VMP 287: Building Community and Connection: The Future of Veterinary Marketing in 2025

Brandon 00:00:01  Welcome to the Veterinary Marketing Podcast, where it's all about how to attract, engage and retain clients to your vendor practice. My name is Brandon Breshears. Welcome to episode 287 of the Veterinary Marketing Podcast. I hope you're having a fantastic day! Today's episode, we are going to be talking about how to make this year your best marketing year ever. So this is timely for 2025, but I bet there's going to be future value here in 2026 and beyond, but especially for 2025. I think this year is going to be probably one of the most, volatile years with marketing. There's so many changes coming out. We're going to talk about what those changes are. We're going to talk about what I saw in advertising in Google my business. I was able to get a ton of data, which is amazing. And this year, I managed over $3.8 million in ad spend for veterinary hospitals, which gave me a lot of insights. And with the hospitals that I run ads for. They're a lot smaller budgets.

Brandon 00:01:02  so that's a lot of hospitals. A lot of data points all across the globe. And I definitely, have some thoughts on that and insights on that. We're going to talk about how to make your marketing more effective. And we're going to go through the different stages of the funnel and what you need to do to make sure that this is your best year ever. So first off, let's talk about some of the biggest changes I think. Obviously, this is going to be no surprise to anybody, but I think that AI is going to change and continue to change the marketing space in general. I was actually pretty surprised at how slow things have been changing. with respect to AI in particular, which I think has been good just because the I mean, how fast AI is evolving and it is, I think, just ramping up exponentially. So major changes that I see coming in 2025 is going to be specifically around content. Content creation. automations. AI agents are coming, which are going to be amazing.

Brandon 00:02:13  but also pretty troubling, for a lot of different reasons. I think there's going to be so many impacts, with AI in general, that it's hard to predict what things are going to look like in 2026 and 2027. I remember the first time I used ChatGPT. I actually was just completely blown away by it, and I was like, I'm gonna see how quickly I can write a book with this. And I wrote a book in about an hour, and I wrote it, and put it on Amazon. And I just was like, this is changing everything. But the adoption, again, has been slower than I thought. So some things that I think will be probably very important here are going to be AI chatbots. for customer service. There's some pretty cool products that I've been seeing, and I'm going to hopefully have people like Doctor Bogan, who's been developing tools that are going to help, with conversation trees and things that are going to help to provide really great, quality information. Because I, you know, you want to make sure that you're right every single time.

Brandon 00:03:21  But with respect to AI and content. I think the content cycle is just going to get shorter and shorter. And what that means is that as AI makes it easier and easier to create more content, it's just going to be more noise than we've ever had before with more noise. I think the cure to that. And by noise, I mean if if creators were able to produce ten pieces of content a week and now because of AI, they're able to produce a thousand, which is not unrealistic. Like you could produce a podcast and shorts, and from that you could also produce posts. And I mean, it's just going to be wild how much you're going to be able to create. So how do we break through that noise? I think the key there is really niching down telling stories, building community. I'm getting engagement, doing things that require soul, using your experience to convey insights. I is going to be I mean, it's going to be like having a genie in your pocket that you could just ask anything.

Brandon 00:04:23  Get immediate answers, feedback. The stuff that's coming out is ridiculous. And so you have to be different than that. There's no way for you to compete in terms of being more relevant and, you know, being accurately conveying data accurately and quickly and easily. I was thinking about this. So, some of you know that I've been building a house in northern Idaho. I moved up there in 2020 and I finished building my house. But when I was building my house, when I had a question, I would go to YouTube and I would search how do I do things on YouTube? More recently, if I have a problem, I'll open up ChatGPT and I'll start talking to it, and then I'll send it pictures and say, hey, what's going on with this? And as things like the new video integrations come out where you can show on your phone video in real time, it can diagnose things to tell you what to do. That completely changes the game. That takes me from having to go and search and sift through data to getting that answer right away.

