The Veterinary Marketing Podcast

In Todays Inbetweenisode I cover how you can get the most out of Google ad words for your veterinary practice's marketing. Be sure to listen and let me know if you have any questions, comments or need help with anything!

Today in part 2 of our 30-day marketing challenge we cover the next step after you have completed your pre-work. For the next 4 weeks, we will be covering what you should be doing, how to grow your practice's marketing, how to measure success, and how to make sure you are being successful in our 4 part series of setting your self up for extreme success with your veterinary practice's marketing. We will also be focusing on who our ideal clients are, how to target them, how to find them on the internet and how to drive them to your practice. Step 2 of 4 will include: Before & After Grid-Before & after Grids helps convey the emotional benefits and overall value you are able to provide them Offers-Offers need to be either a product or service that you can easily convey the value to your target market that helps them transform from the before to the after packaged in a way that shows them as much benefit as possible. Be sure to outline the value of your offer to help potential clients have a clear understanding of why they will want to get your products or services. I recommend that you have 4 different offers that you rotate 1 month at a time. Funnels-Create a funnel that will take your clients from awareness to conversion through your content. Your content will be the top of funnel. Content-Create content on a daily basis and be sure to have a clear call to action on each piece of content. Content can vary from low production time live videos or quick pictures of what's going on inside your practice to high production time edited videos. Be sure to listen and let me know if you have any questions, comments or need help with anything!

In Todays Inbetweenisode I share some future changes coming to Facebook. Be sure to listen and let me know if you have any questions, comments or need help with anything!

Today is the start of the 30-day marketing challenge! For the next 4 weeks, we will be covering what you should be doing, how to grow your practice's marketing, how to measure success, and how to make sure you are being successful in our 4 part series of setting your self up for extreme success with your veterinary practice's marketing. In today's episode, we discuss the prework that needs to be done and break down each step of the prework. The 4 main parts of prework are Setting up baselines- Set baselines for social channels and your practice's website by looking back a month for Facebook and Instagram and gathering the numbers of posts, views of stories, messages, comments, likes, shares, and page views. For websites look back 12 months to see bounce rates, page views, where traffic is coming from and more. Tracking-Tools to use for your tracking include Google analytics, Google tag manager and Google data studio Setting up reporting that is easy to access and useful- Google data studio is a great place to set up your reporting to be a weekly review of all your analytics. and Who is the client you are trying to reach- The last step of prework is really getting clear on who exactly is your ideal client not only in a demographic way where its their age range and how many pets they own or what type of pet they own but also a psychographic way where what are some questions they ask when visiting or what are their pain points. Take your favorite clients and think about what their biggest concerns are about their pets and the best ways you can ease their concerns with your services or products you offer. Be sure to listen and let me know if you have any questions, comments or need help with anything!

In Todays Inbetweenisode I cover using Messenger marketing in your practice. You can use messenger marketing with either Facebook Or instagram using many chat For more information visit veterinarymarketingpodcast.com/manychat

In today's episode, I talk about building a social media strategy of where you should be spending your time and where you should be divvying up your time. It is extremely important to be reaching customers on the channels you want to use to grow your business. whether that be Facebook, Instagram, Linkedin or any other platform you use. First, where should you be spending your time? This really is dependent on which platforms you want to use for your social media marketing and who you want to reach. there are 4 major platforms I believe are beneficial to social media marketing. 1) Your website & Blogging- Share blog content on your actual website and also take your blog post and repurpose to other platforms. 2) Facebook & Instagram - Facebook is still the top place to reach people because it's so widely used by millions. Instagram is another great place to put content as it is also very popular 3) Linked In -Perfect for reach other veterinary professionals and a great place to put your content if you have a specific type of practice like content about surgeries and dental procedures 4) Google My Business Post Next, What your strategy should be? If you have a full-time social media manager you should be using all platforms to greater reach potential customers. For small business owners, you should also be using all the major platforms. Lastly, Where should you be divvying up your time? For Small business owners, 80% of time should be used on one specific platform that has a video. Videos are great because all of the major platforms now support videos and you'll be able to post on your main platform and then be able to post on the others to really get the most out of your content. Make sure you are consistently posting and also repurposing content across all the platforms. Be sure to listen and let me know if you have any questions, comments or need help with anything!

In Todays Inbetweenisode I cover the sequencing of how you approach paid ads. Be sure to listen and let me know if you have any questions, comments or need help with anything!

Hiring is a very hot topic in the veterinary industry. A lot of veterinary practices are always looking for new vets or vet techs to hire some even for years and are facing trouble when it comes to hiring new talent for their veterinary practice. This week on the podcast we have a special guest Jesse Thomason who we speak to about how you should be marketing your veterinary practice or even your own personal brand for the purpose of hiring. The first thing you should keep in mind if your practice is looking for new vets and vet techs is your practice needs to be a good work environment with a great team that people are going to want to work in your veterinary practice. Creating flexibility in your practice will also be able to help get new employees in. Live goes on outside of work and sometimes life and work can conflict with each other creating flexibility will show your vets and vet techs that they don't just have to choose one aspect of their life you can work and also be able to still do other things they enjoy. When creating your content for either your practice or in the case of personal branding be sure that your content that you are putting out is both valuable and authentic. And is for both consumers and also with the intent of hiring. Using the right platform is also important. if you want to see job listing or post job listings LinkedIn is a great platform to use. Building a community of other vets or vet techs is great to do on both Facebook and Instagram. If you would like to know more about vetted pet care please visit their site vettedpetcare.com And if you would like to get in contact with Jesse you can reach him at [email protected] Be sure to listen and let me know if you have any questions, comments or need help with anything!

Sometimes copywriting can be difficult because you don't know what to say or how to say it. In Todays Inbetweenisode I cover a simple trick to improve your copywriting. Use a before and after grid in your copywriting to take your before who is your client and their feelings, thoughts, and concerns and use your practice or service as a bridge to get them to the after state.

