The Veterinary Marketing Podcast

In today's episode, we cover some often overlooked targeting options for Google Adwords. I also explain Youtube's onsite director, where you can get a free 30-second commercial that is professionally made, Click Here For This. I've spoken tons about custom audiences and retargeting audiences on Facebook, but haven't spoken much about Adwords. Many of the things I talk about in today's episode aren't new to Adwords, but I haven't spoken about hem yet. Adwords is very different from Facebook and other social ad platforms because you have many different ad types. The two primary ad types are display network and search network. So you have people who are consuming content (video, written content, news etc) or you have people who are actively searching, and sometimes a combination of both (a person who searches for a youtube video and you show up in their pre-roll ad.) The way that clients and potential clients are very different based on what action they are taking and what ad type you are using. Even within search network, when people are googling they can be searching for brand info, transactional searches or informational searches. That being said, make sure you are creating ads so that they engage in the correct way based on what activity their activity is. For any ad, choosing the correct ad type is only the first step, you then have to choose the correct audience, and this is what we dive into today. Adwords has custom audiences and remarketing audiences that you can use to create really detailed customer lists to show your ads to. The audiences that we cover are: -Affinity audiences -Website Re-targeting Audiences -Customer Lists -Youtube Enagement Lists -and similar audiences as well If you are actively working to drive traffic to your veterinary practice's offers you should be comparing traffic costs and cost per results. You might be surprised that Google is cheaper and has a better ROI than what you're currently testing.

Chatbots are back!!! Everyone stop what you're doing and go to Manychat.com and authorize the app for your veterinary practice now! Seriously, go and do it, it is free to sign up. Earlier this year, Facebook froze the chatbots for new users, so unless you had already signed up for Manychat or a similar program you were locked out. Luckily, Facebook just opened ManyChat back up for everyone. So what are messenger bots? Why Should you care? In the simplest terms, messenger bots are like fancy email responders, if emails got 90% open rates and were easy to use to create logic based responses. Messenger is seriously one of the most amazing mediums to market and engage on. You can create tools to create subscribers that are super frictionless, you can engage with multiple content types and you can talk to your clients at scale. In today's episode, I cover some best practices for messenger, why you should care about messenger, some marketing ideas, and best practices. I also walk through all of the Manychat features and explain their functionality. Consumers are wanting to get answers to their questions immediately. We are in the era of one click to buy your same day delivered items, and it is only going to get faster and faster. Just because you're a veterinary practice doesn't mean that the way you engage with clients and customers will be any different. You've got to adapt to the times and ways that your clients want to engage or you're going to be left behind. Chat bots let you do that by creating systems that can do most of the leg work and segment people into the right buckets. Once someone has gone through the proper channels and identified themselves as someone who needs to be spoken to, then you can take your time to engage, but it will have positive ROI for you and your practice. Get on the chat bot bandwagon before it gets crowded, there is so much opportunity here!

In the previous two episodes of the podcast we talked about first if you should start a podcast for your veterinary practice and then we talked about the technical nuts and bolts how to start a podcast. In today's episode, I talk about the best ways to get your podcast out there. Podcasts work great as a top of funnel content and because that is the case, it is important to consider how you'll engage your audience. You'll likely want to use the recorded audio to create blog posts around because it can be used for social media, email newsletters as well as give you organic traffic benefits as well. Since you'll be using this content to engage and bring awareness and education to your clients, you'll want to re-market heavily to your audience based on what they're interested in. Use the content as a means to segment your audience and create retargeting lists. One of the drawbacks of podcasting is that you don't get too much data from hosting services about downloads, how long your audience listens and what your subscriber numbers are. As we covered last week, iTunes and Google play are just really feeds that pull data from your hosting, so they don't provide insights. That being said, putting your content on your own channels or turning them into video clips as well can give you more meaningful data. A quick tip for creating your data on your website is to use naming conventions so that you can topically sort your content and create retargeting lists automatically. If you put certain words in the URL that are always related to a certain topic you can have your re-targeting list automatically add that topic, this is done by setting rules within your audiences section in Facebook's ads manager. Along with talking about different ways to partner with brands who can help grow your audience, I cover some of the best ways to target potential subscribers and talk about strategies for growing your subscribers through iTunes and Google Play. I also go into what you should do when trying to take your subscribers through your funnel. If you have any questions or comments let me know!

