The Veterinary Marketing Podcast

Today's podcast is part 3 in my series on how to give your veterinary hospital a total marketing makeover so that you can create systematic growth. If you haven't listened to part 1 or 2 be sure to go back and listen to them because each is very important for having your best year yet! One common question that I get pretty often is, "how much should i spend on marketing?" I think that the answer to that question is pretty simple, but it is also very specific to your veterinary hospital. An answer like 2-5% doesn't answer what your specific goals are, it just makes it so that you throw money out at your best guess of what will create growth at your practice. With direct response digital marketing you can reverse engineer what you need to spend and how often you need to run ads to meet your marketing goals.  In today's episode I cover topics ranging from how to figure out what goals you want to achieve based on how much you want to grow this year, to how determine what your average client value is, how to determine what your return on investment is to figuring out what your average ad spend should be.  Not only do we cover ads, but we also talk about facebook likes and building email lists as well. Figuring out what you want to achieve this year is one of the most important first steps to creating growth at your practice. Building ads that help to grow your practice and create a positive ROI can be possible, but it definitely doesn't happen by accident. Most times if you're not measuring results and testing you will end up with ads that create negative ROI so it is definitely important that you figure out how to create profitable systematic growth. 

Happy New Year Everyone! So in Last week's episode we talked about how to figure out yourself, your veterinary hospitals marketing, set baselines for metrics and more. If you haven't listened to that episode be sure to do that because it is definitely the important first step in seeing improvement in your marketing this year.  In today's episode we go in depth on how to evaluate your digital assets so that you can know where to start if you are considering doing any changes or improvements. Digital assets are broken down into four major categories and include your website, your social media channels, your email list and finally your content. I think it is safe to say that for any veterinary hospital you can find things that will provide you the highest return on investment if you go in the order of evaluating your assets in that order. I get the question all the time, "is my website good enough?", and I think it is pretty easy to answer that question if you know the right criteria to check out. First and foremost, in today's mobile heavy user base you absolutely need to make sure your site is mobile friendly, and I talk about how to know if it is mobile friendly or as well as a test that you can run on your site by going to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/mobile-friendly/ and see if your site passes the simple test or not. I also cover a bunch of other factors, but having a functional site that allows your clients to easily contact you and find the information that they are looking for should be the number one thing you do.  Having social media properties that you engage with frequently and consistently is the next important item in my opinion. I cover the best ways to create consistency so you can increase engagement as well as help with conversion when you create offers. The next item of importance is having an email list that you continue to grow. I feel like email is almost as important as social media, but the reason why social media is slightly more important is because your clients can actually engage back and forth with you. Email is usually one sided, coming from you, which is nice because you can put your message out there. With social media though, clients will be talking to you and so you need to listen and respond. Don't leave clients hanging! The last piece I cover is about your practice's content library. Hopefully  you have content at your practice that you are consistently putting out. Creating content helps with SEO, gives you a reason to stay in front of clients and gives them info so that they come to you and your website for answers instead of going to Dr. Google. Creating content doesn't have to be hard, and if you do it in a smart way, you can create content that you can re-purpose and re-use for all kinds of things.  If you have any questions or comments with any of the info included in this week's episode please let me know!

The new year is upon us, and today is the last Monday of the year! In honor of the new year, and because people often times want to set new goals and resolutions in the new year I have decided to do a four part series on  how to give your veterinary hospital a complete marketing makeover. We'll break down exactly what you need to do to see where you are today, and then figure out what you need to do to get to the place you want to be in. I hope that you like this series because I think it is really important to evaluate what you're doing along the way. I think this series will be good even if you have really successful marketing already.  The first part of this series is figuring out where you are in your marketing today. Setting yourself up and actually knowing where you are is a huge step that you need to do before anything else. Let's say you know where you want to go, and you know when you want to get there, but if you don't know where you are today you'll never be able to create directions to get there.  The exersize that I use in my business is what we'll be covering today, and is something that I learned from a great marketer named Ryan Deiss at DigitalMarketer.com. I've adapted the process for veterinary hospitals though and I run through a list of really powerful questions and why you need to consider these questions so that you can get a complete picture of where you are today. This is a really important first step in evaluating your veterinary hospital's marketing, so I hope that you follow along in this episode and actually take the time to complete the questions. If you would like a pdf copy of the questions just send me an email at brandon.breshears@gmail.com

