The Veterinary Marketing Podcast

Where do I start? That is the biggest most complicated question I get from people who listen to my podcast, and the answer is...it depends. Sorry there is not a blanket answer because everyone is in a different spot when it comes to their practice's marketing. In this week's episode though, I try to give you a framework to work through what you should focus on. I think there are a few main areas that you need to work on: Retention Systems Your Core Offers and Message Your Content Building Awareness For your Practice For rentention systems, these are pieces of content, assets and things that you actually own. For example you email collection systems, your email marketing platform and lists that you have built up are something that you own. People who have never heard of you can't give you their phone number or email address, so this is a group of people who are aware of you and are either considering coming into your practice or have come into your practice. For help with retention systems be sure to check out these other posts: Your core offers and message are what you will be hoping to achieve through your marketing efforts. If you are on social media but you never actually ask people to come into your practice then what is the point? Pet owners need your services, so make it easy on them to come and get them. Being on social media but not developing and pushing out relevant and valuable offers is like being stuck in the "friendzone in a relationship". You can't only be the person who is posting engaging, entertaining and useful content, take it to the next level and give them a reason to come in to the practice. Your content is the next piece of the puzzle that is built around what you'll be offering. Let's say you're a small animal practice, as much as dental health of elephants might be interesting, it isn't really relevant, so don't create content around that. Be relevant to the offers that you have so that you can use your content to segment your clients and potential clients and serve them better. Lastly you should be building awareness. Add some fun in there and ALWAYS be building your audience. Figure out where you want to reach your clients and grow your influence. Find out what works well and do more of it. When you can connect better with your clients and potential clients, when you have offers and events to promote they will be more successful. As always if you need help with anything marketing related send me an email to: Brandon@veterinarymarketingpodcast.com or hit me up on facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/veterinarymarketingpodcast

In today's episode we have a guest, Adam Greenbaum from Whiskercloud.com. He was on just recently on episode 108, but since that episode he's been hard at work compiling tons of data, and the results he found were staggering. One thing that Adam has the ability to do is to take all of the data that comes in and look at large sample sizes to make some pretty reliable conclusions. One thing that surprised him was that over 70% of the traffic to clients' site was mobile! The crazy thing about this is that a vast majority of veterinary practice websites aren't optimized for mobile traffic. This finding means 2 things for you, either you have a huge opportunity or you are going to be left behind in the dust. We take a deep dive into what Adam's case study told him and he gives some really great examples of things you should be focusing on based on this data. We also go over when you need to consider getting a new website for your veterinary practice. So many times, I get people asking me where should I start? I think if you have a solid website in place, that is one thing that can really help to create consistent and scalable growth for your veterinary practice. For anyone reading, having a non mobile responsive website is one factor that I think makes it necessary for getting a new practice website. If you text Veterinary to 44222 I'll send you the mobile responsive test from Google where you can see if your site passes. We also discuss bounce rates, traffic sources and how people interact with your site. As I mention in this episode, you can get a live demo to see how Whisker Cloud works by going to http://www.whiskercloud.com/Brandon . This is an affiliate link by the way, so if you use this link, thank you for supporting the podcast. As always if you have any questions, comments or need help with anything, please don't hesitate to email brandon@veterinarymarketingpodcast.com

Have you ever felt stuck in your practice's marketing? Maybe you're not quite sure what approach you should take with a post, or an ad or maybe you have no clue what you should be doing as a post. In today's episode I cover how to approach marketing so that you don't ever wonder what you should do with your marketing. Today we break down anything you can do in marketing, whether it is creating content, driving traffic to a landing page, boosting a post, creating and sending an email, and show you how to approach it in a simple way. In any marketing or content creation that you are going to do you can really break it into 4 steps. First we need to figure out who you'll be marketing to, then we'll choose what the content that would be appropriate would be. From there, we'll choose the appropriate medium and the correct call to action. Any time you make a piece of content or an ad you are just trying to move a person in a specific direction. When you send an email for example, if you break it down into the most simple elements, it isn't difficult to figure out how to write compelling content that gets people into your practice. In this episode, I also cover what I've been up to in my short break I've taken from the podcast. I really hope to bring you the most value possible with the podcast, and I'll be resuming weekly publishing. I was incredibly busy and I didn't want the podcast to be pushed out just for the sake of publishing. If there is ever anything you need help with, or some topics you would like for me to cover just let me know. Send me a message on my Facebook page or to brandon@veterinarymarketingpodcast.com I really appreciate everyone who listens, and I love hearing from listeners, so don't be a stranger!

