Why do my veterinary clients do less when I talk more?

by easyDVM

Starting a new veterinary practice involves lots of decisions and lots of work. What type of building is best? Which location is perfect? Is cloud veterinary software better than a program on your own server? One of the most time-consuming but critical elements to creating a successful practice is forming sold veterinarian/client/patient relationships. These relationships are key to the best care for your patients, as well as follow through on the part of their owners.

While most veterinary doctors think that lengthy explanations spur their clients to follow through on their guidance, research tells us that is not the case at all. In fact, research has shown that the more a veterinarian talks, the less likely compliance will follow. Specifically, the more we deliberate about a decision, the less likely we are to make a decision at all.  Decisions are made emotionally. So, how do you ensure that your clients follow through for healthier pets?

How do People Make Veterinary Decisions?

Knowing what we do about clients tuning out long-winded veterinarian guidance, it points out that their decision-making process differs from what is expected. In fact, most people make decisions about their pets based on emotions rather than logic. Given how much people love their pets, this is likely understandable.

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So, veterinary practices need to be cognizant of emotional elements of the veterinary-client relationship, like these:

  • First impressions – The initial meeting of a client is crucial. While you are examining their beloved pet, they are sizing you up at the same time. Your bedside manner cannot be understated in terms of importance.
  • Comfort level – When clients are comfortable with your care and your advice, they will listen to your guidance. Building that trust level is a key point.
  • Appreciation – Clients should be appreciated and thanked for their business.
  • Compliments – When a client follows the veterinary advice that your practice gives them, they should be complimented for the follow through and taking such great care of their pets.

How Can You Improve Compliance?

Improving compliance is central to growing your veterinary practice. The more clients comply with your advice, the healthier their pets will be. This will certainly lead to better relationships between the practice and the clients. And, great relationships lead to greater loyalty and more referral patients. Luckily, user-friendly web based veterinary practice management software can enhance compliance, solidify relationships, and boost your veterinary practice.

Here are some far-reaching measures that your practice can set up using veterinary software to ensure maximum compliance and client happiness:

  • Take an assessment of current compliance: Don’t estimate, as you’ll often guess that the level is higher than it really is. Communicate with the client and ask!
  • Get the whole team involved: Established follow up procedures on veterinary guidance free up your time to focus on patients in front of you.
  • Set improvement goals: Decide as a team on goals for compliance and put one of the team members in charge of the process improvements.
  • Measure results: Using web-based veterinary software makes it simpler for the team to track communications with clients and track results in better compliance. Sometimes, clients just need a reminder!
  • Celebrate: When compliance increases due to the work of the team, it’s time to celebrate! Maybe order lunch for the office or buy them each a small gift to motivate continued focus on the health and happiness of patients.

Successful veterinary practices are a combination of animal loving doctors and support staffs that want the best for their patients. To make sure that your practice builds great relationships with client pet owners and grows financially, you need great veterinary software that is user friendly.

Is an ESOP a Good Option for My Veterinary Practice?

by easyDVM

Employee stock ownership plans, or ESOPs, are a powerful way of encouraging your employees to take an active interest in your business. They can powerfully impact your company for the better, although they’re not without drawbacks. Read on to learn more about ESOPs, and how they incentivize employees.

What Is an ESOP?

An ESOP is a plan where a company pays benefits to employees in the form of shares in the company. These shares can’t be sold off until the employee leaves the company.

When that happens, the company automatically purchases the employee’s stock. Employees can choose to receive that money in a lump sum, or in payments over time.

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Different ESOPs may be set up differently. Some companies may not distribute stock to employees until they’ve been with the company for a certain length of time. Others may distribute a type of stock that doesn’t come with voting privileges, which restricts employees from making key decisions (unless they buy normal stock in the company on their own, of course).

An Example

Sarah works as a veterinarian at a practice with an ESOP. She came on because she liked this investment option – although she had to work there for a year to get it, and it doesn’t give her voting rights.