This has been an amazing year, and although there is still 1 more episode that will be released I thought it would be a good idea to go back and take a look at some of the best lessons that I learned in marketing as well things that I learned from interview all the amazing guests that I had.  I think a lot of times I am the kind of person who is always thinking about cool new ideas and often times after I learn these new strategies sometimes I forget to reflect and take time to think about application. I suspect that lots of people who listen to the podcast are this way too. With this I think that it is a great time to reflect on the best insights that I've learned. One of the favorite things I get out of doing the podcast is that I get to connect with some really smart marketers and I learn a bunch while doing the podcast too.  So I hope you enjoy today's episode where I break down the coolest things I've learned this year.  I have a few requests  for you as we go into the new year. I want to make this podcast the highest quality it can possibly be, so if you ever have anything  you want to learn about, guests you think I should have on, or any feedback in general, please let me know! One last thing, if you could leave me an honest review in iTunes I would greatly appreciate it! Please let me know if you ever need any help or have any questions. 2016 is going to be an amazing year!

I hear a lot of times that veterinary practices have a difficult time telling if their marketing actually produces a positive return on investment. When I hear that I figure that their marketing likely isn't directing specifically at an offer or a lead magnet. This week I cover how to create offers at your veterinary practice that will help you sell products or services online or how to create offers that you can trade content for contact information with your current or potential clients.  When you create an offer, there are really just four main elements to the whole process. The elements that I cover are: first figuring out what your offer is going to be, creating the headline, creating the copy or content and then creating the call to action. What should you offer at  your practice for sale online with you digital marketing? That depends on what kinds of clients you are looking to attract, what kind of content you've created for your practice and also what kind of resources you have to put towards your marketing. I am really opposed to having your marketing offers just being centered around discounts. Discounts are lazy and easy, do better marketing but don't try and compete only on price. There are always exceptions to this rule, but make sure you use discounts only when appropriate or you'll find yourself having to come back to discounts every time you create a promotion.  The next piece that you really need to focus on is your headline. Headlines are really important for marketing because they immediately identify to the reader what they offer is about and it hopefully segments the interested clients from the non interested people. I talk about 3 headline formulas that work really well in generating interest while at the same time segmenting buyers from non buyers. After the headline I talk about 6 different ways to begin the conversation in your copy. Your copy is going to be either video, text or images/infographics and picking the  right medium will be important based on where you are going to be advertising. Once you have the copy the next piece is creating the call to action and I cover how to  use pricing to increase conversion as well as tips for making the purchase process as easy as possible. 

