The Veterinary Marketing Podcast

This week's episode is a special one for two reasons, first we have Dr. Sue The Cancer Vet on the podcast. Dr. Sue Ettinger is a veterinary cancer specialist, speaker, author & radio co-host focused on early detection & helping pets live longer & live well. You can see her on Facebook and on www.DrSueCancerVet.com and we talk about tons of great marketing tips for both veterinary practices as well as for veterinary professionals looking to build their own personal brand. This episode also marks the 2nd anniversary for the podcast! I've seen Dr. Sue's marketing and I've been wanting to have her on the podcast for a while. In marketing there are 3 groups of people you can target for your potential audience. The first group is those who need something and are actively searching out the solution, this is by far the easiest group to market to. The second group are those who know they need a product or service but aren't actively looking (think people who know their pets need updated vaccines but don't have it on their mind to do it) and then there are people who have no idea that there is a product or service or anything they need done. I think most people in the world don't know that pets can have cancer treatment done, so Dr. Sue has a large task at getting out and educating pet owners. In this podcast we cover everything from how and why she got started to what she has learned along the way. She's been able to build a great community of pet owners and veterinary professionals on her Facebook page, which has almost 30,000 likes. The content and stores she posts are both happy and sad, and one thing I go over with her is how she handles the sad posts, which can be incredibly tough to get out there. I know many times veterinary hospitals don't want to post difficult topics, so we cover how she handles sensitive posts. We also get to cover the topic of hashtags, which Dr. Sue uses in her marketing message. I really enjoyed this interview and I know there are many great insights for anyone who does marketing in their practice. Thank you to everyone who listens to the podcast, and thank you for a great 2 years. Please let me know if I can do anything to help!

Conversion can be especially tricky for veterinary practices. When you have a practice website and mesh it together with all the social media, it can be difficult to turn that attention and traffic into actual clients. In this episode I cover some best practices that will help you to increase conversion. Anytime that you can increase your veterinary practice's conversion any marketing you do will have a better return on investment. Your website is pretty much a multi-tool, kinda like a swiss army knife. It needs to do lots of different things based on what the person using the site is looking to do. Increasing conversion often times simply means making the website or marketing you are doing more user friendly and easier to navigate. Any time that you can make it easier for clients to find information quickly, or reduce the number of steps that a client needs to take you'll be able to see an increase in those actions. An important item to consider when you're looking at your website, or any marketing piece for that matter, should be to think what the purpose or goal you're trying to achieve. Simplifying your pages and marketing pieces so that are trying to achieve just one objective. When you go to the dentist, you're just looking for the dentist to do dental work, if they mentioned you can get an oil change at the same time, you would probably be alarmed. Web pages are the same way and so are marketing campaigns. If you're sending traffic that is trying to convert visitors into clients, sending them to your home page doesn't cut it. Once a person gets to your home page, they have to evaluate your services, your reviews and then figure out how to book an appointment if they have the time to go through the whole process of figuring out if they want to do business with you. A better way is sending a specific targeted flow of traffic to a specific offer that is easy to understand and evaluate and then gives a specific way for your client to opt in. The good and bad part of conversion is that you're never finished! Testing has to continue on and there is always room for improvement. Let me know if you test any of the tips that I cover and how they work for you!

