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4 Ways to Successfully Promote Your Veterinary Practice

by easyDVM

When promoting your veterinary practice, you’ll want to set some predetermined goals. More importantly, you’ll want to be able to measure your results.

Whether you’d like to increase the number of clients coming through the door or build a positive reputation in your community, there are plenty of cost-effective promotional tactics.

4 Ways to Successfully Promote Your Practice

To stand out from your competitors, show your clients that you are a credible and valued practice. When you market your veterinary practice effectively, you can keep your current clients happy and attract new business.

In order to do so, here are some top tips to reach your marketing goals.

1. A locally targeted blog

When it comes to the online world, content is king. If you already have a following, blog posts will provide your audience with information about your practice. Also, when you provide informative, useful content, you will develop a relationship with new potential customers.

While writing content, be mindful of SEO. Since you will want to reach those within your community, focus on a local perspective. As your local audience connects with your posts, they’ll be more likely to share — expanding your reach to more local residents. These posts will then bring more traffic to your site and, in turn, increase local awareness.

Top tip: Research local keywords using Buzzsumo and mention upcoming events in the area.

When it comes to your audience, it’s easier to get your preexisting clients to come in more often than to get new clients to come in. In that sense, focus on those who currently follow you on your social media outlets. Use these platforms as tools, consistently posting fresh, engaging content.

Top tip: Run a contest on your Instagram, Facebook or Twitter page, asking your clients to post a photo of their pet and tag your practice. You can either draw for winners using a random winner generator, such as RandomPicker, or create your own contest rules. (Keep in mind that some social media sites have contest guidelines, so be aware of the legal requirements before posting.)

3. Email marketing

When your clients first register at your practice, offer an option to receive updates and news regarding anything from pet health to exciting promotions. Collecting your clients’ email addresses is a golden opportunity to send information and reminders once or twice a month. This will help you build a rapport with your clients.

Top tip: Provide value in your emails, focusing on topics such as pet health. At the bottom of the email, send a reminder about their next wellness visit. With the permission, you can even send out another client’s success story. To simplify this process, an automatic email reminder will ensure consistency.

4. Reputation management

Last, but certainly not least, you need to make reputation management a top priority. What people say about your veterinary practice will influence the decisions of those in your community. Be aware of which websites you’re featured on, and develop a five-star rating.

Since your customers are bringing in their pets, they’ll want to be confident in their decision. Having a great reputation will encourage new business.

Top tip: Politely ask your regular clients to leave an honest review online, based on their experiences. If you have built up an email list, send a direct link to simplify the review process.

Introducing EasyDVM

Although you will want to be hands on in terms of client interactions, you do not have time to organize every minor task and detail. This is why easyDVM, a software that offers a wide range of practice management features, was created.

Whether you opt to run a client loyalty rewards program or would benefit from an automatic email reminder delivery system, this all-in-one software is the solution.

EasyDVM Practice Software is a cloud-based veterinary practice management software system. We pride ourselves in offering a system that is user-friendly, easy to learn for new team members, full-featured and elegant in its simplicity. Best of all, all devices, multiple users, all your clients and patients, always affordable.

Sources

https://www.shortstack.com/is-your-facebook-contest-legal-infographic/

http://buzzsumo.com/

http://www.veterinarypracticenews.com/7-low-or-no-cost-marketing-strategies-for-your-vet-practice/

10 Best Marketing Tips for Veterinarian Practices

by easyDVM

Word-of-mouth once created extreme demand for exceptional veterinarians. Today, amplifying your message and building a strong local presence are needed to increase foot (and paw) traffic to your practice.

Here are 10 tips to keep your lobby full:

1. Make Sure Your Practice Is Top-Notch

Lots of competition exists. Not only are there more vets than ever, but there are also pet vaccine clinics and large pet retailers. Review your location, your hours, your pricing, administration and your pet care. Lacking in any area? Fix it before expanding promotions. If scheduling or recordkeeping are issues, veterinary software will make you more efficient. The convenience of practice hours can be troublesome, so consider adding one late night per week.

