If your marketing plan has gone to the dogs, there are a few steps you can take to turn it around—no gimmicks and promos here. In this article, we’re discussing real veterinary marketing strategies that yield lasting results.
Whether your practice needs a few tips or a complete marketing overhaul, we’ve got you covered with helpful suggestions and in-depth instructions on implementation.
Keep reading for a myriad of veterinary marketing ideas that will move the needle for your clinic.
1.Have a well-groomed social media profile
It seems like everyone, and their dog is on social media these days (seriously, one in ten pets has a profile). Pet owners love scrolling through their feeds. So ensure an active social media presence is part of your veterinary marketing plan.
While it’s true that the social media landscape is filled with businesses vying for attention, you have a leg up over others. Posts featuring animals are linked to increased engagement in the form of likes and comments. In short, animals and social media are a match made in heaven.
In addition to featuring four-legged friends on your profile, here are a couple of ways to get your social media accounts buzzing.
Change it up.
A steady stream of the same type of content is a bit yawn-inducing. Shake things up with different post types. All it takes is some out of the box content to get your audience’s tails wagging.
Why not use your profile to promote a fun competition? The online learning solution for vets, Vet Education, used its Twitter profile to run a contest. Users had to engage with the profile to enter. The account shared the winners in a congratulatory post.
Another way to keep things interesting is to share success stories. Uplift your followers with an account of a patient that is in good health after a challenging time. The team at Rhinebeck Equine used Facebook to shed a spotlight on a horse they nursed back to health.
Creative content deserves to be seen. Read on to learn how to boost your profiles with a simple tool.
Use hashtags.
Make your posts searchable with hashtags! Adding relevant hashtags to your posts increases your visibility by allowing users who search for that hashtag to stumble upon your profile.
You can utilize hashtags on many platforms, including Twitter and Facebook. But for this example, we’ll use Instagram, the queen of hashtags.
Searching the hashtag #veterinariansofinstagram reveals an array of veterinarians with different specialties and locations.
Some of these posts were shared months ago, but hashtags allowed them to remain relevant and easy to find. Arlington Vet uses multiple hashtags specific to the realm of veterinarians and animal lovers but not so specific that no one is looking them up.
Just make sure to steer clear of banned hashtags and overly broad ones like #love or #animal as your post will be buried under the flood of others using these tags.
2. Boost awareness with features in the local news
Being active online is crucial for building your clinic’s brand. But marketing your veterinary practice requires multiple avenues of promotion. One of these avenues involves getting press coverage from local media sources.
To accomplish this, reach out to reporters and journalists from small news stations in your city. You can ask around your clinic to learn if anyone has connections and can offer you an introduction. Otherwise, you can visit the website of the local newspaper to get contact details.
Next, set up a meeting with a reporter. Offer a story that has an inspiring, interesting, or philanthropic tilt to it. Remember, journalists seek stories that are newsworthy and timely. Take this CNN story about an altruistic veterinarian, for example.
Your story does not have to be this grand. But it should have an interesting element to it that encourages a reporter to run it. If it is truly one of a kind, it could get picked up by a national news station, thrusting your practice in front of a huge audience.
Likely, a local newspaper feature will also come in the form of an online article from the station. The article will mention your proactiveness and link back to it, earning you a backlink. This is a form of digital PR that increases the authority of your practice online. The more backlinks, the more people will see your website. As such, accumulating these is a great addition to any veterinary marketing plan.
3. Invest in SEO for a star practice
Out of all the veterinary marketing ideas on this list, investing in SEO is the most pivotal for your practice’s success. Let’s dive into SEO and how you can implement best practices to better market your veterinary practice.
Search engine optimization (SEO) is the focus on user experience in every aspect of your website. Businesses that focus on SEO implement tactics both on their websites and off-page with things like link building.
The purpose of the many different practices that make up SEO is to signal to search engines that the website is optimized for user experience. In turn, search engines reward sites with higher rankings on the results page. This page placement is vital, considering that organic search (people looking up questions on search engines) is responsible for over half of all traffic to websites.