Brandon 00:05:24  And if you think that pet owners are not going to be into using AI to solve informational problems like that, there's just no reason why they wouldn't want to do that. It's easier, it's more accurate, it's more quick. They can talk back and forth. And as these learning these AI models get better and better, it's going to be more accurate. I remember just as a little note there. I had been, I had been running and I had an injury. And so I was like, what is this? Here's my symptoms, here's what I'm feeling. And this was right when ChatGPT came out. And it's like, this is your problem. You have it banned issue. Here's how you fix it. Here's some exercises. And 100% it was right. So that was in the early days. I'm sure it's even better now. I've luckily been healthy and I haven't had any problems, but like, that's just one example of, you know, this is probably what pet owners are going to do.

Brandon 00:06:24  Like, oh geez, my dog just ate some turkey off the table. Like, what are we going to do? We're going to YouTube and watch a video about ten, you know, Thanksgiving foods that your pet shouldn't eat. Or I'm going to open up ChatGPT and start talking. So I think, it's pretty interesting to to think about how people use the internet, what they use it for. And, there was a very recent search engine Journal article that came out for use cases on search versus I. What performed better? What gave results more quickly? So thinking about what gives results more quickly? I think people are going to continue to use Google for things like maps for search. In terms of looking for local businesses, I think your Google My business is going to be more important than ever in 2025. just because Google really has such a head start with respect to reviews, to, local services and that whole ecosystem that ChatGPT is going to have a hard time catching up with, especially because you already have user behavior with respect to that.

Brandon 00:07:32  I do think that Google's rollout of AI was pretty terrible in the past year, but they've been much better, and they initially set up their AI results to show for everything, and they've reduced it by about 80% now. So the AI summaries show up a lot less. And I think that the search functionality within Google has definitely been improved by that. But there's use cases that we're going to see that just have lasting power with respect to Google versus ChatGPT. it's going to be very, very interesting. Now, if you haven't heard what I agents are. It's basically like a personal employee. That is AI based that can do a specific set of tasks that's trained for those tasks. I think that's pretty cool. we'll see what that means. I bet there's going to be AI marketing agents here. and I'm actually starting working on one to see if I can make something that's going to be very, very cool for, vet med specific stuff. But, it'll be interesting if if somebody comes out with an AI agent.

Brandon 00:08:41  That's a veterinary health AI agent, right? Where now instead of, And I could totally see big companies like, you know, chewy or somebody like that, developing something like that as a tool to try to get more customers. it's just going to be interesting to see what happens. I think this year, moving forward, we're going to see a lot of implementation. but absolutely, we're seeing it in content already, and it's only going to get more and more. So I mean, it's incredible to see the number of, AI influencers that are out there that are not even real people that are taking the place of, of normal influencers. And maybe that'll happen with this podcast, but I think Niching down is going to be something that's very, very important for you. So storytelling, building community, building audience and really figuring out which niche audiences you want to go after, are going to be very, very important. I think that the general content is going to just die out. So if your content is not getting engagement or results, you need to get more specific.

Brandon 00:09:52  You need to provide more value. You need to have more fun. and really think about the placement of the content. and what it's trying to do. I think, this year, moving forward, it's going to be really interesting to see what happens with TikTok. I personally think TikTok is going to actually be banned. It might be reinstated later this year, but, I think it will be banned. And if it is, Instagram and YouTube are going to see massive increases in users US based anyways. And as a result, I think, if you are investing in Instagram and things, you're going to probably see a pretty significant bump in in user base for sure. Let's talk about ads. throughout the year, ad prices have definitely gone up. cost per click has gone up and slowly been creeping up, which is just like the cost of everything has been going up generally with inflation. I think two with the economy slowing down. generally speaking, people are actively going out to try to purchase more customers.

Brandon 00:11:00  any time you go out to purchase more customers with ads, add prices go up. So the higher the competition, the higher the cost. I have been seeing that practices that have really great, conversion processes in practice are far more successful. And, I think it's incredibly important that you spend time analyzing what people are saying on the phones when you're answering them. Making sure that you're making conversion process as easy as possible and then, really giving people what they want when it comes to setting appointments. So if people want to chat, to book appointments, if people want to text to book appointments, if people want to book it online or call somebody, you need to figure out what your clients want and make sure that you do that because, it's just time to catch up to every other industry and make sure that you are meeting your clients where they want to be, rather than saying, okay, I'll do what I want, and you have to conform to this. So make it easy and really figure out how do your clients want to book appointments and what is the easiest way to do that.

