VMP 279: The Biggest Veterinary Marketing Lessons From 10 Years of Podcasting

Brandon (00:00:00) -  Welcome to the Veterinary Marketing Podcast, where it's all about how to attract, engage, retain clients to your vendor. Practice using digital marketing. My name is Brandon Breshears and today's episode is very special. It is the ten year anniversary of the podcast. I cannot believe that this podcast has been going on for ten years. so today I figured I was going to match the ten year anniversary with the ten biggest marketing lessons and principles that I've learned over the past decade. Now I'm an old guy starting to get super old. The past decade of doing this podcast. Things that I think are foundational that won't change, but are going to dramatically help to improve your veterinary practices. Marketing. So before we begin, this episode is not being sponsored by anybody because I just want to say thank you so much. If you're listening to this podcast, I can't tell you how much this podcast has changed my life for the better. I am so thankful. I've always kind of felt like an outsider in the industry because I've never worked in a vendor practice.

Brandon (00:01:02) -  I've never. I mean, veterinarians are an amazing group of people, and when I say that I love this industry, I love working with veterinary professionals. I just can't say it enough. I can't say thank you enough. So it's been an incredible privilege to be able to produce this podcast and then to work with so many amazing veterinary professionals. I just have to say, I appreciate you. if you're listening to this, if you've been listening to this, I know that there's several people who've listened ever since the beginning, which is crazy. Thank you so much. You have made a tremendous difference in my life, in my family's life. and I just am so thankful that this industry exists. And, you know, thank you. Thank you. If you feel that somebody could benefit from this podcast, as always, I would greatly appreciate if you shared it with them because, that's the goal. I'm trying to help practices attract, engage and retain clients using digital marketing. And so I just want to say thank you.

Brandon (00:02:07) -  And I am truly privileged to work with you all. And I just I feel super lucky. So thank you everybody. So over the past ten years, I've been doing digital marketing almost every single day. I've been learning a ton. When I started this podcast, most practices weren't even doing social media, which is crazy. Most practices had a website, but that was about it. Not even all practices had a website, which is crazy. it's just amazing how much things have changed over the years. So I'll probably revisit this list again. Hopefully we're still all around and doing this in ten years, from now. But, if we revisit it, my goal for this episode is to give you ten things that regardless of what happens, it's going to be able to be used in your marketing with whatever it is that you're doing. So these are going to be timeless principles that will help you to improve your practices marketing. So the very first tip or tool that I have for you is always start with goals.

Brandon (00:03:20) -  That's where we need to start in anything that you do when it comes to marketing, you need to understand what is the desired outcome that we are after. In seeing all of the trends that come and go, people ask, should I be doing this? Should I be doing this? There's a million things that you could do when it comes to digital marketing, but the best thing to do is to take the shortest and easiest route because you don't need more work, you need to get there as quickly as possible. So if you, number one know what your outcome is, it's going to really help you to number one, know if things are working, know what kind of adjustments you need to make and help to define the strategy. So the goal always becomes before the strategy. The strategy always comes before the tactic is the way that I like to think about that. And so if you ever find yourself at a conference or in a webinar or training reading a book, you need to make sure that the goal of what we're trying to achieve aligns with the strategy and then the tactic ultimately.

Brandon (00:04:21) -  Okay, so always start with your goals. That's by far the best piece of advice that I have with you when it comes to any kind of marketing that you're going to do the next thing that I think will help you to really simplify the way that you approach your digital marketing, or any kind of marketing in general, is to break everything that you're doing down into its smallest steps. And I've said this a lot of times in the past, but I think it's incredibly true, and it will help you to understand any kind of marketing tactic. You really can only target people based on demographic. You can target them based on behavior, you can target them based on platform. And ultimately we just have to figure out what is that main goal and then how are we going to reach these people and what are all of the steps in between. So here's what I mean by that. For example, let's say you're doing Google ads and you want to be targeting people for TPO surgery. Okay. So the end goal is a patient in the practice for surgery for TPO.

Brandon (00:05:20) -  What needs to happen? First, first thing we need to do is we need to have them. If they're searching for TPO near me, we need our ad to show up. So ad show up is the first thing. They're going to read the ad, then they're going to click on the ad. Then they're going to go to the website. Then they're going to consume the information on the website. Then they're going to either fill out a form, schedule an appointment, make a call. Maybe they're going to bounce once they, let's say, make a call, for example, the first thing they have to do is answer the phone. Then we have to have that conversation, answer questions, objections, get them booked for an appointment. Make sure that they show up to the appointment. Have the the follow up in place for all of those things. They go to the appointment and then we hopefully get a review and repeat clients referrals and things like that. But by breaking this down into its smallest pieces, you can see exactly what's happening.