Every year, her ESOP benefits buy shares in the veterinary practice. She can’t sell them until she leaves the practice. Because she can’t get out of her investment early, she knows she has to work hard to see the practice succeed.

Sarah is nearing retirement age. She’s excited for her shares to “vest”, meaning she’ll receive money for them (matching their value at the time of her retirement). The veterinary practice will directly buy her shares, then distribute them over time to other veterinary employees.

The Benefits

Employees like ESOPs. Giving veterinary employees stock in the corporation will encourage them to apply at the veterinary practice and stay there longer, so they accrue benefits. If a practice is having trouble recruiting and retaining veterinary employees, an ESOP can be a key part of a strategy to turn that around. ESOPs also often come with many tax benefits for employees and the veterinary practice.

ESOPs also encourage employees to care about the veterinary practice. Their investment is tied to investors’ confidence. If employees don’t care about the practice’s future, an ESOP is a powerful way of reminding them that everyone should be pulling together.

Limitations and Drawbacks

Despite their appeal, ESOPs have some serious limitations and drawbacks. Perhaps the most obvious limitation is that not all companies distribute stock. A sole proprietorship or other non-stock corporation won’t be able to provide employees an ESOP.

Stock is a measure of real ownership in a veterinary practice. When a practice sells stock to the public, they lose a certain amount of control over their practice to shareholders. Veterinary practices with ESOPs often cede some control to their employees, although nowhere near as much as they cede in a model like a worker-owned cooperative. Concerned practices can distribute ESOP stock that doesn’t give employees voting privileges.

In some rare but troubling cases, an ESOP may incentivize bad employee behavior. An employee might fail to blow the whistle on scandalous practices within the practice, for instance, because this would cause investors to lose confidence in the veterinary practice and cause the employees’ investments to lose value. Rather than addressing the bad practices and amending them, employees might allow the toxic elements within the practice to fester. To avoid this, it’s vital to maintain a culture of accountability and honesty within the veterinary practice.

For practices that dispense stock, an ESOP can be a valuable way to incentivize employees to sign onto the veterinary practice and work toward its success. ESOPs aren’t an option for every practice, and should be carefully considered before they’re implemented, but can transform a veterinary practice’s culture for the better.

It’s Opening Day for Your Start-up Veterinary Clinic. How Do You Get the Word Out?

by easyDVM

The first few months of your new practice’s existence are a critical period, and many practices that flounder in this period fold later on. You’re a veterinarian, not a marketer — but if you don’t learn at least some marketing techniques, your start-up practice may not survive.

What’s more, starting a new veterinary practice poses a unique problem: You have to carve out a new niche for yourself and create an identity for yourself out of nothing (or almost nothing). Thankfully, many veterinarians have done it before you, and there are several tried-and-true techniques out there to promote your new business.

Get Listed on Business Listings

The first step as soon as you get a location picked out is to get listed on all the business listing directories.  Google is still the pack leader so make sure you start there.  Other directories include Bing, Yelp, and Yahoo.  Most of them require a way to authenticate that you are truly the owner of the business.  So you may need a way to receive mail at the location or have a business phone number already set up.

Write a Press Release

Writing a press release is one of the most time-honored ways of getting your message out. By sending a press release to TV and radio stations, newspapers and other news outlets in your area, you can drum up plenty of interest. But your press release won’t do much good if these outlets don’t run it. With that in mind, you need to make it as enticing to reporters as possible.

Your press release shouldn’t be an advertisement: Write it from a neutral point of view, in the same style as a newspaper article. Press releases are for news, not just information, so be sure to reference something new like an opening date or an announcement. Remember that reporters are busy people, and they’re much more likely to run your press release if they don’t have to edit it. If you have any questions about how to write the best possible press release, you might hire a professional writer.

Notably, you should put your name and contact information at the end of the press release. Even if a news outlet doesn’t run your press release, they may reach out to you for an interview.