Brandon 00:12:17  So let's start here at the bottom of the funnel for 2025 on what you can do to really stand out and win. I think number one is going to be creating hyper personalized offers, and what that means is for the services that you want to promote, you need to make yourself different based on your unique selling proposition. And this is something I talk about all the time, but I think it's more important than ever. So stand out and be different. Not just say we're different, but actually be different. What does that include? You need to make sure that you have segmentation in place, so that you know exactly who your customers are, what they have in terms of pets, what they're looking for, the type of services that they want, and then be able to take a customer or client rather, and really provide as much value for them and help them to ascend the value ladder that you have in your practice. I would really like to see practices have a specific value ascension ladder, and what that means is that they start out with the base intro offer, and that's the appointment and the wellness exam, or the same day appointment, and then have a way for their their clients to ascend up the ladder, especially practices that want to be higher end.

Brandon 00:13:35  You need to have a clear path to making sure that they're either coming in for their exams. You want to make sure that they have, the ability to understand all of the services that you offer, why you offer them, and what they're actually for. I think that people in vet med too often get used to being in vet med, so, you know, like, okay, here's what labs are, here's why we offer them, here's who they're for. And then you assume that your clients are going to know that. I keep going back to a conversation that I had with, Cody Gilman, who's been on the podcast a bunch, and he talks about how he had a customer come in and they wanted to do the highest level of services for their dog. They're like, what else can we do? And they wanted to make sure that they're being proactive. And so, you know, saying, okay, we can do these blood labs and we can do these tests and we can do these things to be really preventative.

Brandon 00:14:34  And the patient and the client, I mean, the client didn't know that that was possible. Like, we can do that. You actually let us do that. And that would help us to, you know, identify these problems and make sure that these things are really staying ahead of all of it. So. Figure out if you could like, let's say you could have every single one of your clients. Go through a process in your practice. What would that look like? Map out the outcome of okay. Here's where they end up. Here's all the steps to get there. And then create a clear. Value proposition that helps to ascend them up that ladder. The next thing that I think is incredibly important for 2025 is that you have. Retention marketing systems in place. So just last week, Michael Shurley, was in my Facebook group, The Veterinary Marketing nerds. If you're not a member of that and head on over to facebook.com, forward slash groups. Forward slash veterinary marketing nerds. And he showed the direct mail that he's sending out to, his clients once they come in for a first visit.

Brandon 00:15:43  And the thing that I love about that is that it is a another touch point on a different medium that helps people to feel appreciated. But he also had a QR code for his podcast on there, which helps them to do another step of relationship building. That's not like here, buy something from us, but it's here. We have content, we are providing value and we really care. So like, here's the next thing that you should be doing. I absolutely love that. The only thing that I would love is if it was automated. There are tools out there that can do those those things automatically for you, and you can build out fulfillment in CRM. I really think that 2025 is going to be the year that you need to have a CRM and a marketing software in one of the next episodes here, I'm going to be going through my favorite CRM. I'm going to show you how to set it up and have all of the different funnels and things that you need to have so that you can really win.

Brandon 00:16:45  having a CRM that automatically follows up, that helps people to become indoctrinated into like, why should we be at this practice? What are they about? What are they for? What are they against? All of those things. If you want to be different, you have to be different. Otherwise people will just go to another practice. And and so think about your favorite store your favorite restaurant favorite experience that you go through. We need to apply those same types of things into vet med. And we have to catch up with the times, because that's what your clients are going to be expecting. And I think, I mean, it's just fantastic what Michael's doing, for example, because he's got this content that he's producing and now he's using it as a system. And imagine if you had a practice, I'm sorry, if you had a client coming into your practice who had already spent like 2 or 3 hours a month listening to you in your podcast. They would know what you know, they would believe what you believe, and conversion would be so much easier because they are relying on you and listening to you for services.

