Four Questions to Bring Your Veterinary Newsletter Marketing Program to the Next Level

By Steve Klinghoffer

A newsletter marketing program is an important part of any veterinary practice’s marketing campaign, but even if your newsletter is doing a good job in terms of promoting your brand, you shouldn’t be resting on your laurels. There is always room for improvement, and remaining open to new ideas and approaches is one of the best ways to ensure you’re maximizing your return on investment for your newsletter marketing program. To help you take your veterinary newsletter—and your entire veterinary marketing plan—up a notch, here are a few important questions you should be asking yourself:

1. What are your marketing goals? If you haven’t clearly defined your marketing goals, now’s certainly the time to do so. Simply stating, “I want to grow my client base,” isn’t a very specific goal. To really hone your veterinary marketing program, you need to set more concrete goals. “I want to grow my revenue by 10% by the end of next year” is a much more focused goal that will help you build a better strategy for your newsletter marketing campaign.

2. How are you measuring the results of your newsletter campaign and overall marketing plan? An evidence-based approach is the best way to get the answers to some pretty important questions that can help you understand how effective your strategy really is. Regular reviews of your plan—at least every six months and, ideally, every three—can help ensure that your approach remains flexible and responsive to changes in your target audience. In addition to a regular review, a client survey is also a great way to determine whether the your veterinary newsletter content offers something of value to your target audience.

3. Is your marketing budget big enough? The purpose of an effective marketing campaign is to help you grow your veterinary practice and become more profitable. Stinting on costs can result in an inferior campaign that does little—if anything—to strengthen your brand. Remember that if a newsletter marketing campaign brings in one or two new clients, or brings in a small handful of existing clients for additional visits, it will likely pay for itself.

4. Is your brand message strong enough? A veterinary newsletter is a great way to get your name in front of your target audience, but unless your newsletter “speaks” to your audience, it’s not really doing its job. To position yourself as a leader in your field and really promote your unique brand, you need to provide veterinary content that’s relevant and important to your audience, and you need to provide it on a predictable schedule.

Your newsletter can be a potent part of your overall marketing strategy. Revisiting your approach from time to time and measuring its results will ensure that you remain as competitive and successful as possible. For more on veterinary newsletter marketing, download our free report, The Complete Guide to Newsletter Marketing for Veterinary Practices and Hospitals.

Steve Klinghoffer is president of WPI Communications, Inc., a newsletter marketing firm. In the past 29 years, he has helped thousands of professionals market their practices through client and patient newsletters, referral-generating newsletters and Web site content. For more information, please call 800-323-4995 or visit http://wpicommunications.com/.

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