It’s 2023 and you have a whole new year to take your marketing for your veterinary practice to the next level. But when you’re busy running your business, it’s not so easy to find the time to work out a full marketing plan by yourself. So, we thought we’d give you a hand and walk you through our 2023 Online Marketing Strategy Template. Take our veterinarian online marketing plan below and simply tailor it to suit your business for marketing success in 2023!
Setting the stage for success
Before you can look ahead to what you want to achieve in 2023, it’s a good idea to take a look back at last year and how things went. Look at the marketing you did last year and think about what went well and what might not have gone as well as you hoped. You can then bring forward anything you want to keep for this year and get rid of anything that isn’t going to help you going forward.
Next, it’s time to look at what you’d like to achieve this year. Where would you like your veterinary practice to be at the end of December this year? Think about the big picture. Think about your revenue and how much you’d like the practice to bring in. How much of your revenue do you want to be profit? How many leads will you need to achieve that?
Are you content to stay where you are or is this the year where you finally take the plunge and open up a second practice in a new location?
What about your employees? Are they happy? Will they need any training this year? Are any of them ready to move up and help you more on the management side?
Equally important, what do you think your reputation is like currently? Do you think you’re doing really well or is there room for improvement? Think about what you’d like your reputation to be at the end of the year too.
Finally, allocate a budget and resources to your marketing so it’s clear what you’ve got to spend and how far you can go.
Crafting your marketing plan
Now you know where you’re going, it’s time to look at what online marketing activities will get you there.
1) Website
It’s worth taking a regular look at your website to see if it’s still reflecting your brand and doing what you need it to do. The start of a new year is a great time for a website review.
Go through the site and try to look at it from your customer’s perspective. Can they easily find what they want? Is it clear how to contact you and how to get more information? Can they navigate the site easily without getting lost?
How does the site look? Is it still up-to-date and modern-looking or does it look a little outdated now?
From a technical point of view, do all the links work? Do the menus work properly? Is your site speed good enough? Does your site work on all browsers and devices? If you have a checkout process, is it smooth and error-free?
Once you’ve done your review, you can now see whether everything’s fine or whether you need small updates or a whole new website.
You can then plan that in on your marketing plan and assign a budget to it.
2) SEO
Once you’ve reviewed your site, it’s a great time to review your SEO efforts too. Check your pages and posts to see if you’re using keywords and phrases enough and in the right places. Your main keyword should appear in your heading, at least one sub-heading, your meta description, and in the first paragraph of your copy at minimum.
Think about local SEO too. With having a brick-and-mortar business, it’s important not to neglect local SEO and to use local keywords such as “veterinarian + your location” or “vet practice + your county”.
You can also help your local SEO along by adding your business to any relevant business directories and by claiming your Google Business Profile. We’ll talk about that more in section five.
3) Digital advertising
You can use Facebook ads, Google ads, and ads on many other social media platforms to get attention to your business. Most of them offer demographic information and other helpful targeting options so that you can ensure your ads reach the right audience in your local area. Many of them are pay-per-click, too, so you only pay when someone clicks on your ad or interacts with it. That way, you’re not paying for views or for people who aren’t interested in your services.
While SEO is vital and it works, it can take some time to have an effect. Rather than waiting, you can use digital advertising to bring targeted leads to your practice now.
4) Review/reputation management
You know how important it is to see great reviews when you’re searching for a business yourself. It’s especially important to pet owners who see their pets as family and want to be sure they’re getting the best care possible. So, of course, that means you need to consistently get great reviews for your practice.
Unfortunately, it’s not the case that you can get a few great reviews and then leave it at that. Customers want to see recent reviews. In fact, they tend not to look at anything that’s over four weeks old. So this has to be an ongoing part of your marketing plan.
You need to work out how you’re going to get reviews and make time to respond to them too. Customers love to see a responsive business saying thank you for good reviews, replying, and even dealing with any negative reviews.
To get reviews, you could leave a feedback sheet at reception for people to fill in. You could send email surveys out or simply request reviews in your newsletters. You can ask on social media, and you can leave a link to review in your email signature. The key here really is consistency.
5) Directory listings management
It’s important to get your vet practice on as many relevant business directories as possible. That includes listing your full details on Facebook, Yelp, Nextdoor, and claiming your Google Business Profile (GBP).
This gives you pages across the internet with your full information and contact details, posts, quality images, reviews, and more. That adds greatly to your visibility and to your SEO.
You must complete every part of your directory listings and you must be consistent too. Even a small change, such as writing Ave instead of Avenue in your address can cause confusion for Google and for some customers, so keep your details consistent everywhere.
Your GBP is another directory that you have to optimize if you hope to get found on Google. Google is giving you free space to write about your business and provide all the information you want. And if you fill in your profile completely and take the time to update it, you have a far better chance of appearing in the Local Pack at the top of the listings on Google Maps. It’s quite a simple thing to do but you have a chance of appearing above your competitors just for this one act.
In addition, adding your contact details means people can call you from your GBP without having to visit your website, and if you add your opening hours, you can be found if you’re open when a potential customer searches for “vet near me.” There’s really no reason not to claim and maintain your GBP considering how much it can help with local SEO.