Brandon 00:17:55  So I think that is incredibly important. Having all of the systems for follow up, for engagement and winning over your clients as systems so that you can retain everybody that you're acquiring. and when I think about to, you know, having a CRM set up so that you can send out outbound marketing, it's just so, so important. I had this one practice that I was trying to help with ads, and they had no appointments, and it was a general practice that had been open for 7 or 8 years. And, they're like, we need appointments. And the only way that they were hoping to get appointments was from ads. Otherwise they didn't have their existing clients coming in. It just blew my mind. They had a huge database of thousands of, you know, former clients who already knew, liked and trusted them, but they weren't coming in. So if you're in a situation where your practice is not busy, you need to be able to mine that database, get people to come in and use the relationship that you already have to really provide better service to them and explain the value that you're offering.

Brandon 00:19:05  So it's really, really, I think, important. I do think, having CRMs in place and communication that's ready to go, I think that's going to be huge. And I really expect that AI chatbots are going to be something that will help you to basically communicate at scale, to the point where at least you can hand off a conversation. I think, there's two ways that you should go, actually. There's three ways you can go with respect to this AI stuff. One is just to ignore it. I don't think that's wise to do at all. One is to use it for automation of kind of low important tasks and engagement. And then the third would be to use it completely to basically take things over for you. I do think most small practices need to keep their souls and, you know, provide that touch and that connection. it's going to be really interesting to see kind of. Do people get tired of this? Is it annoying or is it fantastic and that they love it? I think if you can give people more of a like personal touch and relationship feel, I think that's going to provide more for you.

Brandon 00:20:21  So I would be hesitant to go all in in terms of letting it take over all of your communication and things. But I do think using it to get the conversation started and, at least be responsive, especially to major, easy to answer questions. I think that would be huge. So biggest takeaways in terms of making 2025 your best year ever. Specifically for bottom of funnel. I think automate as much as possible. That makes sense. automate things that you want to incorporate as a system that's not going to require willpower. It's not going to require you remembering. and so any type of bottleneck that you have that is around communicating with people. Make sure that you can build a system for that and then focus on creating offers that are in convert. What do your clients actually want? How are you going to communicate that value? And that's what an offer is. It's communicating the value that you're giving in a way that's going to get people to want to take that offer. so think about that middle of funnel.

Brandon 00:21:34  I think, and that's nurturing and building trust here for 2025. Build authority through insight, not just facts. So anytime that you're helping people to decide like should we be following you? Should we be listening to what you have to say? You can't use just facts and and blanket education, because the way that people are using AI is going to change the the value proposition of that. I think for a long time, veterinarians and veterinary practices have been very terrible at giving people information. They just throw out information. And because veterinarians are super educated and very smart, they'll think like, if they knew the same things, they I know they would just know that they need to do this. And that's not the case. People are busy. People, don't want to just spend money for the sake of spending money. So you have to distill the information that you have and provide insight on that information. So what are the key takeaways? What are the things that you need to be doing where you need to be looking out for what should you be careful of? what are some things that keep your clients up at night, and how can you overcome that with your insight, those types of things.

Brandon 00:22:47  So provide insight rather than facts, and if you can tell stories as much as possible. So instead of saying, you know, like your dog needs this heartworm prevention, you know, here's here's a story of a time when somebody didn't follow my advice. And it was heartbreaking. And I see this too often. And this year we don't want to lose any pets to heartworm. Here's what we're suggesting. Right. You're telling a story giving example, providing your insight. And that's better than just saying, you know, heartworm is this condition. It affects these pets. And here are the options for you. Like that's easily discovered by a Google search. So insights are very very important. The next thing that I think is incredibly important is video practices need to be doing video, and you need to learn how to do simple ways of capturing attention. You need to have hooks. You need to be engaging, and the commodity that is getting more and more valuable is attention. So as more people produce content, as there's more noise out there, you need to be able to stand out.

