Veterinary marketing is a bit different from other local marketing efforts in that the product or service isn’t typically an impulse buy. In order to attract pet owners, your content marketing strategy should be focused on building trust and credibility with your target audience.
The goal of digital marketing is not to discount or sell services to pet owners before thoroughly examining a patient. It’s unfortunate that most veterinarians regard the phrase “promotions” as meaning “advertising a discount.”
The reality is that successful digital marketing campaigns should be a true extension of your veterinary practice’s mission, culture, and values. The aim should be to provide pet parents with the tools they need to keep their furry family members healthy, long-lived, and happy by utilizing today’s most popular communication channels to share essential information and become the go-to pet expert in the lives of every pet owner who lives within 5 -10 miles of your office.
The Opportunity to Reach More Local Pet Owners
If you are reading this, then it should come as no surprise to you that 89% of American adults use the internet on a daily basis. When we have questions, need information, research services, or just want to entertain ourselves for a while, we go online. Magazines and newspapers have embraced the fact that people do so much of their reading online, and it has become easier to consume and share article content than ever before.
The ability for veterinarians to communicate with one another when solving a problem has led to the creation of an incredible opportunity that savvy veterinary practice owners are now taking advantage of in order to provide more vital and engaging pet care information in front of more local pet owners at a price that might be one of the most effective marketing tools any veterinarian can use today to increase their business.
The secret to drawing more local pet owners to your clinic may be found at the intersection of two highly potent trends. The number of people who get most of their information from online articles is the first trend. The second trend is the popularity of internet material that features cats and dogs, which is overwhelming. Veterinarians have been set up for failure by these two internet truths of life, which has paved the way for them to ride the crest of pop culture and reach new heights – as long as they are only willing to grasp this chance to produce and market high-quality pet care information.
If you’re one of the few, smart, and passionate people who offer high-quality animal care, the door is wide open for you to start answering all of your clients’ numerous questions each day in the form of blog articles that are then shared across the internet.
Local Pet Owners Have Questions, and YOU Have Answers!
It takes a lifetime of loving and learning about animals, going to veterinary school, practicing as a veterinarian, starting your own clinic, and assisting many pets in reaching the point where you’re able to answer inquiries like: “How can laser therapy help my cat?”” What is the most effective approach to avoid my dog from getting fleas?”
You’ve already done the legwork that qualifies you to answer those questions, and you do so every day. So all you have to do now is turn your responses into a video or blog article, submit it to your website, and then utilize a combination of social and content marketing networks to get that material in front of pet owners in your neighborhood. Search engine optimization (SEO) is the key to this approach.
The Benefits of SEO for Veterinarians
- Improved website visibility on search engines
- Better ROI from online marketing campaigns
- Higher quality traffic leads to more new clients
- Greater brand awareness and name recognition in your community
- Improved customer engagement and loyalty
- Ability to track results and refine marketing strategy over time
Mobile marketing is a necessity in today’s world
The first step is to make sure that your website is up to date, accurate, and informative. Your website should also be designed with SEO in mind from the start. If it isn’t, you may want to consider a redesign .
Next, take inventory of all the content (text, videos, images, etc.) that you already have on your website, as well as any additional content that you can create. Once you have a good idea of what you have to work with, it’s time to start writing articles or filming videos that answer common questions from pet owners.
As you create new content, be sure to include relevant keywords that will help people find your articles when they conduct a search on Google, YouTube, or another search engine. Once you have a few pieces of content created, it’s time to start promoting them across the internet.
Simple Content Creation
Surely you may spare 10 minutes to turn your veterinary clinic into a powerful source of pet care information!
Here’s how you do it:
- Have one of your employees stand roughly four in front of you with a smartphone while you’re conducting an examination in your clinic. Set the camera app to video and hold the phone horizontally, then have them start recording and ask you a question like, “How are heartworms spread in dogs?”
- Answer the question as though you were conducting an interview with a client. Don’t try to be perfect or practice. Natural and real videos with minor faults and flaws perform better for local service providers, whereas edited and seem-scripted films do worse. So just have fun with it, be natural, and let your expertise shine!
