VMP 249: Veterinary Marketing Tools That Every Veterinary Hospital Needs To Use

Brandon(00:00:01) - Welcome to the Veterinary Marketing Podcast, where it's all about how to attract, engage, and retain clients to your veterinary hospital using digital marketing. My name is Brandon Boshears, and in today's episode 249, we are talking about the ultimate marketing tools that a practice can use. I think this is gonna be something that every single practice can use. There's very few things in marketing where it's like, I think everybody can use these tools, but what I've tried to do is refine down this list of things that are gonna be helpful to everybody, um, and it's something that everybody should be doing and should be using. Okay? And most of these are free as well. So it's going to be a very good episode for everybody. Um, before we begin, a few things. First, I wanna make sure that you know about our sponsors. Thank you so much to two websites by Brad Haven.

(00:00:48) - We have used vet equipment.com and new vet equipment.com. For over nine years now, used vet equipment.com has been helping vets buy and sell used equipment. You can save money when you buy used veterinary equipment, everything from cages, kennels pumps, x-ray equipment, lasers, ultrasound, dental equipment, surgery equipment, lab equipment from a bist, idx, and hesca tables, tubs and sinks, vet trucks and vet boxes. What do you have to sell@usedvetequipment.com. They bring the buyer and seller together. But if you're looking for new veterinary equipment with amazing warranties, check out new vet equipment.com where they show you the price upfront. Digital x-ray equipment, dental, x-ray equipment, ultrasound equipment, l e d, surgery, lighting, surgery tables, autoclaves@newvetequipment.com. You'll clearly see the prices on every item for sale, and you can check out the warranties so that you can buy without regret@newvetequipment.com. They show you the price upfront and give you a great warranty.

(00:01:39) - I've also made a new assessment for you in your practice. It helps you determine the best marketing methods to connect with your cl your clients. Currently, um, it's called the Connected Clients Assessment. Every practice is different, and because of that, you have your own strengths, your own weaknesses, and what this Connect with Client assessment does is it goes through what you're currently doing and it helps to determine what you should be doing, um, and what you're also possibly missing out on. So it helps you to double down on things that are you're doing good at, and maybe make some adjustments so that you can improve your weaknesses. But I find that it's been very helpful for a lot of clients. It goes through some of the most common questions that I get on a regular basis, talking to practices. So if you go to veterinary marketing podcast.com/quiz, that's veterinary marketing podcast.com/quiz.

(00:02:24) - It is completely free to take that connect with client assessment and you get a five page PDF report that goes through the things that you can do to improve your marketing. All right, let's get into today's episode. The Ultimate Marketing Tools list, in my opinion, for things that you need to be doing. So first off, I think that it's important we start, every time we start a marketing conversation, we have to talk about goals. What are your goals? And if we don't know what your goals are for stuff, you need to make sure that you know what your goals are. Um, are you trying to grow? Are you launching, are you trying

(00:02:58) - To maintain? What are you trying to do? And the way that we determine if something is working in marketing is always through analytics. So bare minimum, you need to have analytics, you need Google Tag Manager, you need GA four, which is Google's new analytics suite. I really love GA four. They've done so many cool things, the cross-channel marketing tools that they have to make sure that if you have Google Ads, if it's connected and things, it gives you so much great insight, so much data, the events that they have where you can track events on your website, it is fantastic. So Google Analytics, every single practice needs it. I know that there's a lot of web companies out there that go and create that Google Analytics account for you. I highly suggest that you have your own Google Analytics account. If you ever switch website providers, you won't have access to your Google Analytics if you don't have ACC or ownership admin ownership of that analytics account.

(00:03:56) - So you need to make sure that you have that, in my opinion. I think for everything that you set up, you need to be the owner of these accounts. So that means tag manager, Google Analytics for webmaster tools, any ad accounts that you create, it needs to be set up by you because if you don't do that, you're gonna be held hostage by the company. Not necessarily held hostage, but you could be held hostage if they don't give you access. And one thing that's kind of difficult is that if you don't have access and you have to ask for it, you're not gonna be able to get, um, the data that you want to have. So make sure that you're able to access that. Now with any of the Google products that there are out there, you can automate sending of reports to yourself. So you can send out Google Ads reports, you can send out Google Analytics reports, you can send out screenshots or dashboards, and that way you can automatically see what's going on and take a snapshot.