Have you ever wondered how you should be following up with your clients or how often you should be following up and how you can retain your current clients at your practice? We cover some ways to help your practice run smoother with your follow ups and reminders Today on the podcast we have a special guest! Dr. Mark Olcott founder of Vitus Vet is here to talk about using text notifications, push notifications, and postcards in your veterinary marketing. Vitus Vet app allows pet owners and their veterinarians to be able to access their pets full medical records, charts, and history, lab work, digital images, and medical notes. Vitus vet also allows you to be able to choose which forms of communication of reminders you would like to use from text notifications, push notifications through the Vitus vet app, email reminders, or postcard reminders. Multimedia marketing in your veterinary practice's marketing is very important. Having options and your practice's brand over a few different forms of media is super helpful to effectively reach all of your most valuable customers. Text notifications are great to use in businesses as they generally tend to produce some of the highest rates but on the downside, they can be difficult to get up and running. Vitus Vet offers a simple and easy way to text clients by turning your practice's landline phone number into a textable number that allows you to have a two way messaging and picture sharing option to communicate with your clients. Offering multiple ways to send reminders and follow ups will help improve your client retention. Also remember to keep your ways of contact easy to use, if it's not easy to be in contact with your practice you will lose potential clients. Make contacting your practice as easy as possible. if you'd like to request a demo of Vitus vet for your practice you can visit their site here. https://vitusvet.com/ Be sure to listen and let me know if you have any questions, comments or need help with anything!

In Todays Inbetweenisode I cover Google Data Studio. Google Data Studio is a tool you can use to compile reports and create dashboards of results and analytics all in one place and best of all its free!

If you have been listening to the podcast for a while you know I love paid ads! Paid advertising is something I believe every practice should be used for digital marketing. Paid ads are great because they are consistently scalable, are able to be turned on or off at any time, and measurable. Before you run any ads there are a few things that need to be in place first. For starters, you need a website for your practice that is easy to use and actually works. Next, ask these 3 questions. Who are you serving or targeting? Who is the ideal client for your practice? Take the qualities of your best clients and turn those into your ideal client avatar and market to them. What do they actually want? What are these clients looking to achieve by coming into your practice? Are your clients more casual laid back pet owners that their pet is just an animal or are they the kind of owners that see their pets as members of the family that want the absolute best care for their pets? What is your enticing offer? All 3 of these questions will help you be able to understand what you're really trying to market and will also help you to be able to build a good client relationship. After you know your answers the next step is to make sure you have your landing page you can send your potential clients to with a way to get into your practice. Then start running ads on both Facebook and Google Adwords. Once you start running ads and start to see what is working by testing, confirming and optimizing you'll be able to get a better idea of how much ads spend you'll need. Be sure to listen and let me know if you have any questions, comments or need help with anything!

The crashes of both Instagram and Facebook recently really showed us how one day possibly these platforms could all of a sudden be gone! In Todays Inbetweenisode I share why it's important to be using more than just one platform in your marketing.

Is your veterinary practice running paid ads? Paid advertising is a great way to increase traffic to both your websites and your physical practice. In Todays Episode we are joined with Adam Greenbaum from Whiskercloud! Adam and I share some of our thoughts on paid advertising and why it's so beneficial to have for your practice's marketing. Starting off with the most important part of paid traffic, Tracking and measuring your KPIs and ROIs. When tracking you need to have very specific goals in mind. The clearer the offer and objective of the offer are the better it will perform. Another important part is response time, you should keep your response time short when you have potential clients interested in your offers. You want to make a good impression to potential clients that you want them to come into your practice and that you're excited to work with them. Keep in mind that when you run ads you will experience an increase in phone calls, emails, and messages that will need to be answered or replied to so your potential clients know that you are wanting to work with them. Now let's talk money... with Paid advertising, you will have to pay to get your ads out there to reach potential clients. Adam and I discuss what we think are the best budgets to really get your advertising rolling without breaking the bank while still being beneficial to your marketing. Adam And I also share a very exciting announcement in this episode We are offering a 14-day free trial as well as a monthly price of just $299 a month to get you started with paid advertising. Your free trial will include Multiple Google and Facebook ads created and ran custom Landing pages made Optimized tracking Monthly Meeting and More! Check out all the details here https://whiskercloud.com/veterinary-advertising/ Be sure to listen and let me know if you have any questions, comments or need help with anything!

In Todays Inbetweenisode I share a helpful tip on how you can increase your subscriber amount on Youtube. Adding a small piece of code to the channel description can help grow your Youtube channel.

Building an audience on Youtube can be a challenging thing but its most definitely worth it. With these few steps, you can help your new youtube channel grow and build your audience and even have your videos start ranking. In the final installment of our 3 part video marketing series, it's all about using Youtube in your video marketing for your practice Last week I asked what your favorite social media platform to watch videos on between Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube. And while I think all of these platforms are great in their own ways, I believe that every practice should be using Youtube. Youtube is a great platform to use for your practice as everyone is familiar with it and pretty much everyone uses it daily. People use Youtube primarily for 2 reasons 1) as a search engine 2) for entertainment I recently have been posting a video everyday on youtube for over 2 months (If you'd like to check them out click here ) and here are some tips that I have found to help. Youtube Search Having your videos show up on the search you will need to use target keywords that correspond with what your videos and channel are about and target those specific keyword groups. 2 of my favorite tools to use for keywords are Tube Buddy and VidIQ Scheduling Consistency is key. When people know when you are posting they will be more likely to engage and watch your videos. Video Content Your videos will perform better if it is high quality, has good audio, and generally, longer videos do better as they help your total view times. Other items that help your ranking on youtube is descriptions, tags, titles, and end screens. Be aware while growing your audience on Youtube it will take time to build a steady audience. A few ways to help grow your audience is by funneling over traffic from other platforms to your channel, or even embedding your videos on your blog, or letting your email list know about your channel Be sure to listen and let me know if you have any questions, comments or need help with anything!

