Sep 2, 2022 | Veterinarian Marketing
Loyal clients and word-of-mouth marketing is effective, but it’s imperative to diversify your marketing strategy to grow your veterinary practice.
Digital marketing strategies such as a fine-tuned website, social media, and SEO can help you target potential local clients and gain more appointments for your practice.
Whether you’re brand new to marketing or your practice needs an overhaul, keep reading for helpful tips and instructions for marketing for vets.
Around 65% of pet owners make posts about their pets on social media twice per week. One in six people have a social media profile dedicated to their pets—and often, the pets have more followers than the owners do!
Studies show that posts featuring animals garner more engagement than regular content. With so many pet owners scrolling through their social media feeds, having an active social media presence must be a part of your practice’s marketing plan.
There are several ways you can liven up your social media accounts to create more awareness for your veterinary practice.
Think Out-of-the-Box
You can post just any type of content, and posting the same thing repeatedly isn’t fruitful. To engage your audience, it’s time to think out of the box.
Consider using your veterinary practice’s platform to promote competitions—think “cutest pet” competitions or guessing how many dog bones there are in a jar.
Another way you can generate interest is through pet success stories. For example, make your followers smile by sharing pictures of a pet that’s in good health after a scare or a fresh litter of puppies.
Don’t forget to use relevant hashtags to make your posts searchable. By adding hashtags, users who search for a phrase can stumble upon your account through searching for those hashtags.
Search for popular hashtags to add to your posts and experiment with some that are specific to the realm of animal lovers. Just be careful not to use hashtags that are so specific that no one searches for them.
One of the easiest ways to generate awareness for your business locally is to reach out to local news outlets for press coverage.
To do this, reach out to local journalists and reporters. If no one around your clinic has connections and can introduce you, visit your local newspaper’s website for contact details.
Once you get in touch with a reporter, set up a meeting with them and offer a story that features an interesting, inspiring, or philanthropic edge to it. Journalists look for potential stories that are timely and newsworthy. If your story is one of a kind and is picked up by a news outlet, your practice will be visible to a much bigger audience.
3. Adopt Search Engine Optimization
It’s not just a trend—investing in search engine optimization (SEO) is essential for marketing your veterinary practice. Organic search makes up 53% of all trackable website traffic.
Businesses that practice SEO focus their marketing efforts on user experience. In turn, their websites are rewarded by showing up in higher positions on search engine results pages (SERPs).
To optimize your website for SEO, first, check for technical issues that are detrimental to your website’s success, such as non-mobile-friendly pages and slow load times.
Then, clean up your website so that all information is accurate and up to date. Search engines will rank your website higher if you focus on replacing outdated information with new data.
Consider implementing a plugin to guide your veterinarian marketing strategy. The right SEO plugin can act as a sidekick, helping you ensure that you’re making the right decisions to encourage SEO.
4. Set Up a Google My Business Profile
Google My Business (GMB) is a tool you can use to market your practice to nearby pet owners. To get started, create a profile and verify your business’s location.
A GMB profile will increase local visibility for your veterinary practice. If a user searches for something like “veterinary clinic in Lexington” or “pet hospital near me,” Google knows that they’re looking for local results.
To improve your chances of showing up in local SERPs, you must optimize your local SEO tactics, including setting up your GMB profile.
The more information your profile includes, the more likely it is to show up in a prime position for locals searching for a new vet.
5. Try Content Marketing
Next, set up a blog for your veterinary clinic. This is one of the best ways to engage with potential customers naturally, without direct advertising.
Pet owners will do anything to ensure that their furry friend is happy and healthy. They have questions, and you have the answers. Therefore, share those answers in the form of a video or written blog. Then, use social media to get that content in front of local pet owners.
If you create inspirational content, you’ll increase the chances of your business showing up in SERPs when people search for answers regarding their pets’ wellbeing.
6. Get Listed in a Veterinary Directory
One of the best ways to increase visibility for your practice is to be listed in a veterinary directory. If your business is mentioned on another website, it increases the credibility and trustworthiness of your brand.
Search engines don’t just scan your website for information about your clinic—they look for information on other sites, as well. So, think of a directory listing as a recommendation. The more recommendations your website receives, the more likely your business shows up in front of pet owners looking for a new veterinary clinic.
Creative Marketing for Vets and Other Small Businesses
Marketing can be easy once you take an effective, creative approach to digital marketing. Then, you can further your own efforts with the expertise of experienced marketing professionals.
