VMP 281: Dr. Mike Walker Shares His Veterinary Branding, Marketing & Social Media Secrets To Success

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 and in today's episode we have a special guest. It is doctor Mike Walker from Apollo Veterinary, out in Wimberley, Texas. And today's episode is full of really great info. He talks about how he branded his practice, the thoughts that he put into how he was going to approach his practice concept, and he's been able to really grow a very cool brand and a successful practice from startup. and it's just been really cool to watch his journey on Instagram and how he's created content, developed culture, and built a really cool brand. So it's going to be full of great info. If you're specifically wondering how do you attract better clients? What kind of marketing should you be doing? What's actually working in your practice? how do you build a culture through marketing that's going to attract better talent and also retain that talent, Make sure that they're good fits and just all kinds of really valuable information.

Brandon 00:01:03  I really, really enjoyed this conversation and I think you're going to like it too. Before we start today's episode, I have two sponsors for the podcast. Are you looking to get better SEO ranking for everyday 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 White Sparkle. If you go to Veterinary Marketing podcast.com/seo, that's veterinary marketing podcast.com/seo. You can sign up to get a free account to give you some amazing SEO tools. White spark 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, founder, reputation builder. They even have professional SEO services if that's something that you're looking for. So go to veterinarymarketingpodcast.com/seo to check out White Spark and the free tools that they have available for you.

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Brandon 00:03:16  If you go to Veterinarymarketingpodcast.com/callrail, you'll be able to try call rail for yourself and finally know where your clients are coming from. So without further ado, here is doctor Mike Walker from Apollo.

Mike 00:03:30  Over three years now.

Brandon 00:03:32  Definitely. It's amazing. It's amazing to see what you've done to you so well. Let's just get into it because I think it'll be a good conversation for the podcast here. Make sure you're recording. Okay. Cool. Thank you so much, Doctor Walker, for being on the podcast. I really appreciate it. I've been trying to get you on the podcast for two years. At least two years.

Mike 00:03:50  I think life gets busy.

Brandon 00:03:51  I guess you're busy running your practice or something? I think so it's very exciting. It's been so cool to watch you, grow your practice. I mean, really incredible. So just give a quick background of who you are and how you got started with your practice and things. Yeah.

Mike 00:04:08  No. Thank you. And, I mean, I hope the listeners will kind of hear how deep our relationship goes back.

Mike 00:04:13  And, but yeah, I opened a bit about three years ago, actually, this in September will be our three year anniversary. this has been a a dream of mine for my whole life, actually. But I've been working on it for probably for the past five years. But we opened September of 2021 at Apollo Vet in a small town right outside of Austin, Texas, and, have grown it up to an hour. A six doctor practice about to open our second location here in the next couple of weeks. And and our goal and our mission is to continue to expand out and keep independent and local and bootstrap it ourselves. And, that's really kind of what I found the most joy out of, too, is working with people like you from the get go and, and just building up this company into what we can dream it because really, it's as big as we want to make it, and that's the fun thing to me.

Brandon 00:04:58  It's amazing. I didn't know I didn't realize that you had six doctors working now in at Wimberley.

Brandon 00:05:03  That's ridiculously incredible. So, your practice is very cool as far as the way that it looks, the brand that you've developed with it. can you kind of give a little bit of insight because looking back at your content. So people should go check out all of that. Com check out your social and everything. But it's been very consistent. And I think that's one thing that's been very impressive to me is that most practices I think they go like in spurts where they'll get like an idea to start something and then they won't finish it or, you know, they won't be consistent, but you've been consistent. And not only that, but the brand has been really consistent. So when you were starting how intentional. And I know some of the answers, obviously, because I remember talking to you about these things. But how did you go about really trying to define that brand, because I think it's obviously very intentional and also very impressive because. Yeah, and I see content that you post like I would say, oh, that looks like Apollo content, right.

Brandon 00:06:04  So like I look.

Mike 00:06:05  Probably a little bit like on the silly side sometimes too. But yeah that's good though.

Brandon 00:06:09  Yeah.

Mike 00:06:10  Well for me it is like a very holistic approach. Like we have to, as owners and marketers, consider every aspect of the business from the moment the client walks through the door to the building, to the swag that we give out, to the paid advertisement that we do. So for me, brand is not just what we post or the logo that we make. And even in that point, it's really intentional too. So I think what is good is starting four years ago, when I actually started to come up with the name Apollo and, and really trying to figure out a name of what I could build a brand around, I knew for what I wanted to do, specifically in Multi-location company independently owned, I couldn't have, you know, First Street Vet Clinic or something. That was very location dependent. So that immediately filtered out all that stuff for me. And then I went through, I was like, okay, we could make up cool names that really have no meaning.

Mike 00:07:03  They just sound fun. like some of the stuff you see out there. And but ultimately I was like, what can we create a story behind? Because for me, the story is what sells people on that. And I'll get into like one of my mindset on who I'm actually selling to when I do marketing. And for me, it's a little bit different than maybe some other companies, not necessarily just the customer, but we ultimately are. Me and my dog Apollo, came up with Apollo Vet, and because there's there's such a good story behind that too, is actually my grandfather's name. He was a serial entrepreneur back in Oklahoma, and, had such a rich name and a rich life, too. And and then I named my border collie after. And really, it kind of opened up this avenue to where, like, hey, we can build a brand around this. It's family, it's local, it's hard working, it's transparent. and then we expand out from there. But even down to the colors, like what colors create more calming effect? Get people to, come in and kind of get that anxiety and stress down.