In Todays, In betweenisode, I share some video editing software suggestions that are great to use for your video marketing videos Filmora wondershare is a great option for editing software. It is easy to use and also has a free trial! https://filmora.wondershare.com/ Adobe Premiere Pro is another awesome editing software https://www.adobe.com/products/premiere.html For MAC users imovie is also another great option for editing software and the best part of it is that its free on Mac computers! Final Cut Pro is one of the best editing softwares for apple https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/

Which social media platform is your favorite to watch videos? Instagram, Facebook, or Youtube? In part 2 of the video marketing series, I cover using both Facebook and Instagram for video marketing When using either just one of these platforms or both ask yourself these few questions to help better understand what type of video content to put out and where. What makes you stand out? Who is your competition and what are they posting about? And lastly what are others engaging with? Once you've decided where you'll post your videos the next step is to choose which mediums to use of native post Native post video forms Live videos Recorded videos Video Creator Pages Instagram Tv or IGTV Stories (Facebook & Instagram) Ads Story ads Live videos are one of my favorite video forms to use as they are available on all platforms and take no additional production time. The key to building your audience using live videos is consistency, the more consistent you are and the more your clients know when you will be on the better the engagement will become. another beneficial tip for going live is to kind of have an outline of what you want to talk about and also give opportunities for viewers to engage with you by asking questions and providing topics that will get a response. Recorded videos can be posted both on your facebook page and your Instagram profile. Some tips to use when posting on Facebook is to add captions. And on Instagram is to use hashtags. Stories on both Facebook and Instagram have become increasingly popular over the last year. Using stories is easy and pretty quick to use. And now you can even have story sized ads! Last video form that is still fairly new is Instagram Tv Or IGTV. IGTV allows you to have videos that are up to 10 minutes long. You could even take videos that have been posted on youtube and format them to be posted on IGTV as well Instagram has just recently added a new feature that allows you to have a 60 second preview of your IGTV video. Be sure to listen and let me know if you have any questions, comments or need help with anything!

In today's in-betweenisode we cover using the stories feature of both Facebook and Instagram for your veterinary practice. Instagram and Facebook stories feature is a great tool to use on your practices social media as they can provide a behind the scenes look into your practice. Add engagement with clients by enabling the messaging option to be able to answers question or just talk to your clients. Stories are also super convenient to use. You could have both nicely curated stories or even just use your phone!

Who doesn't love watching videos? For the next 3 weeks, we will be talking all things videos in this 3 part series from the types of videos you make, what camera you use, which editing software to use, and which social media platform to put your videos on. Video Marketing is becoming an increasingly popular form of marketing. Many social media platforms now support video content like Youtube, Facebook, Instagram and more. Videos are a great way to help your clients and future clients get a better sense of you and feel more comfortable with you just by watching your videos! In Part 1 of the video marketing series, I share some of my personal favorites like cameras and a few editing software options that I use when I'm making videos for my youtube channel. For PC users Filmora wondershare is a great option for editing software. It is easy to use and also has a free trial! https://filmora.wondershare.com/ Adobe Premiere Pro is another awesome editing software https://www.adobe.com/products/premiere.html For MAC users imovie is also another great option for editing software and the best part of it is that its free on Mac computers! Final Cut Pro is one of the best editing softwares for apple https://www.apple.com/final-cut-pro/ We also talk about some of the difficult aspects of video marketing like production. And go over the importance of having a mix of video content whether that be types of video like educational, vlogs or Q&As, to even edited type of videos or live streams. Make sure are targeting your ideal clients with each one of your videos. Choosing the frequency of your uploads and sticking to your schedule. Be sure to listen and let me know if you have any questions, comments or need help with anything!

Digital Marketing can be confusing to figure out sometimes with what to measure and when to measure it. In today's in-betweenisode I share a helpful tip to help simplify your veterinary practices digital marketing. Ask yourself these 2 simple questions. What is your objective? and What Is your end goal. Taking your end goal and breaking it down into steps will help simplify your digital marketing.

In today's episode, I go over 7 important questions to help make your marketing clearer. A common problem I often see in veterinary practices is that they will talk about their practice in a way that makes sense to them but really fails to show clients what the actual benefits of their practice are. These 7 questions will help you be able to convey what really sets you apart from other practices and what benefits your clients will be gaining by coming to your practice. The first question is What does your practice stand for? Another way to look at this question is what is your practice's mission? What does your practice stand against? What are some things your practice doesn't agree with? is it a fearful environment or overcrowding in kennel spaces? be sure to make it known in a beneficial way what negative attributes your practice does not have. What is your practice purpose? What is the main purpose of your practice and what are you trying to help your clients achieve with the care of their pets What is your unique selling proposition? What makes you unique and stand out from other practices around you? Who is your ideal target or client? Take a few of your favorite clients and make some new ideal clients for your practice using a client avatar and use those ideal clients as who you are writing to in your ads. What are their pain points? What are some of the struggles your clients face day to day with the care of their pets? What is the solution to their pain points? What solutions to your client's pain point do you offer in your veterinary practice? An important element to remember while answering these questions is to focus more on sharing the beneficial aspects that your clients will be able to experience coming into your practice. Be sure to listen and let me know if you have any questions, comments or need help with anything!

In today's in-betweenisode I cover why you should be using more than one type of traffic sources in your veterinary practice's marketing. You've heard the saying don't put all your eggs in one basket, well that's how you should approach using traffic sources. You want to be able to maximize your marketing by a mix of traffic sources. I share a story of why it's important to have more than one traffic source and why only using one could be detrimental to your marketing.