I'm so excited to have Dr. Cody Creelman back on the podcast in this week's episode. Cody has been on the podcast 3 other times which has some great topics that we've covered, but today's episode is one of m favorites for sure! Since the last time Cody has been on, Cody has started an (almost) daily vlog nearly a year ago and has been able to grow it in huge ways. For those of you who don't know Dr. Cody Creelman, he is a beef cattle veterinarian and practice owner of Veterinary Agri-Health Services in Alberta, Canada. His veterinary interests include bovine pathology, large animal surgery, cow/calf and feedlot production medicine. Cody is also very passionate about veterinary mobile technology. This includes consulting on veterinary application design projects, as well as digital marketing and social media platforms. Check him out on his website, Twitter(you can see him post his live streams here), Instagram, Snapchat (creelmancody), or YouTube…… he is active on them all! Since starting his Vlog, Cody has been able to get millions of views and has absolutely positioned himself as one of the most visible and expert beef cattle vets in the world. When I saw Cody start, I really didn't think that there was going to be too much potential for direct client acquisition, I figured he would see benefits from being able to hire the best people, and developing his own personal brand, but I couldn't have been more wrong. Creating this amazing content on a regular basis gives Cody so many opportunities to get new clients as well as a bunch of other benefits. Cody shares a bunch of great insight into what is working for him, what kind of equipment he uses and more. This episode is extremely valuable for anyone in veterinary medicine who wants to grow their practice, increase their client base or attract the best staff possible. There is so much opportunity out there for anyone who wants to be visible and document their work. Thanks again Cody for being on the podcast, it has been amazing to see him develop his brand and create a world class vlog. Subscribe to Cody's Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/codycreelman Like Cody's Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/CodyCreelmanCowVet/

Veterinary practices have so much work to do, and often times marketing falls to the back of the list. What most people who teach marketing say to do is to be everywhere and that you need to be doing all kinds of marketing activities to keep up with the times so that you can stay in front of clients. While I totally agree that the more places that you can be the better but I think it is so important to remember why you are doing marketing in the first place, to help reach clients and provide better care. That is what today's episode is all about. Ultimately the marketing that I think you should be doing is the minimum amount to provide the proper amount of context, trust and engagement that allows you to help your clients. I hear all the time from people who work in practices, "I feel terrible I'm not keeping up with my Facebook page" or "I should be doing X, Y and Z" and in today's episode I cover how to approach your practice's marketing so that you can figure out how to have the highest impact with the least amount of work. Many times, you can create high quality marketing pieces without too much effort if you plan it correctly. I dive into the quickest way to turn attention from digital marketing into actual paying clients in your practice. We also go through some of the best ways to create content on the fly while you are doing work in the practice. When you create content it should be done so to funnel your prospective clients into segmented targeted lists so that you can show the appropriate offers and deliver relevant info. I also cover tools and tricks that I've picked up when creating content so that you can do so quickly and easily.

Today's interview is a great one! Whether you own a practice or run the marketing for your veterinary hospital there is a lot of very practical info for you. This week we are luck enough to have DVM and Practice owner Dr. Rachel Kuhn-Siegel on to talk about her experience with Google Adwords. Here is a little background on our guest, Dr. Rachael is the owner and practicing veterinarian at Prairie Animal Hospital. She graduated with her bachelors in Science from Iowa State University, and earned a Doctorate of Veterinary Medicine at Iowa State University's Veterinary College in 2005. After graduation Dr. Rachael practiced veterinary medicine throughout the United States as a Navy wife. In 2011, Dr. Rachael and her family returned home to just outside Peoria, IL to be closer to family. I was able to connect with Rachel through Danielle Lambert's Snout School Social Media group(which you should totally join if you haven't already!). Rachel had been using Google Adwords for her practice and as often happens, Google changed things up. The change came when Adwords stopped serving ads in the right hand column in May of 2016. If you were running ads at all, you likely saw a big drop in traffic unless you were always bidding for the number 1 position. We discuss what Rachel was able to do to turn her campaigns around and start driving traffic in to her practice. One of the best things about this interview I think is that Rachel is a practice owner of a relatively new practice, that is surrounded by tons of competition, so the advice that she shares with us is really valuable. We also cover what her bidding strategy was, how she came up with the specific keyword targets she did and how she managed to track her ROI when it came to her campaigns. This interview is really great and filled with tons of useful, actionable info, so I hope you enjoy! Be sure to say thanks to Rachel for sharing her insights!

SEO is one of those terms that is thrown around all the time, but most people do't actually know what it is or what goes into it. In today's episode we have Adam Greenbaum as a guest, the Founder and Owner of WhiskerCloud.com a custom website developer, among other digital marketing services, that builds beautiful sites for veterinary practices. Talking to someone who builds sites might seem like a weird idea if you're trying to find out about SEO, but it is actually the exact person you would want to speak with if you are trying to get organic search engine traffic. In today's episode we cover a 500 website case study that Adam and his team completed. They dove in head first and went through 500 veterinary practices' websites to see what the state of the average practice's website was. The results that they discovered showed that most practices are way way behind where they should be. Not only do we talk about the most common problems that practices websites have when it comes to SEO we also dive into what SEO actually is. Right now most people have misconceptions of what SEO is, and here is the thing, search engines are getting more and more sophisticated. The search engines know when someone is trying to game the system and un-naturally affect the rankings, so setting up your site the right way the first time is one of the best ways to create good rankings for your site. Not only that, the content strategies that help to build your long tail keyword results aren't the ones that will help to provide you with the large traffic volumes you would get from getting the keywords that are shorter and more commonly searched. Be sure to check out WhiskerCloud.com and if you reach out to Adam, tell him you heard about him through the podcast.