This week, I'm extremely excited to have Dr. Jessica Vogelsang as a guest on the podcast. I am a huge fan of Dr. Jessica Vogelsangs content. Not only does she create great content, but she does it consistently. Today we talk about how she got started creating content, how she started on social media and what she has learned along the way. Dr. Jessica Vogelsang is an author, mother, practicing veterinarian, and medical communicator. After graduating with honors from the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, Dr. V started her award winning website pawcurious.com in 2009 while continuing to work in small animal practice. Currently, she is the Editorial Manager for DrAndyRoark.com, and is also the Author of All Dogs Go To Kevin. In today's episode we go over how Jessica got started with digital marketing and what she has learned since she got started. Originally when she started the web was very different and she was using Typepad to create content. Since then, the tools have come a long way to make it far easier to create and distribute content. Dr. Vogelsang shares her insight in what she thinks veterinary professionals should be doing in content creation, distribution as well as some of her thoughts on new platforms. One of the best pieces of advice I think she gives is finding what you're good at and investing into that. So many people say "Be Everywhere" but sometimes that can be a recipe for disaster. Be sure to listen to the entire episode because there is so much good info. I even talk to her about instant articles on Facebook. The Dr Andy Roark facebook page is the only publisher I know personally who is using instant articles. I've tried setting it up(I think you need a computer science degree) and I've been really really curious to talk about how it has worked for them.

Want your social media marketing to be more effective? This episode is for you and it is on a topic that is near and dear to my heart. Social media is amazing today because it gives you the same tools that Billion dollar corporations have at their disposal. So how do you use social media to reach and convert more of your audience or content consumers into actual clients, that is what we talk about in today's episode. Native advertising or native content refers to advertising or content that is specifically built for a social media platform or a content platform. Whether you're using Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin, Twitter or any other platform that comes along, each places has its own vibe and way people engage with content. Observing and understanding how people use the platforms differently is what helps you to create effective native content and advertising. To understand how to use social platforms you have to be a user and a tester constantly and observe how friends and family use the platforms as well. Once you've understood how platforms work and function differently, you need to identify your target market to create the right market/message match. Different tech skills and demographics make the way people engage with content very different, so keep this in mind. Adding the who and where you create the content allows you to figure out what you create and I cover real life examples of the kind of native content you can create that would bring clients to your practice. Now in the past, traditional marketing would say capture attention and drive traffic to a landing page, but with the tools available you don't have to necessarily do that. That is where native conversion comes into play. Use the tools available to create calls to action that happen within the social media platforms. This takes more work but your conversion should go through the roof! Let me know what you think and if you need any help!

In this episode I cover some of the biggest lessons I've learned in starting and launching a podcast for almost two years. I want to take some time and just say thank you. Thank you for listening, thanks for the great feedback, and thanks for letting an outsider become a part of your industry. When I started I had no experience podcasting, and I have learned so much about marketing and launching consistent content. In fact I think that being in marketing every week has forced me to learn so much than I would have had I not otherwise been doing the podcast. One of the biggest benefits I've gotten from doing the podcast is constantly testing new ideas and tactics. Staying up to date on all the changes that come out from ad platforms and social media can be overwhelming, but if once you have down some basic principles you can figure out how to test all the new ways to attract attention. Digital marketing has come so far in the past two years it is really amazing. What the most effective marketers do is take attention, segment it and deliver up relevant offers. Another big lesson I've learned is how important it is to be patient. Learning marketing takes time and effort and you'll fail a lot, but if you stick with it, you'll learn what works and what doesn't and soon you'll instinctively know what the best ways to reach your ideal client. One of the biggest take aways that I've gotten from the podcast is that you can find your ideal target market and grow that audience if you are consistent and have good intentions. Finding strategic interviews have also been very beneficial in building an audience and I think it is really under utilized as a strategy for veterinary practices. Find people to build your business who can benefit from you and your distribution as well. Again thank you so much for listening and please let me know if I can do anything for you. Getting feedback from listeners is what keeps me going on the podcast, so thank you if you've ever reached out. Again thanks to everyone who has contributed as guests and I'll see you on the next episode!