Are you using Google My Business for veterinary practice? Today I go over Google My Business for the first time on the podcast and share with you 4 awesome new features Google My Business offers that can help your veterinary practice grow. Google My Business is a great tool to use in your practice's marketing to get more clients through your doors and more clicks on your google ads! Google My Business works as a business listing that shows when you search by name your practice. It gives potential clients all the important information that they need about you like where you are located, what your hours are, and how they can reach you. The first new feature they have added is a Q&A section so now customers can ask questions about what type of services you provide or days you are open. Anyone can answer these questions so it's important to frequently check and manage the answers that are being given. Descriptions are back! Descriptions on Google My Business now lets you be able to tell your customers directly what they can expect to find at your practice such as services you provide, what makes you stand out from others, and if your an emergency vet or not. The next feature to consider using is their booking feature. This booking feature would allow your clients to schedule their appointment themselves. Now with this feature, you will need a scheduling software if you don't already have one. The last feature that I'm most excited for is Google post! Google Posts lets you share a product release, blog post, upcoming events, and announcements in post similar to facebook. another great part about Google post is that you are also able to create special offers! This feature will help with your google ad words with how much space you'll be able to utilize on google. Be sure to listen and let me know if you have any questions, comments or need help with anything!

In today's in-betweenisode I cover naming conventions and why they are so helpful for your veterinary practice's digital marketing. We cover naming conventions for when you create content or posts. Creating posts that have a consistent naming convention allows you to automatically build retargeting audiences that are segmented. The whole purpose of creating content is so that you can target specific segments and re-target those segments with offers. This strategy helps you identify segments and audiences who are interested in your content.

Is your marketing successful? A common problem I face when talking with other practices is that they often say marketing isn't working for them. But the truth is that they just are not measuring their metrics correctly. Today's episode I go over how to tell if your practices digital marketing is successful or not, and how to improve your marketing. Marketing works in three steps: Awareness, Evaluation, and Conversions. One of the biggest mistake people make often in marketing is that they don't focus enough on content. Content is what will help potential customers get to know you, become aware of your practice.Once you have their attention and they are aware of you they will become more inclined to continue to be engaged with your content and offers. After your potential clients are aware of you and what you offer the next step is to continue to target that audience so they can start the process to come into your practice, the evaluation stage where they are wanting to get more information to see why you are the best choice for them. Next step is conversion. Conversion takes place when the clients make the final step to buy your product or come in for an appointment, they are now a client of yours and have fully converted. Something that I believe helps anybody with digital marketing is planning and going into to every ad and campaign with a goal that they want to reach. Reaching your goals can look different for every campaign whether it be awareness, evaluation, or conversion intended its important to go into your campaigns knowing exactly what your goals are. Be sure to listen and let me know if you have any questions, comments or need help with anything!

In today's inbetweenisode we cover paid traffic for your veterinary practice and how to optimize your ads to get them to perform the best they can. So often when I'm working with veterinary practices whether they're using adwords express, Facebook ads or Instagram ads, one thing I consistent see them do is run automatic placements. Automatic placements is great for the ad networks because they give you more impressions and usually spend your money faster. Make sure you're managing your placements and don't fall into this trap!

Happy New Year! With the new year here we can expect some changes in the digital marketing world and 2019 is going to be a great year for marketing for your veterinary practice. I go over the 3 marketing trends that will help the growth of your veterinary practice this year. I also share some predictions of what could possibly happen this year with social media platforms and how that could affect your marketing. Digital marketing is changing faster than ever before, and if last year was any indication, 2019 is going to be CRAZY! I think that there will be a massive opportunity for veterinary practices who keep up to date with the changes that come out. Privacy issues and public perception will play a huge role in how Facebook and other tech giants handle their product updates, ad guidelines and user guidelines in general. For my predictions of what we can possibly see in 2019, I think we will see an increase in the usage of Instagram for ads. Instagram will become a very popular platform to not only use as a social media platform for your veterinary practice to help build a sense of community by engaging with your followers but as a platform to use to advertise your marketing to get new clients through yoacur doors. Expect Facebook to become more competitive as Instagram starts to become more of a place to show your ads. Facebook ads will also go up and expect to see some bigger brands popping up on your newsfeeds As we talked about a little last week, Email marketing will be another great tool for you to use for your practice. Email marketing is one way you can reach even more people to get to know your practice and become more engaged with your clients. Be sure to listen and let me know if you have any questions, comments or need help with anything!

2018 was a really crazy year for marketing! There was so much volatility, loss of engagement on platforms and crazy changes that took place. In total, I managed just over 240,000 in ad spend on Facebook and just of 260,000 in ad spend on AdWords, and quite a bit of that being veterinary practice's ad budget. I share some of the most important lessons that I learned and talk about what I think you should do to improve your veterinary practice's marketing in 2019 and beyond. 2018 started off with a huge shift in Facebook distribution for business pages on January 19th 2018 algorithm change. This change really set the stage for the whole year and reminded me how important it was to be a multi-channel marketer. Changes will only continue to come down the pipeline from our big ad network providers. Social media channels are becoming increasingly more crowded as more and more advertisers fight for the same set of eyeballs. If you don't have an email list, it is time to start! Email will continue to be one of the most effective marketing tools that you get to own and control. Be sure to listen and let me know if you have any questions, comments or need help with anything!

In today's mini episode of the veterinary marketing podcast, we cover setting up standard conversions on Facebook to increase conversions. Standard conversion events are really simple to use and you benefit from Facebook's algorithms to optimize your campaigns. Smart "machine learning algorithms are becoming more and more useful in digital marketing, and because of this, it is important to use the tools that help you get more out of your marketing.

Ads are difficult for a lot of veterinary practices, and it makes sense. Ad platforms can be confusing, and often when you're working in a practice, you're really close to the offers and content, so it can be hard to figure out the best ways to reach and target your clients or prospective clients. In today's episode, I cover some really simple and practical tools to help you with your paid ads. I cover how to see if they're working and what to do if they aren't. If you've ever run ads before, then more than likely you've had some results that weren't what you were hoping for. It happens to everyone who runs paid traffic to try and get new clients, but it doesn't mean that ads don't work. Ads can be just like when a patient comes into your practice, they can't tell you what's wrong, but you take a look at the symptoms and start to diagnose what it could be. I cover a framework to help you identify the problems you're experiencing and how to turn around ad campaigns that aren't working. To begin this process it is important to break down your end goals into macro and micro conversions. Macro conversions are the big goals you have, like getting people in the practice, while micro conversions are the small steps in between first seeing an ad and then coming in. The most common micro conversion problems that we talk about today are: Getting Impressions Getting clicks getting opt-ins Getting email opens generating clear calls to action, like booking appointments or getting calls If we can identify the micro conversions that aren't working, from there we can make small changes to improve campaign performance and turn the ads around. You don't have to scrap an entire campaign just because one piece isn't working. If you have any questions or need help with anything be sure to reach out!