(00:04:51) - I think setting up these automated reports on a weekly basis is essential because, um, if you know what your baseline are and you understand really what's happening on a week-to-week basis, if you're slower, you can take a look and say, oh, you know, our ad traffic is done 25%, let's take a look, we'll see what's going on. Or, you know, our organic traffic is down 25% or our social is down, right? And then you can identify what the problem is and what's causing that. But if you don't have that in place, you just don't know. So get reports set up to automatically send to yourself, do that once. It's gonna benefit you, um, over and over again and make sure that you have access to Google Analytics and the full analytics suite, not just a dashboard or something that's kind of like a, a smaller version.

(00:05:41) - I do understand if you have a dashboard set up, that is also a good way to automate reports and report polling, but it doesn't give you a full picture of everything that's going on. You can't, for example, if you're doing a marketing initiative, you can't, um, see what your UTM code is doing. Uh, you know, look at these different segments and set up segments and look at traffic through these segments. So make sure that you have that. If you're looking for something even more than, um, your current setup of Google Analytics, which some people are, if you want a lot more in-depth tracking, I tool that I highly suggest is called Hiro. It's at hirose.com. It's a first party tracking software that allows you to get around any of the issues that come up with, um, iOS 14. And it is a fantastic tracking tool.

(00:06:33) - The only thing with that is it's a little bit complicated. Um, if you need help or want help setting up advanced tracking, that's definitely something that I can help you with. Uh, you can reach out to me at brandon veterinary marketing podcast.com. And that kinda leads me to the next thing, which is practice management software. And practice management software, in my opinion, is a marketing tool. I don't have a lot of experience when it comes to choosing it based on like operations and things like that, but I would ask you that when you're talking to your practice management software company, if possible, if you can either have integrations into different APIs, like for example, Google Analytics or if you can have an API that sends out web hook data, so that would allow you to track conversions. Um, and conversion values, especially if you're doing Google ads.

(00:07:26) - I think every practice needs to be doing Google ads. One of the most difficult things in marketing for veterinary hospitals is tracking attribution and conversion data. And so just because you have an online event and then you have an offline event, and there's a gap between those two things. So you can typically track appointments booked and things like that, but if you're able to capture conversion data using web hooks and your practice management software, you can send that back to Google Ads and Google Analytics and you can actually put the conversion values of the actual spend into these platforms so that you're tracking ROI in real time. That's the only way to do it that I've found so far. Um, and out of the hundreds of practices I've worked with, only a handful have taken the time to set this up, but when they do set it up, it is incredibly powerful because you're able to set what are called target ROAS bidding in your Google Ads, for example, and you tell Google, I want to get a 200% return on my ad spend, optimize for that.

(00:08:26) - So that's really cool, um, very advanced and most practices don't have that set up and it's not necessarily practical or feasible, then that's okay. But if you're choosing a practice management software, think about how can we send this conversion data to our analytics, uh, either on Google Analytics or in Google Ads so that we're tracking return on ad spend and return on investment. That honestly rounds out the, um, analytics segment though, and I think analytics are probably one of the more important marketing tools that you can use. Another thing that I would say and suggest is having a UTM tracking tool and a naming convention, because that allows you to track what is going on with your traffic regardless of pixels and conversion pixels and things. So UTM is a code, a URL string that you put at the end of url. And what it does is it tells Google Analytics, this is the medium that this traffic is coming from, this is the source, here's the campaign, here's the content, and it just gives a lot more context for the traffic.

(00:09:24) - So you can see, for example, how your traffic is behaving that comes from social on posts about puppies versus social, about posts, about kittens, for example. Like you can get really, really detailed and it's very cool. But with that you need to have a naming convention and you need to have a UTM code that can populate based on the naming convention. Um, so I have actually a really good, uh, free tool that you can get. I'll post this in my Veterinary Marketing Nerds Facebook group. If you go to facebook.com/groups/veterinary marketing nerds and search UTM in there, um, you'll be able to find this. I'll put it in a Google Drive folder so that you don't have to opt in or anything. So with, with analytics taking care of, and by the way, every single practice needs that, I, I hope that you take action. If you took action on just one thing, please do that because you're gonna get better data.

