The Beginner s Guide To Veterinary Marketing

Contents Introduction...3 The Veterinary Website...3 Rule Your Local Market...4 The Better Option...5 An Enticing Invitation...6 Tag Your Brand...7 What Your Veterinary Site Needs...7 Go All In - and Call in the Cavalry... 10 Don't Get Left in the Digital Dust... 10 What s Next?... 12 2

Introduction Veterinary medicine is a highly-skilled and time-consuming career - it's rewarding, but leaves very little time and energy for a vet to build their business and attract new customers. In between preventative care, client discussions and everyday appointments, a vet is capable of setting up a website, but will likely run into a stumbling block that demands more of their time. What, then, does a busy vet need to know in order to have a successful online presence that draws in new clients? The Veterinary Website A website is the backbone of any marketing campaign - cards, brochures, email newsletters and other outreach tools will all steer back to the site. In addition, "organic" searchers - users that type phrases like "(Your Town) Vet Care" into Google - are an excellent source of business that can only be reeled in with a properly optimized website. Optimization involves setting up a website specifically to appeal to Google's standards, thus gaining a higher position in search engine results pages and enticing more visitors to check it out. Once your site begins the climb to high placement results, it starts to enjoy a self-perpetuating cycle of growth - higher placement means more traffic, which in turn means better placement. As long as a well-built site is kept fresh and relevant, it will continue to enjoy success in the "Google realm." 3

Rule Your Local Market Vet care isn't something that clients can buy over the internet, so the industry is already well-primed to take advantage of a local marketplace. Using the power of solid local search engine optimization practices will ensure that potential customers find your office before a competitor's. Considerations such as a claiming your Veterinary practice Google places listing, listing your business name, address and phone number (NAP) on major directory sites, client reviews, inbound links and relevant information on veterinary care in your area will all help make your site appealing to local searchers as well as the search engine crawlers. 4

The Better Option A vet looking to build their practice and traffic has a number of options for marketing, such as Google pay-per-click ads, which charge a certain amount for every Internet user that clicks on a keyword-tuned ad. However, these practices don't necessarily keep the traffic flowing in once the budget dries up, which is why investing in a local SEO campaign is a better option for long term success. If pay-per-click ads are like a box of glossy flyers, a local SEO campaign is more like a large, attractive billboard mounted alongside a busy highway. 5

An Enticing Invitation Content, the articles and informative pieces of text that appear on a site, make an ideal welcome mat for ushering in potential customers. The idea behind creating content for your site isn't to replace good vet care, but rather to supplement it and add in a suggestive tone that encourages users to make an appointment. For example, articles on how to make natural dog treats, or how to prepare and store a pet first aid kit will attract curious browsers that still need vet care; this is doubly true if local-specific key phrases such as "in (Your Town)" are attached to the titles and concepts in the article. The trick is striking the right ratio of keywords and key phrases in an article - a delicate balancing act that SEO professionals are excellent at assisting with. 6

Tag Your Brand Just as pet tags convey important information about the animal wearing them, a veterinary brand - the name, slogans, ads, site content and site appearance associated with a vet office - will let web searchers know who created what they're looking at. Attribution systems such as Google Authorship... What Your Veterinary Site Needs Any internet presence is better than no internet presence, but a simple webpage built without an eye towards optimization will not garner many of the benefits of digital marketing. When the time comes to build a site to represent your office, here are a few things that should be kept in mind: Your clients (And Google!) should be able to find you. Without an address and different digital "waypoints" incorporated into both the visible portion of your vet site and the coding supporting it, customers won't be able to find you, and Google Maps won't be able to guide them to your location. 7

In addition to a page that clearly lists information such as GPS-friendly addresses, operating hours, contact phone number and other data points, you should also consider adding similar data points to your schema markup, a type of coding "blurb" that tells search engine-indexing bots exactly what they're looking at. Offsite, be sure that aggregate listings, such as your business page on Google+, are completely filled out and feature inclusions like a clear picture of the front of your business for recognition. Use your site as a gathering point. When it comes to high-volume businesses like veterinary offices, ongoing success is significantly easier when feedback can be used to coax in new clients. Your website should link to data points like Yelp reviews, guest blog postings that have been connected to a Google+ profile associated with either the vet or the practice itself, and online news articles that involve charity work or informational seminars by office staff. Other beneficial notes, such as membership in the BBB, local awards and media coverage, should also appear on your homepage to strengthen the legitimacy of your veterinary office and service offerings. 8

Give clients a proper greeting and contact information. Your homepage is likely the first thing that new clients and search engine bots will see online, so be sure there's something to keep them there. Welcome text should give readers something to dig into without overwhelming them with a huge amount of information. It should express the philosophy behind your office and work in a few phrases that give a nod to local search engine optimization - the (Your Town) phrases that were discussed earlier in this article. A contact form - especially one that offers multiple options for getting in contact with your office - should be placed on the front page in a clearly-defined position, such as centered on the right side. Sometimes, familiar is the best route. While it can be tempting to reinvent the wheel when it comes to a local veterinary website, keep certain components where people expect them to be. Navigation bars, which link to the various pages on your site, should ideally be placed along the top edge or left side of the page to keep them easily accessible. A client who becomes frustrated because he or she can't find a certain page or section of the site will "bounce" to a competitor's site, taking potential business away in the process. Give your pictures a name. Yes, even site components like logos and pictures of your client's dogs and cats can be used to support local search engine optimization for a vet office. Use clearly defined names for these files - Client_Picture_2_(Your Town)_Veterinary.jpg, for example, as opposed to a default format like Img24765.jpg, which doesn't relay any specific information to search engine-indexing bots. Subtitles or labels will show up to human eyes, while features such as alt text will inform bots through coding what they're "seeing" on your page. 9

Go All In - and Call in the Cavalry When creating your local veterinary website, make sure you give it the attention to detail it deserves - a half-done or poorly designed site can have a negative impact that eclipses a site that's missing altogether. Unlike most projects, adding facets gradually will diminish the "chatter" and overall client interest that's ripe for the picking during a full scale website launch. If your practice is already a busy one or if you're unsure about taking on an entire site without assistance, don't hesitate to get in touch with a team of experts to get it done "right the first time". Whether you hire an SEO and site design company to create your vet website from scratch or to clean up a previous attempt, you'll be surprised at the value you'll get out of your marketing budget dollars. Don't Get Left in the Digital Dust The fact is, with the Internet available readily in the home and on mobile devices, most potential clients "check out" a business before stepping in the door. If you wouldn't keep dusty 1980s-style animal posters in the windows, or shoot a television commercial with a camcorder from the 1990s, you shouldn't have an equally outdated web presence. By making your veterinary office easy to find and investigate on the web, you're communicating to your clients that you're a modern practice with up-to-date skills for taking care of their beloved pets. As the saying goes, you only get one chance to make a first impression, so make sure you're not wasting the window of attention offered by potential customers. With a welldesigned, locally-optimized veterinary website, you'll be firmly on the path to dominating customer loyalty in your region, with no shortage of cats, dogs and other family pets streaming through your front doors throughout the year. 10

What s Next? Now that you know more about marketing your Veterinary practice online, go ahead and start! Still have questions or need us to help your Veterinary practice boost it s online presence? Feel free to email us or contact us directly at (657) 222-1333 Thanks for reading! Pet Service Marketing Team Petservicemarketing.org 12