Mike 00:08:00  So picking nice soothing colors like our navy blue and our forest green and our our tans, so the minutia of it. And then for me, it like the marketing and the branding, it goes back to what are your like values? What are the pillars of your clinic that you want your staff and your clients to go through? So here at Apollo, we're open concept vet clinic. So you're allowed to watch procedures, be with your pet during every part of the exam. They can come back when we're sedating them down. They see everything we're doing. And so that is a huge, huge niche and our competitive edge and part of our brand. So so we're the vet that lets people in the proverbial pack. And so you think about the space that you're in. Our clinics are part of our brand too. It's not a small like Dungey plays where you can't see the outside world. So I'm sitting in surgery now. I have a window that a client can watch and actually a window out. So I see all the cars parked.

Mike 00:08:54  So you can literally sit in your car and watch surgery if you really wanted to. And so that is a huge part. Our next clinic, I, I struck through probably 100 different properties because I had to find the one that actually fit our brand, you know, glass across the front thinking about that kind of stuff. and so the brand for me, I don't necessarily brands are nothing at the beginning. Right. And so I open up Apollo. It's not like we're a known brand. We're still not we're known maybe locally, and that's the reality of it. But that's what's important to me here as far as you know, retaining our clients and stuff. And then we try to reach a broader audience outside of our locale, and that's for more like recruiting purposes and stuff, too. And so, you know, the main philosophy that I have is when I want someone to Google vet near me or something, we have a unique looking landing page for them. So they go to our website, they say, oh, this is like kind of a little different than the other vets.

Mike 00:09:49  And that's the point. It's like how can we just be a little bit different? We don't need to be like the Elon Musk or the Jeff Bezos. We don't need to like, weigh a hundred miles in front of everybody. We just need to stop and go, oh, that was kind of different. I'm a little bit more interested now. And that's really how we do stuff even within the clinic. As far as the bags that we send home, the boxes that we send home, if you have surgery, things like that. My goal is to have people stop to go, whoa, wait, I just looked at that clinic on Instagram. It's kind of a bit different. Let me go back and kind of wiggle into there a little bit more. And that's proved really successful for us.

Brandon 00:10:21  That's really interesting. I've never heard anybody say it that way, but it's it's absolutely true. Right? Being like 100 times better is no more of an advantage than being like 1% better, right? If you're better, it's just a matter of margin of how much you win by.

Brandon 00:10:33  I think you should obviously go for as much as possible, but like just trying to be different helps to really get like a pattern interrupt and make people pay attention because it's easier to spot differences than like, you know, trying to find something that's similar. It sticks out in your mind. So I think that's a really good marketing principle in general to focus on. absolutely. One thing that I think that you're really good at doing is your social content. And, when you started your social content, how did you get more comfortable doing this? Is it something that you've always been interested in or like people always ask me, what should I do to start? And it seems like ever since you started, you're just good at it. So was it like something that you're just naturally like to do, or is it, something that you just really worked at? Obviously, I'm sure you really worked at it, but, like, how did you go about that?

Mike 00:11:30  It's like everyone's like, overnight success, but it's ten years in the making, right? And so I for some reason I got like obsessive probably a year before I open up a bet on like just marketing in general.

Mike 00:11:42  I watched I listened to your podcast. That's how I actually got connected with you and working the whole time.

Brandon 00:11:47  I remember you were asking me what kind of camera should I buy? And you're, like, really detailed into it, and then you're making really high quality videos. Yeah.

Mike 00:11:55  You know, and just digesting, like I have such a curious mindset about this stuff because it's a whole different world and it's so important. And, and really it's a low entry barrier to, to actually make pretty good content and stuff. And so, you know, I dove into lighting techniques and YouTubes on everything, but there is no magic bullet. And you probably know this to starting this podcast. You just have to put in the reps. I laugh because when I, I opened, I made this video, I put a tripod up in my lobby and I made a 32nd video. And this video actually runs now continuously on Facebook and YouTube and Instagram. And it's it still says now open three years later, but it's got so much like comments and interaction.

Mike 00:12:37  But that 32nd video took me 3.5 hours to do. It took me three hours. I'm just I didn't.

Brandon 00:12:44  Know that's how long it took, but it was amazing. It looks really good. Yeah.

Mike 00:12:48  But it's so basic too. And so what? What astounds me on the social media is how much like traction and engagement that we get when we just speak on there, when it's the staff, like, we have a rule now that we don't do any graphics unless we're making like an announcement like holiday hours or hey, we're going to be closed today. No graphics whatsoever and a minimum of like or a minimal amount of just puppy and kitten pictures because again, like the point is we want people to look at our page like this is a little bit different of a vet clinic page than, than, you know, I've seen before, there's nothing there's no right or wrong, but I just I don't like the look of just graphics everywhere. And for me, my strategy around organic social media posting is I'm not going to gain two minutes realistically from just organic posting.

Mike 00:13:36  We put the hashtags in, we put our locale, you know, we try to tag clients in it so they can share and repost. And so we do get some there. But for me, I have two big drivers on social media. Organic. It's brand loyalty. So I want to keep our clients engaged and loyal to us. And then it's actually recruiting. Like I pretty much focus everything on my marketing for recruiting. And that's that's specific for my mission with Apollo. If this were my I guess like 40 year clinic, this is kind of going to be a small town, but this is it. I'm not growing any bigger than this. Maybe I wouldn't do that so much, but my dream is truly to make this a vet owned multi-location practice. So to do that, I need to showcase what it's like to work here and behind the scenes. And again, it goes back to our brand of that open concept. So a lot of our our pictures and videos are of the back of the team working with clients, showcasing the team.

Mike 00:14:29  It's like we kind of always want a team member in some of the posts on that. And so that's a huge thing for me. And I find like when we get busy and we just kind of throw up some pictures, our engagement lights kind of go down. But when do we really be thoughtful and, you know, get these videos of the people and, it's it's insane. Kind of the doors that open. I've hired three vets now from Instagram only like truly from and I go to these conferences and, you know, I'm so, so thankful that I've never had to put an ad up for a vet. I have always been, you know, reached out to for vet clinics. And we have a couple now on waiting list. And, and it's tough to say, like I am thankful for that, but it's very intentional as well. Like that's kind of the purpose that we do it. It's not that we just are in a magic place. No, we put a lot of attention in our meetings as far as what are we posting? What is the image that we want to put out there? it's really to showcase the culture and what it's like to be here.