2. Formulate a Goal and Strategy

What do you want to accomplish? How can you get there? Consider how you do things now and what works well. Promotions that target current clients are successful and cost-effective since these people already know and like you. Supercharge your use of client mailers and your newsletter. (You do have one, right?)

3. Encourage Word-of-Mouth

Today’s loving and savvy pet owners research well before trusting someone with their furry friends. They’ll ask friends for recommendations and read online reviews before calling for an appointment. Be sure to ask current clients to leave reviews on your website, Google or social media accounts. Offer them a discount for referring friends or family. Surprise good customers with a gift card for a local pet store. You can bet they’ll tell their friends.

4. What’s in It for Them?

Focus marketing on the benefits to your clients and their four-legged friends. Tell them about your friendly team, your newly extended hours, cage-free boarding or affordable rates. Why should they do business with you?

5. Keep Your Message Simple

Figure out your message and stick to it. Keep it simple, easy to remember and effective. Something along the lines of “Jones Animal Hospital: We love your pets like you do!”

6. Use Calls to Action

Your marketing should include a call to action. Even if you are voted Best Vet in Miami, a vet offering a promo discount for new clients will likely attract more of them. Use your status, but give them a reason to call for an appointment right now: “We were voted Best Vet in Miami, and we’ll give you $25 to found out why this week.”

Sponsor photo contests for “best smile,” “laziest pooch,” “most curious cat” or “playful pups,” and watch your fan base grow rapidly. Post links to blog posts offering tips about keeping pets safe on the Fourth of July, or how to keep them parasite free. Offer incentives to current clients who enter their pets in the contest, in addition to a gift for the winners. Promote services sparingly, but give them lots of information, great pictures and stories about your pet clients or your team.

8. Donate Products or Services

Animal rescue groups are always in need of pet food and other supplies. Donate these yourself, or set up a donation area at your office. You might also consider volunteering to treat injured or ill animals that are rescued. Animal lovers know which vets in town are kindred spirits!

9. Special Events and Collaborations

Hosting workshops about caring for a new puppy or leash training a dog will draw lots of pet lovers. How about a picnic or holiday celebration to thank your clients, or an open house to show off your new facility? Collaborate with related businesses and do cross-promotions.

10. In-Practice Marketing

Promote your services on your lobby walls and treatment rooms, or pin flyers to a bulletin board in your waiting area. Let people know how you are different from other vets in town.

Use these tips to brainstorm ideas for your practice, and contact us for veterinary software programs to streamline administration and boost profits.

Sources:

How to Get More Clients at Your Veterinary Practice

by easyDVM

The sustainability of a veterinarian business is critical, particularly where there is competition. One of the key elements of a sustainable business plan is attracting and retaining clients. Here’s how to
attract those new clients and keep them so you have the edge over competitors.

Word of Mouth Works

One of the best ways of getting new clients is through the quality of the work you do, which can help you get recommended by existing customers. If your clients are happy with the care you give to their pets, they will recommend you to others. As a business, you can build on that feedback by setting up a reward scheme. When an existing client recommends a new one and they use the service, give them a discount on vaccinations or treatments. Another good loyalty scheme is to offer discounts to senior citizens, many of whom have pets as companions.

Use the Web

The internet is a gold mine for advertising and attracting customers. Make sure your website is up to date and the contact details are correct. By having web pages or a blog with search engine-optimized content, you can attract new clients searching for veterinarian care online. Don’t forget to use social media to attract new customers, too. A Facebook or Twitter account is an excellent way of raising the profile of your business, highlighting issues such as vaccination requirements, seasonal hazards for animals and more.

Give a Prize and Network

Getting involved in a local fundraiser by donating a prize or offering to judge a pet show is another way of publicizing your business and attracting clients. It helps raise the profile of the veterinary clinic and gets your name known on a wider field. Community events are also great for networking and sharing ideas, which may also help grow your business.