In this in-between episode, I cover why it is time to get started with business manager for your veterinary practice instead of normal ads manager. Business manager now helps you use custom audience tools that make your Facebook marketing more effective. For more on how to create and manage your Facebook Business Manager account go here: Click Here

If you listened to episode 140, you might have gotten the feeling that I was a bit down on Facebook or Instagram. While I do think that it is BEYOND important to diversify your traffic streams and have different methods of generating clients online, Facebook and Instagram have been doing amazing work to update their products. It is no accident that Facebook and Instagram continue to be a powerhouse of ad revenue generation. They are still the best when it comes to targeting in my opinion, and the new ad types that they are releasing are AMAZING. In today's episode, we cover what happened to some of the targeting options, specifically the targeting that was provided by 3rd party data sources, due to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Along with targeting changes that have come out, we also cover some new formatting changes that work well in our favor to cover more real estate in the news feed. One of the most exciting things we dive into are Facebook's new instant experience. These are really dynamic, native content types that used to be called canvas. Facebook Canvas were ad/content types that looked cool but kind of fell flat, until they were updated and now called instant experiences. Load times are extremely, insanely important and these instant experiences are named this for a reason, they load really quickly. They also look really nice too. You can think of instant experiences like native landing pages. You can sell products directly here if you have catalogs uploaded, collected data with lead forms and also capture retargeting audiences of people who engage with these instant experience. The last thing we cover in today's episode is that it is time to upgrade to business manager. If you have been holding off, like many of the practices I work with have, then it is time to get moved over. If you want to use custom audiences from uploadlistss, you can no longer do this without agreeing to terms of service only available in Business manager. Here's how to change over to business manager: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1612355968988019

In this week's short episode I cover how to help veterinary practices get more out of your email marketing. In this short episode here's what I suggest you think about before you send out that email: What do you want the reader's call to action be? What is the action you're looking to compel the reader to take? Figure this out and once you've figured this out, then you need to do step 2. What is the easiest way for the reader to take action? Make that call to action clear and concise. If it is a button to schedule an appointment, make it easy. If it is a phone call, make it easy. Eliminate friction and increase conversion.

Social media is INSANELY important, I love it, but it isn't the only way to get new clients. With the fast changing landscape of digital marketing, social media has become one of the easiest ways to generate new clients, but I see some really big changes coming to that. In today's episode, we talk about how you should be diversifying your veterinary practice's traffic and client generation by becoming a multi-channel marketer. What is a multi-channel marketer? Simply put it is someone who understands and can use more than a single marketing channel. So if you've been working on and mastering Facebook, you should also have Adwords, email marketing or other media channels to help generate clients. What is prompting this discussion today is that I've been seeing Facebook get much more difficult from the paid ads department, especially over the past year. It makes total sense and here's why, Facebook's growth is slowing when it comes to new user growth and younger segments are actually using Facebook less. Despite this lack of user growth, Facebook's ad revenue is higher than ever and this is because there are more advertisers than ever. Both Facebook and Instagram are seeing more ads and advertisers and it's only getting more crowded. It is simply a matter of supply and demand. Demand is up and supply is limited so prices go up. This doesn't mean that Facebook isn't still a fantastic, amazing and effective platform, it just means the gravy train is over. I'm seeing higher cost per clicks and more expensive leads. We're still around the 8-15 dollars per lead area right now for most veterinary practices, but be prepared for that number to go up. As long as you're good at retaining clients, Facebook will continue to be a valuable way to attract new people to your veterinary practice. You're also going to want to make sure that you are tracking your marketing so that you can know what your ROI is. So let's talk how to protect yourself from overexposure in one area by diversifying where your clients come from in this episode of the veterinary marketing podcast.

This is the first in-between episode where I give you a quick, easy and effective marketing tip to use to help market your veterinary practice. In this first episode, I cover a copywriting formula that can help you with your social media posts, emails or anywhere else that you're trying to write persuasive copy to drive clients to act. Let me know what you think about these short in-between episodes, send me a message or leave a note on the Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theveterinarymarketingnerds

There are only a few things that I know without a doubt are going on in your veterinary practice. First, you are almost certainly understaffed or at the very least, extremely busy. Time is at a premium and this makes it difficult to think about running marketing campaigns, setting up email autoresponders or get to other stuff that will help your practice grow. Second, any marketing budget that is available (if one is available) is not unlimited so you need to find creative ways to pull from certain areas without taking too much. I get it. Running a business is tough, and when you add all the chaos that comes with running a veterinary hospital, it makes things even more difficult, which is why I have today's guest on. On this episode, I interview Dr. Joy Fuhrman, from Shepherd Practice Management Software on how to use your veterinary practice management so help to hlep you grow your practice, spend less time updating records and help you to stop missing charges. For those of you who don't know Dr. Fuhrman, she is originally from South Africa and has more than a decade of experience in financial consulting and corporate accounting. A graduate of Colorado State University's combined MBA/DVM program, she brings with her a combination of veterinary practice management, financial analysis, business valuation, professional development and leadership training skills. We dive into why Shepherd was started, and how their software really helps you to be more effective and efficient in your practice. Some of the most impressive things I think we cover include how many charges are simply missed, and as a result, your practice loses money. When you're running a practice where your clients are price sensitive, simply stopping missed charges is one easy way to get more revenue without having to raise prices. Another really important strategy that you're probably not using is not showing the value of the services that you are discounting or giving away. If you want to give the client a service for free, many times that isn't reflected in the billing, which completely misses the opportunity to show on their receipt how much you've given. Perceived value is a massive factor to help your clients feel like they're getting a good deal and are being well cared for. If you want to hear more about Shepherd, you can reach out to Dr. Fuhrman or any of the Shepherd team at http://www.shepherdapp.com and even request a free 14-day trial.