Mike 00:15:27  And, I think that's a huge thing that any clinic can start doing. You don't need a pretty clinic like, you know, looks are not everything, but it's the culture that people are so striving for these days and a good work environment. So if you've got someone that can just turn on your phone and start posting that behind the scenes, that clients will love it, and then you'll start attracting the talent that you really want to. So and it's really kind of nice because you talk about filtering for the clients that you want. Right. But do you filter for the employees that you want to. So our clinic is not for everybody. I've had people that start here on day one and they see, whoa, I'm uncomfortable placing a catheter in front of an owner. I'm out. And that's okay. Like, you know, it's not for everybody, but you come to our website and go through our social media. You'll know if either want, do or don't want to work at a vet, you know.

Mike 00:16:12  And so that is a huge part of it. And it's been a big success for for us to get actually recruitment in, in that way.

Brandon 00:16:19  I think that's a really good way to approach it. And most of the time when practices come to me and they're looking for more clients and things, they're posting on social, you're.

Mike 00:16:30  I can't hear your audio anymore.

Brandon 00:16:32  Okay, I can hear you. My mic's working. let's see here. I think it switched from your lab to your, let's see here.

Mike 00:16:43  What about now?

Brandon 00:16:44  Yep. Gotcha. Now. You good?

Mike 00:16:46  Okay. I'm just going to take this stuff off. This is not working. Okay, cool.

Brandon 00:16:49  No worries. I think the audio quality is good either way. Okay. And I have mastering software too, so I can master the.

Mike 00:16:56  Okay.

Brandon 00:16:56  Sounds good. But what? So a lot of times clients come and practices come to me and they have some social presence, but it's just generally not very like intentional with brand.

Brandon 00:17:10  And they want to use meta, which is Instagram and Facebook for driving clients. But I think it's pretty difficult to do from a paid standpoint unless you're going to give things away. And so I actually think that it's a really, in my opinion, better from an organic standpoint to do exactly what you're doing. And it makes just a lot more sense. But retention, engagement of current clients, referrals, stuff like that, and then hiring and things. along the line, though, of, you know, being intentional with the type of content which I think you're you're really going for transparency. What it's like to work here, what the environment's like making it seem fun, inviting, like it's cool to see all of the back, you know, behind the scenes type things. But do you shoot for a type of content, like, are you focused on reels or posters that not? It's like a secondary thing. It's like, what's the best? Yeah, we.

Mike 00:18:04  Try to post a majority of reels, when we do videos and we try to do a lot of videos, and if we do pictures, we try to prefer carousel pictures.

Mike 00:18:14  So you get a little bit more engagement in those swipes as well. So anything that can drive engagement and this is just purely what we've seen organically on our own interpretation of our insights on our social media. So, we you have to look at your demographic as well. What I'm a diehard millennial and so I live on Instagram, but I live in a retirement community and they live on Facebook and it just kills me. It kills me inside because I just I don't have a private Facebook. We have a clinic one. And you know, what was so funny to me is we have a Facebook page. And so when we post there, our clients are just bombarding us there. But we go to Instagram. Our younger clients are on that one too. And and it was a huge struggle to to figure out and remember about our Facebook pages because again, I attract more younger employees here. And so, thinking about your demographics is really, really important. the, the paid, we've done a few different campaigns, like me and you have talked over the years, as far as lead generation campaigns.

Mike 00:19:14  And they're good. They're just a lot of logistics sometimes and a lot of heavy work. You know, for me, it's it's finding I test out different ones too randomly. And I have over the past few years as far as videos versus just a picture promoting and I'll boost it. but again, you kind of find the video and the message, you'll find this thing that hits and then you dive into that. And so going back to that, that starting video that I made. That video now has, I think, over 100 plus comments on it. And it's all just clients saying like, loved our time here. Like really great vet. It's it's essentially another Google review for us. It's been shared hundreds of times, thousands of likes. And I have a ton of people like, oh yeah, you popped up on my Facebook and I wanted to check you guys out and stuff too. And that video is three years old. I have short hair. there's nothing in the lobby, so it's nothing special.

Mike 00:20:04  It's just getting in front of that camera and getting a little vulnerable. But for our strategy. Yeah, we we, we'll post reels. And then about 10 to 15 minutes later, we posted on our story because a lot of people just don't go through your story feed. So do you want to or your normal Instagram feed. So you want to make sure you're reminding them that you posted through your story. we use Meta Business Suite, so we're able to post on both our Instagram and Facebook page and not have to do that extra step, which has been really helpful for us to keep up with our Facebook page. and then, yeah, what's what's really exciting to me. And I'd love to hear kind of your feedback. We're going from more of a small town. Our second location is now going to be in the Austin Metroplex, and so we're doing similar marketing, but it kind of opens up a new avenue of social media marketing that we may we haven't done yet, and I'm starting to engage.

Mike 00:20:52  So I'd love to hear kind of your thoughts on on micro hyperlocal influencers and kind of utilizing those for brick and mortar services and what you think is kind of a the right and wrong way of doing that. I'm going to be a little selfish.

Brandon 00:21:05  Yeah, definitely won't I. So with the hyper local influencers, I think the the smaller the niche that you go after, the more effective it is in general. and I've done brand deals where like we target specific influencers and things. I think there's just a lot of opportunity for it. It is, I would say, measured by engagement. and so going through and stalking posts that they've done where they're like, let's say they're at a. Local donut shop or. something, and they post it, but looking at their local businesses and then really like looking at the people that are liking and commenting and seeing just like as a kind of survey of like they had 400 likes on this, looking through just a sample of them, they're all local people and it's just like kind of quality control for that.