Social Media

Social media has largely supplanted traditional advertising media, like radio and TV spots or newspaper ads, as a way of getting your message out. Making a social media account and posting to it is a free way of getting publicity, so you should consider having a social media presence on major platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Unfortunately, just making free posts won’t necessarily help you break into your target market. Most social media platforms won’t prioritize your posts on users’ feeds unless you spend money to run advertisements or promote posts.

The good news is that platforms like Facebook allow you to carefully craft advertisements to promote your practice. You can choose precisely the audience you want in terms of location, interests and demographic variables like pet ownership. What’s more, these kinds of ads generally aren’t too expensive.

Opening Specials and Other Deals

Opening specials, sales and other special deals will only work if potential customers already know about your practice. So be sure to use other techniques to build buzz, but bring customers in the door — and build word of mouth — by sweetening the proposition with an opening deal.

What, exactly, you’ll choose will depend on what you can afford and what you think your customers will be interested in. Maybe you’ll give them a discount on their next visit if they refer a friend. Maybe you’ll offer a hefty discount on services for their first visit or give them a discount if they book another appointment before they leave.

When you’re starting a new practice, you have many marketing techniques available to you to bring customers in the door. By using a combination of many approaches, you’ll reach a broad audience and increase your odds of a successful opening — and a thriving practice for many years to come.

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.

New Veterinary Clinic – Lease Retail Space or Own a Free-standing Facility?

by easyDVM

When starting a veterinary practice, reviewing all available options is wise — from deciding on a location and employees to which veterinary software to use. One of the biggest decisions is whether to own or lease your veterinary practice location, and the answer depends on quite a few variables. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of each so you can make a well-informed decision.

Pros of Leasing A Retail Space

Many new veterinary practice owners opt to lease their space for a number of practical reasons:

  • Less upfront cash needed: As a new veterinary practice, and perhaps a new vet as well, money might be a little tight. New veterinarians are typically paying off student loans, which put a crimp in their cash flow, so leasing might be the more comfortable option.
  • Inclusive pricing: Typically, maintenance is included in a lease agreement. This means somebody else will handle cutting the grass and maintaining the parking lot. This type of pricing can make your operations budget easier to control.
  • Fewer issues with maintenance: When something unexpected happens, you will simply call the landlord and let them know so it can be handled. Depending on your lease agreement, you may not have to worry about paying for plumbing or electrical repairs, or even if the roof blows off in a storm.
  • Better location availability: Often, existing commercial buildings have better locations with great accessibility, which is something that might be difficult to duplicate when building a facility on your own location. It’s even better when there are complementary businesses nearby such as pet supply stores, groomers or doggie washes.

Cons of Leasing A Retail Space

However, there are also some drawbacks to leasing as well:

  • Less available space: Sometimes, leasing means not having the amount of space that you would like to have for your vet practice. Leasing commercial property is a function of price and size, and sometimes you have to make do with what you can afford.
  • Less control over the property: When you lease a retail space, you will be bound by the lease agreement and the terms you negotiate with the owner. Of course, these terms might preclude you from doing some of the things that you’d like, so be certain to read the agreement carefully to avoid unintended issues.
  • No equity: Just like when you rent a home instead of buying, you are putting money in the landlord’s pocket rather than your own. You aren’t building equity for your future when renting.

Pros of Owning A Free-standing Facility

Owning your veterinary facility might be the best choice for you.

  • More control: When you buy or build your own practice facility, you have control over the space and can do whatever you want or need with it. From configuring your offices to building kennels and an outdoor dog run, the sky’s the limit.
  • More space: When you build a veterinary facility, you can decide how big a lot you need and how large you want the building to be. Likewise, if you buy an existing building, you can retrofit it to suit your needs.
  • More flexibility: When you own your veterinary facility, you can do pretty much whatever you want with it, as long as it’s legal. Want to stay open until midnight? Put up a really ugly but attention-getting sign (within local regulations of course)? Go ahead and do it. Planning to board dogs and cats and create an outdoor space for them to get exercise? Not a problem.
  • More economical overall: Many practice owners are thrilled to realize that owning is actually more economical for them than leasing a commercial building.