Success in your veterinary practice's digital marketing comes down largely to one single skill. Can you create offers that your clients want and need, and can you drive your clients and prospective clients into your practice? If you've been having trouble trying to determine whether or not your veterinary practice's marketing is getting ROI, it is probably because you don't have clearly defined offers. What action are you looking for your audiences to take? How do you get your social audiences to take action from being a spectator to a client? In today's episode, I go into how to create offers for your veterinary practice that your clients actually want. It is pretty amazing, the one thing that really defines who is successful and who struggles with their marketing is that the businesses who have established offers that convert. What do your clients actually want? What are they wanting you to deliver? How can you create offers that don't include only discounting? These are all things I dive into, and I go over a bunch of tips and tricks for creating offers that your clients will want. Drive your clients into your practice, and start getting better ROI on your marketing.

In today's episode, we have an awesome guest, Danielle Lambert. We dive into how to build a personal and business brand in the veterinary industry and this episode is full of gold! If you have been hiding under a rock and don't know Danielle yet, she is the Snout School founder, an international speaker, and social media addict working to empower veterinary businesses and brands to succeed online. Danielle has built social media campaigns for accounts ranging from DrAndyRoark.com to the Companion Animal Parasite Council, but she is most well-known for being a dog mom to Archer, the Brussels Griffon. This episode is full of awesome info, we talk about practical tips on how to build a brand, including defining your audience and coming out to choose and communicate with your ideal audience. I think that the work that she is doing to help educate veterinary professionals on how to build personal brands will have a huge impact on helping the veterinary industry find its voice and reach more pet owners. This is incredibly important if the industry wants to drive the conversation inside of non-veterinary voices producing sensationalist content (who needs a vet when you have coconut oil). Not only do we cover branding, but we talk about websites, and how that relates to building a brand presence too. I think you'll love the interview and find it very helpful in your marketing. Be sure to check out http://www.snoutschool.com

Most of the client communication tools these days are done by sending out mass messages. Email marketing, Facebook posts, Instagram posts, and on and on. These are great platforms for reaching clients at scale, but it is tough to create a message for everyone, by default you have to leave people out. The benefit of marketing to large audiences all at once is you can cast a wide net and get your message out to all your clients and potential clients, I'm a huge fan of it. The problem is that this is what everyone is doing, and if you want to stand out in the noisy marketplace, that often times takes doing things that not everyone else is doing. In my opinion, one of the easiest ways to stand out and to bond your client to your practice is by taking some extra time to add personal messaging to your practice's marketing, which can be difficult. If you're like every person in the industry that I know, you're probably insanely busy, so how do you make time add personal messaging to your practice's marketing? That is what today's episode is all about. I cover 4 tools that help you improve your practice's marketing by giving people a personalized message. Imagine being able to follow up with every single client who comes into your practice by sending them a custom created, personalized message? That is what the Bonjoro app does, and I go into detail on how to use it to make sure that you're getting good reviews, and that people come back. I even dive into a tool that lets you send... SNAIL MAIL. There I said it. Delivering handwritten notes that look like you sent them is a pretty old-fashioned strategy, but there's a web interface for you to use, so I think it is worth sticking in the podcast. If you can use tools to take out the time-intensive nature of personally following up you'll be able to make your clients feel like you actually care. Remember the famous saying, People will often forget what you said but remember how you made them feel. Make them feel like they matter.

Your best clients and prospects are the ones who actually come into your practice right? I know, it is a really groundbreaking concept but it is true. We talk about how to attract new clients all the time on the podcast, but sometimes we forget to focus on working on in-practice marketing. In today's episode, we cover a new project that I've been working on that is called Vet Wifi. VetWifi is a tool that helps you connect with and collect marketing data on the clients who come into your practice. Here's a few of the ways that VetWifi helps you that we cover in today's episode: How to grow your veterinary practice's pixel list How to automatically collect contact data of clients How to create marketing automation to help your practice How to get reviews for your practice automatically after a set time And much more I also discuss several ways to increase your VetWifi usage inside your practice so that you can get as many clients contact data as possible. Today, more than ever it is extremely important that you're able to communicate with clients on media that you actually own. Marketing platforms continue to lose organic reach so pixel audiences, custom audiences, and other assets are more valuable than ever. If you have any questions about how to use VetWifi or see what it would look like in your practice send me an email at [email protected] or go to VetWifi.com

In today's episode, we cover some often overlooked targeting options for Google Adwords. I also explain Youtube's onsite director, where you can get a free 30-second commercial that is professionally made, Click Here For This. I've spoken tons about custom audiences and retargeting audiences on Facebook, but haven't spoken much about Adwords. Many of the things I talk about in today's episode aren't new to Adwords, but I haven't spoken about hem yet. Adwords is very different from Facebook and other social ad platforms because you have many different ad types. The two primary ad types are display network and search network. So you have people who are consuming content (video, written content, news etc) or you have people who are actively searching, and sometimes a combination of both (a person who searches for a youtube video and you show up in their pre-roll ad.) The way that clients and potential clients are very different based on what action they are taking and what ad type you are using. Even within search network, when people are googling they can be searching for brand info, transactional searches or informational searches. That being said, make sure you are creating ads so that they engage in the correct way based on what activity their activity is. For any ad, choosing the correct ad type is only the first step, you then have to choose the correct audience, and this is what we dive into today. Adwords has custom audiences and remarketing audiences that you can use to create really detailed customer lists to show your ads to. The audiences that we cover are: -Affinity audiences -Website Re-targeting Audiences -Customer Lists -Youtube Enagement Lists -and similar audiences as well If you are actively working to drive traffic to your veterinary practice's offers you should be comparing traffic costs and cost per results. You might be surprised that Google is cheaper and has a better ROI than what you're currently testing.