So you've decided that podcasting would help your veterinary practice, or maybe you haven't, in that case, it is important you listen to part 1 of this podcasting series, you can listen here: Should You Start A Podcast For A Veterinary Practice. Once you figure out what your podcast is about and that you're going to create one the next step is to start the content production. I'd like to mention that technical part of starting a podcast isn't the hard part, it is coming up with the details of your show I describe in part 1 of the series. Make sure you've figured out those important details before you move on. Podcasting really comes down to a few parts: Come up with your idea Record the content Edit your content Master your files Upload and publish your content Promote and distribute Recording your content needs to be as easy as possible based on your show goals. Are you looking to have a really polished, finished product or are you looking for an informal Q&A show? The answer to that question determines the level of equipment you'll need to invest in. My suggestion for 99% of the people listening here is to get started with a simple usb setup like a Blue Yeti or Snowball or an Audiotechnica ATR-2100. You don't want to have to mess with a mixer because that adds layers of complexity. If you're on the go when creating your podcast a Rhode lavalier mic or a Zoom H4N recorder is a great option. Recording and editing can happen on the device if it is recorded on a mobile device or if you're using a USB mic, then you'll want to use a program like Audacity, a free audio editing software. PRO-Tip: Make sure you're consistently the same distance from your mic when you're recording, this will give you a more consistent sound. Once you export your media, you can then upload it to a mastering software like Auphonic. Auphonic helps you to create consistent volume levels throughout the podcast so people don't have to have very loud or quiet sections. After mastering your media, you have a finished product! Great work, now you need to upload it to your podcasting hosting. You'll want to use hosting because if you have any level of downloads, the bandwidth requirements could really slow down your production. Next week we'll talk about distribution and promotion, which includes how to get your podcast on iTunes and Google play. If you have any questions be sure to reach out and send me a message!

Have you ever thought about starting a podcast? I've spoken to a lot of veterinarians who have said they've been thinking about starting one for a while, so I figured I'd help them out. This episode is the first in a series on how to create a podcast for your veterinary practice. In this episode, we cover the general items you should consider before starting a podcast. First, why should you even care about podcasting? I think that it has a bunch of advantages as a content type(obviously). First, I like podcasting because there is a HUGE number of users who consistently search out and engage with content. It is a medium that gives more context to the audience because they hear your voice. You're a voice that is showing up consistently and as a result, the audience bonds well with you. Some of the biggest benefits of podcasting are: You gain credibility and clients will be better educated You can create content around offers and use the podcast episodes to segment your audience If you like speaking more than writing of being on video it helps Your content can be short or long form and it doesn't have to have tons of production It is a different medium and if you have a list of subscribers it helps to diversify your audience and traffic I think podcasting really comes down to 4 steps. First, you need your show idea, and how you're going to run your episodes. I really suggest that if you're going to start that you commit to 10 episodes. Once you've figured out what you're going to do you have to create the content (this is going to be next episode) and then publish the content and distribute it. Podcasting is still one medium that has room for significant growth, so we're still "early" in my opinion. That combined with the importance of voice search and content in the future, I really think there is tons of upside.

Today's episode is very important if you use Facebook for your veterinary practice's marketing efforts. Back in January, the massive drop off in organic reach happened but that is only the beginning. There have been massive changes that have been happening in the paid ads department as well with Facebook. If you have been noticing recently, Facebook has been in the news a bunch because of the 2016 election and the run-up to the election, and as a result, there are a ton of policy changes that have been coming out. I think that we're only seeing the beginning of the end of the "wild west" that Facebook's ad platform has been. Even though Facebook is taking away data and insights that have been available in the past, I think that we still have an amazing opportunity to reach and educate clients like we've never had before( and likely won't get again). With all that being said I think it is extremely important that as marketers on Facebook, we approach our ads and marketing from the position that the rules could change at any time and it could go away at any time. The truth is, if you don't own the media, it could go away. To help ease your worries about this potentially scary truth, I cover what is working now, how to approach your marketing and ways to mitigate having all of your eggs in the "Facebook" basket. Ultimately, I think that these changes will be helpful because it will make the platform as a whole better. As long as people keep using Facebook to the scale that they do I think it will continue to be a great way to reach your clients.

Youtube is a beast of a platform. It is the second largest search engine and nearly 5 billion videos get viewed... EVERY DAY. Why is youtube so hard for veterinary practices to use tactfully then? If you've tried out youtube for your veterinary practice, you've probably felt some frustration, and in today's episode, we talk Youtube as it relates to generating new clients for your veterinary practice or to develop your personal brand. The way I see it, there are really 2 different approaches when it comes to Youtube. First, there is the keyword target strategy. In this strategy, you try to reach people who are searching on Youtube with relevant search terms and video content. This is like the SEO version of reaching potential clients. This is beneficial for practice because you can try to reach people who are searching for info relevant to pet owners-your target demo. The difficulty here is that Youtube is an international platform and it is tough to rank your videos when you're a small channel. We'll talk more about that in just a minute. The second approach you can use on Youtube is to reach people who are frequently using the platform as a medium to engage with and consume content. Here established brands and content creators produce content regularly and their audiences consume it here. With this strategy, our goal is to reach people by showing up in suggest videos and try to piggyback off of established channels' audiences. If you're looking to produce content regularly, create a more personal brand or give more context to your audience by creating something like a vlog then this is definitely a good approach. In today's episode, I cover some of the best practices you should set up for your Youtube channel and we go over how to approach your targeting strategy. I really love Youtube as a medium and I think there is so much opportunity for veterinary practices here. Let me know what you think, and if you are a veterinary practice, be sure to comment with your channel URL below.