Brandon (00:06:12) -  So, for example, I have a client that's recently been running some ads. They've been getting a lot of good traffic. We can see breakdown of the traffic demographics. And this one that I'm thinking of in particular is on LinkedIn. So we have our ad copy. We have our ads that are showing. We have the ads that are getting a good click through rate. The topic and the headlines are relevant to the type of client that they want to get. But the problem is, once they're clicking on the ad, they're going to the site and the conversion action isn't taking place. So there's a disconnect at this point in the ad between the ad itself and the conversion action. So for whatever reason they see the ad, they clicked, they're engaged. It's the right demographic. We can see job titles, we can see everything looks right on the front end. But that conversion is not happening. So that allows us to go in and say, okay, we need to adjust this landing page so that it aligns better with the goals, the pain points, the desires, the outcomes that these people are looking for.

Brandon (00:07:07) -  And so incredibly important to know within each of these steps. Where is it breaking? It's like if you took a car in to a mechanic and you said, our car's not working and you really have no idea what it is, you don't tell him any symptoms or, you know, a pet comes in and you say the pet sick and you don't have any more information other than that, you need to be able to diagnose the problem. And by breaking it into the smallest steps, you can really figure out where things are breaking and how to improve them. So breaking it down into small steps also will tell you is this a good strategy for what we're trying to do? is it not? And I think that's very, very important because a lot of times people will try to do maybe too many activities with a marketing piece. And I'll give you an example. So, the the thing that I see most often in, I would say emails, text and social posts, people will do a post where they're asking for people to like and share and also book an appointment and request a special.

Brandon (00:08:10) -  So they're trying to do like five different objectives with a single piece of content. And generally that causes confusion and doesn't get the end result that you're hoping for. So make sure that if you have something, you have your end goal in mind, and you have the single step each way to get there because you're going to be far more effective. So understanding if something's working or not, that means that you have to actually measure. And so this is the third thing that you absolutely need to be doing. Measure. You need to have KPIs in place so that, you know, and obviously the goal that you're going to have is going to determine the KPI. Now, if we remember the types of marketing activities that you can do, you can do awareness marketing, you can do evaluation marketing or conversion marketing metrics are going to be different. And each one of those steps. So make sure you're able to measure a goal that is going to be meaningful and give you data. So things that you should be doing Google analytics absolutely need to have that in place.

Brandon (00:09:08) -  Measure, measure and measure as much as you can. And that is going to be able to allow you to make adjustments and change. Because the truth is, like everything works out there. It just is a matter of how well it's working. Right. If you set up a newspaper ad and I see a lot of people still doing newspaper ads and things, surprisingly, it's going to work. People are going to see it. It's just how well is it going to work? And then identifying things that are working really well and doubling down on those. So make sure you're measuring things and make sure it is in a way that's going to be meaningful and provide you good data. That makes sense. The number four thing that I think you should be doing is go after the smallest possible audience, as small and as niche as you possibly can. So what do I mean by that? If you're creating content, if you are creating offers, if you're creating ads, you want to go after your ideal client, your ideal service, and the more relevant and more specific you're going to be, the more relevant it's going to be.

Brandon (00:10:13) -  Okay. So for example, if you have two different ads for polo and one says ABC Animal Hospital, we treat everything from emergencies to surgeries. We can handle your pet's needs. If you see that ad versus are you looking for TPO? We have TPO, special offers, etc., etc. so the more specific that you can be in terms of your target market, the messaging that you have, the more effective any type of marketing you're going to do. So I really think defining several different buckets around offers that you want to be doing. So like let's say dental procedures, let's say surgeries, types of pets, senior pets, puppies. You know, whatever it is, it has to be specific and relevant. And the smaller the audience that you can create, the better your ads are going to do. So Seth Godin calls this minimum viable audience, and I think it is incredibly smart. Right. It's you're listening to the Veterinary Marketing podcast and chances are you are a veterinary professional. It is not the Small Business Marketing podcast or the brick and mortar podcast, or the local podcast.

Brandon (00:11:19) -  I'm not saying that those things wouldn't be effective, but I'm able to reach you, the veterinary professional, because I'm niched down and ultra specific. Right. And I understand the problems that you have. And so you're probably more likely to listen to me than you would be just somebody who was, in general, brick and mortar marketing. The fifth thing that I think after a decade of doing this podcast is you actually need to be different. You need to have a unique selling proposition. Being empathetic, caring, giving better service. Like, what does that mean? Those are things that everybody does in vet med. And just saying, you know, we care about your pet. We'll treat your pet like family. That's not good enough anymore. You have to actually differentiate yourself. If you're going to say we reimagined vet care and it looks like a normal veterinary practice, you're not reimagining vet care. Okay. Last episode, we did that with Cody. He actually reimagined the experience and made it unique.