This is going to sound crazy, but I seriously believe that livestreaming is the most effective marketing strategy that you can do right now for your veterinary hospital. Live streaming has been around for quite a while, initially Meerkat and Periscope were the only options, but Facebook has rolled it out to everyone. In today's episode I show you everything you need to know about how to be a live streming pro! One of the first things I think we should think about before we begin livestreaming is that it is an amazing way to create native content. If you create your streams properly, you'll be able to create content that segments your audience so that you can show them ads and offers around things they want and will be interested in. The benefit of livestreaming right now is that it is EXTREMELY cheap to get paid distribution, and the way that facebook ads work, you can create custom audiences of people who have watched your videos. In fact, you can create audiences segmented by people who have watched at least 10 seconds, 25% 50% or 75%. You can also create look alike audiences based on people who have watched your videos as well. This is an amazing way to identify people who have interest in the content that you're putting out. So before you begin, here are a couple tips. First, make sure you have the pages app. you need the facebook pages app installed on an Apple or Android device which can be a tablet or phone. One thing I highly suggest too is having a clip on wide angle lense. Wide angle lenses will help you to get all the action into your frame, especially if you're in a small exam room. A tripod also helps too. Once you have the equipment you need, make sure to put your phone in do not disturb mode because you won't want your stream interrupted by phone calls. When you're setting up the stream on your device make sure to check in to your location, this will help you to get more relevance when you're doing ad boosts. These live streams help increase engagement right now. Make sure you ave your topic picked out before you start, I like to have 3 parts to my streams an intro, a body and a closing. Please don't forget the calls to action and as much as possible keep your calls to action native. Ask people to engage within the app and figure out how people like to engage and watch your content. Try this out, you won't be sorry you did!

If you take a look at the past episodes I usually talk about activities that you should try out or things to do, today is a little different! In this episode I cover things that you should stop doing in your veterinary hospital's marketing that will help you to be a better marketer. I think whenever possible it is better to remove than it is to add, because you don't have to do more. So when we're talking about removing from things that you're doing in your veterinary hospital's marketing, the biggest mistake I see is connecting social media accounts. The most common offender is the person who links their Twitter and Facebook accounts. The major problem that I see with this is that each social media platform has its own context and format. Being everywhere isn't necessarily better when what you're doing just looks out of place. Your clients and potential clients aren't dying to follow you just because they take their pet to your practice. You need to provide value and native content makes it far more engaging. Along the same theme of not connecting accounts, don't feel like you have to do EVERY social media platform. It would be great if you could create amazing content for all the social media platforms that your clients spend time on, but if you're like most practices, this isn't realistic. Find out where you'll get the most bang for your buck and really master a social network platform so that your practice actually benefits. I know several practices who are just doing one social network and are doing an amazing job at it. Many practices are using adwords or want to be using adwords and I cover one of the biggest problems most people face when setting up their ads. Luckily, this problem is extremely simple to catch, but most people make this mistake. As more practices start doing ads on paid traffic platforms they'll be running into some of the problems that I cover and I give simple things to stop doing to help your ads run better as well. Make your marketing as simple as possible, and if the more tactics that allow you to take away instead of adding to, the easier it will be to implement for you and your veterinary hospital.

Discounting can be quite a trap. If you use discounting in your practice too much, you'll attract clients who only care about price. Competing only on price is a difficult, especially if the digital marketing that you are doing is centered around discounts because it usually attracts the kind of clients you are not looking for. I am by no means suggesting that you price gouge or go crazy on price, but wanting to attract clients who pay you what you feel you're worth is totally understandable. So how do you go about attracting clients without using discounts? In today's episode I cover 5 strategies you can use in your digital marketing that don't include discounting. I think it is important to understand why discounting can be harmful to your practice, and so in the first part of the episode I cover why discounting hurts your brand in general. There have been so many examples of companies competing only on price and I outline a few examples so we can see how this race to the bottom doesn't end well for either of the competing companies. Veterinary practices have more competition than ever, with corporate chains, discount big box stores, amazon, other discount websites and more vets than ever in the industry. There will always be people who are willing to work for cheaper so it is extremely important to find out how to compete on other factors. So how can you compete without going for the easy discount? People will come to your practice for two reasons: Results or Experience. They want a specific result meaning for example they think that you can fix their sick pet, or maybe they know that you are the most caring highest rated vet and they want to be part of that experience. Knowing those two factors play a role in why people want to come to you you can create offers that include the following features too: Specialty Offers: Being the only practice who performs a procedure or has a specialized piece of equipment. Rewards Programs: Offering Rewards instead of discounts, I go over what the difference is Prestige: Appealing to what people care about and making them feel like they are making a difference by going to your practice. Value Ads/Bonuses: Adding value instead of removing cost Specialized Info: Making you the expert in the eyes of the client so that they want to do business with you You can get away from discounting you just need to work at it!