Brandon 00:23:59  Video, especially short form, is the way to build awareness and to get people in the middle of funnel. You can use short form content on Google Ads and Performance Max, so short form video is here to stay. If you haven't listened to the episodes that I have with Ariel Potter, be sure to go back and listen to those. Ariel. I see the work that she's doing with other brands. she's just amazing. I hope to have her back on the podcast sometime soon, but the stuff that she's doing is fantastic. short form will continue to dominate, content. And I think it's just a skill that you're going to have to master now simply because, it's it's not going anywhere. And even if TikTok gets banned, Instagram Reels is just going to get even more popular. So understand that with each platform, there's different levels of the funnel. different levels of the funnel require different content types, and you need to be able to make content for each platform that you want to be investing in.

Brandon 00:25:05  So if you want to be an Instagram and you want to get clients from Instagram, you need to be good at short form content. If you want to be good at YouTube, that's a different audience. that's a different type of content. And so you just need to know that's a more long form content type. I would for me, if I was opening a practice this year, I would focus on Instagram as my primary platform, and then I would push Instagram to Facebook And then I would publish my Instagram Reels to TikTok as well. Until we find out what's going to happen with the TikTok ban. If TikTok, if TikTok gets banned, I think that's okay. it'll just push people to Instagram. I am bummed though. I really love TikTok as a platform. The stuff that they're doing with shopping is incredible and innovative. and I think that if TikTok gets banned, it will be. It'll be a bummer in general, for, for platforms in the innovation that's taking place. But, I think it's another good example, too.

Brandon 00:26:12  You need to own as many of your marketing contacts as possible with respect to you need to have email lists, text list, and, you just really own the list rather than rent it from Instagram or Facebook or YouTube. the next thing that I think is really, really important for middle of funnel is having some way of having omnichannel communication. And what that means is that clients expect to communicate wherever they're consuming content. So if they're on site, you need to have a chat widget. If they are on Facebook or Instagram, you need to be able to message. There's tools out there that lets you do that. text messaging is great. You need to have the one to many functionality and the 1 to 1. So if somebody you send out like a text blast and some of your spans back, you need to be able to communicate with them. there's a great tool that I'm going to be going through in one of the next episodes that it's a CRM, it connects all of your social channels, it connects your text messaging, it connects your email.

Brandon 00:27:15  So that way you can just communicate back and forth, in one spot. But I think that's very important. You need to be able to reach people across all platforms and then communicate with them on that platform. So for middle of funnel. I think in 2025 you need to, number one, be owning as much media as you can. So I would say go very, very heavy in terms of texting chatting and email. You need to also be doing short form video. Like you can't just do pictures, you need video. And then you need to give insights, not just information but actual insights. So let's move in to top of funnel now for 2025. I think one of the most important things to do for top of funnel, which is building awareness. Brand positioning is you really, really need to niche down your messaging. So trying to be everything to everyone is a recipe for just being completely ignored. So really focusing on specific points that you want to stand out on, whether that's types of procedures.

Brandon 00:28:35  types of pet owners, demographic pet owners, specific species, age brackets, breed specific. I said species, but that's like exotic pets. breed specific stuff. types of cancers, types of diagnostics, types of labs. You can you. I just think you can't get too niche. The thing that I would target would be probably, Daryl Eves, one of the guests that I've had on about YouTube, his, book about YouTube, talks about this in depth. I love his book. It is so good for content creation in a post TikTok world. Right. So TikTok came out and it completely flipped the script on needing to build an audience that you had a lot of subscribers around. So subscribers are less and less important. Followers are less and less important. The ability to create content that's going to interact with a specific niche is far more important. So if you open TikTok and you use it very quickly, you'll find that they show you content from maybe a dozen different buckets pretty regularly. So like if you're into DIY stuff and if you're into humor and if you're into like, these types of niche content, you're going to see things around these niches pretty regularly.

