Veterinarian Marketing

Effective marketing strategies for veterinary clinics and animal hospitals should be built on a solid foundation of great content that resonates with your customers. 

Whether you are doing the marketing yourself or working with an agency, here are some strategic marketing and promotional ideas you can implement for your veterinary practice or animal hospital.

Content marketing 

You have the best content curators in the world! Just about everyone loves cute animal photos, especially pet owners. Base your content strategy around authentic photography and stories that appeal to your audience. 

Think about all the services you offer and develop content that covers that niche or topic completely. Making helpful, authentic, and compelling content will improve awareness and conversions. That means more appointments and opportunities to help animals. 

Customer reviews

People will do their research, especially when it comes to their pets. Social proof and word-of-mouth are essential aspects of marketing. You can improve word-of-mouth advertising by providing excellent service, but to maximize the results, you have to develop a plan to promote or feature your customer stories and reviews. 

Your veterinary website

It all comes down to your website. If this were a dating app, your website would be your profile picture. Develop a great website content strategy that promotes your services and educates your audience to win the swipe (or click). 

The foundation for Animal Cause Marketing’s (ACM) veterinary websites are strong visuals, clear service offerings, and helpful content for pet owners. We also use several marketing techniques to ensure we have a strong conversion for appointments, phone calls, email captures, and data collection. 

Search Marketing

“If you build it, they will come.” The famous Kevin Costner quote from Field of Dreams does not apply to websites! It’s true that if you build a website, your customers will have a place to come, if they can find you.. 

Search marketing is about helping your websites get found online. There are things you can do to drive organic traffic, and you can use paid advertising to boost additional traffic. A beautiful website is important, but without the right words and page structure, it’s possible no one will ever see it.  

Here are a few areas of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) that are crucial to your veterinary practice’s digital marketing efforts. 

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

When I think about SEO, I think about creating great content with the optimal page structure. If you use clear page titles, headlines, and images, and include helpful and accurate information, then you’ve got the basics down. 

Of course, there’s a bit more to it than that. What topics you cover and how many website pages you have are also important factors. Creating blog posts or articles about your veterinary practice or animal hospital is a great way to produce enough content for your audience. 

Think of your website like a spider web and the more pages and topics you cover, the bigger the web. If you want pet owners to find your veterinary oncologist, you should cover topics relating to animal cancer, radiation, and chemotherapy, and provide helpful online resources for your clients. 

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

If you can’t rank #1 organically, then you should consider using Google PPC for your veterinarian clinic. You can use PPC strategically to increase slow periods or acquire new customers for specific services. 

If you want to provide more dental services, you can use PPC as a way to bring in new customers. The broad search term ‘cat teeth cleaning San Diego’ may be a difficult keyword to rank first organically. Using paid advertising can help you jump the line to the top position.

Local advertising with listings and directories

The easiest and quickest way to get found locally online is through Google My Business and Bing Places listings. These profiles usually appear at the top of the search and will often show a map of your service areas. In addition to the main search engine directories, you’ll also want to claim your business listing on Yelp. 

Once you have your listing, it’s time to optimize it. Keep the content consistent across all listings and use well-written descriptions and high-quality photography. Get your profiles verified and complete all the sections for the best results. 

Communications and reminders

Customer retention can cost 20x cheaper than customer acquisition. As a veterinary clinic or animal hospital, you need to constantly be marketing to new customers but also be engaging existing customers for reminders and preventative care. Developing a strong retention strategy that compliments your customer acquisition strategy can pay dividends long-term. 

There are communication automation tools that can help provide effective and engaging reminders during the customer life cycle. Investing time in these tools will save your staff time in the long run. Check out our list of expert marketing resources.

Emails and newsletters are the foundation of great marketing communication for veterinary clinics. SMS text messaging and phone calls are also a staple in communication but are less used for marketing purposes. Pair your content strategy with your communications to create a funnel of helpful and engaging information sent out on a schedule. 

Video chat and website chat features would be a great addition to a busy practice. Chat features allow one operator to manage several customers at once and at a slower pace. 

Seasonal marketing

Pet care and education follow seasonal trends. A veterinarian should see every pet at least once a year, but many pets can benefit from preventative care. Your marketing and communication efforts can support things like flea and tick season or push education about feral cats during spring kitten season.