Brandon 00:21:57  So if you're going to do partnership deals or, you know, ask them to share things or give them like free service in exchange for type of a thing. Yeah, really diving into their typical content and seeing if the engagement would be worth the whatever your you're giving. But usually the smaller the better in general, because it gets very expensive for larger influencers and it's just so diluted that it doesn't really make sense usually.

Mike 00:22:26  Well, yeah, that's like a it's cool. Like we had a post go viral and I think it had over like a million views. And then we got a lot of followers from around the world. I was like, that makes us feel good, right? But it doesn't really do anything for the business if we're being honest. And so for me, that and the numbers really don't matter as far as the followers, it's, you know, do they have good engagement in that area. And then what I have found is talking with a couple now, it's like they're way more willing to do deals to like not necessarily money back and forth like we're engaged.

Mike 00:22:55  One of our clients that is kind of a hyperlocal influencer at the area of our new clinic. And just having that like honest conversation, I go, I have no idea how this works, but like, you look like you're really involved in the community. I love, like, you know what we do here in Apollo? Like you're passionate about it. When you come here, you post on your stories and stuff, like you got two dogs, how can I help you? And you help us kind of thing. And yeah, really does come from that. But it's a whole new territory for me personally. I guess it goes back to your brand too. I see some, like bigger clinics and corporations. They'll get the influencers in and, you know, their their voice over in these baby like, child like voices and stuff that that for me, I don't necessarily like I like the more approach where, you know, they're just it's a true client testimonial, like, hey, I came here like, this is my experience.

Mike 00:23:42  This is how it was so different from anybody, any other place that I went to. check it out. Like, just come check it out. And again, our theory here is if we can just get them in the door and they see how the process is and how it feels to have their client journey through here, they're going to stick. And that's usually the case once they get the kind of the Apollo is what we call it.

Brandon 00:24:02  Yeah, I think that's probably a much better way. And also, if they're smaller, like super micro, they'll probably just be more open to doing it as like a yeah, I had a great experience. I'd love to just your type of a thing. but I think the, the main major difference between your two locations that you've got, it's very similar to like, what Cody had up in Canada. yeah. In that they're just completely different demographics, right? Like suburban small town versus, you know, in the city, there's no parking. People are wondering like, do I have to pay for parking? Is there going to be parking? So there's just a lot of differences, in terms of client values and like also objections and things like that.

Brandon 00:24:48  So yeah, going to be interesting too.

Mike 00:24:50  I mean, like for me personally, I always want to be growing and learning new things and how we started this kind of may be completely different, how we start the next clinic. And, you know, I think what would be super beneficial because honestly, this is how Ameena, our relationship started four years ago is I was listening to a podcast you were with, Adam Greenbaum with Whisper Club and, you were talking just like I think it was a conversation. If I were a new startup, how would I start? And so I'd love to hear, because I talked with a ton of recent grads that students nowadays and vets that are just looking to do startup, like in 2024, if I were to start a clinic and assume this is a around a semi large populace. So we're talking small animal metropolitan. Like what would be your kind of recommendations as far as starting to market to get clients in the door?

Brandon 00:25:41  Yeah. So actually, I got this idea from Michael Shirley, who's been on the podcast.

Brandon 00:25:46  He did a really successful grand opening where he did a list building that tool where it was giving away vaccines for life for one person who's going to come. So like, it's, you have to come to the grand opening to be entered to win, go to all of these stations which were highlighting all of the services and like showing. So you have to walk through the clinic and then at the end you could submit, for prizes. And also one of them, we're going to win vaccines for life of the pet, which is pretty cool because it's a very high perceived value. Right. But it's low cost to administer. So it's a really good prize. and on social, that's actually one of the things that we've been testing with lots of different practices or like one person's going to win, a lab like lab panel that's really expensive. When like all these different types of prizes. But the vaccines for life seems to be the most highest perceived value. Like easiest thing for people to sign up for.

Brandon 00:26:42  and then you can frame it a few ways, but really building a pre list for, for pre-opening or as you're opening like the first 3 or 4 months, you have that grand opening special promotion that you're doing list building for. And then I think still, Google ads are the best in terms of driving new clients in the door. relative to other types of, industries like HVAC even is like 40 to $60 per click. And so most veterinary practices and markets are 2 to $3 per click for Google. And that's really high quality traffic. and so you can get tremendous amounts of new clients coming in the door. But I think it goes back to niching down into what kind of services you want to target, because, I mean there's anything you can imagine, I mean, cherry. Surgeries to lymphoma, cases to, like sebaceous. And itis like, like there's all these weird things that you can target. And the more niche that you go, the better the response is going to be. So the more general you're just competing kind of with everybody.

Brandon 00:27:51  And so it's harder to stand out, especially when they don't know you yet. And and so really narrowing down on the types of procedures and the types of clients that you want to do. So either really focus in on experience. And and the cool thing about you is that you're good at content. You can actually show them. And there's new placements like performance Max which gave us, you know, not just text but also videos and pictures. And you can actually show them. Because if you're telling people this is a really cool and new experience, that's not like other vets that you've been to. Like, you just have to take my word for it. Or you can actually show them and they can see the difference. So, you know, honing in on on your skill set, that you already have in the strengths that you already have, and really diving into those things will be very helpful. And then I can't say enough how important it is to have good staff that are going to like, make the experience consistent through the whole process, and that includes answering the phones and making appointments for you in your practice.

Mike 00:28:51  Yeah, and I think Mark Cuban has a really, really good saying. And he said it on Shark Tank. I was watching it one time and he said it and it was just like a like a boom moment for me. He was like the best marketing you can do. It's not, you know, paying thousands of dollars for influencers or social media or anything like that. It's delivering a very good, consistent product to your customer just every time. And then that is the best marketing can do. So then they're going to start to tell people and it is so true, like referral is still probably the top driver in the world as far as.