Brandon 00:30:00  So niching down will be the easiest way to stand out. And as you niche down, you're going to be able to find niches within the niche that is going to be, you know, things that really help to drive more people, to your content. So things like, like for example, stuff for senior pets. Like within that niche you have like anesthesia, you have euthanasia, you have quality of life, you have health and like Supplements. So getting that niche I think is very, very important. if you live in an area that has, for example, lots of outdoor stuff. So like I have clients that are in Denver, there's a lot of different lifestyle and types of people that are in Denver versus like people that are in Southern California, like, or in New York City. You know, it's very different in terms of culture. And so, you know, creating content around people that are hiking and running and doing outdoor stuff versus people that are in the cities. It's very, very different.

Brandon 00:31:05  So figure out who your niches are. for most practices, I would try to go after probably between 4 and 5 different client avatars. And within those avatars, I'd figure out which niche buckets or the types of content that you're going to test, and then go out and test it. And my suggestion would be to go through this probably quarterly and map out okay. What types of content are working in this niche, and how can I apply that to what we're doing? it's pretty easy to see what's working, especially on like TikTok and Instagram. And so if you search for specific topics, you can find what people are doing and then remix it to match your brand and your voice. I think across all of your channels, it's very, very important that you have consistency within your brand. So the types of content that you're putting out, the types of people that you're seeking out, and then the way that your content looks is going to be very, very important so that if people see you on TikTok, they'll know it's you.

Brandon 00:32:06  If people see it on Instagram, they'll still know it's you. So make sure it's consistent across everything. The next thing I think for top of funnel that's going to be incredibly important is you need to use organic content as the test, and you need to post as often as you possibly can. I don't think you can overdo content because, again, followers, if that's one thing that I see, if people say, like, I'm nervous, I'm gonna annoy my my, audience. The thing is, if somebody loves your content, they're going to want to see more of it. If you think about the content that you see. You probably see several creators over and over again with content. And so, especially for things that you like, it's not like they annoy you because you're like, oh, great. Here's another funny post, or here's another interesting post. I'm going to learn something like how annoying. If people don't like it, they're going to swipe away and it only takes a second.

Brandon 00:33:04  And so you're not going to annoy people, do more. And when something works, you need to leverage that. this is really something that's pretty cool that I see, like Ariel doing with, clients that the content that she's putting out or coaching consulting on does incredibly well. And so like stuff that does well organically. We can take that and use that as an add. So the testing process for ads, especially on social, is if something does well, you immediately need to use it as an ad in these, paid media channels. Okay. So if something does well, organically, it is an ad. And, I'll create a quick tutorial video, I'll post it on LinkedIn. But, you can go into your, your Facebook page, you can look at content insights and see what does. Well, it'll tell you how many times more something is shared. And I've been saying this for a long time, but the same algorithms that are used for finding your social audiences are the same ones that if you put an ad, it's going to find more of those people, it's going to force it to distribute, and it's just going to do better than you could imagine.

Brandon 00:34:15  So make sure that you're testing your creative through organic and then let the market decide what is interesting, what is engaging. And if you have overlap between the niche segment and the niche offer, you're going to win. So when you're going through and figuring out okay, as a as a company, we want to target these demographics. What are the offers that you have for those. So going back to middle of the funnel you need to have those I'm sorry. Bottom up funnel. We need to go back to the highly personalized offers. Tailor those to the types of clients that you want to be, bringing in and attracting. And then it won't feel gross if you're putting an offer that's highly relevant, highly valuable to these types of niches that you're attracting. So that, I think, is going to be something that you really can, use. the beauty of paid social is that you can apply. And this is the same thing with performance Max ads, but you can apply location targets on top of the other settings.

Brandon 00:35:19  So you're getting relevant traffic and building engagement, with people that are just potential customers, rather than just getting stuff out for the sake of getting it out. So, the next thing that I think will help you is you need to start using AI tools for creating, add creative. And, one of the ways that you can do that is using tools like opus, which helps you create clips that are edited quickly. They have the the text over it, and that's a great tool. There's so many AI content creation tools out there now that lets you take something that you create, repurpose it, and tailor it into stuff that you can use across all of the different platforms. and I think that using your paid social, I'm sorry, your social organic content as paid ads is something that's very, very beneficial to you. But if your practice, that's not just putting a ton of time into content creation, then I think doing something the opposite way is actually also beneficial. So like there's one strategy where you can take from paid.

