VMP 269: Enhancing Your Vet Practice's Digital Marketing: Top 3 Strategies for Improved Outcomes

Brandon (00:00:00) - Welcome to the Veterinary Marketing Podcast, where it's all about how to attract, engage and retain clients to your veterinary practice using digital marketing. My name is Brandon Breshears. I'm so glad that you're listening today. Thank you for taking the time. If you haven't done so already, be sure to subscribe in iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, or if you want to watch along, please be sure to head on over to YouTube and look for the Veterinary Marketing Podcast there. I actually have some graphics today, which is pretty fancy, so if you're watching on YouTube, comment down below and say hello if you're listening. Hello! I'll describe the graphics for you that we've got, but today's episode is going to be, I think, helpful anytime in the future, but it's very relevant with data today. So a few things add costs and attention. AD costs are going up, attention is constantly going down. It's getting more and more difficult to reach clients. And so because of that, we're going to talk about three ways that will dramatically improve your digital marketing efforts regardless of what it is that you're doing.

Brandon (00:00:57) - So if you're doing paid ads, it's going to give you cheaper results at higher quality. If you're doing organic, it's going to help you to get better response and results. So let's jump into today's podcast episode. Before we begin, I wanted to give a quick shout out. I know I don't normally do this, but I wanted to give a quick shout out to to buymydadsvetclinic.com. Uh, if you're looking to purchase or own a veterinary clinic and you're in the Wisconsin area buy my dad's vet clinic, might be something that you want to check out. Ark Animal Hospital is the hospital that's been for sale up there, and they're trying to find a buyer, and they're not looking to go corporate. They'd like to find somebody to kind of continue the tradition and legacy. Um, they have a great client base and things, a really cool story. And they're also doing amazing marketing, um, around this. So if you go to buymydadsvetclinic.com, check it out.

Brandon (00:01:49) - If you think practice ownership might be for you. They've already done all the heavy lifting and legwork when it comes to figuring out financing options, how to make it work. It's actually not as difficult as you think. So if you're considering practice ownership and maybe you know somebody that's in the Wisconsin area, it's in Eau Claire, which is a cute little town outside of Saint Paul. And, um, it looks beautiful. If I was a vet, I would be like, hey, this looks pretty interesting. Anyways, I just wanted to shout them out because I think they're doing some really cool things when it comes to trying to continue the legacy of the practice and find somebody who's a good fit and not just sell to somebody that's corporate. And when I talked to Seth Godin, he talked about basically this exact thing, and I think it's pretty cool. So I'm a huge fan of private practice, and I would love to see private practices flourish, and that's why I wanted to give them a quick shout out.

Brandon (00:02:44) - So go to buymydadsvetclinic.com and if you're interested, check it out, reach out and say hello to them. They're very, very nice people. Um, so if you're interested be sure to reach out and let's jump in. We have two sponsors for today's episode. Are you looking to get better SEO ranking for your practice? Probably everyone I know that runs a veterinary hospital would be benefited from having better local SEO, and that's why I want to give you some free tools from one of today's sponsor. It is WhiteSpark.ca. If you go to Veterinarymarketingpodcast.com/seo, that's veterinarymarketingpodcast.com/seo. You can sign up to get a free account to give you some amazing SEO tools. WhiteSpark gives you everything that you need for better local SEO. If you haven't heard the episode I did with Darren Shaw, be sure to go back and look at it. He is the founder and owner of this company. It is fantastic. They have Google business profile management, local rank tracking, local citation finder, reputation builder.

Brandon (00:03:48) - They even have professional SEO services if that's something that you're looking for. So go to Veteran Marketing podcast.com/seo to check out WhiteSpark and the free tools that they have available for you. You won't be disappointed. They're really cool. Uh, let me know what you think too. If you need help with any of that, please don't hesitate to reach out. But again, veteran marketing podcast.com/seo. Have you ever said yourself, I wish I knew where these clients were coming from? If you've ever been wondering, you know what is actually driving conversions in your practice, then I have something that I think will be great for you and that is called real call relevancy. Fantastic tool that allows you to measure and see where your conversions are coming from and which of the calls and call sources are driving clients into your practice. CallRail makes it really simple to not only see where your calls are coming from, but the AI tools that they have that track and record the conversation so that you can assign outcomes to the calls is amazing.

