How Swoop Scoop Grew From 0 to 2,700 Pooper Scooper Customers

How did Swoop Scoop start?

Swoop Scoop began as a side bet between two school friends. William came from digital marketing and had already partnered with an operator to build an electrical company, which he said went from zero to seven figures in about five or six months. His friend Levi, who he had known since elementary school, wanted to start something with him but had no trade.

The idea came from home. William’s wife was pregnant, nobody was picking up after the dogs, and the pooper scooper she hired was unreliable and billed everyone through Venmo. William decided to try it himself. He thought it might make an extra thousand dollars a month.

The early days were rough. Levi threw rocks around his backyard and timed how long it took to scoop them up, so he could work out what to charge.

How did Swoop Scoop go from 20 customers to 350 in three months?

By adding paid social ads at the right time of year. Levi spent a couple of months grinding out the first 15 or 20 customers with door knocking, visits to vets, door hangers and free Facebook groups.

William then looked at advertising. There was almost no search volume for pooper scooper terms, but the Facebook groups were working, so he tried social media ads. The timing landed in the first quarter, the busiest season, and the company reached 350 customers in the next three months.

For the first two years the ads paid for themselves. Swoop Scoop spent $30 to $40 to win a customer who paid $100 for the first cleanup and then stayed on a recurring plan. In year two it went from about 350 to over 900.

Today the top channels are Facebook ads, Google ads, SEO and truck wraps, and they feed each other: the more the company spends on Meta, the more people search for the service. Yard signs are the one he calls underrated. Their cost per customer is lower than Facebook’s, and the company bought about 20,000 of them.

Asked what marketing move mattered most recently, William said they narrowed down. Early on the company tried TV ads and billboards; now it concentrates on the few channels that work and on knowing its numbers. “I’d say if anything that we’ve changed is we’ve actually done less.”

How does Swoop Scoop hire and pay scoopers?

Slowly on the way in, quickly on the way out. In the early rush Levi would train someone for 30 minutes and have that person train the next three. Now an office manager and a supervisor at each location handle hiring, mostly through Indeed, and the company reads more than 100 resumes for each hire. Someone who is not working out is gone within a week or two.

Pay is a flat 21% of the revenue a route generates. A route that brings in $1,000 pays $210. A callback sends the scooper back on their own time, so quality and speed pull in the same direction.

How does Swoop Scoop raise prices and keep customers?

It bills less often and gives customers a way around the increase. The path from ad to customer runs like this:

• Ads send people to the website’s instant quote tool, which collects a phone number and sends a price.
• Anyone who does not sign up gets a call from the sales team and an automated text sequence.
• At signup the company offers odor control and quarterly or annual billing.

William said the less often you bill, the longer people stay. Close to 30% of customers now pay quarterly or annually. When a price increase of about 10% went out, customers could keep their rate by switching to quarterly billing or save more by paying annually. The notice goes by regular mail and states the change as a small weekly amount.

That prepaid money, hundreds of thousands of dollars in his telling, funded marketing for the spring rush.

For past leads and former customers, the offer that works is a free first cleanup. An initial cleanup takes about 45 minutes on average and costs the company around $25, and most signups come on the second message, sent with a 48-hour deadline.

Where do pooper scooper companies get stuck?

At the start, then at about 150 customers. William said new owners lose time on names, logos and truck wraps instead of finding a customer. At 50 to 70 customers they have to decide whether to quit a job. Past 150 the work changes to hiring, training and managing, and many stall at 250 to 300.

Churn grows with the business. Losing 3% to 5% a month means Swoop Scoop sometimes has to replace more than 100 customers in a month.

Why position as the least risky company instead of the cheapest?

Because price is only one of four ways to compete. William named price, speed, ease of use, and risk. Swoop Scoop is, he said, probably among the more expensive companies, so it sells reliability: background-checked employees, wrapped trucks, a call center, cover when someone is out sick, and more than 300,000 yards cleaned.

The company is in due diligence to acquire another operator and plans new locations, with a goal of about 3,500 customers after the next spring rush.