Brandon 00:36:24  I'm sorry from organic and then apply paid to it like that's going to work for sure. I know without a doubt, if something works organically and you put money behind it as a social post, it will work as a as a paid ad too. but if you're not able to do that, another option is to take your main idea and really distill it down to like, what is the main point of the offer? What are the pain points that we're going to try? What is the hook that we're going to try? So you start at your hook and your paid ads and you see which one converts the best. And then basically you develop that hook into content. So it's like you can either start with the content or you can start with the idea. Test it. When you have a winner, you turn that winner into more content. So either one of those will work. one I think has less upfront risk because if you're doing paid ads and you don't know what offers are going to convert, you're just guessing and going to test your hypothesis versus if it does well organically, it'll do well.

Brandon 00:37:25  Paid for top of the funnel. I also think that it is very, very important that you're optimizing as much local SEO as possible so that you can get as many impressions, show up as much as possible in front of potential clients. so make sure that you are using tools like White Spark where you can find your citations. Make sure you're showing up as much as possible. and then going back to bottom of funnel. This has some specific application there too. There's two things that I see from my clients that are driving people in the door today. So if you need appointments, two things that I see working better than anything else are Google Business profile and making sure that that's optimized and continuing to make sure you're getting reviews. Doing all of the things that you need to do for Google Business Profile. The second thing is Google Ads. So if you need people today, go to where the customers are and show up in front of them. But caveat is you have to have a funnel in place that is going to really make sure that you convert them.

Brandon 00:38:43  So let's talk now about integrating this whole process together. so the whole funnel, how do we go to make sure that everything is integrated properly. I think there's some very, very important factors here for 2025. First off first party data is most important. What does that mean. So Facebook and Instagram and Google and all of the other platforms, especially with ad platforms, we used to have pixels. Pixels are dead. Unfortunately we don't have that marketing data like we used to. browsers and Apple and all these companies, Google Chrome, they don't allow third party cookie tracking anymore. And so as privacy becomes more and more integrated into these systems, giving these platforms your first party data meaning, I own this list. I'm going to upload it and tell Google who my customers are. That becomes more important than ever. So integrating first party data into platforms like Google Ads, into Facebook, especially if you're doing any type of paid advertising, you need to have first party data reporting. And so you can set that up with tools like Zapier.

Brandon 00:39:58  You can set that up with tools like gyros. but you need to be capturing email lists, phone numbers, and, client data so that you can re-upload that into Google or Facebook. in 2025 and beyond. Attribution and analytics are more important than ever. So going back to the top of funnel and the way that social works now, right. If social knows that this piece of content works well for these niche bucket segments and these interest segments, the same thing can be true for Google Ads. It can take that data. It it knows what you're buying. I mean, Google owns Google Analytics. They know everything that everyone is buying. They know where they buy their coffee, what kind of dog food they buy. Like they know everything. And so if you can give good attribution and say, okay, Google, here is my data, here's how much these customers are worth to me. It will go out and find you more, but you have to be able to give it to Google in a way that it's going to make sense with conversion tracking in particular.

Brandon 00:41:09  There's a hierarchy of conversions with especially with Google for example. So the lowest thing that you can optimize for is impressions or We're getting your content or your ads shown out there. The next level and has more quality is going to be clicks. So basically as you go up the ladder of quality, you're going to get better results. But you have to give Google data. So impressions Google knows that they saw the ad. It's very low quality generally speaking. clicks that's not bad. You can see what people are searching for and what they're clicking on. If you have no other data points, you can manually control campaigns and say, okay, we want to show up for these searches in these times, in these locations, at these times of day, like we're optimizing for clicks. At least you'll know that it's a real person. And they search for this term and they show up on your site. But Google, if they can get the next level of data, it's even better. And the next level of data beyond that is called conversions.

