The Veterinary Marketing Podcast

If you take a look at the past episodes I usually talk about activities that you should try out or things to do, today is a little different! In this episode I cover things that you should stop doing in your veterinary hospital's marketing that will help you to be a better marketer. I think whenever possible it is better to remove than it is to add, because you don't have to do more.  So when we're talking about removing from things that you're doing in your veterinary hospital's marketing, the biggest mistake I see is connecting social media accounts. The most common offender is the person who links their Twitter and Facebook accounts. The major problem that I see with this is that each social media platform has its own context and format. Being everywhere isn't necessarily better when what you're doing just looks out of place. Your clients and potential clients aren't dying to follow you just because they take their pet to your practice. You need to provide value and native content makes it far more engaging.  Along the same theme of not connecting accounts, don't feel like you have to do EVERY social media platform. It would be great if you could create amazing content for all the social media platforms that your clients spend time on, but if you're like most practices, this isn't realistic. Find out where you'll get the most bang for your buck and really master a social network platform so that your practice actually benefits. I know several practices who are just doing one social network and are doing an amazing job at it.  Many practices are using adwords or want to be using adwords and I cover one of the biggest problems most people face when setting up their ads. Luckily, this problem is extremely simple to catch, but most people make this mistake. As more practices start doing ads on paid traffic platforms they'll be running into some of the problems that I cover and I give simple things to stop doing to help your ads run better as well.  Make your marketing as simple as possible, and if the more tactics that allow you to take away instead of adding to, the easier it will be to implement for you and your veterinary hospital.  

Discounting can be quite a trap. If you use discounting in your practice too much, you'll attract clients who only care about price. Competing only on price is a difficult, especially if the digital marketing that you are doing is centered around discounts because it usually attracts the kind of clients you are not looking for. I am by no means suggesting that you price gouge or go crazy on price, but wanting to attract clients who pay you what you feel you're worth is totally understandable. So how do you go about attracting clients without using discounts? In today's episode I cover 5 strategies you can use in your digital marketing that don't include discounting.  I think it is important to understand why discounting can be harmful to your practice, and so in the first part of the episode I cover why discounting hurts your brand in general. There have been so many examples of companies competing only on price and I outline a few examples so we can see how this race to the bottom doesn't end well for either of the competing companies. Veterinary practices have more competition than ever, with corporate chains, discount big box stores, amazon, other discount websites and more vets than ever in the industry. There will always be people who are willing to work for cheaper so it is extremely important to find out how to compete on other factors.  So how can you compete without going for the easy discount? People will come to your practice for two reasons: Results or Experience. They want a specific result meaning for example they think that you can fix their sick pet, or maybe they know that you are the most caring highest rated vet and they want to be part of that experience. Knowing those two factors play a role in why people want to come to you you can create offers that include the following features too:  Specialty Offers: Being the only practice who performs a procedure or has a specialized piece of equipment. Rewards Programs: Offering Rewards instead of discounts, I go over what the difference is Prestige: Appealing to what people care about and making them feel like they are making a difference by going to your practice. Value Ads/Bonuses: Adding value instead of removing cost Specialized Info: Making you the expert in the eyes of the client so that they want to do business with you You can get away from discounting you just need to work at it!

