Painless Veterinary Marketing Ideas to Put into Practice Today

Vet practices thrive on building relationships with existing clients, but you still need to get new customers through the door. While many vet practices rely on traditional veterinary marketing techniques, many veterinarians are starting to discover the power of social media marketing services in getting new clients through the door.

Whether you’ve just opened a new practice, or have an established small business, investing in social media digital marketing is essential to ensuring that your business survives. Even busy practices need some form of marketing to keep up with the competition. New pet owners tend to search online for a practice close by, and if you’re not marketing your practice online, you’ll find existing avenues of prospective clients drying up.

What is the Demand for Veterinary Services?

As long as people keep animals around, there will be a need for high-end pet care. Many veterinary practices have noticed that while people need pet care, they may not necessarily come to you, making marketing more necessary than ever.

Past trends show a large spike in the demand for veterinary care due to pandemics, alongside mass adoption of pets.¹ Social distancing and safety procedures brought by pandemics also mean that vets can’t see the same number of pets per day, leading to an increased demand for experienced veterinarians.

Simple Methods to Promote Your Vet Business

As a practice owner, you may worry that starting a veterinary marketing strategy will take more time and effort than you’re willing to spend. The good news is that it’s easy to start with a few simple methods to attract clients and build them up as your business grows. Even a small social media and digital marketing campaign can have visible results, and many of these strategies require less time and effort than you’d expect.

Create a Veterinary Digital Marketing Presence

Digital marketing refers to any form of online marketing, including paid web advertisements, email advertising, and social media.

Content marketing provides informative, useful content that all pet owners can use. It can be as broad or specialized as you want. Many potential customers will use your blog to get helpful info and remember your vet clinic later when they need serious veterinary care.

Another important component of digital marketing is your online listing. Claiming your Google My Business listing gives you control over what information goes into the listing. You can add phone numbers, addresses, and other vital contact details, but you can also go deeper and post photos, blogs, and even videos to showcase your practice. Best of all, it’s all free, so all you need to contribute is a bit of time and effort.

Set Up a Veterinary Social Media Marketing Strategy

Social media offers a marketing channel where veterinary practices can directly communicate with local pet owners. Even adding your veterinary clinic to various social media platforms can dramatically increase the attention your practice gets.

What makes social media marketing so appealing is that you can use a wide range of strategies. Not only can you solicit online reviews from clients, but you can also use content marketing to boost your credibility and authority by posting informative animal health content. You can also make your practice feel approachable by posting videos of some of your patients and veterinarians.

Try These Veterinary Dental Month Marketing Ideas

Months that highlight a particular condition are an excellent opportunity to educate the public while also promoting your practice. You can use veterinary dental month to:

• Write blog posts about pet dental care
• Use relevant, trending hashtags on your social media posts
• Offer promotions on dental and tooth extractions

Leverage Veterinary Promotions

Promotions on routine care can entice people to take their pets to your practice more often. Veterinary promotions don’t need to be discounts on procedures, but they can also be extras (get a free deworming with every vaccination), or even entries into competitions for a six-month supply of pet food or something similar.

Start a Paid Advertising Campaign

Paid advertising is a staple of traditional marketing and translates well into the digital space. Online paid advertising involves choosing certain keywords and linking them to your site. Every time someone conducts a search containing that keyword, your website will appear at the top of the search results. You only have to pay a certain, agreed-upon fee when someone clicks on your paid advertising link.

Create a Memorable Veterinary Website

Your veterinary website forms the lynchpin around all other digital marketing strategies, including search engine optimization, social media marketing, and paid ads. It’s frequently the first thing that a pet parent will see when researching your practice, so investing in a solid website that looks great and showcases your veterinary practice is worth the effort.

Build Out a Veterinary Marketing Calendar

Take note of important veterinary awareness events, and develop marketing strategies around these events. For instance, April is National Heartworm Month, so write blogs and offer promotions around heartworm treatments.

Develop a Veterinary Marketing Plan as Your Strategy Guide

Veterinary marketing works best as a combination between traditional word-of-mouth and print ads and digital marketing techniques. It’s a good idea to implement one veterinary marketing strategy at a time and measure the results to see if it’s the right fit for your practice.

Start with the basics, such as developing a website and starting social media posts on popular platforms. As your marketing plan starts to produce results and you start feeling more comfortable with the concept of veterinary marketing, you can expand the scope and try out some of our other veterinary marketing ideas.

Does a veterinarian need to become a vet marketing pro?

Marketing can make your veterinary practice more visible and attractive to new clients. It also helps maintain relationships with current clients, and may even encourage them to come in for routine procedures that they may otherwise skip.

While you don’t have to be a marketing expert, implementing some veterinary marketing ideas can help your practice thrive.

How to Promote Without Hiring Veterinary Marketing Companies

Nobody expects a veterinarian or customer service representative to have an in-depth understanding of cutting-edge marketing strategies. The good news is that there are still plenty of marketing ideas that don’t take much time or expertise but still produce excellent results.

Solicit and Display Online Reviews

Online reviews help demonstrate that your practice is trustworthy, compassionate, and skilled at veterinary care. You can link online reviews to your My Business listing and put them on your website and social media accounts.

Soliciting and managing online reviews can often become time-consuming, and it’s worthwhile investing in a marketing tool such as Weave’s Online Review manager. These platforms automate many of the routine tasks, while also providing real-time monitoring, allowing you to see the impact of your marketing strategy as it produces results.

Implement Email Marketing

Email marketing is an excellent veterinary marketing idea, as it allows your practice to connect with existing and potential clients alike. While slightly more intensive than some other digital marketing strategies, sending emails offers several benefits worth the effort. Software such as Weave’s email marketing tool can automate many of email marketing’s routine tasks.

Sending regular emails via marketing automation can build credibility and brand recognition while maintaining customer relationships and increasing traffic to your website. It also makes other digital marketing strategies, such as search engine marketing, more effective.

FAQ

What is a veterinary CSR?

A Client Service Representative, or CSR, is the individual who acts as the front-line communicator between pet owners and the practice. They also help with administrative tasks and scheduling to keep customers and veterinarians happy and the practice operating smoothly.

What are some competitive veterinary marketing jobs?

Many veterinary practices are outsourcing their veterinary marketing. Common areas of expertise include:

1. Social media manager
2. SEO specialist
3. Website developer/designer

Get Weave to Keep Your Veterinary Office Running Smoothly

Weave provides a suite of office communication tools to help your staff with scheduling, reminders, payments, and more—all in one platform. Contact us for a demo today!

Resources:

1. US Veterinarians Overwhelmed as More Pet Owners Seek Care