(00:10:15) - You're gonna see what's working and what doesn't, and you're not gonna be guessing or hoping next time you do any kind of marketing. This is where marketing starts. Anytime I start a campaign, uh, it is with a goal in mind and how are we gonna measure this goal? How is it gonna be achieved? So that is foundational every single time we need to have analytics set up. Now, um, the next thing that I think is probably most important is client engagement and retention. And the best tools for that are emailing and text messaging. And so one thing that I've had a lot of trouble with specifically within my own business is finding a communication platform, email marketing platform or text message marketing platform or something that is gonna be comprehensive and that will allow me to contact and communicate with my clients, send out emails and promotions and all kinds of things.

(00:11:03) - And so I've used everything you can think of. I've used HubSpot, I've used Infusionsoft, I've used Active Campaign, I've used MailChimp, I've, the list goes on. I've used Zoho, probably a ton of other ones that you've never heard of as well. Um, the cool thing about doing marketing for people is that I get access to a lot of the marketing platforms that they pay for and I get to test out and try things a bunch. And in that I was never satisfied with the marketing platforms that were out there. Um, you know, HubSpot does a pretty good job for sure. It's very expensive, more expensive than I think most practices would wanna pay for. Um, there's also limitations with it. Uh, you have Infusionsoft, which has very poor usability, bad deliverability, things like that. It just is difficult. So, um, I was pleasantly surprised when I found a new company that's called Go High level.

(00:11:55) - And with go high level, it is a complete marketing platform. And if you're interested in this, send me a message. I am sure I can find a promo code for you. But with go high level, it is everything included. You get email, texting, social integration and messaging within social, you have landing pages. It is truly an all in one platform. It takes a little bit of learning, but once you get the hang of it, it is no more difficult than anything I've used before. In fact, it's a lot easier for a lot of things. Um, but it is a fantastic way to build your list, have everything like it has landing page builders, it has web form integrations, it has live chat integrations. If you wanna see what that live chat looks like, go to veterinary working podcast.com. I have it set up on my website where you can live chat with me.

(00:12:44) - Um, they have AI tools that integrate into that live chat. By the way, mine doesn't have that set up, but maybe someday you'll be able to chat, chat with the, the Brandon AI bot. And it's trained on all my content and things that'd be interesting to test out. But it is a fantastic tool. It is very well priced. Um, it's $97 for two locations, $47 a month for one location. Um, I think that's the pricing. I'm gonna have to double check. But if you go to veterinary marketing podcast.com/uh, high level, that's one, one word, h i g h l e v e l, uh, so veterinary marketing podcast.com/high level, you can take a look at all of the stuff that they have to offer. It is a fantastic platform for marketing. It's the only one that I recommend now. And what that lets you do is target, not target, but rather text and email your clients, set up automations, set up campaigns, set up logic based campaigns, trigger based campaigns, all kinds of really cool things.

(00:13:47) - Now, this doesn't necessarily integrate directly with your practice management software. Again, your practice management software, your collect data is going to probably have a protected API where you can't access your practice management software with other marketing platforms. So I would suggest on a regular basis, um, exporting your contact data and putting it into these marketing platforms because you're gonna have a lot better functionality that the caveat for that would be that you have to use it and it's something that you're gonna have to use on an ongoing basis to make sure that you're getting return on investment out of it. If you don't ever send out emails or texts and things like that, um, you're not gonna wanna do that. But if you are, and I think that you should be, especially in the economy that we have coming down down the pipeline, if it's not already here, you're probably already noticing some slowdowns, but communicating with clients on a regular basis is going to be more important than ever. So make sure that you are sending out communications and I think go high level is probably the best solution out there.

(00:14:51) - Um, after testing tons and tons of, of everything from the most expensive to stuff that's very affordable and in my opinion for the price, is actually more affordable than other options out there. And it has so many more features, so many cool things that you can solve, can't recommend it enough. Um, especially for automation with texting, emailing, landing page builders. Um, it has membership site content, stuff that you can build out, which is really cool. It has website hosting if you wanted to host your own stuff. Um, so just really, really cool. Now with that, the tool that I think everybody needs to be using is chat, G P T, um, and AI tools. There's a bunch of AI tools coming out that are gonna be incredible, but for now the most important one is gonna be chat G P T. That's gonna help you to build out, uh, landing pages, emails, text messaging, basically anything that you can think of that are requires text messaging and follow up, you're gonna be able to use that to dramatically save time.