At Harris & Ward, we strive to provide a one-of-a-kind agency experience. As a result, you can focus on what you do best as we help you meet your business goals through building your online brand.
If you’re interested in what we can do to grow your veterinary practice, contact us today.
Sep 2, 2022 | Veterinarian Marketing
8 Marketing Ideas for Veterinary Practices
Veterinary marketing tends to be a lot harder because a veterinary business sells both products and services. It also needs to appeal to a tough target audience of pet owners and farmers. If you need help marketing your veterinary practice, you’re in the right place.
In today’s post, we’ll be highlighting a couple of amazing marketing ideas for your veterinary clinic.
Pet and animal lovers love social media because they can interact with others just like them. Not to mention the barrage of cute pet and animal videos that people share on social media every day. If you want to reach your target audience, the best way to do so is via social media.
Focus on crafting a social media strategy to raise brand awareness and engage with your customers. For proper social media marketing, create a profile on all the major social media platforms. Some platforms you should consider include Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Once you set up your profiles, post every day about developments in your practice and important information for pet owners. Be as active as you can and don’t forget to respond to messages from your followers.
If you want to create a bit of buzz around your area, consider sponsoring a pet event. Pet events are a fun and effective way to get people talking.
There are plenty of events you can hold to spark conversation about your clinic. You can have a pet adoption event or even hold a free vaccination run. Don’t forget to talk about the event on social media for the greatest effect.
3. Hand Out Welcome Pet bags
If you’re looking to make a lasting impression on your new customers, you should consider getting them welcome pet bags. We’re talking about everything from doggie bags to tiny guinea pig bags. This will make your new customers’ first experiences so pleasant that they’ll have no choice but to come back again.
It’s a good idea not to skimp on the pet bags you get for your customers. Find something that’s high-quality and durable. If you can’t find bags, pet pouches will do just fine.
4. Establish Loyalty Programs
Now that you have your customers’ attention, it’s time to reel them in and retain them for life. A loyalty program is one easy and effective way to do just that. It’s also a great way to get the edge over your competition.
A good idea for a loyalty program is to issue points for every visit. Once your customers attain a certain number of points, you hand them a freebie or a discount. Keep this up and your customers will be there to stay.
5. Create a Killer Website
Creating a solid online presence should be at the top of your to-do list, assuming you don’t have one already. In the digital age, if your practice doesn’t have a website, it’s virtually invisible; get it? The first place people go to when they need a vet is the internet.
Create a website so customers can find you with a few simple clicks. While creating your website, be keen on crucial aspects of your website like web design, SEO, and everything else. Your website must be better than your competitors’ to have a chance against them.
Also, you need a comprehensive website that captures all areas of your practice. Make sure you have a page for contact information, another for your services, and even a blog for some good old content marketing. This will certainly make your website a hit with your customers.
6. Leave Your Business Card at Pet Stores
This is one of those old techniques that still works like a charm even today. Talk to local pet stores and ask them for this tiny favor. Of course, you can always return the favor by referring customers to the pet store in question.
Don’t stop at the pet store! Give your business cards to local coffee shops and other stores to give your business a boost. Doing so will help you capture a couple of new customers.
7. Consider a Lumpy Mail Campaign
A “lumpy mail campaign” means sending out direct marketing mail to potential clients. The name “lumpy mail” is because senders make the mail “lumpier” so it stands out from the rest of the mail. To make it lumpier, you’ll have to include a simple surprise, like a dog treat, for instance.
Sending out lumpy mail is a great way to get your customer base intrigued. Be creative and send something that resonates with your audience. It’s also a great way to get one step ahead of your competition.
8. Host a Seminar
Pet owners have one thing in common: all of them love their pets. Consider holding a pet talk seminar and inviting all interested pet owners. These seminars give pet owners a chance to discuss their favorite topic, their pets.
Before holding a seminar, make sure you have something valuable to offer your customers. Give them crucial pet tips, diet options, and even a word from a figurehead in the veterinary industry.
Also, try to make the topics relevant to the current season. For instance, you can try, “how to keep your pets warm and healthy during winter.” This is a great example of a topic you can discuss during the seminar.
Veterinary Marketing Made Easy
Veterinary marketing should be a cakewalk with the information above. Remember to go all out with your marketing endeavors for the best results. If you need a little help, don’t be afraid to hire a professional to take over your marketing.
Then, call us today for a professional and quick marketing service that will help you take your veterinary practice to the next level.
Learn more about Marketing for Veterinarians here.