- After you’ve given your answer, your assistant may cease recording and you can move on to your next appointment. The doctor’s job is finished now!
- The patient’s assistant (or in-house marketer) opens the YouTube app on the phone and logs in before uploading the film to your channel.
- Your assistant then goes to Rev.com, an internet video transcription business that charges $1 per minute of video to transcribe the film. They usually provide you the transcript within a few hours once they have finished it.
- Add the YouTube video and the written version of your video to your website as a blog, with a member of staff editing the text.
- Take a screenshot of just the YouTube video image on your website, and post it to Facebook.
- Twitter, and Instagram to share that image with a link to your page.
Social media marketing for veterinarians doesn’t have to be time-consuming or expensive. You can do it all yourself with a little bit of help from a reputed veterinary marketing company, and the results will be well worth your marketing efforts!
Use PPC to Give Your Content a Boost
After that, take things a step further and start getting local traffic like a pro by investing in PPC to reach out to local consumers! You’ll begin to get more visitors from social networks if you follow the methods outlined above, but you’ll need to invest in advertising in order for your website to truly thrive.
It’s no secret that internet businesses rely on ad dollars to survive. Google and Facebook have become some of the world’s most valuable and successful companies, almost entirely due to the advertising income they generate. And do you know why these firms have been so incredibly successful? Because their advertisements are effective.
How many firms would continue to invest significant money on advertising that don’t work? Not many. How many businesses continue to devote as much cash as they can each month to Google and Facebook advertising? There are a lot of them.
Why is this? You may virtually guarantee that your firm gets a significant return on investment from its advertising if you do it right.
Strategies to Make Advertising Pay Off
Facebook has evolved into a pay-to-play platform. With over 68% of Americans having a Facebook account, there’s a high possibility that your message will reach your target audience. So, in recent years, Facebook has decreased the number of followers who see your posts “naturally” (for free) to ensure that less than 5% of your audience sees anything you post…unless you spend money promoting it.
The good news is that if you do decide to advertise, it’s in Facebook’s best interests for everything to go well. As a result, they’ve grown skilled at assisting you in defining who you want to see your advertisements, where they’ll be displayed, and what their interests are. Do you wish to target moms with children who enjoy pets and reside within five miles of your veterinary practice with a particular message? It couldn’t be simpler.
Google ads are also quite straightforward to create and manage, and they can be just as cost-effective as Facebook ads. Google AdWords is the primary form of advertising on Google, and it allows you to place your ad on relevant websites (including YouTube) as well as in the search engine results pages when people look up terms related to your company.
Ads are not the only way to get more visitors to your site from PPC, however. You may also choose to invest in Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
SEO is the process of optimizing your website so that it appears higher in the organic search engine results pages (SERPs), which are the webpages that show up when people search for something on Google. That’s a low-cost, high-ROI paid marketing technique that will get your practice in front of a large number of new local pet owners.
Promote Content Through Email Marketing
Don’t forget to take advantage of your email list! If you have a website, you should also have an email list that you can use to send out periodic updates, announcements, coupons, and other information to your subscribers.
Email marketing as part of your digital marketing strategy is one of the most effective ways to keep your current clients informed about what’s going on at your practice , as well as attract new business. It’s also relatively inexpensive, and it doesn’t require a lot of time to maintain.
As part of your digital marketing efforts, using marketing automation tools make it even easier by allowing you to create email templates, manage your list of subscribers, and track the results of your campaigns so that you can see what’s working and what isn’t.
Conclusion
Content marketing is an essential part of any modern veterinary practice’s marketing strategy. By taking advantage of the many opportunities that are available, you can reach a larger audience, attract new clients, and grow your business.
When done correctly, digital marketing can be an incredibly effective way to promote your veterinary practice. It’s also relatively inexpensive and easy to get started. If you’re not sure where to begin, consider investing in some pay-per-click advertising on Facebook and Google, as well as email marketing. These are all great ways to reach new clients and keep your current ones informed about what’s going on at your practice.