Since many moving parts contribute to SEO, it can be difficult to know where to begin. Here are three simple ways to optimize your site:
- Diagnose on-page issues that are holding your website back. Technical issues like slow load times and pages that are not mobile-friendly hurt your chances of getting on the first page of search results. Get alerted to these issues with a free tool like Google Search Console. GSC will notify you of issues and offer solutions to help remedy these setbacks.
- Clean up your site, so the content is fresh. Search engines are more likely to rank your website higher when your information is accurate and up to date. Do a digital cleaning of your website to delete old and outdated information and update articles with new data.
- Get SEO help from a plugin. An SEO sidekick is closer than you think. A plugin like Yoast scans your site to make sure technical aspects like website structure are up to par. There are multiple free SEO tools on the market to assist you in your quest for first page rankings.
New to SEO? Build a firm foundation with our beginner SEO checklist.
SEO is one of the most powerful veterinary marketing strategies out there. Pour into this area of your marketing plan to attract people (and their animal companions) to your practice.
4. Connect with local residents using Google My Business
Marketing your veterinary practice to nearby pet owners is simple thanks to a free tool called Google My Business (GMB). To use it, set up a profile and verify your location.
When you set up a full GMB profile, you’re setting up your practice for increased visibility in local searches. A local search is one that includes a specific area. Google inquiries like “pet hospital in Dallas” and “veterinary clinic near me” are local searches that let Google know that the user is looking for closeby results.
To help your practice show up in local results, it’s important to improve your local SEO tactics. This means optimizing your Google My Business profile so that it’s more likely to show up in both Google Maps and the search results page.
GMB is one of the top veterinary marketing strategies for reaching residents. Follow along to see how it works.
When we search “veterinary clinic in Montgomery, Alabama,” three clinics pop up at the top of the results page. What earns these locations top spots? Each of these clinics has a well-optimized GMB profile.
Searching the same term on Google Maps yields these three clinics in top spots. When we click to view the GMB profile for Eastmont Animal Clinic, it is filled with details on hours of operation, pictures, and over 90 reviews.
Profiles with lots of information make it easier for Google to match them with searches. So be sure to fully optimize your GMB profile after setting it up. Then, your clinic will be in prime position to appear for locals in need of a super vet.
5. Get listed in a veterinary directory
Next on the list of veterinary marketing ideas is the humble veterinary directory listing.
It may not seem like much to get your practice name, address and phone number listed in an online directory. But this listing affords your practice a brand mention on another website.
Since search engines learn about your organization by scanning other websites and your own, more mentions across the web increase your credibility. Think of each listing as a recommendation of your website from another website.
Listings differ depending on the directory. The USA Veterinarians Directory features an informational snippet about each clinic along with contact details.
As far as veterinary marketing strategies go, directory listings pack a big punch. This listing provides Mandarin Animal Hospital with local SEO benefits and a brand mention that increases its authority.
6. Raise the woof with content marketing
One of our favorite veterinary marketing strategies boosts SEO and connects your practice with people naturally. It’s called content marketing and typically takes the form of a blog on your clinic’s website.
Picture this scenario to see content marketing at work.
Dale owns a two-year-old Scottish Fold cat that he suspects is overweight. He’s worried about its health, so he goes online and searches, “how can I help my cat lose weight.” On the first page of results, a post from All Feline Hospital appears.
Dale clicks on the article and finds an informative post detailing steps he can take to solve the problem. He decides to implement some of the strategies and now has All Feline Hospital in his mind as a potential clinic to visit when the need arises.
All Feline Hospital ranked on the first page of Google not by chance but by intentional content creation. The SEO-focused efforts drive traffic to the hospital’s website, allowing pet owners like Dale to easily find the hospital.
A great barketing plan is within reach
We hope you found these veterinary marketing strategies useful and informative. Marketing your veterinary practice alone is no walk in the park. Skip the stress by getting help from the professionals.
At Markitors, we take pride in our creative and effective approach to digital marketing. Our technical SEO experts will work behind the scenes to ensure your site is running in top shape. Our strategists will determine what keywords to target in content for your site. All the while, our digital PR team will gather quality backlinks for your website, boosting the prominence of your practice. Learn details about Markitors’ services and how we can move your practice towards its goals. Contact us today!