Aug 29, 2022 | Dental Marketing, marketing
How to grow your orthodontic practice
There will always be difficulties when expanding an orthodontics practice, but if you’re willing to learn from others’ experiences, it will be easier to manage.
The motivations that influence how practices operate tend to vary from owner to owner. Some may prioritize efficiency, while others may prioritize quality. Others may prioritize balance and quality of life for their team over revenue or efficiency. Not every practice owner is focused primarily on growing their practice in size, but being growth-oriented is still important.
So where should you start?
Organic Search Presence (SEO)
Are you only using word-of-mouth marketing to tell others about your orthodontic practice? While this can be powerful, it shouldn’t be your only marketing method. Orthodontic marketing is all about attention to detail and authentic engagement.
In today’s digital age, you have a ton of resources right at your fingertips, so use them. Start with your orthodontic website, and update the content to include a page specifically for orthodontics. Be sure to curate content specifically for each of your unique services. Google wants you to be detailed and engaging.
Make sure current and prospective patients know what to expect from your services by describing them and addressing FAQs. Post reviews and testimonials to give others a better idea of what you offer.
Once your content is ready, you can start optimizing your online presence for better search engine results. Use keywords, phrases, and images in your website, blogs, and social media content to target your ideal audience. Google will reward you with higher search engine results if the information you provide is relevant and helpful. Orthodontic SEO is a crucial part of a modern orthodontic practice’s marketing strategy.
Want to learn more about orthodontic seo?
A recent study has shown that orthodontists who use social media and have a practice website are more likely to get new patients. The study also showed that orthodontists should post information or run social ads in the evening, when patients and their parents are more likely to be using social media.
Utilize social media to its fullest capabilities by posting at appropriate times. Keep in mind that content is king, and that posts with authentic content that emotionally connect with your audience are more likely to be successful. Provide value to your audience, but be careful of over-posting. Monitor where new patients are coming from, as this can help you tailor your social media posts.
Reviews
Patients are increasingly using the internet to research doctors and dentists, with 74.6% of patients looking online for information on medical care, according to PatientPop. Furthermore, 59% say that online reviews influence their decision on which provider to choose.
It’s not enough to just have patient reviews – they need to be good. Nearly half of consumers (47%) won’t use a business that has less than 4 stars, according to BrightLocal.
Reviews are important for local search rankings. If you don’t have enough reviews, or if your reviews are not frequent enough, or if you’re not reviewed on multiple sites, you’re not giving Google the information it needs to rank your practice higher. This means that without reviews, your practice will have trouble attracting new patients.
No-show and cancellation rates are extremely important, as they are the primary drivers for your collections. Part of patient education is teaching patients to keep track of appointments. In a 2013 study, 27.8% of respondents said they relied on memory, and 40% of respondents said forgetting was the reason for missed appointments in the past.
As part of your treatment plan delivery, your staff should ask patients about what scheduling reminders work well for them. This could be intrinsically tied to a patient’s lack of understanding about the treatment they are receiving, or why that treatment and showing up to their appointment is important.
If you are experiencing poor attendance and cancellations, you may want to reassess your scheduling tools. Do you use an online scheduler? How about a text reminder service? Identifying where the problems are with scheduling can help improve your operational and treatment efficiency, both of which are important for your bottom line.
Community Engagement
It is important to use social media, but it is not a substitute for getting to know your patients in person. Do everything you can to become part of your community. Attend local events. Get to know other business owners. Consider joining groups like the local Chamber of Commerce. This will make you more recognizable and people will see you as a good guy instead of just another orthodontist.
To reach more people in your community, plan a special day just for them! Offer free consultations, screenings, and a Q&A session, as well as family games. You can’t grow your local presence unless you’re actively involved, so this is a great way to make an impact.
Grow your orthodontic practice one step at a time.
You can’t grow a successful orthodontic practice overnight, but there are steps you can take to scale your growth strategically. The tips above can help you reach more people, grow your knowledge, and establish your team as community leaders.
Focus on your digital marketing efforts first. It’s easy to blend in with your competition by mistake. Be intentional and build a simple and solid website. Most marketing campaigns point back to your website so ensure it showcases you and your staff appropriately. Modern consumers see right through stock photography and uninformative content.
Choose the right partnerships. You can outsource your digital marketing efforts to a reliable agency resource. But, don’t think that removes all marketing from your dental practice. It’s important to own your local presence, doctor referrals, and relationships with your patients/parents.
Aug 5, 2022 | Dental Marketing, Google
Dental PPC Guide to New Patients
Do you have the right digital marketing plan in place? A system that drives new patient phone calls and increased search volume. Every dental practice needs the right tailored plan. Let’s explore dental ppc advertising.