Brandon 00:29:20  You.

Mike 00:29:20  Know. And so don't forget that. Like and then on those systems that client experience is a huge one. And like personally for me I We all practice pretty good medicine as far as across the board. Of course there's outliers. Right. And and so you have to think about like how are you going to differentiate from the competitors. Again we're not going to be Elon Musk's or Jeff Bezos.

Mike 00:29:42  Maybe they'll come along. But little things can really go a long way for the clients. You know, maybe you don't have to go full open concept like this, but, you know, trying to ease the like, we have meetings every week and we're like, what are our client barriers? What are their difficulties? Okay, let's think about this. The client journey. They walk into the door, they're met with just like five people on the phone. The phones are ringing off the hook. They're like, hold on, wait here. And that's a horrible client. So how do we change that? Okay, now we move reception offsite. So we have a dedicated concierge that comes in and greets you just like a high end hostess at a really nice restaurant. Very personable, greeting your pet by name, giving you a latte when you come in, escorting you to the room. Okay, now with this. All right, what are the other constraints going in and having that talk with the doctor and nurse.

Mike 00:30:29  Your dog gets dragged away. Something happens back there. Your bill is 400 bucks. Let's change up that whole experience. Okay? Then after that's done, then they have to go back up to that desk and get checked out. Well, it's kind of annoying. This is all just meeting chairs. All right, now we've got portable terminal payments that we're just now doing it in the room, and we got a second door that they can egress out. So really thinking about that client journey, those little things can go such a long way. I remember when I first opened, like I had the sick clients back down so many times, like, okay, I'll go up to front to pay. And I'm like, no, no, just stay right here. Nurse will come in and get you checked out. And they're like, oh, sweet, this is awesome. And it's like, that wasn't revolutionary or anything, or it cost nothing to do. so, you know, that is part of the brand as well.

Mike 00:31:08  Like, you have to realize every time we talk with a customer, be it doctor, receptionist to to you are upholding our values or brand our mission. and it has to be a consistent message for sure that.

Brandon 00:31:20  That is so important. And I couldn't agree more with that. And it's interesting to I was listening to I can't remember which podcast it was recently, but it was talking about like marketing changes and things like when you're starting out, you have to make massive changes to make a difference because you don't have any momentum. Right? But like if you're in a vehicle that's going like 200 miles an hour and you do a slight adjustment, it makes you go like dramatically off course. And so the better that you're you're doing. So for example, you're dissecting all of the, the steps and optimizing your entire like basic process. Right. And so anytime we make adjustments that are going to improve on the front end of that funnel, like it just exponentially increases the revenue because you're going to get referrals, you're going to get reviews.

Brandon 00:32:07  And so everything is amplified on the back end of that. Whereas like if I have somebody that comes to me and they're like, I want to get more clients, I have terrible reviews. And this happens like quite a bit, right? Like my practice isn't growing. Fix it with money and marketing and it doesn't fix it. It just creates more of the back end problems that they're seeing. And so having that perspective like it's incredibly important. I bet most people are not thinking about processes, marketing like that and breaking down all of those pieces because it does make a huge difference, especially when you have an anxious dog and you have to drag them and they're I want to go. I'm thinking of my Great Pyrenees that I just took to the vet, and it was a terrible experience because she doesn't like she wants to be on the farm, you know, she doesn't want to be in the vet clinic.

Mike 00:32:51  So like I've heard it, you said it before, it's like, and I've been in this position where I've called you and like, hey, it's slow as heck.

Mike 00:32:57  Like, you know, we should have fixed that problem 2 or 3 months ago, you know, planning for this and, and I think what I have. So I started the clinic in the middle of Covid and it was just crazy, right? Like we were pretty booked from the moment we opened. Now we're headed into this economy, right? And we're starting to see that cyclical nature of bend where, you know, back to school gets a little slow, like holidays gets a little slow. And so me as a young business owner now, I'm kind of riding the seasonal waves a little bit more and it's really interesting. So you know okay. Now I remember last year what can we start to do like a month or two before that to try to fill our books or have a better chance of success during those times and stuff? And so, you know, I think that's just patterns and going through it and the experience. But have you seen that that kind of cyclical change as far as coming back to that med a little bit and maybe like, do you have some strategies to to kind of get through those things?

Brandon 00:33:53  Absolutely.

Brandon 00:33:53  So it is actually slowing down pretty significantly across the country. I'm also talking to vets now who have been laying off their staff because they don't have appointments, which is the first time since 2018 or so that I've heard things like that. So, markets that are a lot more seasonal are also seeing bigger swings. So Florida is one like clear example that there's summertime is is slow. and it's slow. This year comparatively to, previous years. And so keeping like if you have appointments open, I would suggest number one, have a traffic plan in place that you can turn up and turn down based on need. Right. Because that's scalable, dependable. We know we have benchmarks for, you know, what kind of traffic we're getting right now and we can increase it. So that's really important. Knowing kind of what levers levers to pull to get more of what you're looking for very, very important. And then secondly is, make sure that you're using your own customer data as much as possible. So most practices aren't sending out reminders or emails, like 85 to 90%.

Mike 00:35:10  Really, that's a fascinating stat to me. Why? Why do you think that is? Because there's so many native PIM systems that do that for you now.

Brandon 00:35:18  Yeah. So most of them have, older Pim systems. Right. And the majority practices are are using those. And they'll always say, I know I should be sending stuff out, but we're just not doing it.

Mike 00:35:33  Gosh, if I had to do that manually, I would pull my hair out for sure.

Brandon 00:35:37  For sure. Absolutely. So I think that those two things are going to be really big. And then, just trying to plan. So I think most locations are going to see you slow down for back to school. And then usually we see a pretty big slowdown in December. So those those are the two things that are are slower. And then there's usually a little bit of a dip in February and then it starts to pick up again in most markets. But I'm thinking.

