SearchLove Part 1: In Veterinary Hospital Marketing, It Is All About the User

As some of you may have heard, a couple weeks ago I spent two full days at Distilled’s SearchLove SEO conference, learning the latest and from some of the greatest in search engine optimization and thinking about how you can implement these ideas in your veterinary hospital marketing strategy. Though my takeaways from this inspiring conference are seemingly infinite, I have set out on a three-part takeaway content series to give you the three most important lessons taught. Today is day 1, entitled It’s All About the User.

Effective Veterinary Hospital Marketing Means Engaging Pet Owners

All the experts speaking at the conference offered the same resounding conclusion: success is about listening and interacting with your clients. So, though your veterinary hospital marketing may include daily posts on Facebook, updating your blog regularly, having a user-friendly website, and interacting with pet owners at the practice, is your veterinary marketing strategy really engaging your clients? Do you know your market and are you reaching them?

Few business owners can honestly say yes, without hesitation; and this prompted me to begin my recap series with these most fundamental of questions, which I pose to you, our VetNetwork’s veterinary hospital clients:

• Do you truly know your customer (their age, their hobbies, mobile/desktop, lifestyle)?
• Do you market to what (besides pets) interests them?
• Do you present yourself as a resource (both in-person and online)?
• How often do you update your blog and Facebook posts?
• Do your clients “like”, “share”, or “comment” to any of this content? Do you even know?

And this is just the beginning of questions you should be thinking about in respect to attracting more pet owners, and in short, making more money for the practice. All of these questions are founded upon knowing your user, your client, the pet owner looking for area veterinary care. A website, a Facebook page, and a blog must speak to a potential client, not at them-and not be in existence just for the sake of having one. It just doesn’t work as well anymore.

What You Can Do

So, likely with limited resources and time, you say, what can I do? Here’s some great tips for starting the process of better engagement:

1. Consider your clients: their age, are they married, do they have kids, income level, etc. This will help you determine how to create content that interests them.
2. Quantify/qualify marketing content: how are you reaching out to clients? Do you have a blog? A Facebook account? An email newsletter? Are these pieces of content interesting? Funny? Intriguing? Shareable? Are they “liking”, “commenting”, or “sharing” these posts/articles?
3. Create goals to create better content: based on how receptive clients have been to your posts and blogs, you can determine what’s working and what isn’t. Is there someone who handles this content exclusively? How can you use what you know about your client to engage them more?
4. Ask us: This is what we do. Talk to us about your social media concerns and questions, your email marketing campaign, your brand, or how to create a better overall content marketing plan to engage your clients, to build trust, etc- to compete in today’s market. We’re experts in veterinary branding, content strategy, seo/social media analysis, and engagement. We can help.

Whatever you choose to breathe life into your online veterinary hospital marketing plan, the most crucial aspect to remind yourself of, again and again-from conception to implementation-is that successful business is all about the user, only about the user.

Look for Part 2 of my What I Loved about SearchLove  three-part takeaway series, Consumers in a Real-Time Era, where we will be discussing how the consumer has changed-every consumer in every industry; and how your veterinary marketing strategy must respond in order to meet their needs effectively…and first.

To find out more about what VetNetwork’s highly skilled veterinary marketing and design team can do for your veterinary hospital website, please call us at 800-564-4215 today. VetNetwork is a full-service web design and veterinary marketing company dedicated to the needs of veterinary hospitals. Reach, engage, and grow today –  with us.

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