Brandon (00:12:23) -  It's not like a normal veterinary practice when you walk into Fen Vet. They have a scent that is the Vincent like that's not normal. They're actually reimagining vet care. Think about that. What is going to actually make you different and lean into that, tell people what's going to be different things that are going to attract them and make them interested. So you actually have to have a unique selling proposition. I'd like to think of this as the before and after. When you have somebody that doesn't know you, what do they look like before they come into your practice and what do they look like after that transformation bridge that they cross, whether they have more information, they have peace of mind. They have, you know, more tools and diagnostics. Maybe you give them more education. There's a ton of different things that you could give them, but you have to create a value proposition and you need to be different. And that leads me to the next point here, which is point number six. You need to have offers.

Brandon (00:13:25) -  What is an offer? An offer is a it's basically that value bridge from where they are to where they're going. And you need to package it in a way that is unique and non commoditized. So if you want to not be only competing on price and you want to actually compete on service and value, you have to convey that. And the best way to do that is with an offer. Definitely going to be doing a training on offer creation in the future here, so be sure to head on over to Veteran Marketing podcast.com. And put your email in. You can sign up for the newsletter and I'll send you a notification when that's ready. I'm going to make that free. But creating an offer and a value proposition is going to help you to avoid competition based solely on price. So what is it that you could offer? I want you to do a quick exercise. If you had to charge $5,000 for an exam or $10,000 for an exam, what would you have to include in it so that you could justify charging that price? Right? I'm sure there's people out there who would pay 5 or $10,000 for an exam.

Brandon (00:14:32) -  Like, absolutely, those people exist. So think about what you would have to include, how you'd have to package things, what that would have to look like if you want to be the ultimate service, like, think about that and then think about the elements that you could actually include in your practice today. That's something to think about. Absolutely. When it comes to offers, I think that it's important that you understand your market and your testing often. Which leads me to number seven. You need to test with organic. And then if something works, put money behind it with paid. I like that option better than starting with paid. And this is somebody I do paid ads. That's all I do for veterans hospitals. I help you to attract more clients with veteran hospitals. If you want to do ads on meta or Instagram, or Facebook, TikTok, these platforms, starting with organic content that's going to work and get engagement, is going to be the way to go 100% of the time. So if you can start with organic and scale with paid, that is better in my opinion.

Brandon (00:15:36) -  So test, test, test. And if you're going to go straight to paid, and there are definitely times where we're paid advertising is a good thing to go to. especially within Google. Right. Because it's hard to get organic ranking that takes time, effort, energy. So not necessarily a bad thing, but, definitely think test with organic and scale with paid. Or if you're going to start out with paid ads, start with smaller budgets and scale up once things are working. don't start by just saying. And I think this happens all the time, because I'll get people who said I tried that it didn't work. and you can probably think of times where you've run ads and you're just not sure what your result was. Maybe it worked, I don't know. that's pretty common. So think about starting out with either small, paid type things or organic things. And then once you get engagement, put more money into it and really double down on things that work, you don't have to continually reinvent the wheel.

Brandon (00:16:40) -  If you see a type of offer works, repackage it. Repurpose the content, presented it in a new way, but continue to use that value proposition. I think too often people think they need to completely come up with new things. That's not the case. If something works, double down on it and keep using it over and over again. There's a bunch of ways to repackage things so that they appear new. The eighth tip that I have for you is that marketing in general, and advertising is a great way to amplify what you currently have, but it doesn't fix things. So if you have great service, great product, great practice, putting paid ads behind it is going to amplify that. I'm going to fix a problem. It's not a magic bullet. I'm not a wizard when it comes to being able to make all of your problems go away. It is incredibly important that you have your service down, that it is a good experience, and it doesn't have to be with everybody, because there's going to be people that are not good fits for your practice.

Brandon (00:17:46) -  And that is totally okay. I think it's impossible to make everybody happy. So that's the caveat there. But if you are, you know who it is that you want to be targeting. and you know the types of services that you want to be offering, and you can find those people, you should be able to amplify the success that you have. And so paid advertising works dramatically better with practices that are, you know, run well and successful. So if you have problems with bad reviews, staff problems, culture problems, advertising, marketing is not going to help that. I don't think you shouldn't start marketing, especially organic and content creation and all of those things, even if your practice isn't perfect. Nobody's perfect. So don't wait to get good at doing marketing. until everything is perfect in practice. It's a skill that it takes work. It takes practice. So get good at it. But make sure that you if you have serious problems and you keep seeing these problems in the form of bad reviews, unhappy clients, unhappy staff, you need to get those things fixed.

