Have you been wanting to develop a stronger online presence for your veterinary practice? If so, you’ve come across the perfect online presence guide for veterinarians to help get you started. We’ve compiled a guide for you so you don’t have to waste any time scouring the internet for the information you need.
Let’s dive in.
What Is an Online Presence?
Simply said, your online presence is made up of your company’s digital assets. Digital assets could include anything from your website, social media profiles, local business directory listings, online ads, photos, and more. The more digital assets you have, the easier it will be for people to find your company through Google Search and Maps.
What Does an Online Presence Look Like?
Here is a 3-part overview of an online presence.
Part 1: The Public – This is how people perceive your brand online including what they say about you on social media and forums, how they engage with you, and the reviews they post about you.
Part 2: The Internet – This includes your search engine page rankings, social media content and rankings, etc. These are based on the algorithms each platform uses to determine what your website and other content is all about and how relevant it is to their users.
Part 3: You – This involves the content you produce and the actions you take to produce that content. Is your content SEO-optimized? Did you use relevant keywords and phrases? Did you consider user intent before posting your content? All of these factor into how relevant and helpful any given piece of content will be to its platform users.
The Benefits of Having an Online Presence
- Increased visibility and brand awareness.
- Drive more traffic to your business.
- Provide more conversion opportunities.
- Build consumer trust.
- Be seen as a legitimate business.
- Promote your business around the clock.
- Save you money while attracting new customers.
- Help earn Google’s trust.
- Make it easier to nurture customer relationships.
Are you liking our Online Presence Guide for Veterinarians so far?
Keep reading…it gets even better!
How to Increase Your Online Presence
There are some tactics more effective than others to increase your veterinary practice’s online presence. You don’t have to do everything; however, the more you do, the better your results will be.
Here are some of the things you can do to increase your online presence.
1. Build a Website
If you don’t have a website already, build one. You need a modern, attractive, easy-to-navigate website. People will judge your business’s credibility based on whether you have a website and if your website is up-to-date and professionally made.
Your website then needs to be SEO optimized using SEO best practices. You should also include a blog, FAQs page or section, add photos and optimize them, and include a Sitemap on your website as well.
2. Create Social Media Business Pages
Create social media pages for your business on the platforms where your customers spend their time. This could be Instagram, Facebook, X (formally Twitter), TikTok, etc. You will need to be active on those pages by sharing educational content, trending information, and other content your audience would find useful. Don’t make your main focus on selling or obtaining new followers. Keep it natural, provide valuable content, and the rest will follow.
You also need to make sure you consistently post and engage with your followers. So only create the number of social media pages you can realistically sustain. Additionally, make sure you are being authentic with what you post and how you write. You should also optimize your social media pages using SEO best practices.
3. Directory Listings
Claim as many business directory listings as you can (more about how to do that in a moment). Directory listings are extremely powerful. Start by claiming your business on the biggest, most important directory platforms such as Google, Yelp, Facebook, Bing, etc.
Complete your listings with consistent information. The information you provide should match exactly on all your listings. If it doesn’t, you might confuse your customers and could also receive a penalty from Google as well.
Proactively work on getting new reviews. This will help negate any 1-star or negative reviews that are posted about you. You will also need to monitor and maintain your listings for consistency, new unanswered questions, new reviews, special offers, etc. The easiest way to monitor and maintain your directory listings is by using an online tool like Surefire Local (more about that in a moment).
4. Online Advertising
The more you advertise, the more visible your business becomes. The more people who see your business around the web, the more brand recognition and authority you will receive. Online advertising is a great way to achieve an almost instant jump in traffic which generally means more customers and more income.
There are different forms of online advertising.
- Search Ads
Search ads are also referred to as paid search advertising, search engine marketing, pay-per-click (PPC), and cost-per-click advertising. Search ads are keyword-driven ads. They involve placing digital ads inside the search engine results pages. The way this works is the company that runs a search ad campaign pays a small fee every time someone clicks on one of their ads.
Search ads appear across the entire Google Search Network, and they are displayed at the top, bottom, or next to Google’s search results. All search ads have three main components which are the headline, the display URL, and description text.
- Social Media Ads
Social media advertising is another extremely effective ad option. It uses social media networks like Facebook, etc. to deliver paid ads to your target audience. These are effective because the ads are presented to people based on their interests and previous searches. People spend a lot of time on social media and often look to social media before making a buying decision.
- Display Ads
Display ads use images, gifs, videos, graphics, and sometimes text. They are usually placed on banners to display their advertising. Display ads, when crafted properly, will grab a reader’s attention because they don’t require the reader to engage with it. They are banners placed on a page; therefore, a reader will see it whether they want to or not. Display advertising is done on a network of publisher websites like the Google Display Network, Facebook Ads, etc.
- Retargeting Ads
Retargeting is sometimes referred to as remarketing. This method of online advertising utilizes cookies that remember people who have visited your mobile app or website and left without completing the desired action. Retargeting sends ads or emails to your previous website or app visitors. Retargeting ads give you another opportunity to capture potential customers who might still be interested in your veterinary services by reminding them of what they were thinking about buying or choosing.
5. Email Marketing
Email marketing is a great way to promote your business and nurture your current customers.
There are four types of email marketing.
- Email newsletters
- Promotional emails
- Retention emails
- Transactional emails
These types of emails help you stay in touch and engage with current and potential customers.
There are lots of benefits of email marketing.
- Most people check their email throughout the day.
- Once you have developed an email list, you have a targeted, built-in audience you can email any time you want.
- You can send bulk emails that can be easily segmented and personalized.
- Email is easy to scale and automate.
- Email has an extremely high return on investment. And the email statistics are staggering.
Let’s move on…
How would you like to take your most time-consuming marketing tasks and make them quicker and easier using highly effective online marketing software? Well, now you can. It’s called Surefire Local.
What Is Surefire Local?
Surefire Local is a business intelligence marketing software that costs much less than using other online tools or a digital agency. Surefire Local helps you manage your most important digital marketing activities all from one platform. No more logging into multiple tools to perform singular tasks. Surefire Local enables you to access, perform, and manage all your digital marketing tasks from one dashboard, and it can even automate many of them for you as well.
What Does Surefire Local Do?
- Ratings and Reviews
- 80+ Business Directory Listings
- Content Marketing
- Lead Generation
- Local Paid Ads
- Analytics and Reporting
- Competitor Analysis
- Geo-Location Check-Ins
- Text Message Marketing
Surefire Local Stats
~ 34% average increase in SEO traffic.
~ 82% more online reviews.
~ 385% return on investment.
Did You Know That…
Businesses see a 50% increase in revenue when they get more reviews?
Online visibility is the #1 way to get more customers?
Improving your lead quality can double your closing rate?
It is 7x cheaper to retain your existing customers than it is to generate new ones?
You could get up to 320% more leads, customers, and revenue with optimized digital marketing?
That Surefire Local can help you do all that, so you have the opportunity to see these kinds of results?
It can! So why not request a Surefire Local demo today?
What’s Next?
Request a Surefire Local Marketing Platform Demo Today!
We hope you found this Online Presence Guide for Veterinarians helpful, and we look forward to hearing from you!