(00:15:51) - I created a course, by the way, if you're interested, if you go to veterinary marketing podcast.com/courses, you can see all the courses that I have. But that AI tools course is really helpful. Feedback's been great on it. Um, and it teaches you how to go through and use all of the cool AI tools that are out there. So, um, I think within that, um, client communication, my ultimate uh, and most recommended tool is go high level, um, and then using tools like chat, g p t and g p t four for all of your content creation and editing. But that's gonna be really, really, uh, beneficial and help you to save a bunch of time. Now the other thing that helps us save a bunch of time when it comes to marketing and an essential tool in my opinion, that every practice should be doing is gonna be Zapier.

(00:16:43) - And Zapier allows you to connect two unrelated products together. And especially with chat G P T, you can set up really cool automations that are gonna do all sorts of things for you. So if there's anything that you're manually doing, whether it's like taking a Facebook post and then posting on Instagram or taking a Facebook post or make taking a blog post, for example, making a Facebook post for it, or you know, basically anything that you're doing marketing related, you're gonna be able to automate that with Zapier and chat g p t. So you can connect your platforms that are unrelated. So for example, let's say that you create, um, in the last episode I talked about actually using a Google sheet, putting in a topic and an offer, and then chat G p T will automatically go and create a Google business profile post on that topic and with that offer, so it takes something that you had to sit down and think about and automates it so that you just get it done by filling out two cells in a spreadsheet.

(00:17:47) - So that's pretty dang fantastic. Um, if you combine that two with other things like tools like notion like click up like Asana and Trello, if you have marketing objectives, you can connect these things and you can automatically get those things finished and completed. Uh, so it's just tremendously powerful tool and there's never been a time like today, um, that's all I can say is it's incredible and really, really exciting. So Zapier is incredibly important when it comes to marketing. I use it every single day and I think you should too. It just so many applications. It's so cool. The other thing that is gonna be like probably beating a dead horse that everybody knows about is Canva. Canva is incredible free tool for creating socials and graphics and I think this is part of every marketer's tool belt for sure. If you combine Canva with Zapier too, you can have it create stuff for you.

(00:18:46) - Um, there's a bunch of tools out there, like mid journey tools like, uh, Dolly and things that help to create images. I don't think the average veterinary hospital is needing that yet, um, in my opinion. So I wouldn't typically suggest most practices to use those tools. I would say you should start using them personally just to see what they're like, see what they're about and begin to get good at them. But I do think that there is, especially when it comes to image creation and content creation in your practice, there's a huge benefit of simply curating content that's going on in your practice rather than creating artificial images. So that's why I don't recommend typically using the new AI tools that are associated with image creation. Now, there's a bunch of video editing tools that are coming out, especially podcast editing tools. There's a tool called Auto Podd, which is incredible.

(00:19:42) - Um, and what it does is it takes a multi-camera podcast and condenses it into a single, um, highly edited podcasts. Like you've probably seen video podcasts. And so if you're considering doing podcasting, and by the way, I would highly highly suggest starting a podcast for your Redner hospital. There's just so many tools that are coming out that are making this ridiculously easy, and I think it's one of the most effective ways to reach your target audience. Um, there's a few benefits that I think long form content helps to, it's just incredible compared to short form, especially in a world where short form is getting more and more, um, just very, it's just the typical default mode of content creation. I think podcasts are, are becoming more and more valuable. So, um, definitely think about that if you're trying to say, you know, what kind of content should we be creating at our practice?

(00:20:39) - If you're open to trying podcasting, I would definitely suggest that I'm actually gonna create an episode, uh, about podcasting, how to start a podcast in 2023, cuz it's incredibly easy. I started a new podcast two weeks ago and I couldn't believe how easy it was. So it's easy and you don't even have to pay for hosting anymore, which is incredible. I'll show you how to do that in the next episodes coming up. But I think that probably rounds out most of the marketing tools that I think every single practice needs to be u using. Um, obviously if you are doing different marketing things, um, there's gonna be different tools that'll be very helpful. But for the most part, uh, this is something that's going to apply to every single practice. So make sure that you have analytics set up. Make sure you're using tag Manager webmaster tools. Make sure that you're the owner of these accounts, not just a user that your web development company isn't gonna hold you hostage by making you a user. Because imagine if you change website companies and then you don't have access to your data anymore. That's so disappointing. So make sure you own your data, it's incredibly important. So if you have any questions or need help with anything, please don't hesitate to reach out. It's brandon@veterinaryworkingpodcast.com and we'll see you on the next episode. Have a great day already.

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