Is your marketing working for your practice right now? This is a key question that you should be asking yourself every time you create a piece of content, an ad or anything for your brand using digital marketing. The good news is digital marketing is easier than ever to measure and track, but are you measuring meaningful data. In this episode we cover what you need to be tracking to make sure that the marketing you are doing is actually having an impact on revenue at your business.  There are three levels of data measurement that I cover in today's episode: Top Level, Mid Level and Bottom Level analytics. When you have someone who comes into contact with your brand online, they are at the top of your funnel, having just been introduced to you. Your goal is to bring them through your funnel to the bottom where they can become an actual client and make your practice revenue. Each of these marketing metrics has a place, but ultimately if you want to make a positive financial impact you're going to need to start measuring bottom level metrics so that you can track the impact your marketing is having.  Top level or top of funnel analytics are really easy to measure, but don't have any impact on bottom line. Sometimes marketers call these vanity metrics because they're nice to look at but don't mean too much. Top level analytics are things like clicks, likes, shares, bounce rates, time on site etc. These are good indicators for whether or not your marketing is having an impact, and this can be a good baseline for your social media content but you can't keep the lights on with just likes alone, you need people to come into your practice.  Mid level analytics are getting more at data that helps you to grow your business. These are data points that help track things that will grow your business over time, but aren't directly linked to revenue. These kinds of things are webinar registrations, lead magnet opt ins, contact us form submissions, newsletter subscribers and things like that.  Bottom level analytics are where you start measuring the data that will help determine ROI of campaigns. If you are the owner of a practice or you report to the owner of a practice, these are the numbers that you want to see and show. These will tell you if you're campaigns are making money or if they're losing money. Data points that are on bottom level are things like revenue per lead, conversion rate of leads, average revenue per visitor, average revenue per conversion, average revenue per appointment etc.  Sometimes you'll have to layer these analytics together to see the full picture of what is going on within your marketing. Please if you ever need help analyzing campaign data don't hesitate to reach out to me! I love this stuff just email me at >>Brandon@veterinarymarketingpodcast.com

I hear it all too often that practices say they just aren't getting value from the work they they are doing on Facebook. In today's episode, I cover why I think most practices aren't getting the conversion they want, it is because they are stuck in the facebook "friendzone". Maybe you create really great content, but if you don't approach your client or potential relationship with your clients in the right sequence, it will be difficult to turn your practice's page content into people who actually enter into your practice.  Using facebook, or any digital marketing for that matter, to create new clients is important. It isn't enough to just create content, the content that you have needs to do drive engagement and create a specific response or result. I think people forget in general that building a relationship with a person online is the same as building a relationship with someone in real life. You need the proper sequence, messaging and context. Just like it would be inappropriate to ask a stranger to marry you, you can't just go online and shout out that people should come to your practice. Unless someone is desperate, the overly direct approach doesn't work.  So how do you bridge the gap from stranger to a client? I think you do it with content. Creating a piece of video content, or a blog post is a great first impression and a  way to introduce yourself that is very low commitment. The thing that I love about video content these days too is that there are so many new improvements to the way that you can create custom audiences and retargeting audiences.  So today I cover one way that I thnk is very effective for creating segmented custom audiences that you can show offers to. I also cover how you should reverse engineer the final result that you are looking for so that you can know how to measure your marketing and ultimately be able to determine if it is effective or not. 

One of the biggest problems I see with veterinary professionalsface is that they have so many things to do that getting marketingdone is sometimes difficult. It totally makes sense too, veterinaryhospitals deal with so much and often times the person doing themarketing has a ton of other work to do as well. In today episode,I cover tricks and strategies that will help you to get yourveterinary practice's marketing done more efficiently.  Any time I start working with new clients or on my ownprojects in marketing the most difficult part of the creationof any digital marketing is just getting started. One thingI've found that helps me create content, ads, or any digitalmarketing as quickly as possible is having a media library storedon my hard drive. I create nearly all of my marketing materials onthe same computer, so having a central place where everything fromlogos to different lead magnets stored where I can easily findthem helps me to save so much time.  Along with having digital assets set up in a specific place, Ialso really like having a production calendar completed as well.Knowing what you're going to create and having a game plan for whenads, landing pages and content needs to be created makes working onthe marketing a lot easier. I like having all of the relevantcontent and offers I can include in a single place so that I knowwhat to create and what the objective will be.  Templates are a tremendous time saver as well. Whether it istemplated ads, copy, landing pages or images having a framework forwhat you're creating makes it way easier and faster as well. Anewer tool that I've only recently started using is adespresso.com.If you are doing any kind of Facebook ads, this tool makes it quickand easy! Whenever possible, turn your marketing work into systems thatare easy for you use to use. 