Brandon (00:04:54) - I highly suggest all of the clients that I have used CallRail. And if you've ever wondered where my clients. Coming from. You can try calling out for two weeks for free. If you go to veterinarymarketingpodcast.com/callrail, you'll be able to try CallRail for yourself and finally know where your clients are coming from. All right, so let's jump into today's episode. There's two facts of life that we need to really embrace when it comes to digital marketing. Number one is that attention is limited, and it's probably the most valuable resource in today's world right now. It's more difficult than ever to capture people's attention. It's a fact. It's getting shorter and shorter. Short form content is ruining people's brains. And, um, if you enjoy TikTok like I do, you could probably say the same thing for yourself. So what does this mean? It means that you need to be better. We're going to talk about specifically three different ways that you can be better. The second truth is that traffic and the cost of traffic is going up as attention gets more and more valuable.

Brandon (00:05:56) - That's basically what traffic is. So whether it's organic traffic, paid traffic, sending emails, whatever it is that is going up in cost because attention is getting more and more rare, right? The more rare that the attention is, the more valuable the traffic. And looking at data here, specifically from Search Engine Land, one of my favorite publications, Google CPCs up 19%, pushing ad spend up 17%. What does that mean? So there's more advertisers that are jumping in. It's surprising Google is very established, but more advertisers are jumping in more than ever, which totally makes sense. Anecdotally, I'm busier than ever because more practices are trying to get more clients. Now Google search CPCs are up. That's cost per click. But does that mean it's too late for you to figure this out? Absolutely not. I think that, um, every veteran practice should have an inbound traffic strategy so that you're not just relying on the market. If you don't have a way to drive people into your practice consistently and you don't know what's happening or how you're acquiring clients, you are setting yourself up for disaster because you're just going to be at the whim of the market, right? If, uh, market's the only thing driving clients in.

Brandon (00:07:12) - And for the most part, that's been the case for most veteran practices, especially through the pandemic, where everybody was so busy and you're overwhelmed, you're not sure how you're going to be able to handle all of this demand. And all of a sudden the market is starting to soften, and now you have appointments available and you're wondering what we should do. Right? The best time to figure that out was when you're really busy, because when the market changes, and I think this is true of every single industry I've ever worked in. When it's a good times, people think they're never going to end. It's bad times. People think it's just going to keep going forever. It's bad. It's never going to change. It's good, it's going to keep going, and nothing bad is going to happen. Right? I think that's just human nature, but it is constantly cyclical, even with products like veterinary care and it's very interesting too. I think that there is probably a bit of an Achilles heel when it comes to thinking, oh, you know, veterinary care is essential and there's no way that people would forego veterinary care, but that simply isn't the truth.

Brandon (00:08:14) - If the economy is not doing so well, or if inflation is creeping up and people are choosing, are we going to get wellness care or are we going to continue to pay for health insurance, like people are having to make these decisions in the markets? And so it is important that you have a way to consistently drive the types of clients that you want in your practice to come in. And I think one of the best ways to do that is through paid advertising. So specifically search ads, um, are up. Spend was up 19%. So people are spending more, which makes sense to acquire customers because the the market demand is starting to slow. And I think for veterinary practices there, especially seeing this, you haven't had to typically be advertising through Covid and things. And now all of a sudden switching it up and we have to figure out how to get clients coming in. By the way, if you want help with this, this is what I do. I help clients all across the country and the world get better clients using paid advertising.

Brandon (00:09:11) - Um, interestingly, spend was up 15% on desktop and laptop searches, so people are specifically trying to target desktop and laptop pretty significantly. Um, tablet was up 4% year over year, which is just also kind of interesting. Um, but clicks were down 13% and cost per click was up 19%. So I've typically found that with paid advertising, mobile, especially for transactional search, mobile is in general best because you get the best price traffic and it's still very high quality. So all of that being said. We need to figure out how can we be more effective, right? Costs are going up. Attention is getting more rare and more valuable. How can we get better results with what we're trying to do? So the very first thing that I think is incredibly important is that you have your value proposition and your core offers down, so the more valuable you can make your offer appear. So if somebody's searching you versus everybody else, what makes you more valuable and not only what makes you more valuable, but how can we increase the likelihood for our perfect and ideal clients to say yes? So I need you to think about that in your practice.