Using Veterinary Software Programs

Having a reliable veterinary software system in place is vital. This enables a clinic to track clients, send reminders and collect data on trends. It will produce information essential to the smooth running of your business and enable you to identify areas for development. Investing in veterinary software like easyDVM veterinary software also helps you keep accurate records and provide an efficient service that attracts clients. Software with up-to-date information can help you personalize your service, which can help make clients feel remembered and looked after.

Find the New Residents

Most towns have construction developments these days and there are always new people moving in and out of an area. You can use these opportunities to partner with a real-estate company to offer a discount to new residents, several of whom are likely to have pets and will be looking for a new veterinarian. Check out any pet-friendly hotels in your area and give contact details should a guest need assistance with a sick animal.

Use Print Advertising

Check out your area for local newspapers, particularly those that are free. Make sure you have a regular advertisement, as these attract customers. You can also offer a pet-focused column to the editor containing useful tips for animal owners. This can bring in new clients to your business and help raise the clinic’s profile.

There are many ways of attracting new clients in a veterinary business. By implementing a few tried-and-tested schemes, you’ll see your business grow.

Should I Open My Own Veterinary Practice?

by easyDVM

Opening your own veterinary practice gives you a lot of control over your career, but some vets are happy to remain associates in existing practices. The right choice for you depends on what you want out of your career. Let’s take a look at the benefits and drawbacks of each option to see which is right for you.

Why Open Your Own Veterinary Practice?

Veterinary practice owners often have more control over their working lives than vets who work as employees in practices owned by other people. When you own the practice, you can determine the opening hours of your practice, as well as choosing the layout and decor of your working environment. Feeling that you have chosen to come into work every morning can make a huge difference to your state of mind, as you will feel in control of your life. You may also feel more invested in the practice and feel as though you are working toward an important goal.

Why Remain as an Associate?

Associate vets often have a better work-life balance than practice owners. Although they may in theory have less control over their working hours, they often work fewer hours in total. Whereas practice owners must do everything it takes to keep their practice running, including solving any crises that occur, employees are only obliged to work their contracted hours. When you go home at the end of the day as an associate, you can stop thinking about work, whereas a practice owner is responsible for planning the long-term future of their business.

Which Is Better for You as a Veterinarian?

Choosing to remain an associate doesn’t mean you aren’t committed to your career. Some veterinarians choose to forgo practice ownership so they can spend more time reading the latest medical journals and developing their medical skills. On the other hand, practice owners get a wider view of pet care, as they interact with pet owners, insurance companies, and the regulations that govern the industry, as well as the animals themselves. Which option is best for your career? It depends whether you want to focus purely on medicine or explore other areas of running a veterinary business. This is a very personal choice, so take some time to think through which aspects of your job you most enjoy before making the jump into practice ownership.

Which Option Is More Financially Rewarding?

Practice owners have a greater potential to increase their earnings than associates, but they also risk losing money. As an associate, you may enjoy the stability of taking home a fixed salary every month, or you may aspire to build a business that provides you with long-term financial security. If you have access to enough capital to start your own practice, you could create a highly profitable business that gives an excellent return on your initial investment.

Should You Open Your Own Veterinary Practice?

Opening a veterinary practice is a great option for many people, but before you jump into this option, it pays to do your homework. Take the time to learn the business skills you’ll need to manage your practice, such as marketing, accounting and managing practice budgets. Think carefully about what you want from your veterinary career. Are you an ambitious entrepreneur who craves control or an associate who simply wants to care for animals while maintaining a healthy work-life balance?

Worried about the transition from Paper-based to Paper-less Veterinary Practice Software?

by Sam D Meisler DVM

Worried about the cost and expense of a transition from paper to paperless? This is a very valid concern and there are many things to consider. First, how will the transition take place. In going from paper-based medical records to paper records, we recommend proceeding slowly.

Once you have decided on a veterinary practice management software provider, the first thing to do in the initial set up after getting your basic business information in (ie. name, address, logo, sales tax percentage, etc) is to load up your prices for services and products. Most providers will allow you to put all of your prices onto a spreadsheet like Excel and they will then
load them into their software database. Or you can enter them in one by one.

