On this week's episode, we continue on the two part series of getting back to the basics. Last week we spoke about how to approach marketing and some general principles that will help you to get a really good foundation for what you're doing. In this week we talk more about the tactics and ways to get new clients in your veterinary practice.

When you create content and offers you're going to be targeting these at one of three groups of people, cold traffic, warm traffic and hot traffic. Each of these traffic sources should definitely be handled differently because they have a different relationship with you and your practice. Cold traffic is a group of people who have never heard of you or your practice so asking them to buy something without the right context would not be a good idea. There are times when it is appropriate to make offers to cold traffic, like when they have an emergency and need a vet now.

Moving people from cold to warm and then to hot is just like any relationship that you would build in person. First introduce yourself, provide value through info or entertainment and then move them to becoming a client. I think many times people forget that your marketing and content is targeted to real people and that your clients react in the same way that they would in face to face meetings. If you walked up to someone in a public place who had a dog and you told them that their dogs needed a hip replacement and that the should bring them into surgery that person wouldn't likely believe you.

So we use content to move people up the relationship ladder and once we have identified what the person is interested and we have rapport built up we can then more easily turn that stranger into a client. Having cold traffic driven to your content is essential when you are in business because this group represents new clients. If you don't bring in new clients for long enough, eventually you'll go out of business.

170 - Russell Howard