Brandon (00:10:28) - And every single practice is different. Every practice has a different type of client that they're looking to attract. Um, every client has different strengths and weaknesses in practice. Everybody's facilities are different. So it is important that you really consider who are already clients. How can we get more of them, and how can we communicate that value in a way that's going to reduce our costs? So the way that you frame the value that you're presenting to a client or potential client, that is called your offer. So you need to make sure that you're presenting it in a way that makes it as valuable as possible to your ideal customer, and then also use it to to repel the people that you're not looking to get into your practice, especially if you're doing paid advertising. So when it comes to things like for example. So some of the ways that I really like to do this is to create a product that is unique to you, whether it is your wellness exams or your surgical surgical searches or you know something, whatever it is that you're trying to sell, you need to package it in a way that maximizes the value for your ideal client.

Brandon (00:11:34) - Um, and then makes it attractive as possible. So for some practices that might be first free exam. First exam is free. Let us prove to you that we're going to do an amazing job and earn your business for life. For some of you, that might be just naming it something, showing all of the pieces and comprehensive steps that go into it, and helping people to understand truly what the difference is in service, what they look like before and after, and what they can expect going throughout the process. Now, anytime you are trying to attract clients and customers, the more valuable the offer is and the better that it is framed and the easier it is for people to say yes, especially if you make it a no brainer. Um, the cheaper the cost for new client acquisition is going to be. So an example of that. Let's say you're doing TPO surgeries. Let's say you charge $8,000 for TPO. That's definitely on the higher end of the market. So if you have people that are price shopping, they're not going to use you just because you're more expensive.

Brandon (00:12:34) - So you need to justify that price and provide value. What are the types of things that can increase perceived value? One is difficulty to achieve results. If it's easy to get that result, it's not as I mean, it's far more valuable if you can reduce the time to get the result. If you had a shot that immediately cured TPO, uh, without any recovery, that would be amazing. You'd be a billionaire, right? Um, and so the faster that you typically can give people results, the more valuable that is. So anytime that you can increase that desired outcome while decreasing the effort, energy and time to get it, you're going to be able to get more for that offer and make it easier for people to say yes. At the same time, you have people that want to feel like they got a deal. You have people that are value shoppers, people that want to get great value for what they're paying. And so that doesn't necessarily mean that they're low clients, low quality clients, but it just means that that's the personality type.

Brandon (00:13:33) - So figure out exactly who it is that you're trying to attract and figure out how to communicate value to them. Now the second thing that really works well with this is having high quality creative. So something that stands out and is incredibly high tier when it comes to production or is funny, entertaining, can capture attention. When it comes to social creative, I think it's much more important to learn how to be a content creator than it is just to run ads, um, alone. And the reason for that is all of the algorithms that are really fueling the growth in social space specifically, like in, uh, you know, Tik Tok and things, the better that you are at creating content and getting people to engage with your content, the better you're going to be at creating ad content. That is then going to communicate your value and help people to see kind of the the next steps in the vision for why they should work with you. So real quick here, I want to give you a few thoughts on this that are going to, I hope hopefully prove my point.

Brandon (00:14:45) - Number one, um, the the better you can do to stand out, capture attention, the cheaper your results are going to be. A perfect example of that is if you go on Facebook or Instagram or wherever you have friends, I would probably say Facebook would be a good place for this. And you say, I'm looking for mattress recommendations, can you please give me your mattress recommendations? If you do that, 80 to 90% of those recommendations will be purple mattresses. I can almost guarantee you that. It's really interesting. You'll have a few Casper, you'll have a few other brands, Tempurpedic, etc. but the overwhelming majority will be purple mattresses. I don't know if you remember this, but a couple years ago, purple mattresses dominated the ad space because they had an incredible capture attention capturing video that highlighted all. All of the benefits and promoted this idea of buying a mattress off the internet, which was actually pretty unheard of at the time. They were one of the people who kind of pioneered that.

Brandon (00:15:45) - And by the way, I have three purple mattresses in my home. I love them, they're fantastic products. So you have to have a product that's amazing too, right? And obviously that's a big part of being successful in business, obviously. But if you look at the purple mattress ads, it skyrocketed them and took them from zero to hundreds of millions of dollars in sales. The same thing with potpourri, which is the toilet spray. Same thing with the Squatty Potty. And it's interesting. It's actually all of these ads were made by a company called the Harman Brothers and Harman Brothers, along with a guy named Darrell Eaves is going to be on the podcast here in a couple months. They basically reversed engineered. How do we take these viral concepts and turn it into a direct response ad? I'm not saying you have to have the ability to produce Hollywood level quality of content, but I am saying if you are good at creating content organically, you will be able to dominate the ad space because you're going to be able to create ad creative that does the same thing, which is attracting your ideal clients and repelling ones that are not ideal.