Next, take a good hard look at all those shelves or filing cabinets full of paper medical records. Converting them to your new veterinary practice management software system is a daunting task. Yes, you could pay a third party to come onsite and scan in all the thousands of patient records into i
ndividual pdf files for an exorbitant fee. Then you could upload them all one-by-one into the software wasting hours and hours of your staff’s time. Instead, we suggest that this is a great time to clean house. Instead of converting every medical record, take this opportunity to purge records.
The best way to do this is when you are ready to start using your new system, enter client and pet information into the computer only as those particular clients come in for services. You could also save time, if you have scheduledappointments, by entering client and pet information into the system the night before. Scan the old paper records into a pdf file at the same time. Many veterinary practice management software systems have a client registration screen where the client can do all the work for you by entering their current information directly into an iPad. When the client comes in, give them the iPad to enter their information. After a year of doing this, you can slowly purge that huge mess of paper medical records. And in time, you can slowly move the old paper records of clients no longer using your services to the back room for storage.

Above all, make the transition super easy on you and your staff. And use a veterinary practice management software system that is as easy to use as ordering something from Amazon.

Online Reviews – Aaaaaagh!

by Sam D Meisler DVM

Online reviews are here to stay and you as a practice owner have to figure out what to do about them. First of all, what are they good for? If you have good reviews, they can serve to bring in new clients (if they are read). Even better, they raise your practice website’s ranking on search engines like Google. The more in-links that you have, the better your website will rank.Bad reviews, on the other hand, can be disastrous. If you are one of those practice owners who have just been quietly going about your daily activities without checking review sites, you may be vulnerable to attack from a bad reviewer. If you have been thinking that everything will work out fine simply by providing great service, watch out. You and I both know that in practice, even when we do our best, we occasionally come across that one client that does not connect with us or one of our associates. In today’s times, this does not result in a simple parting of ways. It often results in a bad online review.

Step One. Open Your Eyes.

“Your customers are talking about you – and the whole world is listening.” writes Kermit Pattison in the NY Times. He recommends monitoring your online reputation at various review sites like yelp and citysearch. You can also set up a Google Alert to alert you everytime your practice name is mentioned on the web.

Step Two. Take Defensive Steps.

Take care of every dissatisfied customer; train your staff to notify you within 2 hours or less when they have an interaction with a customer who is not happy. A quick phone call from you or someone designated by you may head off a bad review. Remember that most online reviews are either made by extremely satisfied customers or extremely dissatisfied customers. So if all you do is call the unhappy client and just listen to them, you may move them into the more complacent although “still dissatisfied” category from the really angry “I’m so dissatisfied that I’m gonna trash you all over the web” category.

Step Three. Be Proactive.

Yes, if you provide really great service, you create clients who want to help you succeed and who would be willing to write great reviews of your hospital based on the experience that they have had with you. You still, however, can not sit back and wait for this to happen. You need to encourage your clients to write reviews. You can do this by including links to various review sites on your website or on a handout that you give to clients as they leave your hospital. Note some review sites may frown on this; check the site’s rules to make sure.

As I said before, the clients who write reviews are not a genuinely representative sample of your client base’s opinion of you; they usually represent the extremes. This may change in the future but at the moment, that is the way it is.

Andrew Gruel, owner of the SlapFish restaurant chain, (see the New York Times Article, A Bad Review is Forever: How to Counter Online Complaints, by Constance Gustke) responds to all reviews good and bad. And he begs customers who gave poor reviews to give the restaurant a second chance.

What not to do.

Do not “astroturf” review sites. This means do not have your employees write false reviews of your hospital to make you look good.

Do not get on the review sites and make “defensive” or “offensive” replies or posts to negative reviews. Be respectful if you are allowed to reply to a comment, identify who you are and give out facts only.

Do not keep your head in the sand and hope you won’t be a victim of a bad review.

Tag: marketing

4 Ways to Successfully Promote Your Veterinary Practice