Cons of Owning A Free-standing Facility

On the flip side, there are some negatives to building or buying your own space as well, depending on your situation.

  • Upfront cash needed: Diverting the funds needed to purchase a commercial building or pay a down payment can take away your ability to invest in technology and equipment.
  • Maintenance required: Somebody has to keep up with the maintenance required, and when you own the place, that somebody is you.
  • Not easy to move: When you have a veterinary building completed or retrofitted to your specifications, it limits the potential buyers. Most likely it will only appeal to other veterinarians, so it can be challenging to sell the space when needed, may take longer than expected and can sometimes net less money.

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.

Where Do I Get the Funds for My Start-Up Veterinary Practice?

by easyDVM

You have to spend money to make money. But where does that money come from?

If you’ve never started your own business, it can seem like businesses appear out of nowhere. Taking out a loan is perhaps the best-known way to get essential capital, but there are many other ways of getting together the money to open a new veterinary practice. Read on to learn some of the ways of getting your veterinary practice off the ground.

Your Savings

Maybe the most obvious way of getting the money for your new practice is by dipping into your personal funds. If you’re considering opening a practice, you’ve probably been working for someone else’s practice or a veterinary hospital for a while. Along the way, you’ve likely saved up some money.

These funds will most obviously include a savings account. They may also consist of less liquid assets like stocks, bonds or even a retirement account — but be aware that liquidating these assets may carry hefty fees or tax penalties.

In general, you don’t want to drain your entire savings to open a new business. You want to leave yourself a financial cushion to rely on in case the business fails or doesn’t pick up like you’re hoping. So unless you’re very flush, you should probably supplement your own funds with another source.

Grants

Grants are an often-overlooked way to get the capital you need to start a new business. These will be particularly useful if you’re servicing an underprivileged or underserved area or population, because government agencies and charities will often earmark grant money to go toward these communities.

The downside of applying for grants is that you have to apply for them, and assembling the grant application takes time and potentially money (if you hire a grant writer). There’s no guarantee that you’ll get the grant, either, so you shouldn’t plan your opening date around a grant you’ve just applied for! But with a well-written application and a good vision for your practice, you’ll greatly improve your chances of receiving a grant.

Bank and Private Loans

Banks and private companies both offer loans to businesses looking to get off the ground, and this is how many (if not most) practices get established. However, unlike many of these loan types, you’ll owe interest on your loan. The more you take out, and the more time it takes you to pay it back, the more you’ll owe.

What’s more, the interest rate will depend on your credit. If you’ve had trouble paying your bills, or if you have a bankruptcy in your record, you’ll end up paying far more back to the bank over time. For these reasons, it’s a good idea to explore other options first and only borrow what you need (and can pay back).

Friends, Family and Crowdfunding

If your friends or family are affluent, you might try asking them for money to get your practice started. In these scenarios, it’s good to treat these loans like a bank or private loan. Don’t just take the money — pay it back over time. Set out the terms in advance, including the payments you’ll make, and any interest that will accrue.

Another newer option is crowdfunding. Using GoFundMe, Indiegogo or Kickstarter can help you raise capital for a business by distributing the costs across a community of interested people who want to see you succeed. Of course, you’ll need to advertise the crowdfunding campaign to make it successful, and you might need to find a way — even something small — to show your donors your appreciation.

Starting a private veterinary practice takes a lot of capital. But with these methods in hand, you’ll be well on your way to raising the funds you need, so you can serve your community and fulfill your dreams.

Top 5 New Years Resolutions a Veterinarian Should Make

by easyDVM

The start of a new year is the perfect time to make positive changes in your career and personal life. As a veterinarian, the holiday period is a chance to take a break from your busy schedule, reflect on your work-life balance, and work out how you can more effectively work toward achieving your career goals. Here are five resolutions that could make a big difference to your life.

