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Optimize Your Veterinary Marketing Strategy

veterinary marketing Dear Clients and Friends,

Summer is in full swing here in New Hampshire. Temperatures and the economy have begun to soar and pet owners are spending big on their pets. This is a great time to review and refocus your hospital's marketing needs.

It's not just the temperature that's rising this season. Pet owners' use of online social media offers you a unique venue to raise awareness of key health care issues with your clients and can also help you encourage them to visit your hospital. In this issue, we discuss the importance of Marketing with YouTube, Knowing Your Hospital's Strengths, and having Well-Defined Social Media Strategies.

With a YouTube online video, you can make an immediate and powerful impact on your clients and your website's rankings. Building an engaged social community means tapping into your hospital's strengths and being smart about where you direct your attention. Plug in to Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites and feel the fresh breeze of marketing success.

Think about these suggestions as you enjoy the summer sun. Both will provide you with a bright outlook for the future. As always, thank you for subscribing to our newsletter.

—Dr. Mark Feltz, DVM, and the Creative Team at VetNetwork

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Veterinary Marketing With YouTube

Using YouTube to Increase Your Website's Google Rankings
and Attract New Clients

If you're looking to increase your veterinary hospital's online visibility, build trust with your community, and convert prospects into clients, then YouTube needs to be part of your online veterinary marketing activity.

veterinary video marketing

Reach the Google Summit with YouTube

YouTube, now the Internet's number two search engine, offers you a unique and valuable venue for promoting your veterinary hospital. YouTube is owned and operated as a subsidiary of Google, meaning that online videos can have an immediate and powerful impact on your website's rankings. Moreover, clients often find it helpful to see veterinary medicine at work; YouTube provides a way for you to communicate with clients through tutorials and videos.

By utilizing YouTube to its fullest extent, you can simultaneously educate your clients on your facility and pet care services, provide tutorials on the proper administration of medicine and dental cleanings, alert clients to recalls and updates and replace educational handouts with short video clips. Don't be afraid to think outside the box and have some fun with this new tool. How about posting your latest dog rescue story? Adding veterinary hospital videos allows you to keep current and maintain your clients' interest in your website and, thus, your hospital.

Easy and Affordable

The world today experiences faster connection speeds, unlimited hosting and inexpensive video cameras. Creating a veterinary hospital video for online sharing has never been more affordable or easy. YouTube even holds your hand with step by step instructions.

That said, it pays to ensure that your videos are of good quality. A shaky, blurred video implies carelessness that you do not want to infer to your clients. On the other hand, a polished, clear video tells pet owners that you possess sophistication and professionalism, which you apply faithfully to all aspects of your practice. Your video can be simple, just not shabby.

Top Rankings

As a social media tool, YouTube is the second most popular search engine in the world behind Google, which owns it. Videos often appear on the first page of search results, which translates into your hospital's top rankings and visibility among your community's pet owners. By incorporating YouTube videos into your veterinary website, your site's rankings will improve almost immediately.

Soon YouTube may well supplant Facebook, Twitter and other popular social mediums. Not only is it free, easy to use and interesting to clients, but it capitalizes on society's current fascination with videos. YouTube attracts more than 800 million users per month. This translates into a unique and formidable marketing approach for your hospital.

Direct YouTube Marketing Benefits to Your Hospital

Increased Google Rankings for your Website
Creates a Personal Connection with Clients
Enhances Client Education
Reemphasizes your Website Presence
An Easy and Inexpensive Marketing Tool to Attract New Clients

In today's tech-obsessed world, it's important to be diligent about your online presence. Neglecting it, or contrarily, spending too much time marketing ineffectively, will only set you back in your quest to grow your hospital's online reputation. So grab on to YouTube's coattails and prepare to soar to the top of online rankings.

For information on how to create a YouTube feature on your website, call VetNetwork at (603) 743-4321. We are happy to provide this marketing feature to you and your hospital.

Know Your Strengths, Let Others Do the Rest

In the May 2013 issue of AAHA's Trends Magazine, the owner of this year's AAHA-accredited "Practice of the Year," Nancy Soares, VMD, was asked what mistakes she has made as a practice owner. According to Dr. Soares, she waited longer than she should have to hire skilled professionals to take over the administrative side of her practice. When she did, however, she realized that "hiring a proficient business professional enabled me to concentrate my efforts on being a veterinarian again. I could focus on what I love to do—caring for pets and the people who love them."

