Finding ways to get new customers and being a well-respected name in your community comes down to one thing usually: your brand. As a veterinary clinic, you understand how important it is to provide great services and be knowledgeable in your field, so you can help your clients go home happy with what you’ve done for them and their families. But no matter how good your team is or how many happy furry clients you have, you’ll be missing out on opportunities if your brand isn’t established.
In this guide, we’ll go through some of the most essential brand development tips for veterinarians. When you’ve finished, you’ll have a fresh outlook on how to define your business and know which platform is going to be the best option for supporting your marketing and branding efforts.
What is Branding?
Branding is the practice of creating a strong, recognizable, and clear perception of a company. Different elements help to create this effect, such as a name, logo, visual identity, tone of voice, and content as well as how your employees treat non and current customers. Working together, all of these elements build up an image of your business that reflects your mission, values, and services.
At its core, branding is all about creating an identity for your veterinary clinic. By having consistency across your business, and tying everything together with a visual like a logo, you can make a place in people’s minds and ensure that they are aware of what you do and why you offer value to them.
Developing a brand is an important part of marketing. Without it, a potential customer wouldn’t know what makes you unique. They also won’t know what makes you great, or why they should choose your business over a different vet clinic in the area. When you’ve done branding successfully, you’ll be able to gain instant recognition and give customers a reason to come to you. The biggest companies in the world have succeeded because they managed to create a brand that sticks in the minds of customers and has instant recognition.
10 Brand Development Tips for Veterinarians
Now that you know a little more about branding and why it’s a valuable part of your business marketing, let’s go through some tips that you can implement that will help you take your branding to the next level.
1. Define What Makes Your Brand Unique
The first tip is to start brainstorming about what makes your veterinary clinic different from others in the area. What makes you special, and how can you help clients differently than other clinics in your community? Asking yourself these questions can help you determine what branding choices are going to be the most effective for creating a unique story and message that resonates with your customers.
2. Evaluate Your Competitors
In order to make sure that your branding is unique, it helps to evaluate your competitors and see what their branding is like. For example, maybe the other veterinary clinics near you are very professional in their branding. That might mean that you want to go more humorous with your materials and take a lighter tone. You can also evaluate the competition to see how well customers are responding to what they are doing, so you can make adjustments.
3. Identify Your Ideal Client
Creating a brand is all about speaking to your audience. In order to do this successfully, you need to know who your audience is. Creating a profile of an ideal client can help you figure out what type of messaging and branding will work best for attracting them. For example, if you cater mostly to cat and dog owners, then you wouldn’t want birds, fish, or lizards on your website or social media posts, as your ideal customer won’t relate to those animals as much.
4. Use Compelling Messaging
You also want to make sure that your message is compelling and attractive to your clients. The message is the main intention that you communicate to your target audience. A compelling message will make them want to come to you when their pets need attention. As a veterinary clinic, you are able to connect to people on an emotional level with your message, as pets are dear to owners’ hearts.
5. Create a Professional Logo
A logo is one of the most important visual elements of your branding. It’s the image that people will associate with your business. Think about major brands like Pepsi or Nike—even without having the name of the business spelled out, you would know which business an ad is for because of the logo. Your logo should be professional, so make sure someone with graphic design experience is behind the creation.
6. Be Consistent
Another important element of your branding is consistency. The materials you produce need to have the same branding in order to create that important recognition with potential clients. If you send out one email with a logo on the top, but leave the logo out of the next one, it can create confusion for readers. Similarly, you want to make sure things like the style of your materials and the tone of your written content are the same.
7. Be Authentic
Authenticity is another part of branding that has a big impact on audiences. You don’t want to come off as appearing fake or overly polished. If your content and branding aren’t authentic, you might not be able to connect with your audience. Be real in the messages you put out, and don’t be afraid to add your own personality to what you do. Customers prefer to know that they are dealing with real people rather than a robotic corporation.
8. Engage Your Community
Your community is a valuable resource when it comes to branding. When you work with your community and engage with them, you can build a community brand that represents your clients just as much as it represents your business. Your clients, after all, are the lifeblood of your business, and their animals are the core of your brand. Utilizing feedback and the opinions of your community in your branding is a great way to build a brand.
9. Create Valuable Content
Content refers to many things: emails, videos, images, social media posts, blogs, website pages, and SMS messages. No matter what type of content you are creating, you should be able to add value to what you do. Offering helpful tips, sharing important health information, or even just sharing a funny photo of a furry friend that lifts someone’s mood are all great ways of adding value to your content.
10. Build a Reputation
The last of the brand development tips for veterinarians is to build a positive reputation within your local community. You want people to associate your brand with quality services, great products, and happy clients. The better your veterinary skills are and the stronger your team is, the better your reputation and branding will be. Gathering positive reviews and listening to feedback are great ways to build a reputation online.
Build Your Brand with Surefire Local
In order to build your brand, you need the right tools. Surefire Local is a marketing platform that helps many veterinary professionals get started with their branding and ensure that the previous tips are being followed.
With Surefire Local, you can send review requests via text messages and emails and then immediately post the responses on your business profiles in order to build that positive reputation. You can also create and publish high-value content to your blog, social media profiles, and Google Business Profile all from a single location in your Surefire Local account, so you don’t need to constantly log in and out of other platforms in order to accomplish the same task.
Surefire Local also allows you to share photos and videos across your entire social media presence in order to maintain consistency. You can further maintain consistency with the information found about your business online by managing your business directories in one location. That means key information is the same, including details about:
- Name
- Address
- Phone Number
- Website
- Services
- Special Offers
Surefire Local also helps with marketing activities like optimizing your website to increase local search rankings. You can use the platform to measure engagement and determine what your audiences are most interested in. Another way to improve branding is to send targeted email campaigns that foster stronger customer relationships and build communities. And you can use the word cloud tool to determine brand sentiment by revealing frequently used words found in your reviews.
Attend a Surefire Local Marketing Platform Demo
If you are ready to take charge of your branding, then there’s no platform better than Surefire Local. Surefire Local is a business intelligence marketing software that veterinarians can get for a fraction of the cost of other tools or agencies. Surefire Local helps you manage the most important online marketing activities from one platform that you can access anywhere. To learn more, sign up for a Surefire Local marketing platform demo today.