Mike 00:36:09  The frustrating thing that I've found, I feel like sometimes we're maybe, maybe more of an independent practice owner.

Mike 00:36:15  We're we're 20 to 30 years behind, like the technology and the way we think about stuff. So, you know, for me there's you know, we have cloud based software where we have cadences starting, I think 4 to 6 weeks before they're due. And we switch it up because you think about it. So me personally, if you leave, you leave me a voicemail, I probably will never check it. I that is just not a medium that I like to do. Text me, or email me. But even if you text me, I treat my text messages kind of like my email inbox. I get a ton of it takes me a while. and so you have to think that's that's no different from your client. So if you're sitting there and you're only sending postcards and you're not really get a good retention rate, like you have to think about the demographics, maybe they need to email. So what we do, we don't send any postcards or anything, but we actually switch it up.

Mike 00:37:03  So at a certain cadence, starting like 4 to 2 weeks before they're due, they're getting emails. And then in the intervals that we have some text messages hitting them too. But these things are all automated and we don't even have to look at it. We just set it and forget it. And it's done and it's trackable. We see it in that client file, those messages going out and they can reply to it. and thinking about that and then, you know, when we're having a really slow time, we actually jump on the phone. So we pull usage reports on not usage reports or reminder reports saying, like, who's overdue in the past week for the rabies? Because sometimes it's hard to get a client in for a board to tell or kennel cough. But people know rabies. They associate it with like legality of it. Right. And so it really I have my practice manager run a report every Tuesday on who missed the rabies this past week. Hey, call me like, hey, don't know if you got our stuff.

Mike 00:37:50  Not a big deal. just letting you know Coco's due for his rabies. I can get you booked right here. I'll shoot you a text message about online booking. and they're like, oh, shoot. Thank you. I didn't even realize that. I didn't see it. It's not personal that people aren't booking. It's just they get busy or they moved away. And then we learn a lot from those calls to like, oh, I actually moved to Idaho. Okay, cool. I'm gonna inactivate, send you your records. Not a big deal. and so trying to lower those barriers to and these are, these are just very simple things that you can natively get in your packet. You don't need to buy a third party. Everything for there's there's stuff that does that too. But just like the simple thing of like that story, I use that and it's probably 30 to 40% of our bookings come online direct booking online again lower that barrier. So I know that when I turn off my phones at 530, we're still able to generate active clients that can go online, they can book, they can choose their doctor, choose their day.

Mike 00:38:44  and again, I don't have to be active in that. And it cost a few hundred bucks. You know, we can make that up with a couple of appointments. It's a no brainer.

Brandon 00:38:51  So yeah, that totally makes sense. I really like how you phrased that rabies call to like doing the assumed close. Do you give your your practice manager scripts on how they call?

Mike 00:39:02  Yeah. So they have scripts for when they call. They have scripts for when they leave the voicemail. If they don't answer, and then we follow up and then we move on. So again, we don't take it personally. But you know, we're trying we're business. But as long as we're doing things with the right intention and the mission and at the end of the day, I got to support the people here. And you know, we're here for profit business. I mean, there's there's no shame in that either. But we gotta get people in. So there's tactics you can do and they just take some work.

Mike 00:39:28  But once you put those processes in place and, yeah, kind of trust your team and let it go.

Brandon 00:39:34  So yeah, I love that. And I think that most practices that I talked to don't have any scripting in place. And that's why I asked because I think like doing that assumed clothes. Most people don't ever even ask for an appointment, which is the closing question. So they'll get a call and it'll be like, how much is your spay? Like 150 bucks for the appointment? Or, you know, that's really cheap, but and then they're like, okay. And then like, have a good day and that's it. You know. So I think that that is a big yeah. Important takeaway.

Mike 00:40:02  Easy protocols you can put in place. So when we have someone call for an estimate like that, we're like, hey, yeah for sure. Like never say no, right? It's like, yes, I can figure this out for you or I'm going to get you. Like again, we want to reduce defenses on the clients, on everything.

Mike 00:40:16  That's why we're open concept. So there's no guessing on what we do. Right. So yeah. Okay, I can get you an estimate. No problem. Let me go ahead and get you your assistance. I'll email that. So we have record of it and everything. Cool. Now you reduce the barrier like they're already in the system, okay? They're going to get easier to book. Right. And so that's kind of how we do our estimates as well. And yeah, it proves pretty successful. if you just again, you know, I'd be like, yeah, for sure we can do it. This is how we do it. You know, you get some of that over and now we got them in our system. and we continue them again if we want. So and then there's other things to like. There's the data doesn't lie. And there's reports that for everything in the PIMs. And one of our cool reports that we can do too, is we can pull estimates that we've made over a certain time period now.

Mike 00:41:01  And this is kind of going to be like an an ace in the pocket for me. If we're really getting kind of slow or, say, surgeries or something like that, we haven't dealt too much into this, but just kind of thinking out loud and stuff. So we've been playing around with that idea. We can say we sent an estimate within a two week time period in the past two weeks. I can pull a report now on my PIMs and see which estimate has been flipped over to an invoice, meaning that patient came in. Did that serve as a gone and watch estimate is now open. And so now I can send that list to one of my lead techs and be like, hey, why don't you give these people a call? They must have questions. So, hey, do you have any questions on that dental estimate? Let me walk through that for you. Cool. Like maybe there was just some confusion on it or hey, that price was too much. Let me talk to the doctor.