Who wouldn't want more referrals to their veterinary practice? In today's episode, I cover strategies that will help you to create referral partners who can help create new clients in your practice. The strategies I cover will work if you are a standard small animal practice or if you're a specialty practice.  The first step in find people to refer you clients is to think about where your potential clients are spending time and who they're already doing business with. The potential referral partners don't necessarily have to be veterinary related, but they definitely can. Go through an exercise of writing down all the possible people who could refer you new clients. Some examples of people who could refer you are groomers, specialty acupuncture or laser services, trainers and pretty much anyone you can think of who comes in contact with pets or pet owners. It should be pretty easy to think about certain segments of your practice where you might not offer services and look to find referral partners.  So once you think about who you want to partner with, how do you find them? I cover the best ways to find these potential connections on Linkedin and Facebook. Once you find the person, then what do you say? I have found that treating online connections like in person connections or meetings works really well. Ask them about their job, experience or just introduce yourself. A good way to break the ice is to ask them to do an interview for you once you've vetted the potential contact and their web presence.  Once you have people who you can do cross promotion with, it is just a matter of coming up with new topics and ideas to promote. Find people who have engaged client bases and offer value to those people! It is really pretty simple, and it is one of the best ways possible to grow your business. 

Last week in episode 91 we discussed how to set up the relationship with your clients and potential clients with email. This week we talk about how to continue the relationship and deliver on the expectations you set up in your introduction email. Setting up the proper expectations is super important so if you haven't listened to the last episode be sure to check it out!  Email really needs to help forward one of the following agendas and the emails that you send out should really be geared toward one or a few of the following areas:  Branding Retention Re-engagement Segmentation or engagement Referrals  Direct promotion The tough part about email is that you can sometimes feel like you're bugging people, especially if there is promotion inside your emails so we cover how often and what should be inside your emails. As a rule, I think you should at a minimum email your list at least once a month. Ideally, you should send out weekly emails, but I know that practices have very limited time budgets to be spending so crafting email broadcasts can be time consuming.  A tool that I really like to do is set up a promotional calendar that helps you and your practice take any of the guess work out of what you'll be sending. This is especially a great idea if you want to measure what you'll be promoting so that you can see what email subscribers are potentially worth to you and your practice. Every time that an email goes out, it should have a call to action so that your clients don't have to guess as to what the next step should be. If you're creating an email built around something entertaining or informational/useful then your call to action should be a click, a share, a like or something.  Ongoing communication is just like continuing any relationship, so learn how to nurture and grow your list. Email is an asset that you get to own and control, so it is definitely a very long term value item for your veterinary practice. 

The introduction can be one of the most important emails that your veterinary practice sends out, and today we cover all the elements and things to consider when you are creating your welcome emails. This is the first part of at least a 3 part series on emails that every veterinary hospital needs.  Most veterinary practices that I come into contact with typically don't have an introduction email.  Your introduction email does several things to help solidify the relationship with your client. Your welcome email should set expectations, offer immediate value so that clients are trained to open future emails as well as build a relationship and make clients feel a connection with your practice. Even before you begin constructing your introduction email you should really think about three elements which are the timing, tone and purpose. Timing should be as quick as you can and so if you don't use an email marketing service you should really get one set up. Mailchimp is an easy to use and very affordable option. When it comes to tone, be as personal as possible. Clients don't love companies becaues they are so official and corporate, people love brands many times because of the poeple who work at the brand.  The purpose of the welcome email needs to really train your clients to open emails and that there will always be value there. Many times I feel like businesses send out mass emails because they haven't done it in a while not neccesarily because they have something of value to offer. Make sure that you have a purpose and that you're providing value, otherwise you'll get people puttings your emails in the spam bucket every time.  When you have a new client or someone opts in to an email list, the first week is really the golden time to get in and build value. Open rates typically steadily decrease the long you wait to communicate and add value so be sure to be promt. I also cover 7 introduction email tips that will help you to turn more of your new clients into clients for life. 