PPC advertising differs from SEO in that it is much quicker to see results from. While SEO can take several months to show any measurable results, PPC can be set up almost immediately to bring visitors to a site.
This guide is for you if you’re looking to learn about PPC for Dentists and how to get started on a successful campaign. We’ll introduce you to the basics of PPC and its benefits, so you can make the most of this marketing tool.
Google Ads for Dentists
Dental PPC advertising is an affordable solution that could bring you more attention online. You’re only charged for the advertisement when someone clicks on it, so it’s uniquely affordable.
PPC ads can help your dental office market your services by reaching more prospective patients online. Here are the top 6 reasons PPC advertising can help:
- Increased visibility – PPC advertising is the quickest way to appear at the top of search engine results pages. Paid ads will place your website at the top of the results almost immediately, rather than waiting weeks for organic ranking.
- Beat the competition – Reaching the top of the search engine results can be difficult, especially if your website is new. Paying for top placement with PPC ads can give you exposure above your competitors.
- Targeted website traffic – Studies show that only 5% of searchers click paid advertisements, but that 5% is also much more motivated to enlist services than the average Internet user. If you’re running ads for a term searched at least 400 times per month, this highly interested 5% could equate to at least 20 new patients each month.
- Control over spending – When running PPC ads, you set your maximum daily budget, so you never spend more than you want. You can also stop the ads immediately if you determine they aren’t as lucrative as you hoped.
- Keyword management – When creating an advertising campaign, you can select which keywords you want to target. This makes onsite optimization easier and allows you to control which terms you want to be known for.
- Trackable success – PPC ads have a clear ROI, unlike traditional SEO. With SEO, you have to wait for search engines to index your site, and even then tracking results can be difficult. With PPC, your entire campaign is tracked, so you can see exactly how it impacts your web traffic and marketing efforts.
Dental PPC Pros & Cons
There are pros and cons to every method. Before you make any decisions you should know them.
PROS
Immediate Visibility – PPC ads offer immediate visibility when you choose your keywords well. They appear on the top and next to organic results, on the first page of search results, so your audience can see them without having to scroll down. Organic SEO can take up to months to generate traffic to your site, while PPC ads can offer fast results for timely offers.
Qualified Target Audience – PPC ads give you the ability to target specific individuals who are interested in finding a dentist or getting a dental procedure within a certain location. With PPC, you can geo-target your ad based on a certain radius, which is important if you’re pulling in patients from several towns. It is very hard to optimize your website for a town other than the one your practice is located in, so PPC is a great solution to capitalize on business from surrounding towns.
Budget Conscious –PPC ads allow you to target potential customers interested in dental services near you. Geo-targeting lets you show ads to people within a certain radius of your practice, making it easier to attract patients from several nearby towns.
CONS
PPC ads can be expensive if you don’t know what you’re doing. Smart Insights recently did a study that found PPC conversion rates averaged around 3%. If you pay for 100 clicks at $50 per click, you could end up spending $5000 with only a 3% conversion rate.
Campaign Management – It’s not enough to just make a PPC ad and hope for the best – someone needs to manage them effectively in order to see results. This means testing keywords, messaging and target preferences, and being able to quickly analyze and adjust the ads for maximum impact.
Lack of Conversions – Ad clicks don’t necessarily mean conversions. Someone clicking your ad may not necessarily result in a call to your practice. Having great ad copy that drives searchers to a landing page on your website is extremely important. Qualified internet marketing companies will review and create landing pages when developing your PPC marketing strategy, which is a key factor in making a successful PPC campaign.
Internet users have become accustomed to seeing ads in various forms, such as banner ads, remarketing messages, and PPC placement in search results. Therefore, it is important to carefully select keywords, messaging, and testing in order to grab your audience’s attention. Each internet marketing channel works in conjunction with the others, so it can be difficult to find the right combination of channels and messages if you are busy running your own practice.
Interested in learning more? Harris & Ward is a leading dental ppc agency. Let’s talk!
Jul 19, 2022 | Search Engine Optimization
In a survey on online health searches that the Pew Research Center conducted, 72% of internet users said they looked for health information online in the last year. Of those respondents, the vast majority started at a search engine like Google.
This group represents a massive pool of potential clients. But to capture any of them, you need to show up in those search results.
Proper search engine optimization, or SEO for dentists, can help. There’s no mystery in how Google creates these results. It’s a science. With a few small tweaks, you can reap the benefits of a better ranking.