Mike 00:41:42  Maybe we can, you know, go to more of a plan, be cool. Then maybe if we can get 25% booking off that. That's amazing. Right. But there's we're sitting on a lot of, like, gold that you don't even realize in the data, but you have to understand it. And one practice that I and this is kind of a cool conversation I wanted to have with you too, is I'm going to a workshop in Vegas next week on scaling business and stuff, and part of the homework that we had to do before was calculate our client acquisition cost. And so they make you take all the marketing that you do in a year. and divide that just very simply by how many new clients you get. And so you get a really rough number of your client acquisition cost. And, and I think ours came out to $25 and something cents on there. And so this is very different from what you said earlier. You know, that cost to click is 2 to 3. That doesn't mean you get a client from that click right.

Mike 00:42:33  So this is the number of money that I put into marketing. That's how many clients I get out of it. And then there's kind of a whole world that opens up then. So now, you know, okay, if I spend 100 bucks on marketing, I should get four new clients. Okay, now, what is the lifetime value of a client? You know, we're looking at thousands of dollars. Then you're it's it's kind of becomes this, this whole machine that you can't go wrong as long as you look at your data. And so that's why I kind of zoom, you know.

Brandon 00:43:02  Definitely. And that's one thing is most people try to get their their costs down as much as possible. But in reality, the person who can pay the most to acquire customers is going to be able to be in business longest instead of racing to the bottom Yeah.

Mike 00:43:15  For sure.

Brandon 00:43:16  So.

Mike 00:43:19  Yeah. Sorry.

Brandon 00:43:20  Understanding your numbers is incredibly important. Oops. Got it. So, I think hopefully the PIMs are coming around to being to the point where we're going to start being able to put that customer data back into Google and then match our conversions.

Brandon 00:43:32  yeah.

Mike 00:43:32  And that's even if like, you're you're hearing this and you're like, my, my PIMs doesn't. That's a PNL thing, right? You just pull your PNL and you see, like, you know, your marketing cost. And every pen should tell you how many customers you have or new clients you've gotten in a certain time period. I think that's pretty universal. And so these are pretty simple calculations. You don't need the latest tech to do this stuff. and then that just gives you power because I feel like, you know, I did the same thing when I started and I talked to so many vets now starting clinics, like, I'm not sure I spend a day on, on Google and stuff and like, where is even the benchmark and stuff? And for me, I think a big thing that I just tell people is like, just farm out what you don't know. I do not know anything about placing Google ads. You know everything about pasting contracts. So I'm going to hire you to help me do this and not have to hit that brain space.

Mike 00:44:22  My focus now is on the client. So too I remember we had a me and my marketer, marketing, coordinator here at Apollo. We had a meeting a couple of months with you and you're like, oh, by the way, did you hear about the new changes on Google Ads? We're like, excuse me? What? And we learned a whole new thing that is completely changing the landscape of Google ad running. We had no idea who told us that. So like, don't try to do everything either, you know?

Brandon 00:44:46  Definitely. Well, I guess one one question that I have for you is what is a marketing activity that you were surprised were, so successful for you and that you didn't think would be such a good, good thing to do?

Mike 00:45:01  Honestly, and this is very location dependent. The the place that I started, Apollo is a very, very strong community. And so we talk a lot about this like digital aspect of everything social media aspect of everything, but putting dollars into the community and actually showing up.

Mike 00:45:19  I think there's a big difference. For example, say, say you're moving right and you have two friends and some guy's like, okay, I'm going to give you $5,000 to help you move around. And like, here you do. It's cool. Thank you. But then you have your other friend that spends that whole weekend lugging things out. Which one did you kind of value more? Right. And so taking that approach with the community. Yeah. Like we write checks to sponsor the volleyball and stuff too. But when we have actually events that we sponsor, like showing up as a business supporting that community, I cannot tell you how many clients have come up to me at these events or in the clinic and saying like, hey, we really see, like what you do out there, and it's really, really good that you're involved in the community. And so don't forget that good old approach to it too, like, you do have to spend some money, but if you do it right and you do it genuinely with good ethics, like it'll it'll be paid back because people are creatures of habit.

Mike 00:46:13  They want to go to people they trust that are doing the right thing, that know you personally. So that was a big surprise of like, the more we put in the community, the stronger our like ties to everybody has been. And, you know, don't like we have our own issues here. Right. You know, we have the angry client every now and then. But we sit down and we talk to them. It's super transparently about it. And nine times out of ten we're hugging at the end of it. I'm booking their next appointment and stuff because you know that people just want authenticity. I think is the biggest thing in this world. It's so hard to get that from some large companies. And I think local, independent practitioners can be the epitome of showing authentic, true selves in their business. Like we are not perfect, we mess up all the time. But here's how we do stuff and here's why we do stuff, and people really resonate from that. It's been kind of the biggest shocker, not shocker, but the cool thing for me to see.

Brandon 00:47:06  I think that's really overlooked in digital because I mean marketing has almost exclusively digital focus now. And so, I think standing out by engaging in the real world is really important to you. I think that's one thing that chewy does really well, is that they send out birthday cards for all your pets and like, you know that they're going to send you something for it. and so, yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Mike 00:47:31  For sure. And so and you got to be realistic, right? Like, I don't have millions of dollars back in me at Apollo. I don't have a whole C-suite of, you know, CEOs and chief marketing officers and which the thing like, we've done it before, we talked about it earlier, like trials and stuff. Spend some money. So you talked about Michael Shirley's open house? when we opened here, we did an open house a few weeks after we open, and I just, I made a post. I spent seven bucks for a week, on, on social media.

Mike 00:48:00  So Facebook, Instagram, and it became a frat party here. So my friends, they had some catering business, they brought some drinks and food. We had over like 300 people show up. We have grand prizes, so you have to stay to the end. Everything from, like antique through and lab, things. We had local businesses bringing baskets and stuff. So we, we raffled off probably ten different prizes and stuff, and it was so much fun. But I he kind of got to be careful to I think some people had to be driven home by the end of it. But like, okay, you think about it like I spent probably 1000 bucks on food and stuff and then, you know, 40 bucks on Instagram ads. And we got such a cool turnout and it was just like shoulder to shoulder in the clinic with people in here. And it was so much fun and, and that, like, I think really helped us get kind of a ties with the community right from the get go.