1. Look After Number One

Stress and burnout can prevent any veterinarian from achieving their full potential. This year, resolve to take care of your health and wellbeing. Why not take up an active hobby, such as dance classes, yoga, climbing, hiking, or jogging with a local running club? These hobbies can help to clear your mind as well as improve your fitness. If you think you don’t have time for hobbies in your busy schedule, think again: structuring leisure activities into your schedule could help you work more efficiently.

2. Make Time for Family and Friends

At the beginning of the year, make a calendar of all the important birthdays, weddings, reunions, family get-togethers, and other important events that you want to attend. Make a plan now that will allow you to attend these functions. Arrange for another veterinarian to cover your shifts or be on call during the time you plan to spend with your family and friends. As a busy professional, you need a strong support network around you to help you cope during stressful periods. This year, resolve to foster strong relationships with the people you care about.

3. Appreciate Your Team

Strong relationships with your team are also vital to ensure success in a veterinary career. Show your veterinarians, administrative staff, and technicians that you value everything they do by taking the time to praise them this year. Throughout the year, set aside time to listen to your team members and act on any ideas they have for improving the working environment. While you’re thinking about ways to appreciate your team, add National Veterinary Technician Week to your calendar in October. This is the perfect time to plan a party or social outing for your veterinary team to show how much you value them.

4. Learn Something New

Veterinary medicine is changing all the time, which means you can never stop learning if you want to stay at the forefront of your field. This year, put aside an hour or two each week to read about new developments in veterinary medicine. Consider attending a veterinary conference to network with other veterinarians and learn about the latest research.

5. Use Technology to Free Up Time

Technology can help veterinarians work more efficiently. For example, easyDVM veterinary practice management software can help you track and store medical records, invoice clients, and prepare reports. This software stores all your data in the cloud, which means you don’t need to worry about storing and backing it up yourself. When all your records are available in a format that is easy to access and share, you can spend more quality time interacting with patients, coworkers, friends and family.

Before January 1 rolls around, take the time to make plans for the year ahead. Purchase veterinary practice management software to help you work more efficiently, add important events to your calendar, and set aside time each week to appreciate your team and continue your education. These resolutions should set you up for an enjoyable and successful new year.

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.

Top 5 Dental Offers for Clients During Pet Dental Month

by easyDVM

Finding new clients can be challenging, so you need to give the public a reason to visit your practice.

Since February is National Pet Dental Health Month, it’s a great time to educate your clients on the importance of optimal dental care — but how?

In order to benefit both your client’s pet and your business, incentives can be offered to get these pet owners through the door. From there, you can spread awareness about pet oral health, as you grow your client base.

If you want to get creative, here are some ways you can attract new business, while helping the pets within your community. The following five incentives are attractive to potential clients, all while showcasing your presence in the community.

1. Create a Unique Pet Oral Health Kit for New Clients

When new clients visit your practice, they will receive the kit you’ve put together. These kits can include a toothbrush, dental treats, toothpaste, etc. By educating these clients, they’ll also be more open to dental cleanings in the future. In order for this incentive to be successful, you need to promote your practice and this offer specifically.

2. Make Clients Aware of Pain Prevention

In many cases, it’s not that clients don’t care — it’s that they’re unaware. What appears to be just a case of bad breath could potentially indicate a more serious health concern. Start a blog on your website, so that you can post interesting, informative pieces, adding value to pet owners.

In this case, no pet owner wants their pet to suffer, so give them an inside look at what poor oral health can lead to. Before and after pictures are always effective. You could even create an online video, showcasing some common procedures within your practice to improve pet oral health, then send it out to your mailing list. Also, encourage your audience to share your content!

3. Work With Local Groups and Businesses to Donate Items

Once you have a little hype around the importance of pet oral health, reach out to other organizations or groups within your community to collaborate. You could advertise that the first 15 clients who register for a cleaning will receive an item valued at X amount. The groups, shelters or organizations you work with can also advertise through their platforms.

