If you’re a small business, one of the most important things for you to understand is that you’re ultimately not competing with your large, national counterparts. You’re in direct competition with the 33 million other small businesses operating in the country right now. This is especially true if you’re running a niche services organization like a veterinary practice. There are only so many pet owners that can conceivably become customers of your practice over someone else’s, and with so many organizations vying for attention from the same audience, every last one of them counts a great deal.
Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and others will be enormously valuable to that end. Trusting you with the health and well-being of their pet is an inherently intimate experience. Someone is putting their faith in you that you will properly care for something that matters a great deal to them. You need to reach them in the same personal, intimate way and the various social networking platforms that are out there will quickly become a big part of how you do it.
Why Localizing Your Online Presence Matters
Again, especially for a company like a veterinary practice, the importance of localizing your online presence is something that cannot be overstated.
It doesn’t matter if your veterinary website gets massive volumes of traffic from people all over the country – most of them don’t live where you operate. They’re not going to walk in off the street if their pet needs something and they’re certainly not going to come to you in the event of an emergency.
Instead, you need to target the people who live and work in the same geographic location that you do. That’s why localizing your online presence is paramount.
Consider the fact that according to one recent study, about 98% of people used the Internet to find information about local businesses in 2022. Not only are roughly 46% of those searches for local businesses, but about 80% of those local searches end up converting.
Not only that but localizing your online presence builds a great deal of trust – not to mention organic connections – within your local community. People see that you care about the same things that they do. Never underestimate what a profound impact that can make.
Social media in particular also becomes a way to keep people engaged throughout all points in the customer journey. People don’t need a veterinary practice every day but if they’re active on social media, and if you’re very active in their lives in that way, you increase the chances that when they do need a vet they come directly to you.
Choosing the Right Social Media Platforms
Having said all of that, it’s equally important to note that not all social media platforms are created equally. A few of the most popular today include Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest.
Facebook is a great, general resource to use to showcase your veterinary practice, the services you offer, any specials that you may be running, and more. Instagram is a heavily visual social network and is great for posting engaging, compelling images. TikTok is great for videos and short bursts of content. Pinterest is also a social networking site more about visuals than straight text.
Clearly, you have a lot of options available to you. For localization success, you need to first identify the platforms that are most relevant to not only your veterinary business but also your customer base. Where do your ideal customers spend the majority of their time online? Utilize those social networks as much as possible.
As you do, remember to maintain a consistent brand presence across all social media platforms. Each profile should house different types of content, but everything still needs to feel like it’s all coming from the same place.
Optimizing Social Media Profiles
Regardless of the social media profile you’re talking about, always start with a compelling and locally-focused bio. Let people know who you are, what you do, which towns/cities you operate in, and why they should care. Incorporate locally-focused lingo, keywords, and hashtags to make yourself easier to find.
You should also take advantage of any location-based features that are available to you, like adding your veterinary practice’s address to Facebook.
Content Localization Tips
Over the long term, you’ll also want to make an effort to create as much content as possible that resonates with your local community. Did you recently participate in a local event? Use it as an opportunity to showcase your veterinary practice’s community involvement and support.
Likewise, highlight local testimonials and success stories. Let your veterinary practice’s real, satisfied customers spread word-of-mouth via social media.
Engage the Neighborhood
One of the major elements of social media success will always involve engaging your community as much as possible. While on social networking sites like Facebook, you should be actively participating in local groups and community forums. Never overlook the opportunity to remind people that you’re out there.
You should also respond to all local reviews and feedback that you receive, regardless of whether it is positive or negative. Make it a priority to run local promotions on social media whenever you can. Along the same lines, engage with other local businesses in the community to see what mutually beneficial partnerships you might be able to create for yourself.
Utilize Social Media Advertising
According to another recent study, there are about 4.8 billion social media users on the planet. No, you’re not targeting every last one of them but social media does allow you to target local audiences in particular, and social media advertising is how you do it.
Sites like Facebook and Instagram offer powerful localized advertising platforms that can get your ads in front of local audiences easier than ever. Leverage things like geotargeting for specific local promotions to increase your chances of success.
Encourage User-Generated Content
Another great way to not only localize your social media presence but also engage with local customers is to encourage as much user-generated content as possible. Don’t overthink things – for a veterinary practice, even something as seemingly simple as encouraging people to share their experiences will go a long way.
You can also run local contests and campaigns that directly involve your customers. This can be a great way to boost engagement. You can also repost and reshape user-generated content across various social media platforms to keep your activity feeds filled with the types of posts that people will love.
Monitor and Analyze
Finally, understand that localizing your online social media presence is something that you need to be proactive about moving forward. It’s not something you “do once and forget about.” You should be constantly making adjustments as new information comes to light.
You should set up analytical tools to track local engagement in particular, along with your overall levels of visibility. Analyze the metrics that matter most to you to understand how effective your current localization strategies really are. Over time, you’ll be able to get rid of what doesn’t work and double down on what does – making sure that your veterinary practice’s various campaigns are always performing as well as they can.
Make data-driven adjustments whenever possible to optimize the results that you’re seeing in terms of not only reach, but also engagement, the number of leads that you’re generating, the amount of revenue that you’re bringing in, and more.
Surefire Local: Taking Your Social Media Presence to the Next Level
In the end, localizing your online presence through social media as a veterinary practice can have a profound impact on your long-term success. But you’re talking about more than just setting up a Facebook profile or making the occasional post to Instagram. This is not a “set it up and forget it” kind of thing. Social media platforms offer an easy way to maintain an active online presence without going through too much effort – it would be a shame not to take full advantage of that.
Especially in today’s digital-first customer journey, social media is only going to become more important as time goes on. Not only can the right localized presence increase visibility in specific zip codes for your veterinary practice, but it also empowers better customer engagement and ultimately business growth as well.
At Surefire Local, we’ve always made it a priority to help small businesses like veterinary practices with all of their localized online marketing needs. We want to help practices like yours establish your online presence by creating powerful local signals across platforms and profiles. Those signals make it easier for new customers to find you, which in and of itself is the most important benefit of all.
Surefire Local’s all-in-one marketing platform condenses everything into a simple, single source of truth for your online presence. Some of the powerful features we offer include but are not limited to ones like:
- Website/local SEO optimizations. We create geotagged content that gets published across your website, blog, social media profiles, and more.
- Online review management. We’ll send review requests, write responses, and analyze your veterinary practice’s brand sentiment online.
- Content marketing. We have the tools to help you create locally targeted and relevant content for social media, your blog, your Google Business Profile, and much more.
- Social media management. We can help schedule posts, track engagement metrics, and even respond to comments.
- Analytics and reporting. We specialize in helping you achieve full transparency into the overall performance of your campaigns, letting you see how much revenue your marketing dollars are really generating.
- Educational resources. Our webinars and blogs are designed to help small businesses like yours learn everything they need about local online marketing.
So if you’d like to find out more information about local social media tactics for veterinarians, please contact the team at Surefire Local today or click here to attend a Surefire Local demo to see what are platform can do for you.