Mike 00:48:49  So again, like that was an organic I spent some money to do that. but it's not that expensive in the grand scheme of things. So, one thing I would ask you, you know, you talked about a few years ago about this, you know, percentage wise of revenue. And I think, you know, that's probably been under 2 to 1% of their revenue on actual marketing I mean, we try to go up to that 2 to 3%, and you can get a lot of bang for your buck even getting up to like, 3%. so what is your kind of new benchmarks with changes on Facebook and Google? What do you think we should be spending percentage wise against revenue?

Brandon 00:49:22  So I think, most people will say about 3% of revenue that are like financial planner people. I don't usually, approach it from that perspective. So you mentioned your cost per acquisition across all of your channels was about $25 for most client data that I see where we have like call tracking in place. Like that's the benefit of having just like, you know, a lot of ad spend that I'm managing.

Brandon 00:49:47  I can see kind of what people are doing based on market, people that have better tracking, people that don't have such good tracking. But for your practice, I would probably say we're at about a $21 or so cost per appointment. Right. And so based on your cost per click and your market, your competition, things like that, we'd say, okay, like we have 4 to 5 openings per day that we need to be filling. Okay, so the cost per client acquisition and then how many appointments we want to fill. And so it's going to be kind of that kind of a benchmark rather than

Mike 00:50:20  Makes sense.

Brandon 00:50:20  And then at the same time, like making sure that all of our organic is optimized, all of our social is optimized. And then hopefully over time we can increase, especially with new startup practices where you don't have the traction with reviews and ranking on the local side, leaning more into paid and kind of covering for the lack of organic, but then scaling back as you're hitting your goals and your clients and all of the referrals and things that build as you open.

Mike 00:50:48  Yeah, definitely.

Mike 00:50:50  It's again, it's like, get them with the ad and get them in the door. And then with the ad they'll go to your website or social and then like, you know, win them there kind of thing. And, you know, changing your website's an easy thing these days, you know, and don't try it like I hope a lot of the clinics aren't trying to build their own websites, like it's so cheap just to have a good company do it.

Brandon 00:51:11  Yeah, most are not. So that's good. Definitely. But I think you're the thing that you said about follow up is so insightful. Nobody does follow up. And also the genius of putting them in your system when you're talking to them like they're I can't tell you how many times, especially with euthanasia practices where you have a euthanasia practice and they'll get a call. They're not sure if it's time or not. And so they'll kind of consult on the phone and then they just won't ever follow up. They're like, it's I'm here and open.

Brandon 00:51:37  But imagine if you just had your receptionist call back and say, like, hey, I just wanted to check in on your dog, see how things were going. I know it's a tough time for you. I think there's no chance they would go somewhere else. They're gonna. They want to. Like, if you're trying to differentiate based on. We care sensitive. Right. Same thing with like we're following up with your pet. You know that they came in for this invoice. this estimate for the procedure to make sure you're getting the service that you need. Yeah.

Mike 00:52:04  Yeah And it comes.

Mike 00:52:05  Down to just like creating processes in your business and stuff too. And so we have an offsite, you know, back end DVM assistant that handles all of our. So we do ads for home euthanasia. That's a nice competitive like niche that we found as well. And so, you know she's in charge of coordinating all of that. So pretty much nowadays. And we have a lane. So we run ads on Google for for in-home euthanasia.

Mike 00:52:28  and then we have that click, I think to a landing page now on our website where one of our doctors acts like a video. Right. And so she's going through, you know, this is how we do euthanasia is the benefits of it at home and stuff at Apollo. And and then they get followed up. So it's creating that system and processes and, and really getting those conversions as well. But again, it's like, the intention of it has to be right. Right. And any decision you make in the world. Right. So the intention, you know, the difference between manipulation and health is intention. It's like what is your intention? We do want to help these these people. I do want to provide a life for my employees, too, you know, and so we can do that together and not be shameful about making money. We can help people out, both our clients and our employees. so, yeah, I think there's a lot of, like, weird money talk around men and stuff too.

Mike 00:53:16  But you have to shift your perspective on how you do and why you do these things. I think the why is so important.

Mike 00:53:21  Yeah, I'm.

Brandon 00:53:22  Totally, totally agree with that. And you know, you can't pay your, your, your staff what they deserve if you're not charging. Yeah. And so that goes back to finding the right clients who are happy to work with you. And like they're delighted to come in and and pay what your, your cost is because you're giving them the service that they want. So I think there's that's right on for sure.

Mike 00:53:42  Yeah. For sure.

Brandon 00:53:43  So how can people get in touch with you, especially if they want to work with you?

Mike 00:53:47  oh man.

Mike 00:53:47  I live on Instagram, so doctor Mike Walker, that's that's where I live. Our Instagram is Apollo Vets and and so just DM me anytime. I'm. I'm probably too much of an open book with vets. So I will go through you know how I started and costs and everything, and I just find so much passion and sharing.

Mike 00:54:07  Like what my experience. And again, I always tell people like the way I did it, it's not the right way, it's not the wrong way. It's just the way I did it. I really messed up 100 times and we'll continue to do that. So if you can learn from something, get your own way, that's awesome. So I'm it's reach out and and I'll give you my phone number and we'll talk on the phone.

Brandon 00:54:26  Okay. Cool. Well thank you so much for generously sharing. I think you're doing amazing things and I'm excited. We'll have to have you back after your second location is there.

Mike 00:54:34  We'll be talking soon about the new clinic anyways, so.

Brandon 00:54:37  Yep.

Mike 00:54:38  Well, thank you for it.

Brandon 00:54:40  Of course. Thank you.

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