4. Run a Promotion for Both New and Loyal Customers

Whether you pin flyers in local businesses or advertise on social media, run a promotion in regards to a client’s first oral health procedure. For both new and loyal customers, you can offer a discount or a free gift. Perhaps you have developed a loyalty points system? If so, double standard offers in relation to any oral health care appointments.

5. Share and Display Positive Reviews Based on Past Experiences

Clients want to see that other pet owners have had a positive experience with you. If you have had customers schedule oral health procedures in the past, reach out to them for an honest review. You can offer them some sort of incentive, such as 10 percent off their next cleaning. Display these reviews on your website’s home page and within your practice.

Although you have plenty to focus on within your practice, don’t forget about the world outside of your practice. You need to be innovative in order to grow your clientele, all while solidifying your place as an expert in your community. Get involved and be creative this National Pet Dental Health Month — it will be pay off in the long term!

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.

Getting Veterinary Clients in the Door (A Few Reminders…)

by easyDVM

Content marketing can seem like a complicated endeavour. But, just like anything in business, content marketing is only as daunting as you make it. I understand that may sound a little naive, but there is certainly a grain of truth to the notion that we can over-complicate any task when we lose sight of that task’s guiding principles. Content marketing is a multi-step process, but the strategies that surround content marketing are based on largely common sense and practical principles and guidelines. If nothing else, I am here to remind you of a few of those guidelines and hopefully relieve some stress surrounding content marketing strategies and applications.

Take time to think about your practice and your clients

Before you can generate actual content, take a deep breath and brainstorm about what your practice means to you and your clients. If you don’t clearly define the terms of your practice ( i.e. how you want it to be perceived, what you want it to accomplish, and how you want it to impact your clients), how can you expect to define the terms of your marketing strategy? When you are generating content, it can become very clear very quickly whether your content is being guided by a clear and concise vision. Constructing that clear practice vision can help define your goals and construct a holistic marketing strategy. In essence, treat this brainstorm time like a scientific case study; before you can conduct the study, you must define the terms and variables that will guide your study. Content marketing is no different.

Be brutally honest with yourself

When generating content, you must be brutally honest with yourself. If writing was never your strong-suit, it may not be the worst idea to look elsewhere for content generation. This might mean looking in-house for people on your team that could generate engaging content or be trained to do so, or even outsourcing your marketing to a professional in the marketing field. Either path with require some investment, but if you’re serious of generating engaging content that will bring people in the door (or are reading this post), then I’m sure you understand that. If you decide to remove yourself from the direct marketing process, do not feel that you must exclude yourself entirely. Do not discount your knowledge as a veterinary professional. Whether you decide to stay in-house or outsource your content marketing, utilize your expertise and insight.

Rough draft versus final draft

It’s like you never left college! This might seem like common sense, but the editing and optimization process is vital once you’ve generated content. Check for spelling errors, the presence and placement of keywords, content organization, plagiarism, etc. Treat your marketing content like you would the final draft of a college assignment. Glaring grammatical errors or incorrect data presentation can really detract from the strength of your content, so be sure that your content generation process includes an editing step. Bonus tip: When generating content, particularly when it relates to veterinary medicine, make sure that what you’re saying is client-friendly. More specifically, make sure that what you’re saying isn’t too bogged down in technical jargon or only accessible to other medical professionals. Your focus is on engaging clients in some form or another, so always double check that your tone and content are customer-centric.

SEO. SEO. SEO!

