As a veterinarian, you understand that customers are your lifeblood. And as times change and more and more people use online tools to find local businesses, the need to adapt your approach to gaining new customers needs to evolve as well. Your veterinary clinic website is one of the most powerful tools in your belt to bring in new customers and explain exactly what your services are.
If you have a website but are still struggling to bring new clients into your vet clinic, then this article is for you. We’ll break down nine of the most effective strategies for driving more traffic to your website and getting new business through digital and online methods.
1. Optimize Your Google Business Profile
When a potential client first uses Google to search for vet clinics near them, they will come across a list of Google My Business profiles that showcase several of the nearby places that match their search. Your Google My Business profile is one of the most important features you should spend time on in order to get new business and find clients in your local area.
Your Google business listing can be a direct link between search engines and your website. Your profile needs to be updated with accurate contact information, links, and hours of operations. You also want to specify if you service or specialize in specific areas, like exotic animals or livestock.
A Google listing is free and easy to set up, with plenty of helpful tutorials and guides on how to best optimize your account so that it works for your business. It also works on all devices, including mobile phones. You can provide visuals in the form of photographs to let searchers know exactly who you are and where you are located, as well as displaying reviews and other helpful information that they might be interested in.
2. Claim and Manage Your Local Business Directories
While Google My Business is the most important online directory that you can use, you’ll want to make sure that you claim and manage any other online directories. That might include profiles on other search engines like Bing and Yahoo or local directories that display businesses in your local area. These other directories will also be used by people looking for vet clinics and are important to manage and update.
When you have up to date and accurate information on all of your directory listings and keep the information between them consistent, search engines know that you are an active business that spends time making sure clients know how to contact them, so they are more likely to rank your website and your listing above competitors in your local area. It also gives you more opportunities to share content and connect with locals in your area.
3. Get More Reviews on the Top Platforms Like Google & Facebook
Word of mouth is an incredibly powerful marketing tool. Think about it: when you last planned on going to a new store or restaurant, did you ask a friend for their opinion first or take a look online to see what the star rating was? If you did, you are among the majority of people. We tend to trust the word of others, even if they are strangers, rather than just the marketing coming from a business.
If your vet clinic doesn’t have any reviews, it can be a red flag to potential customers who have nothing to go by when viewing your profile. Getting reviews is an important part of building your digital presence. Ask your clients and customers to leave reviews after a service at your clinic, and consider offering a reward like a discount or free tooth cleaning or nail trim when a customer leaves a review.
It’s also important that you make sure your negative reviews have responses. Never react defensively to a negative review, but apologize and offer a solution. Not only can this appease unhappy customers, but it can also let potential customers viewing your profile know that you have great customer service skills. Try to reply to every review you get, positive or negative, so that people feel appreciated for leaving their feedback.
4. Be Active and Engaging on Social Media
Social media is another tool that can help guide new clients towards your vet website. Your website should be connected to all of your social media profiles, so that if someone comes across your profile on Facebook or LinkedIn, they can quickly navigate towards your website.
Social media also gives you a unique opportunity to talk directly with customers and members of your community. You can respond to posts, offer your input, and reply to messages all on a public forum so people can see how active and engaged you are in the community. This can improve the reputation of your clinic and make it easier for your to win over potential clients.
5. Ensure Your Website Has High-Value Content
Content is the king of digital marketing, so it’s important to make sure the content you have on your website is of a high quality. You want to have plenty of content so that you can be found in Google and search engine searches for vet clinics in your local area, and you want to make sure you are using appropriate keywords like the name of your city and the name of your clinic.
Content includes things like website copy, blog articles, employee descriptions, and even the photos and images on your site. You want your written copy to be grammatically correct and you want to make sure that your images aren’t grainy or the wrong size. Taking the time to look over content before it is posted will help you avoid having to go back and fix things down the line.
6. Optimize Your Website with Local Schema and Structured Data
Another way to improve traffic levels to your website is to implement a Schema markup and use structured data. While this might seem overwhelming, with the help of a designer or programmer you can add microdata formats to your website so that it can be found and indexed by search engine bots easier.
Put in other terms, a local Schema will help the algorithm of Google and other search engines look through your pages and understand what is on those pages. That can help improve your rankings on search engine results pages. In addition, Schema can help you get rich snippets, or unique layouts, on the results page. That might mean having your reviews listed under your name, showing up in a box to the right of the results, or having your top ranking pages auto populate at the top of the page.
7. Ensure Your Website Loads Fast and is Easy to Navigate
The organization of your website plays a big role in the user experience. When users have a better time on your website and can quickly locate the information they are looking for, it not only makes them happy, but increases your authority on Google which can impact how high you rank on search engine results pages.
You want pages to load quickly so visitors don’t get frustrated and leave the site. To accomplish this, make sure you have a good website tool you build on, enable caching and avoid things like large images and video files that can slow the site down. You also want to take time to look through the navigation of your site so that your top navigation is clearly laid out and your subpages make sense and are located in the right area.
8. Leverage Email Marketing
Email marketing is an inexpensive and effective way of engaging with your current customer base. You can send emails to everyone in your contact list and guide them towards your website with CTAs to relevant pages. That will help people understand more about your services or success stories and help people understand the value your practice can give them and their pets.
9. Set Local Targeting Parameters on Your Digital Ads
If you use digital ads to find new leads in your area, you want to make sure you are using local targeting parameters. If you don’t have the right targets enabled, you might be wasting time by putting your message in front of people who are too far away to visit your clinic. Instead, make sure that you only target your local area to find the customers who have the most value to your business.
Get a Demo of Surefire Local Now to Improve Your Marketing Strategies
At Surefire Local, we understand how important it is to have a marketing tool that makes it easy for you to manage different tasks and get more website traffic for veterinarians. That’s why our all-in-one platform helps you manage all aspects of your marketing strategy in one tool. To learn more about Surefire Local and how we can help you increase traffic to your website, get a demo of our platform and discover what we can do to improve your strategies.