Chatbots are back!!! Everyone stop what you're doing and go to Manychat.com and authorize the app for your veterinary practice now! Seriously, go and do it, it is free to sign up. Earlier this year, Facebook froze the chatbots for new users, so unless you had already signed up for Manychat or a similar program you were locked out. Luckily, Facebook just opened ManyChat back up for everyone. So what are messenger bots? Why Should you care? In the simplest terms, messenger bots are like fancy email responders, if emails got 90% open rates and were easy to use to create logic based responses. Messenger is seriously one of the most amazing mediums to market and engage on. You can create tools to create subscribers that are super frictionless, you can engage with multiple content types and you can talk to your clients at scale. In today's episode, I cover some best practices for messenger, why you should care about messenger, some marketing ideas, and best practices. I also walk through all of the Manychat features and explain their functionality. Consumers are wanting to get answers to their questions immediately. We are in the era of one click to buy your same day delivered items, and it is only going to get faster and faster. Just because you're a veterinary practice doesn't mean that the way you engage with clients and customers will be any different. You've got to adapt to the times and ways that your clients want to engage or you're going to be left behind. Chat bots let you do that by creating systems that can do most of the leg work and segment people into the right buckets. Once someone has gone through the proper channels and identified themselves as someone who needs to be spoken to, then you can take your time to engage, but it will have positive ROI for you and your practice. Get on the chat bot bandwagon before it gets crowded, there is so much opportunity here!

In the previous two episodes of the podcast we talked about first if you should start a podcast for your veterinary practice and then we talked about the technical nuts and bolts how to start a podcast. In today's episode, I talk about the best ways to get your podcast out there. Podcasts work great as a top of funnel content and because that is the case, it is important to consider how you'll engage your audience. You'll likely want to use the recorded audio to create blog posts around because it can be used for social media, email newsletters as well as give you organic traffic benefits as well. Since you'll be using this content to engage and bring awareness and education to your clients, you'll want to re-market heavily to your audience based on what they're interested in. Use the content as a means to segment your audience and create retargeting lists. One of the drawbacks of podcasting is that you don't get too much data from hosting services about downloads, how long your audience listens and what your subscriber numbers are. As we covered last week, iTunes and Google play are just really feeds that pull data from your hosting, so they don't provide insights. That being said, putting your content on your own channels or turning them into video clips as well can give you more meaningful data. A quick tip for creating your data on your website is to use naming conventions so that you can topically sort your content and create retargeting lists automatically. If you put certain words in the URL that are always related to a certain topic you can have your re-targeting list automatically add that topic, this is done by setting rules within your audiences section in Facebook's ads manager. Along with talking about different ways to partner with brands who can help grow your audience, I cover some of the best ways to target potential subscribers and talk about strategies for growing your subscribers through iTunes and Google Play. I also go into what you should do when trying to take your subscribers through your funnel. If you have any questions or comments let me know!

So you've decided that podcasting would help your veterinary practice, or maybe you haven't, in that case, it is important you listen to part 1 of this podcasting series, you can listen here: Should You Start A Podcast For A Veterinary Practice. Once you figure out what your podcast is about and that you're going to create one the next step is to start the content production. I'd like to mention that technical part of starting a podcast isn't the hard part, it is coming up with the details of your show I describe in part 1 of the series. Make sure you've figured out those important details before you move on. Podcasting really comes down to a few parts: Come up with your idea Record the content Edit your content Master your files Upload and publish your content Promote and distribute Recording your content needs to be as easy as possible based on your show goals. Are you looking to have a really polished, finished product or are you looking for an informal Q&A show? The answer to that question determines the level of equipment you'll need to invest in. My suggestion for 99% of the people listening here is to get started with a simple usb setup like a Blue Yeti or Snowball or an Audiotechnica ATR-2100. You don't want to have to mess with a mixer because that adds layers of complexity. If you're on the go when creating your podcast a Rhode lavalier mic or a Zoom H4N recorder is a great option. Recording and editing can happen on the device if it is recorded on a mobile device or if you're using a USB mic, then you'll want to use a program like Audacity, a free audio editing software. PRO-Tip: Make sure you're consistently the same distance from your mic when you're recording, this will give you a more consistent sound. Once you export your media, you can then upload it to a mastering software like Auphonic. Auphonic helps you to create consistent volume levels throughout the podcast so people don't have to have very loud or quiet sections. After mastering your media, you have a finished product! Great work, now you need to upload it to your podcasting hosting. You'll want to use hosting because if you have any level of downloads, the bandwidth requirements could really slow down your production. Next week we'll talk about distribution and promotion, which includes how to get your podcast on iTunes and Google play. If you have any questions be sure to reach out and send me a message!

Have you ever thought about starting a podcast? I've spoken to a lot of veterinarians who have said they've been thinking about starting one for a while, so I figured I'd help them out. This episode is the first in a series on how to create a podcast for your veterinary practice. In this episode, we cover the general items you should consider before starting a podcast. First, why should you even care about podcasting? I think that it has a bunch of advantages as a content type(obviously). First, I like podcasting because there is a HUGE number of users who consistently search out and engage with content. It is a medium that gives more context to the audience because they hear your voice. You're a voice that is showing up consistently and as a result, the audience bonds well with you. Some of the biggest benefits of podcasting are: You gain credibility and clients will be better educated You can create content around offers and use the podcast episodes to segment your audience If you like speaking more than writing of being on video it helps Your content can be short or long form and it doesn't have to have tons of production It is a different medium and if you have a list of subscribers it helps to diversify your audience and traffic I think podcasting really comes down to 4 steps. First, you need your show idea, and how you're going to run your episodes. I really suggest that if you're going to start that you commit to 10 episodes. Once you've figured out what you're going to do you have to create the content (this is going to be next episode) and then publish the content and distribute it. Podcasting is still one medium that has room for significant growth, so we're still "early" in my opinion. That combined with the importance of voice search and content in the future, I really think there is tons of upside.

