Monday, October 18, 2010

The 411 on Veterinary Marketing

Veterinary Marketing might be the least used tool to enhance your practice, but it can help you build your business and enjoy a constant flow of clients.
A marketing plan can be the reason why your clients come back to your practice and even refer their friends and acquaintances. A marketing plan is the basic building block of a successful business. With a marketing plan you can have the right message delivered to the right people in an attractive way, so that they become your clients.
Pets are becoming more and more part of our families. The average veterinary expenditures per household are steadily increasing. And when most people are interested in finding a solution to a problem they have with their pets, they search the Internet. A web presence is a must in the 21st century for any veterinary practice, and such a presence has to be able to stand out among the many competitors.
Veterinary marketing means creating a strategy for increasing awareness about your practice. It is a strategy that can identify, anticipate and satisfy customer requirements. Relying only on face to face contact with your clients is not enough in today's economic climate. Good marketing will help practices to stand out, become memorable and stable.
Social media can facilitate and strengthen the connection between the veterinarian and the pet owners. Newsletter articles, blog posts, Facebook updates or Twitter tweets can all contribute to a better relationship. Communicating better with pet owners is facilitated through a veterinary marketing plan. They should receive information on everything that is relevant to pet care. And using the Internet to communicate with them has become more and more common practice.
Facebook allows you to create a page for your practice and everybody can become your fan. A useful tool on Facebook is a poll that can allow you to obtain quick opinions from your customers on the services you have offered and determine how interested they are in additional services. You can also use paid advertising provided by Facebook. The ads that you create will be targeted to certain segments of users, depending on your goals. Working in a similar way to Google AdWords, you might use this feature and find out how many people are interested in your ads.
Twitter is ranked as one of the most popular sites and it has a huge database of people which is free to use. You might find your existing clients on Twitter and follow them while they can choose to follow you. This can help you build a strong network of contacts and you can deliver all the relevant messages to them from your mobile phone, not necessarily from a computer. You can share pet care tips or facts, receive complaints and address them quickly before they damage your reputation, communicate with your employees and thus let your clients know more about what you do.
If you like writing, posting interesting articles on your blog can build your credibility and help spread the word about your services, while also establishing you as an expert in the pet care field. You do not need to use complicated medical jargon or write extensive articles for your readers. A friendly tone will help in creating a stronger relationship between you and your readers and clients.

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