If you're ever considering building your own website or having a developer create a website for you I think that Wordpress is a great option for you and your veterinary hospital. Wordpress, for those of you who don't know, is an online, open source website creation tool written in PHP. In plain terms, it is likely the easiest and most powerful blogging and website content management system that is available. Since it is open source, wordpress is free to download and install on your servers, which is really cool.  What we're talking about today are plugins for your Wordpress site. Plugins are pre-built pieces of functionality that do specific things on your website, so that you don't have to go out and code a piece of software to make your website custom made.  For example, maybe you want a live chat or appointment setting feature, so you'd go out and find the right plugins to do that, which there are already pre-built ones. Plugins can be both free and also cost money, but the ones I'm going to talk to you about are going to be free.  Plugins mentioned in this episode: Wordpress SEO by Yoast- This plugin helps with SEO, and really helps you approach your content and site from a SEO standpoint without having to get a really in-depth knowledge of how to do SEO on your website. This has feeature that do everything from give you previews of how your content will look in search results to create XML sitemaps that you can then submit to Webmaster's Tools.  Shareaholic- This is a really good social plugin that lets people engage with your content across social media. It also has a google analytics integration so you can measure your social efforts.  Easy Content Templates- This is a great tool when combined with my 31 Veterinary Blog Posts Ideas Guide, don't worry about what to write, just be able to sit down and grind out some really good content.  Editorial Calendar- This is great for creating content with a group of people. So if you want to get the whole team engaged, or just plan your content around the calendar, this has great features for getting your content published.  Google Webmaster Verification Tools- This can help your hospital integrate with google analytics, google adwords and google webmaster tools. It makes pasting your user ID very simple. Measure your marketing or you're just guessing!   New stuff to check out this week: Dr. Braden Collins at Bunbury Eaton Veterinary Hospital doing some really awesome holiday photo competitions. This is great! Take a look Click Here Dr. Cody Creelman's new VLOG on Youtube, check it out, it is epic content, click here Danielle Lambert's new SnoutSchool.com Scoop, stay up to date on all kinds of pet related events and holidays, click here  

Today's episode is going to be a little bit advanced, but stick with me here, I think it is really worth the effort to at least understand the marketing concepts that we're going to be talking about. In fact, I think that the subject of today's podcast is likely the best opportunity that there is to market your veterinary practice. Today we're talking about Facebook Pixels.  So What Are Pixels? Pixels are pieces of javascript code that Facebook provides. You put the Facebook pixel in the head section o your webpage so that when someone visits the site,the piece of javascript runs or "fires" and you are now able to track the person who is visiting that page or the event that just occurred. So pixels allow you to do two main things, one is build lists of audiences who have viewed certain pages or pieces of content that you create and/or they allow you to track and optimize ads for events like newsletter opt ins, form opt ins, purchases, cart abandons and other things.  In the past, with Facebook pixels you had to create unique pieces of code every time you wanted to either create a new list to market to or track an event, but Facebook has recently changed the way pixels work. Now you get a base pixel that is standard for, the way you customize them for event tracking is by placing a little identifier that Facebook provides for you to copy and paste into your base code.  So once you copy and past your pixel into your veterinary hospitals web pages, what can you do then? This is where some marketing strategy comes into play. By using segmented content built around offers that you have at your veterinary. It is really easy (at least comparatively) to get people to click and consume content instead of getting people to actually opt in to something to build your marketing list, so using pixels allows you to create segmented interest based lists without having people opt in.  So I cover several examples that you can test, that will allow you and your practice to actually attract new clients, easily measure ROI and create content that your audience really wants.  Facebook video also has a really cool pixel feature within the Power Editor that I cover.  I know that this is definitely one of the more complicated episodes, but if you can implement the ideas in today's podcast your veterinary practice will be able to create dependable growth.

One of the most common questions I get from veterinary professionals is, "Is my website good enough?" It can be difficult to know when it is time to redo your site, especially if you don't know anything about programming or building websites. That is what this episode is all about, how do you go about finding the right person or company to help build your veterinary practice's website. This week's episode is pretty cool, because I have my twin brother, who has been a professional web developer, software developer and mobile app developer for a decade now, and he helps us go over exactly what you should think about if you are considering changing up your practice's website.  Barrett Breshears, who you can find @barrettbreshear on twitter, currently works as a self employed IOS developer building mobile apps for businesses and start up all around the world. He's also built many websites for large and small sized companies and so I've been wanting to have him on the show for quite a while so that he could share some insight with my audience since I always get questions on how to find a web developer.  So how exactly should you know what to get, and once you know what you want, how much should it cost? The whole experience of trying to get a new website can feel a lot like applying for auto financing and buying a car, how do you know if you're getting ripped off or not? We cover things from how to know when you need a new website to how to find the right web developer for your veterinary practice. We also discuss how much typically websites should cost and the best ways to know if your developer will actually be able to perform.  One of the most important pieces that we cover in today's episode is making sure that you know what you want done so that you can get an accurate bid. The items that you absolutely need to know are: how many pages you want made, what kind of features you want to have, and how the site should function once it is complete. Having a clear idea of exactly what you need done and getting everyone to have the same scope for the project is a good way to make sure your new site gets done quickly and doesn't go over budget.  Although Barrett doesn't build veterinary websites anymore, you can still ask him questions via twitter @barrettbreshear  Items mentioned in this weeks episode:  Test your site speed: http://tools.pingdom.com/fpt/  Google Webmaster Tools: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools   