Brandon 00:42:10  So you have conversions which an action took place. Now there are conversions Versions like a button click. So Google knows. Like for example, somebody click the button on your website that said request appointment. That doesn't mean it's an actual conversion. And so beyond that we have what are called conversion values and conversion values is that it knows that somebody clicked and then they ended up buying something or paying you in practice for service. Now that is difficult to get to. There's a bunch of tools I know of that we're working on to get that data specifically from your practice management software, but that process is very hard. I have a few practices who've done it. It's pretty cool. and so once you get that conversion value, you can then do value based optimization where you say, okay, Google, here's our return on investment. We only want to target a 400% ROI on ad spend. Go and find us clients and it'll do it. And that sounds crazy, but if you think about it, if Google knows or Instagram knows or TikTok knows that this type of people like this type of content.

Brandon 00:43:21  They also know these type of people buy these types of products and they're this demographic. And so it's just getting better and better. This is only going to get more important over time. And I think one thing that's very interesting, like companies like chewy, for example, are dipping their toe into practice ownership. If they can take all of the data that they have and use it to identify their clients in, like the vet med space for services. They would have such a leg up over everybody else, just because they have so much client data that they can target the best clients and provide them with the best offers. So, small businesses have to really take this seriously if they want to compete with bigger companies that have access to data. Having data and conversion data in particular is like. Running with your shoelaces tied together versus like, having a motorcycle. So all of these big companies that have access to all of the data. and I was just thinking, if anybody knows the marketing person for veg, like, if you could put me in touch with them, I would love to talk to them about their marketing.

Brandon 00:44:35  just because I would bet that they are doing a great job of capturing client data and reporting it to Google, because I see in all of the markets that I'm competing against them, they're doing an amazing job. So I'm a big fan of their marketing department. And so if anybody knows of them, send them, send me a message on LinkedIn. I would love to, talk with them. But you have to treat your company like a big company does. And big companies value data because it is incredibly valuable. So make sure that you have attribution and analytics in place. The last thing that I think. For integrating this whole funnel and really making sure that you're doing things is, map out your client journey and your ascension ladder and think about the ways that these clients are going to be interacting across the whole funnel. And with all of the new things that you want to be doing in 2025, so that you can integrate all of the marketing tools that you're doing. I think a lot of the times practices are doing, you know, very segmented activities where it's kind of compartmentalized.

Brandon 00:45:45  We have our social stuff, we have our newsletter. Maybe we send out client cards once in a while, but really making sure that the whole journey is integrated. Like I give an example, Michael Shurley with his postcards, like the postcard is a physical touch. And then it also sends people back to the podcast, and the podcast has these calls to action in it. And so we're tracking all of these different ways that people are going to get there and the sentient journey that you want them to take and how you'd want them to interact. I think it's very, very valuable to think about that and then map it out so that it's all integrated. And if you think about, like, for example, your podcast as a marketing system, if you have a podcast, if you can drive traffic from other channels there and really use it as a piece, it's going to amplify the results that you get. So every marketing system that you put in place is just going to create an exponential growth factor for you.

Brandon 00:46:45  And it's you're going to be way ahead of the curve. So I know that this was kind of long today. but I hope that it was valuable. I think that this year is going to be pretty challenging for a lot of practices. it's just going to be the the way that it is. It's going to be very interesting to see what happens, especially with the larger corporate groups. But I think there's more opportunity than ever. And as a private practice, especially if you can be agile and adopt things more quickly, you're going to have a major advantage in 2025. So if you need help at all, please send me a message on LinkedIn. Send me a message on Facebook. Wherever you're listening from, send me a message. It's Brandon Brandon at Maverick Digital Marketing. Com. I'm sorry I don't have Brandon at Veterinary Marketing Podcast. I use my Brandon at Maverick Digital Marketing. so send me an email. Send me a message. Go to Veterinary Marketing podcast. com and chat if you need help.

Brandon 00:47:48  I'm here to help and I hope that this was viable for you. If you did find value, please be sure to share this with somebody. but I appreciate you. And,

Brandon 00:47:58  Have a great day.