Reduce Stress, Focus on What You Love to Do

Too often, veterinarians choose to handle their own marketing plan or delegate it to a staff member whose talents are most likely best applied elsewhere. What happens? A basic website is put up, but then quickly becomes out of date; a Facebook page is created, but there is no effort to gather “likes” and posts are few and far between; lukewarm or negative reviews appear on Yelp! or Google Reviews and they go unanswered and unfixed; printed and digital media lack the cohesive look necessary to build your brand. The result is a superficial effort that yields no benefit to your practice and may actually be harmful, further underscoring the misconception that veterinary marketing isn't important and doesn't work.

Strategic Veterinary Marketing Works

In our highly-connected digital age, you will not realize the greatest gains from your veterinary marketing plan without a professional team behind your efforts. Developing a unique veterinary brand and logo, designing an attractive and compelling website, writing content, handling updates, staying on top of veterinary SEO strategies, writing blog articles and Facebook and Twitter posts, and managing your online veterinary reputation require dedication, skill, and time—as well as a comprehensive understanding of how all these elements work together to produce greater outcomes than any single effort by itself.

You did not become a veterinarian because you love graphic design or website coding. You did not start your own practice because you enjoy spending your time thinking about how to keep your website at the top of the search engine rankings or how to use social media to increase your business. But that is what the graphic design, veterinary SEO, and copywriting professionals at VetNetwork do every day.

Do not let these things keep you up at night or distract you from doing what you truly love and do best. Call VetNetwork today and let our expert veterinary marketing professionals do the work for you!

Your Veterinary Practice Will Reap Benefits
of a Well-Defined Social Media Strategy

You've made the decision to join the technology evolution by launching a social media campaign. That's the easy part. Settling on which of the numerous options at your disposal best suits your veterinary practice warrants careful consideration.

First, ask yourself some basic questions: What are my goals? Who is my target audience? What is my anticipated return on investment? Establishing those parameters will aid in the development of an optimal plan that highlights your strengths, separates you from your competitors, drives new clients to your website and through your door and, ultimately, enhances your revenue stream.

If you remain unconvinced about the growing impact of social media marketing, consider that over 75% of Americans are connected to at least one social media platform. The shift in marketing has influenced the way in which consumers make purchase decisions which, in turn, has transformed the way you can attract clients to your veterinary practice. With so much information available at a consumer's fingertips, buying choices now turn on peer reviews, status updates, and social media approval.

Consistency Breeds Connection

Consistent usage allows for increased marketing and advertising benefits for business owners. Most Americans access their social media accounts at least once a day, usually more frequently. The more you post, the more your clients feel a connection with you and the stronger the relationship builds between you and pet owners.

Current statistics demonstrate that social media use extends far beyond tweens and teens. While it is estimated that 83 percent of Americans between ages 18-25 – potentially your next wave of prospective clients – maintain some type of social media profile today, many other age groups also fall into your targeted demographic. 77% of people aged 30-49, 52% of those aged 50-64, and 32% of those over 65 have a social media account. The market is there; it's up to you to tap into it and there is no more efficient way to reach today's digitally-connected society than through social media.

Start Small, Choose Wisely

The old adage about being "a jack of all trades and a master of none" is precisely the trap you want to avoid when it comes to social media. It is much more effective to master one or two sites and deliver your message efficiently than it is to over-reach and perform poorly on half a dozen sites or more.

The obvious choices are the established heavy hitters: Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. However, ancillary sites like Pinterest, Instagram, Foursquare and Tumblr all offer features that will help you establish and cement your digital footprint.

Stay True to Your Message

Your company brand is your identity. Veterinary social media marketing provides the method through which you can provide both new clients and prospects with useful information ranging from disease alerts and reminders about upcoming clinics to introducing a new member of your staff or new services that you now offer. When you reach out, do so in a way that is reflective of your brand.

Stay the Course

Don't get frustrated – while posting information on the web is instantaneous, building an engaged social community is no different than building your brick-and-mortar site was. It takes both time and patience but, in the long run, the reward will be worth it. Take advantage of Google analytics, a free tool that tracks where your traffic is coming from and how interested users are once they arrive. Use images and video whenever possible – both are great tools to generate sharing and spread the word about your veterinary practice.

At VetNetwork, our team of digital veterinary marketing professionals is led by a veterinarian with more than 20 years of hospital ownership experience. For advice on any veterinary marketing strategies or services, contact VetNetwork at 603-743-4321 or check us out online at vetnetwork.com/.

VetNetwork Services

VetNetwork is a veterinary marketing and design company exclusively for the veterinary industry. Our services and products are guaranteed to increase your profits and attract new clients.