Today's episode is very important if you use Facebook for your veterinary practice's marketing efforts. Back in January, the massive drop off in organic reach happened but that is only the beginning. There have been massive changes that have been happening in the paid ads department as well with Facebook. If you have been noticing recently, Facebook has been in the news a bunch because of the 2016 election and the run-up to the election, and as a result, there are a ton of policy changes that have been coming out. I think that we're only seeing the beginning of the end of the "wild west" that Facebook's ad platform has been. Even though Facebook is taking away data and insights that have been available in the past, I think that we still have an amazing opportunity to reach and educate clients like we've never had before( and likely won't get again). With all that being said I think it is extremely important that as marketers on Facebook, we approach our ads and marketing from the position that the rules could change at any time and it could go away at any time. The truth is, if you don't own the media, it could go away. To help ease your worries about this potentially scary truth, I cover what is working now, how to approach your marketing and ways to mitigate having all of your eggs in the "Facebook" basket. Ultimately, I think that these changes will be helpful because it will make the platform as a whole better. As long as people keep using Facebook to the scale that they do I think it will continue to be a great way to reach your clients.

Youtube is a beast of a platform. It is the second largest search engine and nearly 5 billion videos get viewed... EVERY DAY. Why is youtube so hard for veterinary practices to use tactfully then? If you've tried out youtube for your veterinary practice, you've probably felt some frustration, and in today's episode, we talk Youtube as it relates to generating new clients for your veterinary practice or to develop your personal brand. The way I see it, there are really 2 different approaches when it comes to Youtube. First, there is the keyword target strategy. In this strategy, you try to reach people who are searching on Youtube with relevant search terms and video content. This is like the SEO version of reaching potential clients. This is beneficial for practice because you can try to reach people who are searching for info relevant to pet owners-your target demo. The difficulty here is that Youtube is an international platform and it is tough to rank your videos when you're a small channel. We'll talk more about that in just a minute. The second approach you can use on Youtube is to reach people who are frequently using the platform as a medium to engage with and consume content. Here established brands and content creators produce content regularly and their audiences consume it here. With this strategy, our goal is to reach people by showing up in suggest videos and try to piggyback off of established channels' audiences. If you're looking to produce content regularly, create a more personal brand or give more context to your audience by creating something like a vlog then this is definitely a good approach. In today's episode, I cover some of the best practices you should set up for your Youtube channel and we go over how to approach your targeting strategy. I really love Youtube as a medium and I think there is so much opportunity for veterinary practices here. Let me know what you think, and if you are a veterinary practice, be sure to comment with your channel URL below.

Adwords are a no-brainer for nearly every veterinary practice. Your clients and potential clients are out there searching right now for veterinary services all you have to do is get your ads out there in front of the right target market. In fact, if you are slow or having trouble getting people in the door, I think AdWords are one of the easiest ways to get people in the door quickly. In today's episode, we're going to be covering five really simple and implementable things you should do to help increase ROI and effectiveness of AdWords in your veterinary practice. Best of all, these tips are really simple to use. First, one common mistake I see often is that practices aren't dayparting their ads. Dayparting is when you run campaigns and ad sets for specific timeframes throughout the day. Let's say for example you're only open from 7am to 5pm, if you and the staff aren't there to perform services and take calls the ads that you're running at that time probably won't be effective. Make sure that your ads correspond with when you're open, especially if you're running on a limited budget. You want to have the highest chance of getting someone who will bring their pet to your practice. The next concept I cover is using Adwords express VS standard Adwords. Although it sounds appealing to use AdWords express I feel that having additional control is more important. Fight the urge to let Google tell you what to be advertising on, especially if you have a limited budget. It is easy to go down a rabbit hole of broad match words that aren't the right fit when you can target more transactional phrases that will convert to actual clients. In this episode, I also cover AdWords callout extensions and explain how they can help you convert more impressions into clicks. You get to have your ad take up more space, and you allow the potential client to pick what they are interested in. An important aspect of callout extensions is to make sure that the specific services you advertise point to a page that is related to that callout. One common mistake I see with many veterinary practices AdWords accounts is that they create one campaign, one ad set and then they stuff every possible keyword or too many keywords for that matter into the ad set. This ends up diluting the ad set and decreases click-through rates and relevance for the ad. I suggest making smaller ad sets so that you can more closely track keyword performance and optimize ads so that you improve ROI. The last item that I talk about is making sure your Analytics and AdWords are connected so that you can get greater insight into what the traffic is doing once they click through. If you're going to be paying for traffic, it is important to know what is happening when they get there. If you have any questions or need help with your digital marketing, please don't hesitate to reach out. Also remember to join my Facebook Group: Veterinary Marketing Nerds.

In today's episode I cover custom audiences, one of the most important ad tools that you can use to grow your veterinary practice's marketing work even better. In marketing you have really only 2 parts to put together, you have the offer/product/content and you have the audience. The audience is very important because it makes up half the equation, and if you get the audience wrong, the offer or the content won't work. In previous episodes, we've talked a lot about targeting options, and targeting is a tool that I love to use with my ads, however, custom audiences (which is what today's episode is all about) allows you to reach people with a lot more engagement, intent or interest within Facebook and Instagram. So how do you use build and use custom audiences? That is what today's episode is all about. First, to get to the place where you can build a custom audience, you need to get into Facebook and go to ads manager. From ads manager you can click the drop down and get into Audiences. The types of audiences that I cover in the episode today are: Customer files: your current client lists. You can do additional segmentation here. I love working with this list. Website Traffic: here you can create lists of people who spend time on specific pages of your site or based on how much time users spend on your site Offline activity: This is where people are actually coming into your practice. You can use practice management software or pixels, and in the episode I talk about a strategy that I think is AMAZING Engagement: This is segments of people who interact with content or business pages specifically within Facebook and Instagram. This is how you keep your engagement up and running even after the Facebook Algorithm Change. If you are considering running ads to distribute your content or pay for ads, then today's episode is going to be really helpful. Let me know what you think! Send me a message and don't forget to subscribe in iTunes or Google Play!