In today's episode we have a very special guest that I am really excited about, Dr Brett Beckman! Today we cover all kinds of topics related to growing your practice. Today's episode is definitely different from other episodes because we dive into not only marketing concepts but business concepts as well. If you haven't heard of Dr. Brett Beckman, he is a well renowned international speaker and operates the Veterinary Dental Education Center in Orlando, (Lake Mary) Florida.This state of the art training facility is one of only a few in the country dedicated to advancing the educational needs of veterinarians and veterinary technicians around the world in the field of dentistry and oral surgery. Dr. Brett Beckman, DVM is a veterinary dental thought leader in your area and sees patients by appointment, Atlanta Georgia, Orlando, Sarasota, Naples, Fort Myers & Punta Gorda, Florida. He is a 1987 graduate of the College of Veterinary Medicine at Mississippi State University. We jump right into to covering what standard of care is, and how current veterinary dentistry standards aren't cutting it. There are so many opportunities today where you can create a situation where you are considered a thought leader and a thought leader in your area. Your practice should have a unique selling proposition, what makes you different, what makes you better or innovative and we cover how you can create that through better service and more services in veterinary dentistry. There are effectively two ways to make more revenue in your practice. You can either sell to more people (IE selling a product to 100 new people) or sell more products to your current clients (IE selling 100 dollars more per client who comes in). Having the skills and resources to be first, better and different when it comes to veterinary dentistry is a great way to stand out from the rest of the practices around you. Be sure to check out the image library that Dr. Beckman is giving away to listeners of the podcast at http://www.veterinarydentistry.net/brandon Today we also cover how Dr. Beckman is able to run his own marketing so well. I am a huge fan of his marketing and he has some amazing advice for anyone who is doing marketing in a practice. Be sure to let me know what you think about today's episode, and as always if you need any help in your practice's marketing, send me a message!

How much are you spending on your veterinary practice's advertising a week. As crazy as it sounds, I know a lot of practices whose digital marketing budget and spend is $0 right now! In today's episode I cover the specific plan that I would implement if someone asked me how I would spend $100 to market their practice. This episode has all the nitty gritty that you would definitely want to know about. One of the major distinctions I think you need to make in your marketing that you might not be aware of is setting your advertising into 3 specific categories. You have awareness, lead generation and then actual sales. Going in straight for the sale on cold traffic(people who haven't heard of you before) is usually a recipe for disaster unless you're giving away a huge value. Often times, that is the reason why people say "social media doesn't work." You're trying to close on the first exposure and you have no context or connection with your potential clients. It might surprise you to know that I advocate the a good portion of your marketing budget simply for distribution on the awareness. On awareness type marketing I cover some specific ideas and examples that I would use. When you're doing awareness marketing it is important to be creating or distributing content that furthers your objective(connecting with pet owners in your area) that will get easy reach. This should definitely be relevant to your audience but not heavy educational material. You're trying to cast a net that is as wide as possible here. The next level of marketing is for lead generation and list building. Building your email list and taking the relationship with your social followers to the next step is so important to growth in your veterinary practice. In order to do this I cover ways you can retarget those who engage with your content that you spent time and energy identifying with your awareness marketing. Finally, once you have some context built up, and relationships established, it is much easier to turn those people into customers who walk through your practice's doors. I talk about ways to turn followers into clients. I also cover how to create a minimum viable product. Web sales can get complicated with creating shopping carts, setting up payment processors and on and on. Getting someone to take action, and get in to your practice doesn't have to be so complicated, but you need to have a process set up before you start running your ads. Social media is the best way to create segmented lists of attention and turn that segmented attention into action. Please let me know if there is anything I can do to help you get more clients!

Today's episode is all about marketing opportunities that arise on a daily basis. The idea in today's episode is that there is always something great going on around you to create awesome, relevant, entertaining and engaging content and offers. What brought on this episode is a lot of practice have been doing a great job at using Pokemon Go as something to drive engagement on Facebook and other social media. There are tons of times you can use Opportunity marketing to gain new clients and grow your veterinary practice's brand. A key consideration before you begin is to stay up to date with what is going on in the world. World events, new technology, news stories are all great examples of opportunities to create marketing campaigns that are relevant. You need to keep in front of your clients as much as possible and by using opportunity you're being relevant and timely so that you don't seem annoying. If you had someone knocking on your door every day asking if you wanted to buy something you'ld probably grow annoyed of them, and in the same way you can promote your veterinary hospital's brand without having to directly be in their face. Sometimes opportunity marketing can go wrong too though. If it is too much of a stretch then it could go very wrong. I saw a real estate company who was using Pokemon Go as a reason why someone should buy a house. The comments were terrible because they were just trying to hop on the bandwagon and use the momentum from the app's popularity. Often times there is so much noise out there, especially with trending items that simply adding to the noise doesn't help at all. Make sure that you have the right intent, to server and provide value to clients and you won't have to worry about being perceived as salesy. I cover many examples of what you can do to create opportunity marketing and what stages of the client funnel you should use each example for. As always, be sure to let me know if you have any questions or comments!