Search engine optimization. This is an imperative aspect to content marketing and entails a variety of aspects involved in optimizing not only the performance of your content but your website, as well. SEO entails things like optimizing your site/content through a responsive design (which can incorporate clean coding, faster load times, etc.), complying with existing web standards, strong backlinks and inbound links through promotion, meta information, as well as mobile search compatability. This last aspect – mobile search – could be argued to be the most important, if for no other reason than the ever-growing prominence of mobile usage by consumers. Search engine optimization also entails integrating your content and website with your existing social media presence. Don’t be afraid of cross-promoting your site and content across different platforms, and always including links and streams from one to the other.
The keys listed above are certainly not the end-all be-all when it comes to content marketing, but they do highlight a few of the major points and pit-stops along the way to successful content generation and marketing. If you’re ever in doubt about the success of your content marketing strategy or just want to stay on top of your marketing efforts, utilizing tools like Google Analytics or the analytics tools on Facebook and Instagram are great options. They can provide a wealth of data on your website or social media platforms, and even track the performance of individual pieces of content. They are meant to be user-friendly, so do not be intimidated by what may seem like a bunch of analytical IT jargon. Such analytical tools ultimately give you greater control and understanding of your marketing strategy, and can even help you better understand what potential and existing clients are engaging with. If you would like to go more in-depth, I have posted some links below to sites and articles that delve into topics like content generation and marketing, as well as SEO. These links are not endorsements of specific companies or entities. Rather, they are simply meant to encourage further learning and understanding.

Content Marketing:
http://www.vmdtoday.com/journals/vmd/2017/august2017/the-five-pillars-of-content-marketing
SEO:
https://moz.com/beginners-guide-to-seo

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.

Top 5 SEO Tips for Veterinary Practices

by easyDVM

According to a 2017 survey, eight out of 10 people have used search engines to find a local service or product within the last week. As a veterinary practice owner, you need to ensure your business is highly visible in search engine results pages if you want customers to find out about the service you offer. Here are five SEO tips that can help your veterinary practice stand out online.

1. Choose Your Keywords Carefully

Use a keyword research tool, such as Google Keyword Planner, to find out which keywords people use when searching for veterinarians online. Consider local keywords, such as “veterinarian in [your city],” as well as service-specific keywords such as “spay and neuter.” Long-tail keywords, such as “cat spaying in [your city],” contain several words. Although they have a smaller search volume than general single-word keywords, such as “vet,” long-tail keywords usually have less competition and can attract customers who are looking for the specific services you offer. Be sure to include long-tail keywords in your SEO strategy.

2. Publish Fresh Content Regularly

Adding a blog to your website can strongly boost your search rankings. Search engines love fresh, original content. Once you have chosen your target keywords, create content around those keywords and publish it on a regular schedule. For example, you could add one post per week to your blog.

3. Provide Value to Readers

Your content must provide value for your readers. Use services like Quora to find out what questions people are asking online, and then use your veterinary expertise to create posts that answer these kinds of questions. You can also source blog topics from the questions clients ask in your veterinary practice. For example, if clients regularly express concern about putting their pet under anesthesia for surgery or dental cleanings, you could write a blog post about the anesthetic options for pets and how vets minimize the risks.

4. Add Your Veterinary Practice to Directories

Adding your business to online directories makes it more visible online, as well as providing backlinks to your website that can improve your search rank. Add your veterinary practice to Google Maps, Yelp and any local directories that serve your city or region. Be sure to keep these listings up to date with accurate opening hours and contact details. Encourage your customers to review your business on these directory sites to improve its visibility and reputation.

5. Use Social Media

Using social media can strengthen your relationships with customers. Having a strong social media presence may also bring SEO benefits, as people who interact with your practice on social media may post links to your website from their own sites and blogs. The more links you have pointing to your website, the higher your search rank is likely to be. Set up profile pages for your veterinary practice on Facebook, Twitter and any other social media networks popular with your customers. First, fill out your profile pages with accurate information. Next, begin sharing interesting and engaging content, such as links to your blog posts, pictures of your veterinary team, and questions that encourage people to talk about their pets.

Keep It Up!

Search engine optimization isn’t a “set and forget” process. To stay at the top of the search engine results pages, you need to keep using these tips. By continually working on your SEO strategy, you can make it easy for customers to find you online.

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.