Brandon (00:16:54) - The more engagement that you can get on ads, the better quality of response you're going to get and the cheaper, um, cost per result you're going to get as well. So being able to consistently create organic content that your ideal audience is really wanting to see is going to be, I think, one of the most valuable skills for all businesses in the future, especially as ad platforms move further and further away from manual targeting and more and more towards creative as ad targeting. Meaning the same thing when you post a TikTok, for example, you're not telling it who to the target audience should be. It's going out and showing it to people who thinks it will be the right audience. And then based on engagement, it starts to show it to more and more of those people. Same thing with ads. So in the future, we're going to be losing a lot of ad targeting options. I'm telling you, 2 to 3 years, we're not going to have anywhere near the level of detail that we have right now.

Brandon (00:17:51) - I've already seen it happening on YouTube ads or losing placements where you used to be able to target specifically which videos you wanted your ads showing in front of, and that's not the case anymore. So it's very important that you begin to work out this muscle, which is how do we create content that our clients engage with. You cannot sit on this. I'm telling you, if you sit on this and you don't do anything, you're going to be in a world of hurt in a couple of years, I guarantee you. So, you know, there's all of the benefits that you get from organic content, whether it's, um, increased audience people already know, like, and trust you when they come in. Um, it just will really roll into paid advertising as well. So I can't stress that enough. Now, the third thing that I think you really have to have down so that you can reduce the costs when it comes to client acquisition and customer acquisition is have your tracking down. You need to know exactly where your clients are coming from.

Brandon (00:18:49) - And by the way, asking them at the front desk, in my opinion is not enough. Just saying, um, you know, we saw you on Google. Okay, great. That could be like five different places. They could have googled, searched you, they could have done maps, could have been a Google my business click. It could be Google Ads, it could be a blog article for the SEO that you're doing. Right. It could be from a YouTube video that showed up in results. There's just so much there that you need to know where your clients are coming from. You don't have the luxury of just guessing and hoping. If you have the ability to track where your clients are coming from, you're able to cut the fat out of your campaigns and stop wasting money. Right? And that is important. It's very surprising when we have accurate conversion tracking. It's surprising to see what works and what doesn't, because sometimes the things that's not working are things you think for sure would be working.

Brandon (00:19:43) - And you're surprised because, you know, this might work really well for practice down the street or, you know, across the country. But for whatever reason, it's not working with your team. And that's another thing too, is that with tools like CallRail, for example, by the way, go to veterinarymarketingpodcast.com/callrail because it's a fantastic tool. Two free weeks to try it out. But with that you can really see the qualitative data. That you just don't get when you're looking at a Google Ads dashboard. I love looking at Google Ads, but if you're not using conversion tracking, it's like you're missing half the picture. So I imagine shooting a bow and arrow at a target and you never really go check out the target to see where you hit. That's what it's like when you are running ads without call tracking, especially if the majority of clients that you have coming in are coming from calls. So it's very, very important that you have conversion tracking set up. It's going to give you the feedback that you need for both organic and paid across all of the different mediums, whether it is across email, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, wherever you're trying to acquire clients from, you need to understand what that process looks like and how you can really scale and grow things that are working, and stop doing things that are not working so that you're going to reserve your resources the most important, which is your time.

Brandon (00:21:07) - So those three things will give you the biggest returns in my opinion. Number one is have a solid offer and value proposition so that you can communicate that quickly, easily, and make it easy for your clients to say yes. Number two is to make sure you are able to create ad creative or organic creative, you need to be able to make content. And then number three is you have to be able to measure all of it to understand what's working and what's not. Otherwise you're guessing and that does not work. And also, if you're guessing and just trying to remember and not being intentional about, we're tracking this over time and seeing how we're improving. Try and think about what you eat for breakfast a week ago. Try and think about what you ate for breakfast yesterday, I don't remember. Um, most likely you don't either. So how are you going to remember which ad headline worked and which one didn't? Right? If you're not tracking this and making an effort at getting better and improving all the time, you are just going to have to worry about getting lucky because that's the only way you're going to succeed.

Brandon (00:22:06) - I know that sounds a little bit harsh, but it's true. And I want you to be successful in 2024 and beyond. So be sure to subscribe in iTunes, Spotify, Google Play wherever you get your podcasts from. I appreciate you for taking the time to listen, and we'll see you on the next episode. Have a great day, everybody.

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