6) Social media marketing
Social media marketing can play a big part in driving possible leads to your website and in building your online reputation.
You can provide a whole tide of cute, fluffy animals on your feed which will definitely get you attention, and you can show off your expertise by talking about how to care for them, how to feed them, what to do about various conditions, when you definitely need to see the vet, and more.
You could also entertain with tales of cuteness and fun from all the things the animals get up to when they visit you. The possibilities on social really are endless for a veterinary practice.
And if you do get stuck, pay a visit to your competition and see what they’ve got going. Take away inspiration from what they’re posting.
7) Content marketing
Again, content marketing can be a godsend for a vet’s practice. You can use many of the same ideas from posting on social media, including looks behind the scenes, success stories, educational topics, like how to cut a cat’s claws or give the dog a bath without taking one yourself at the same time, and so much more.
And every post you write will add to your reputation, and help you get seen as the expert in your field. When you’re done posting, you can also share your blog posts on social media as new content.
What it takes is some thought and some planning.
8) Email marketing
When you set up your website, ensure that you have plenty of places where people can sign up for your newsletter. You can also ask people to sign up on your social platforms.
Ideally, you should offer them a lead magnet in exchange for their email address. A lead magnet could be anything from a simple discount voucher to a small ebook on caring for their pet. Think about what your clients would really want to receive from you so that they are more likely to sign up.
Then you need to regularly market to your list and keep in touch with them. Again, you can link to blog posts and share news. You can include more cute animal shots to catch the eye, and obviously, you can tell people about any new services you’re offering or remind them to bring their pets in for flea treatments, spaying, and other services.
Guard this email list well. If every social platform went down tomorrow, you’d still be able to reach and market to your ideal customers. The money really is in the list.
9) Lead nurture
As a vet, you are likely to deal with emergency cases where people actively look for you and call to book an appointment. But in addition, it’s important to nurture the leads you have and make sure you’re providing the right content to them at the right time to convert them into buyers.
Some people need more information and encouragement than others. Some people may simply be deciding between you and another local vet. These leads can be nurtured by providing frequently asked questions, educational information, and other content that’s aimed to persuade. Then, as they move down your marketing funnel, you can encourage them to call and speak to someone if they need any help or you can offer an appointment. If you do these things too early, you will put some people off, so take it slowly, persuade them, and then let them come to you when they’re ready (and when you’ve given them just the right nudge).
10) Text message marketing
Text message marketing can generate a great response. Just as people don’t often ignore emails to their personal email, they’re even more unlikely to ignore a text straight to their phone. Most people are never far from their phones either. You can reach people with just the right offer at the right time.
You do have to build your list and gain permission for text marketing, just as you do with email marketing, but it can be highly effective.
11) Analytics
Every business owner needs to keep a close eye on their analytics so that they know what effect their marketing is having and what is working.
Even more so, they need to know when things are not working so they don’t continue to throw money at things that will never pay off.
Watch your analytics closely. They are an excellent guide on what you need to do more of and what you can leave. They can guide you to which posts and topics are your most popular and which you need to do more of.
You can then shape your marketing plan as you go to make it more and more effective.
Executing your marketing plan
Now you have a range of ideas and tactics you could use, you need to add everything onto a monthly calendar to help you maintain consistency.
Add your email marketing so you know when you’re going to send your newsletters out and plan what you’re going to include in each newsletter too.
Add your content marketing. Plan out every post and when you’re going to write it and post it. Add the topic and any notes you have.
Add your social media post ideas too.
Why? Because everything is then all in one place on your calendar and you can easily press ahead with your marketing without having to think about what you need to do next. This also helps with getting ahead of yourself, as you can write more content when you’re less busy and schedule it ready to go.
Marketing software can also help to make life easier for you and save time.
Surefire Local’s marketing software lets you plan ahead and schedule your content, emails, and your social posts. And you can update over 80 business directories, including your Google Business Profile, with just a few clicks.
Setting the stage for growth
With your plan in place, you can now put everything into action and test and analyze as you go. Get deeply into your analytics and test everything. Even something as simple as changing the color of a button on your call to action can sometimes have an effect. Just make sure to test one thing at once. If you change several things and then try to test, you won’t know which one of them made the difference.
Make sure you know where your customers are coming from and which platforms you should be using so that you don’t waste time or ad spend on the wrong sites.
Gather all your intel together and don’t be afraid to reallocate your marketing budget to suit your real-life results and data so you can optimize conversions and increase new customer growth. Continuous testing, analyzing, and improving is how you generate greater and greater revenue.
You can also look to add new online marketing activities to your marketing plan as you find out what works.
Attend a Surefire Local Marketing Platform demo
Surefire Local can offer you professional business intelligence marketing software at a fraction of the cost of other tools or agencies. Instead of having to measure things with spreadsheets or keep track of multiple pieces of software, you can streamline your whole marketing process by using one simple dashboard that helps you manage the most important online marketing activities within one platform.
Manage your paid ads, reviews, email marketing, content, social media, directory listings, and so much more, and get up-to-date, highly-accurate analytics and overviews to give you the big picture and the smallest details of what’s going on with your marketing.
Want to know more? Why not book a demo of our marketing software with our friendly team?