built it for.
Eight to twelve months to consistent 60%+ occupancy if marketing is run properly. Operators who execute the referral triangle and GBP playbook from month one typically reach break-even occupancy by month 5–6. Skipping those steps in months 1–3 pushes break-even to month 9–12 or beyond.
The vet + groomer + dog-walker referral triangle, by a margin. Out-of-pocket cost: ₹3,000–4,000 per quarter in thank-you gifting, plus referral commissions paid only on conversions. Returns: 35–45% of all new bookings at most healthy boardings.
Don't budget for paid ads in months 1–3. From month 4–6 onwards, ₹6,500–11,500/month for a tier-1 city — split across Google Search, Google Maps boost, and Meta retargeting. Scale up only if revenue is growing in proportion.
Boarding-day vlogs (30-second clips of dogs at your facility, real-time and unscripted) and re-shares of parent-tagged content. Avoid generic dog trivia and overly produced "what we offer" reels — they get likes but don't book stays.
Ask in person at checkout, with the parent's phone in your hand. Send the review link via WhatsApp within the hour. Aim for a 50%+ review-completion rate per checkout. Most boardings sit at 10–15% only because they don't ask consistently.
Running paid ads in month one before reviews exist, and skipping the referral triangle. The combination drains ₹15,000+ per month for almost no bookings while leaving the highest-leverage channel untouched. Fix the order.