Is your marketing working for your practice right now? This is a key question that you should be asking yourself every time you create a piece of content, an ad or anything for your brand using digital marketing. The good news is digital marketing is easier than ever to measure and track, but are you measuring meaningful data. In this episode we cover what you need to be tracking to make sure that the marketing you are doing is actually having an impact on revenue at your business. There are three levels of data measurement that I cover in today's episode: Top Level, Mid Level and Bottom Level analytics. When you have someone who comes into contact with your brand online, they are at the top of your funnel, having just been introduced to you. Your goal is to bring them through your funnel to the bottom where they can become an actual client and make your practice revenue. Each of these marketing metrics has a place, but ultimately if you want to make a positive financial impact you're going to need to start measuring bottom level metrics so that you can track the impact your marketing is having. Top level or top of funnel analytics are really easy to measure, but don't have any impact on bottom line. Sometimes marketers call these vanity metrics because they're nice to look at but don't mean too much. Top level analytics are things like clicks, likes, shares, bounce rates, time on site etc. These are good indicators for whether or not your marketing is having an impact, and this can be a good baseline for your social media content but you can't keep the lights on with just likes alone, you need people to come into your practice. Mid level analytics are getting more at data that helps you to grow your business. These are data points that help track things that will grow your business over time, but aren't directly linked to revenue. These kinds of things are webinar registrations, lead magnet opt ins, contact us form submissions, newsletter subscribers and things like that. Bottom level analytics are where you start measuring the data that will help determine ROI of campaigns. If you are the owner of a practice or you report to the owner of a practice, these are the numbers that you want to see and show. These will tell you if you're campaigns are making money or if they're losing money. Data points that are on bottom level are things like revenue per lead, conversion rate of leads, average revenue per visitor, average revenue per conversion, average revenue per appointment etc. Sometimes you'll have to layer these analytics together to see the full picture of what is going on within your marketing. Please if you ever need help analyzing campaign data don't hesitate to reach out to me! I love this stuff just email me at >>Brandon@veterinarymarketingpodcast.com

I hear it all too often that practices say they just aren't getting value from the work they they are doing on Facebook. In today's episode, I cover why I think most practices aren't getting the conversion they want, it is because they are stuck in the facebook "friendzone". Maybe you create really great content, but if you don't approach your client or potential relationship with your clients in the right sequence, it will be difficult to turn your practice's page content into people who actually enter into your practice. Using facebook, or any digital marketing for that matter, to create new clients is important. It isn't enough to just create content, the content that you have needs to do drive engagement and create a specific response or result. I think people forget in general that building a relationship with a person online is the same as building a relationship with someone in real life. You need the proper sequence, messaging and context. Just like it would be inappropriate to ask a stranger to marry you, you can't just go online and shout out that people should come to your practice. Unless someone is desperate, the overly direct approach doesn't work. So how do you bridge the gap from stranger to a client? I think you do it with content. Creating a piece of video content, or a blog post is a great first impression and a way to introduce yourself that is very low commitment. The thing that I love about video content these days too is that there are so many new improvements to the way that you can create custom audiences and retargeting audiences. So today I cover one way that I thnk is very effective for creating segmented custom audiences that you can show offers to. I also cover how you should reverse engineer the final result that you are looking for so that you can know how to measure your marketing and ultimately be able to determine if it is effective or not.