Adwords are a no-brainer for nearly every veterinary practice. Your clients and potential clients are out there searching right now for veterinary services all you have to do is get your ads out there in front of the right target market. In fact, if you are slow or having trouble getting people in the door, I think AdWords are one of the easiest ways to get people in the door quickly. In today's episode, we're going to be covering five really simple and implementable things you should do to help increase ROI and effectiveness of AdWords in your veterinary practice. Best of all, these tips are really simple to use. First, one common mistake I see often is that practices aren't dayparting their ads. Dayparting is when you run campaigns and ad sets for specific timeframes throughout the day. Let's say for example you're only open from 7am to 5pm, if you and the staff aren't there to perform services and take calls the ads that you're running at that time probably won't be effective. Make sure that your ads correspond with when you're open, especially if you're running on a limited budget. You want to have the highest chance of getting someone who will bring their pet to your practice. The next concept I cover is using Adwords express VS standard Adwords. Although it sounds appealing to use AdWords express I feel that having additional control is more important. Fight the urge to let Google tell you what to be advertising on, especially if you have a limited budget. It is easy to go down a rabbit hole of broad match words that aren't the right fit when you can target more transactional phrases that will convert to actual clients. In this episode, I also cover AdWords callout extensions and explain how they can help you convert more impressions into clicks. You get to have your ad take up more space, and you allow the potential client to pick what they are interested in. An important aspect of callout extensions is to make sure that the specific services you advertise point to a page that is related to that callout. One common mistake I see with many veterinary practices AdWords accounts is that they create one campaign, one ad set and then they stuff every possible keyword or too many keywords for that matter into the ad set. This ends up diluting the ad set and decreases click-through rates and relevance for the ad. I suggest making smaller ad sets so that you can more closely track keyword performance and optimize ads so that you improve ROI. The last item that I talk about is making sure your Analytics and AdWords are connected so that you can get greater insight into what the traffic is doing once they click through. If you're going to be paying for traffic, it is important to know what is happening when they get there. If you have any questions or need help with your digital marketing, please don't hesitate to reach out. Also remember to join my Facebook Group: Veterinary Marketing Nerds.

In today's episode I cover custom audiences, one of the most important ad tools that you can use to grow your veterinary practice's marketing work even better. In marketing you have really only 2 parts to put together, you have the offer/product/content and you have the audience. The audience is very important because it makes up half the equation, and if you get the audience wrong, the offer or the content won't work. In previous episodes, we've talked a lot about targeting options, and targeting is a tool that I love to use with my ads, however, custom audiences (which is what today's episode is all about) allows you to reach people with a lot more engagement, intent or interest within Facebook and Instagram. So how do you use build and use custom audiences? That is what today's episode is all about. First, to get to the place where you can build a custom audience, you need to get into Facebook and go to ads manager. From ads manager you can click the drop down and get into Audiences. The types of audiences that I cover in the episode today are: Customer files: your current client lists. You can do additional segmentation here. I love working with this list. Website Traffic: here you can create lists of people who spend time on specific pages of your site or based on how much time users spend on your site Offline activity: This is where people are actually coming into your practice. You can use practice management software or pixels, and in the episode I talk about a strategy that I think is AMAZING Engagement: This is segments of people who interact with content or business pages specifically within Facebook and Instagram. This is how you keep your engagement up and running even after the Facebook Algorithm Change. If you are considering running ads to distribute your content or pay for ads, then today's episode is going to be really helpful. Let me know what you think! Send me a message and don't forget to subscribe in iTunes or Google Play!

Mobile marketing is becoming more important than ever because of changes that are happening to social media platforms, search engine algorithms and increasing ad prices. Today we have Dr. Stacee Santi from Vet2Pet on the podcast to discuss how she has designed an app to help increase client compliance in practice. It is a great interview and it is well timed because Dr. Santi has just released her 2017 Loyalty report. For those of you who don't know Dr. Santi, Dr. Stacee Santi graduated CSU in 1996 and began her veterinary career in Portland Oregon at a 13-doctor ER hospital. In 2002, she accepted a position at Riverview Animal Hospital in Durango, Colorado and began managing the hospital in 2007. Being a veterinarian herself, she knows the challenges the industry faces to stay connected to clients. In 2013, Dr. Santi founded Vet2Pet and began working on new contemporary strategies to connect with clients… the first being the custom veterinary app. Apps for small businesses definitely came into fashion around 2014, but back when they first came out, they were primarily built as re-skinned mobile versions of websites that didn't have much functionality. In today's episode, I ask Dr. Santi what she thinks makes an app work inside a practice and some of the key features she has included in her app based on the data that she has collected. A few of the features we really dive into are the selfies that clients can send, which I think is a brilliant marketing idea, reminders, push notifications and loyalty aspects the app can deliver. I love push notifications because it is getting increasingly more difficult to reach clients. When you can send out a notification that is going to actually get read by your client, that is a very strong marketing medium. I think it is also great that you can fill prescriptions and book appointments directly from the app. If you have any questions you should definitely check out Dr. Santi's Facebook page here