Dentist SEO Starts With Link Building
Search engines build their results pages based on two factors: relevance and importance. Relevance is simple: it is the degree to which your content matches a user’s search terms and the intent of their search. Being relevant is the first step to showing up.
Importance is more complicated. Search engines determine how important a site is in the same way academics determine how important someone’s research is: through citations. But online, citations are links, so search engines rely on link analysis.
Link analysis can get complicated quickly, but for the purposes of dental SEO, you can boil it down to one key strategy: get authoritative or important sites to link to your site.
The more prestigious the site that links to you (that is, the more incoming links that site has), the more that link will help your SEO ranking. All links (with one exception to come) will help your SEO, but these links give you the biggest boost.
How and where those links are implemented also matters. Ideally, you want the anchor text (the blue text that makes up the hyperlink) for links to your site to include your most important keywords. Also, the links should be in relevant content and on a relevant site.
The one exception to the more links are better rule is link farming, or paying people to create fake links to your site. The suspicion of link farming is one of the fastest ways to get your site demoted in Google rankings. But link trading, or publishing a link on your site so someone will publish one on theirs, is fine. What does dentist seo success look like? It’s a combination of link building, content creation, and user experience. Finding a digital marketing agency that specializes in seo for dentists can help.
So, how do you get people to link to your site?
Publish Great Content
Search engines make their money, and a lot of it, by bringing in more users. They have an incentive to deliver content that people want to read. That means you have an incentive to provide them with the best content.
The most important part of your SEO strategy should be to think about what a human user would want, instead of trying to game the search engine. If you create good content, users will seek you out on their own, and other sites will link to your content.
In other words, the best way to get ranked by Google or other search engines is to create content that is rankworthy.
That kind of content will also help with your user interaction measures. When they rank pages, search engines look at how users behave once they find a page.
- Do users hit the back button and pick another result?
- How much time do users spend on the site?
- How many other pages on the site do they visit?
One of these important measures is the bounce rate or the percentage of users who only visit one page on a site before leaving. Creating compelling content will lower your bounce rate. Local content, for instance, can help draw users.
Users will also visit more spots on your site if you create internal links between your pages. These internal links also have another key benefit.
Make Your Site Crawler-Friendly
Search engines build their database of websites by crawling the web using automated spiders. These spiders start with seed sets of high-quality sites and then follow the links out from there to discover other pages.
If these crawlers can’t find your pages, the search engines cannot include you. If you want to remove all doubt, you can always submit pages to Google manually. But there are ways you can structure your site that should make that unnecessary.
One thing you want to do is create a flat site to minimize link depth. Link depth is how many clicks it takes to get from the homepage to a given page on the site. Both crawlers and human users assume pages close to the homepage are more important.
Cross-links between your content can also help the crawlers. Once they find one of your pages, these cross-links will lead them to the rest.
Also, crawlers have trouble reading images. That is why you always want to include an alt attribute for all of your images. Otherwise, the crawlers will ignore any of your relevant pictures.
Think Carefully About Your Domain
Your website domain sends a signal to your potential customers. There are certain tips you want to follow to pick the best one possible:
- Make it unique: never pick one that is just a plural, misspelled, or hyphenated version of another one
- Choose only .com domains
- Make it easy to type and remember
- Avoid hyphens and numbers
For search engine rankings, you want to avoid subdomains as much as possible. Search engines will treat these as separate sites, so you will be competing with yourself for link authority and rankings.
Instead of subdomains, use subdirectories instead. Then, your single domain will build link authority instead of splitting it between subdomains.
Proper Keyword Placement
Search engines have gotten sophisticated enough that keyword stuffing won’t work anymore. In fact, keyword stuffing can indicate to search engines that your pages are low-quality, which will hurt your rankings.
Instead of forcing in as many keywords as possible, you’re better off writing naturally and using synonyms where appropriate. Again, think about what a human user would want.
Still, keywords are important to show that your content is relevant to a user’s question. As such, it’s important to include your most relevant keywords in a few key places:
Include keywords in the body content as well but, as we mentioned, write naturally rather than trying to shoehorn in more keywords.
Grow Your Business Traffic
No matter how small an area you are targeting, there are too many other dentists online for you to leave things to chance. The right SEO for dentists can bring in more business with only a few small changes to your present site. If you don’t grab those results, your competition will.
If you’re ready to maximize your traffic, online and off, browse some of our marketing services. The other posts on our blog can offer more tips to enhance your marketing.