Have you ever really thought about why you are creating a piece of content or specific ad? You likely have a desired end result like having someone read an article, share, comment, like or click but do you sit and actually think about what the person on the other end is experiencing? In this week's episode I talk about the three types of clients there are out there and how to figure out which is the best fit for you and your practice.  If I were to ask what was most important in running a business most people would focus on the product, saying having a perfect product is most important. Product is absolutely important, if you or your veterinary hospital performs badly consistently you will go out of business, but on the other side providing amazing care sometimes isn't enough. I am sure you know of times where there were veterinary practices that had amazing staff who deeply cared, but for whatever reason the business side didn't make it. An important factor to have when considering what kind of marketing, whether it be content marketing or direct response ads, is who are you going to target.  There are basically three groups of people that all of your potential clients fall into and they are as follows: People who don't know what they don't know. They are ignorant of the problem and the solution. People who are open to a solution and understand the problem but aren't actively looking for a solution People who are actively looking for a solution.  Obviously each of these groups of people need to be handled and approached differently because they have different lenses through which they see you and your practice. The first group of people are the most difficult to market to, because not only do you have to prove to someone that they have a problem, you then have to show them you are the best solution to the problem they had no idea they had. The second group of people could be anyone from ma current client to a prospective client, and this group of people is far easier to reach because they are not that hard to convince. Maybe these people have simply forgot that they need to bring their pet in again. The third group of people that I talk about in this week's episode, is by far the most valuable immediately because they want and need what you have and are actively looking for it.  Different types of advertising work better for each group and I talk about what kind of marketing works best for each type. If you consider the perspective of the person who is viewing your content you will be able to create more compelling marketing and be able to help more pets receive care!

I'm a huge fan of email marketing, and I hope that you and your practice are collecting emails. If you aren't collecting emails that should absolutely be where you start. A couple of reasons that I absolutely love emails is because for one, you own the list. No one can take away the emails that you've gathered. In some cases, especially with social media platforms, you're basically just renting the lists. You don't own it and if any of the rules change you're pretty much out of luck which can be a big problem.  Since you own the list, if you are good at email marketing, you can use it to really influence your current and prospective clients. If you have good emails you can drive behavior and traffic into your practice. Having a slow week or month? Send out an email sequence and get some clients coming in through the door.  So obviously since veterinary professionals are some of the most busy people that I've ever encountered, it is really important that you automate as much of this as possible. With automated emails you need to be using an email marketing system and for that I suggest either Mailchimp, Aweber or Infusionsoft, depending on the budget you have and what features you are looking for. Whatever you use it should be relatively easy to use, give you the ability to segment your lists of clients and also have automatic email capabilities.  The email sequences that I talk about in today's episode should be able to be set up once and not have to be touched again. Whenever you can set up a marketing system and have a return that pays off for years is a huge win for anyone who is marketing because the return on time that you spend is so high.  With email sequences the more you have the better in my opinion because you can create such segmented and relevant campaigns depending on what people like and engage with, but you likely have pets to care for, so I've narrowed it down to 5 that I think every veterinary practice needs. The 5 email sequences that I cover in depth in this week's episode are:  a welcome email series a review email series a win back series a current client sales series and an engagement/segmentation series With each of these email series I think you'll see a huge return on investment. Remember that often times people get really busy and they just don't have the time and energy to think about things that they need to do for their pets, so not only will these email sequences help to drive more clients into your practice but they can also help to provide better care to pets as well.