{"id":4116,"date":"2018-11-15T09:28:24","date_gmt":"2018-11-15T14:28:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vetnetwork.com\/blog\/?p=4116"},"modified":"2018-11-15T09:28:24","modified_gmt":"2018-11-15T14:28:24","slug":"holiday-veterinary-marketing-tips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vetnetwork.com\/blog\/2018\/11\/holiday-veterinary-marketing-tips\/","title":{"rendered":"8 Veterinary Marketing Tips to Boost Business This Holiday Season"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As a veterinarian, you may see business go down during the holiday season. Why? Because people are occupied with parties, baking, shopping, choosing cute fall clothes, and more.<\/p>\n<p>You know that animals&#8217; health is just as important during the holiday season, though, so you&#8217;ve got to get the word out. But how do you compete with everything else that&#8217;s going on?<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;ve got to keep spreading the word and add a holiday spin while you&#8217;re at it. How do you do that? Here are eight tips for effective holiday veterinary marketing.<\/p>\n<h2>1. Offer Season-Specific Promotions<\/h2>\n<p>No matter the holiday, that day falls in a specific season. Use that season to grab your audience&#8217;s attention.<\/p>\n<p>Say, for example, you want to market your business around Thanksgiving. Consider the risks and health issues typically seen in the animals you treat during that time of year.<\/p>\n<p>Once you&#8217;ve nailed down the most popular issues, get your marketing game on. Let the public know about these issues and offer a discount to check for, prevent, or treat them.<\/p>\n<h2>2.\u00c2\u00a0Give in to Gifting<img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-4117\" src=\"https:\/\/vetnetwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/shutterstock_748606915-300x200.jpg\" alt=\"shutterstock_748606915\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" srcset=\"https:\/\/vetnetwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/shutterstock_748606915-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/vetnetwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/shutterstock_748606915-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/vetnetwork.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/shutterstock_748606915.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/h2>\n<p>Many people like to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rover.com\/blog\/truth-about-christmas-dogs\/\" onclick=\"__gaTracker('send', 'event', 'outbound-article', 'https:\/\/www.rover.com\/blog\/truth-about-christmas-dogs\/', 'give animals as Christmas gifts');\">give animals as Christmas gifts<\/a>. Offer your services to ensure the pet that&#8217;s being given is healthy and ready for his or her new home.<\/p>\n<p>All it takes is a cute animal picture, a message, and some holiday-appropriate decoration. You could create marketing materials featuring a sweet puppy playing in the snow with a message like &#8220;Giving boy&#8217;s best friend this Christmas? We&#8217;ll make sure he&#8217;s ready to play all winter long.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h2>3. Offer Education<\/h2>\n<p>Feel free to seek business from people whose pets aren&#8217;t actually sick. Instead of focusing solely on treatment, why not offer education?<\/p>\n<p>The holidays are the perfect time to tug at peoples&#8217; heartstrings&#8211;they&#8217;re already feeling warm fuzzies towards their loved ones. Remind them that a well educate pet owner means a well-taken-care-of-pet.<\/p>\n<p>Whether you offer education for free or in small paying classes, you&#8217;ll likely get some <a href=\"https:\/\/vetnetwork.com\/blog\/2018\/06\/how-to-boost-traffic-to-veterinary-websites\/\">additional traffic<\/a> to your business. When they come, don&#8217;t forget to mention that holiday special you have going on!<\/p>\n<h2>4. Refresh (or Create) Your Website<\/h2>\n<p>If you&#8217;re serious about bringing in new business, you&#8217;ve got to have a great website. When people need something these days they take to the interwebs to find it.<\/p>\n<p>If you don&#8217;t have a website for your business, create one. If you do have one, make sure everything is in tip-top shape for new and current clients.<\/p>\n<p>A good website looks great and offers the information current and potential clients are looking for. Some of those things include your business address, contact information, hours, reviews, and services.<\/p>\n<h2>5. Add Blogs to Your Website<\/h2>\n<p>Blogs are great for bringing traffic to your website. And when people find their way to your website, they may just find their way to your business location, too.<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t add meaningless blogs&#8211;that won&#8217;t get you anywhere. Instead, post regularly about things that matter to your audience.<\/p>\n<p>Talke about heartworm, over-the-counter medications for pets, why prescriptions are important, and why dental care matters. Feel free to add some fun posts, too, like &#8220;10 Hilarious Halloween Costumes for Your Yorkie This Halloween.&#8221;<\/p>\n<h2>6. Encourage Holiday-Related Communication<\/h2>\n<p>Get and keep people interested in your services by getting them talking about their pets and the holidays. Whether you do it on Facebook, your website, or a white-board at your business location, people will love sharing their holiday memories with their pets.<\/p>\n<p>Even better, set up a bulletin board so your visitors can share photos of them and their pet(s) celebrating the holiday season.<\/p>\n<h2>7. Use Facebook Ads<\/h2>\n<p>Facebook ads are invaluable when it comes to getting the word out. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.statista.com\/statistics\/264810\/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide\/\" onclick=\"__gaTracker('send', 'event', 'outbound-article', 'https:\/\/www.statista.com\/statistics\/264810\/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide\/', 'More than 2 billion people');\">More than 2 billion people<\/a> use Facebook regularly&#8211;that&#8217;s a huge audience just waiting to be reached!<\/p>\n<p>You can place a handful of different kinds of ads on Facebook, so it&#8217;s worth looking into each kind. From sidebar ads to videos, there are great ways to market your business all year round.<\/p>\n<p>During the holidays, ad some holiday-related flare, just like you would in your other marketing materials, to get people to click on or view your ad.<\/p>\n<h2>8. Don&#8217;t Forget to Strategize<\/h2>\n<p>However you decide to market your business, you need to have a strategy in place. Choosing and creating marketing materials at random is much less effective than having a plan.<\/p>\n<p>What sorts of things should be part of your strategy? Look at what your competitors are doing and when. Consider the timing of your ads&#8211;offer a fantastic deal the week before Christmas for all those last-minute shoppers.<\/p>\n<p>Know what you want to be known for. Research keywords and find out how to use them to your advantage on your website and in your blog posts. Don&#8217;t forget to use holiday keywords too, if that&#8217;s what you want to rank for.<\/p>\n<p>Once you&#8217;ve created your strategic plan, stick to it. Things will go much more smoothly than if you had no plan at all.<\/p>\n<h2>Veterinary Marketing During the Holidays Should Be Fun<\/h2>\n<p>Far too many people find the holidays to be full of stress and go-go-going all the time. Don&#8217;t be one of those people. Instead, have fun with your veterinary marketing this holiday season.<\/p>\n<p>Holiday marketing is all about finding the perfect combination. All you&#8217;ve got to do is promote your business regularly and add a little holiday flare.<\/p>\n<p>Is social media not your thing? You should make it your thing if you want to get the most out of marketing. Check out our guide on <a href=\"https:\/\/vetnetwork.com\/blog\/2018\/10\/how-to-use-instagram-for-your-veterinary-practice\/\">using Instagram to promote your business<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As a veterinarian, you may see business go down during the holiday season. Why? Because people are occupied with parties, baking, shopping, choosing cute fall clothes, and more. You know that animals&#8217; health is just as important during the holiday season, though, so you&#8217;ve got to get the word out. But how do you compete [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vetnetwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4116"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vetnetwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vetnetwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vetnetwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vetnetwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4116"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vetnetwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4118,"href":"https:\/\/vetnetwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4116\/revisions\/4118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vetnetwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vetnetwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vetnetwork.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}