Brandon (00:18:56) -  before item number nine, everything works, everything works. And I mentioned this in earlier, but my suggestion is and then there's so much that you could be doing. Start with one thing, work on that until you get a good handle on it and wait to add another thing. And typically that's going to be a channel until you feel like, okay, I've got this, that's a good channel or this isn't working, we need to pivot. And the caveat that'll give is you need to give it enough time to do so. Let's say you wanted to start doing YouTube for your practice. Let's say you wanted to start a podcast for your practice. you need to give yourself enough time. And generally I'm going to say 90 days is a good time frame. If you're consistently working on something to see if it's going to give you results, and if you are going to get what you're hoping to get out of it before you move on to the next thing. if it's paid ads, I think you should be able to see results a little bit quicker.

Brandon (00:19:54) -  if it is paid social, you should be able to see results quicker. But first focus on one channel at a time and this is going to help you to also be able to measure the impact more quickly. So let's say for example, you decided okay, not doing any advertising at all. We're going to start doing local service ads, Google less ads. We're going to do Google, Google ads, on search and performance Max. We're going to do social ads on meta, and then we're also going to do social ads on TikTok. So we're going to add five new traffic channels to what we're currently offering. If something works, you're not going to be able to identify that piece that is working. So by adding one thing at a time, you're going to be able to set new baselines and get an understanding for what is truly working and what isn't. and the alternative to that is to just have really good tracking in place to use UTM codes and get a good handle on it. But for most practices, especially if you're doing it in-house, adding one thing at a time is absolutely enough.

Brandon (00:20:57) -  Get a good handle on it. Figure out what's working and what's not, and then take what works. And again, double down on that. I think doing 80 over 20, kind of overviews all the time. What's the 20% of activities that are generating 80% of the clientele? Continuously go through and look at that. Keep the 20%, discard the 80% that's not doing anything, and then reinvest your energy efforts, time money into things that are working. The last thing that I think, is the most important, this is probably the most important piece across all of these is that consistency artwork's brilliance every single time. So let's say you're amazing writer, and you're going to create the world's best blog post on something or piece of content. If you create one piece of content, it's the best ever that's written, but you only create it once. You're not going to get the same result as if you were just creating like relatively good, consistent content every single week. This goes for anything that you do.

Brandon (00:22:06) -  If you want to have results and see what's working and improve your practices, marketing consistency is what's going to outwork brilliance and, you know, virality and all these things every single time. So be consistent. I think you should be working on this on at least a weekly basis where you're saying, okay, this week, here's what we're going to do, but be consistent with it. If you just do one thing a week, by the end of the year, you're gonna have 52 things that you've done and improved on. So especially with content creation posts, I mean, the more that you can do consistently, the better. But stick to consistency. Keep trying. Keep learning. These are skills that build on top of each other when it comes to marketing, whether it's copywriting or content creation or whatever type of marketing activity you're doing. The more you do of it, the better you're going to get, and that practice is going to compound so that if you continue to work on things in a year from now, two years from now, you're going to be ten times better than you are today.

Brandon (00:23:09) -  And so you're never going to be starting over regardless of what you're doing. So I hope that that is helpful for you. So let's recap really quickly here. We've got number one. Always start with goals. Number two break down your marketing into the small steps possible. Number three is always measure your marketing. Number four is go after the smallest possible audience. That minimum viable audience that Seth Godin talks about. Number five is create a unique selling proposition. What actually is making you different. Number six you need to have an offer in place. So create offers test offers and see what your clients actually want. What is going to bring value to them. Number seven is test with organic and scale with paid. Or start with small budgets and scale up with things that work. Number eight is marketing amplifies your practice whether it's good or bad. So make sure that the service is great. Marketing is going to amplify that greatness. Number nine is everything works, so it's just a matter of how well it works.

Brandon (00:24:11) -  Make sure you start with one thing at a time. Work on that, get good handle on it, and then move on to the next thing. And then number ten is consistency. Always beats brilliance or virality. So be consistent and you're going to get better results. I hope that you enjoyed today's episode. Again, I want to say thank you so much for listening to this podcast and for being a, an amazing part of my community and, my life. I can't tell you how blessed I feel to be working with veterinary professionals, so thank you. If you ever have any questions comments, you need help with anything, don't hesitate to reach out. I really, really appreciate you. Have a wonderful day.

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