Tag: reputation

Diamond in the Rough: Making Your Veterinary Practice Stand Out

by easyDVM

Veterinary practices today operate in a highly competitive market. To attract new clients to your practice and retain existing ones, you not only have to provide a good service, but also convince clients that your practice offers greater value than all the others in your local area. If you are struggling to get enough business while other practices in town hog the limelight, use these tips to polish your practice’s marketing until it shines like a diamond.

Upgrade Your Website

When pet owners look for a local veterinary practice, they often turn to search engines to find out what their options are. If your website sits low in the rankings for key search terms, such as “vet [your local area],” people may not know your business exists at all. In this case, adding keyword-rich content to your site in the form of a blog could help to raise your site’s search ranking.

What if your website ranks highly, but still fails to bring in much business? In that case, you need to consider whether the content on your site is doing its job correctly. Does your website clearly state your location, opening hours and the services you offer? Most importantly, does it provide easy ways for clients to get in touch, such as a contact form, phone number and email address? Making communication as easy as possible could help to ensure your business is the practice of choice for pet owners who are new to the area.

Network Online and Offline

Building connections with the local pet-owning community can help you attract and keep customers. You can stay in touch with clients by inviting them to connect with your practice on social media, where you can share tips on pet care, pictures of your team and updates on the latest services your practice offers. However, even in today’s digital age, it is important not to underestimate the importance of real-world interactions. Increase your community presence by attending community events or giving talks about pet care and veterinary careers at local schools.

Partner With Local Businesses

Local businesses that cater to pet owners, such as pet stores, professional dog walkers and grooming services, can put you in touch with new clients. Research the pet-related businesses in your local area and approach the most popular ones with an offer to partner up. For example, your practice could hand out discount vouchers for a local pet store, encouraging your customers to buy their pet food and accessories from that business. In exchange, the store may allow you to place advertising materials for your practice in their store. Building relationships with businesses that pet owners already rely on is a great way to boost your brand’s reputation and attract new clients to your practice.

Deliver Outstanding Service

All the marketing tricks in the world won’t help you build a loyal client base if you can’t deliver a good service. Be sure to schedule plenty of time for appointments, so your veterinarians can take the time to make pets comfortable and build a rapport with owners. Use veterinary software programs to eliminate billing errors and other admin-related issues. Finally, always ask clients for feedback, as this can help you to identify problems with your service and address them to ensure your practice is truly outstanding.

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.

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.”

7. Build Social Media Pages With Unique Content

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.

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:

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.

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.