Every veterinary hospital needs to be running paid digital marketing campaigns because it is the best way to bring new clients into your veterinary hospital. There are so many parts to every ad campaign though that it is a good idea to have a checklist to run through each of the components of the ads that you run. I mentioned that veterinary practices need to be running digital marketing campaigns because sometimes you won't be running a direct response campaign where you are trying to get a client to take a specific action but instead you're trying to get awareness for your practice.  In today's episode I cover the three parts to of a campaign, which is made up of the ad, the landing page or content and then the follow up. Before you even begin considering running a campaign you need to consider two items: who are you trying to target and then what is the goal. Who you're trying to target will affect the type of offer or content that you need to create and ultimately should tell you what the goal should be. If it is someone who is a complete stranger who has never heard of you or your practice then creating an offer that sells specialty cat dental programs for example, probably won't get the conversion that you're looking for. Distributing content that segments and creates a remarketing list would be a far more appropriate campaign to create instead.  Knowing what the goal is will tell you how to measure success. Are you trying to get impressions, clicks, conversions, clients or purchases? Being able to have a clear objective will help you to be successful. Once you know who you're going to be marketing to, what you'll be marketing and how to measure success we get into what to do to create the ad. The ad is the first piece of the whole process and it needs to call out to the specific intended audience and then be compelling enough to take people to the next step which is the landing page. We cover a checklist of times you should consider when creating the ad. Next is the landing page, which should only serve one specific purpose. Many times ad campaigns fail because the landing page isn't set up to do one specific job. Driving traffic to non specific pages, like a veterinary practice's home page for example is a way to fail for sure. Once you've converted it is now time to follow up and set expectations.  If you ever need help or want a second set of eyes on your ad campaign let me know! Send me a message at Brandon.breshears@gmail.com

I am  amazed at how fast new marketing features and platforms are coming out this year. New features and updates are coming to social media platforms and ad platforms faster than ever! Sometimes I wonder how anyone can possibly keep up with all of these changes, and I love spending time using and testing new things. Since things are changing so rapidly, I always want to make sure to test out features before I encourage you to use them for your veterinary practice. Facebook has recently released 3 new features that I think are important enough to test out for your veterinary practice, and I cover all three in today's podcast episode.  Facebook Live Streaming For Pages Manager Facebook has been rolling out live streaming for a while now. First, it was just for personal pages and Verified Accounts(like celebrities and people with large followings). Now in the past I've done specific episodes on how to livestream for your veterinary practice with Dr. Cody Creelman, we covered Periscope and Meerkat. There are some pretty significant differences that I think are important to note with Facebook livestreaming. First off, the user interface is definitley different, you can see live viewers, and also respond to comments, which is a good way to interact with your clients and viewers. It is actually pretty simple to get the livestream going, simply open your pages manager app and then hit publish. Once you enter the publish screen you'll see a little icon all the way to the left with a head and circles around the head, hit that button and then it will prompt you with a live stream preview. Check out the image below for the 4 steps to getting to live streaming.  There are tons of applications on how to use live streaming for your veterinary practice. I think it is a great way to engage on a really deep level with people who follow your practice's social media brand. It puts an actual face to the practice and makes it so that your practice is real people and not just a brand. You can do education, cute animals at your practice or just interesting/entertaining content.  Facebook Canvas Mobile Ad Types Facebook just rolled out a new canvas type of native ad that lets you create ads that are really interesting on mobile devices. The editor for creating the canvas can be found under publisher tools on your facebook page and if you've never created a canvas before it will show you a tutorial canvas. I think there are tons of ways to use this Canvas ad and I go into what I used it for and my experience creating the ads. It is very easy to use and intuitive though, it reminds me of a templated WSYWIG web editor. These ads only show on mobile devices though.  Facebook Lead Ads Lead ads and native ads in general are my favorite type of ads. I love them because the social platform user doesn't have to leave the platform to engage and opt in. This is huge for marketers because any chance you get to reduce friction, the higher conversion and the lower the cost will be (most of the time). Facebook Lead ads were released back in the Fall of 2015, but they were clunky and there were some continuity problems.  Once a client or prospective client opted in, they wouldn't be clearly guided to the next step. Facebook has since added Cards at the end of the Facebook lead forms which serves as a thank you page and lets your client know what to do next. This is great because now you can help turn that interest into conversion. Setting expectations up front was pretty difficult when someone would opt in and then there was no explanation of how and when they would be contacted or receive content. This combined with other 3rd party integrations like Zapier that let you automate the exporting and integration make this one of my favorite ad types now! Try these ads out.