Marketing | Beyond Indigo Pets Veterinary Marketing & Websites

Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category

Adapt or Die…

Wednesday, May 1st, 2013

The headlines and phone calls continue to focus on the pharmaceutical component of the veterinary world. Whether it is the re-directing of Super-Products (Flea/Tick, Heartworm, Pain) or the online pharmacy world of PetMedExpress and their American and Canadian brethren or the brick and mortar challengers of Costco, Walmart, CVS, Walgreen, the small animal veterinary pharmacy will NEVER be the same.

For as long as I can remember, the pricing of veterinary pharmaceuticals never had ANY science associated with it. For that matter, I’m not sure the pricing of veterinary office calls had any science behind it. I remember opening my practice in 1989 and the suggested cost for an office call was 100 times the price for a postage stamp ($0.25). So my initial office call was ….ta da $27.00. I didn’t want to be ‘average’. (more…)

Tags: Beyond Indigo Pets, Marketing, Online Pharmacy, Peter Weinstein, Veterinary Marketing
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The 5 P’s of Marketing: People

Wednesday, April 3rd, 2013

For our final discussion of Marketing, we turn to probably the most important one of all, namely, people. Although you could define this in many ways, I’m going to define it narrowly as the people you have on your hospital team.

Mark Opperman is right when he says, “It’s what’s up front that counts”. This means that your outward facing team needs to be completely client focused at all times: the little things count. I don’t mean just your front desk staff either, as that is far too narrow a definition in today’s highly connected world. Ask yourself how many people on your team NEVER interact with clients? I’d bet the answer is almost always “None”. Even the kennel assistants at our hospital are responsible for interacting with clients when they pick up/drop off patients to be boarded. (more…)

Tags: 5 P's to Veterinary Marketing, Beyond Indigo Pets, Mark Olcott, People, Staff, Veterinary Marketing
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The 5 P’s of Marketing: Promotion

Wednesday, March 13th, 2013

As we continue our discussion of the “5 P’s of Marketing”, this week we are focused on Promotion. It wasn’t that long ago that differentiation for a veterinary practice meant how your Yellow Pages ad looked compared to those of the other veterinary hospitals in town. Today, our society has become so connected through sites like Angie’s List, Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, that traditional means of promoting your practice, like print advertising, aren’t as effective as they once were. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that having anything more than a 1-2 line ad in your local yellow pages is a waste of money. “Creative destruction” has largely relegated these bulky tomes to the ashbin of history, right next to buggy whips and Walkmans. Instead, your money would be far better spent on a social media campaign, as detailed below.

Digital strategist Chris Horton claims there are four broad reasons why social media-as-promotion is effective for businesses: (more…)

Tags: 5 P's of Veterinary Marketing, Beyond Indigo Pets, Mark Olcott, Promotion, Veterinary Marketing
Posted in Digital Marketing, Mark Olcott, Marketing, Veterinary Marketing | Comments Off

What is Your Client Relationship Rating?

Wednesday, February 27th, 2013

Trust is the first word that comes to mind when describing a meaningful and lasting relationship. Next may be the word respect. When consumers trust and respect their veterinary hospital employees, a true relationship has formed. Unlike transactions based on price and convenience, relationships based on trust and respect last for long periods of time. Clients will give a high rating to clinic relationships that display empathy, compassion, and competence.

When clinic owners make hiring and evaluation decisions, they should look at each candidate or employee through the eyes of their most critical clients. Every position in the clinic plays a critical roll in garnering the trust and respect of each client. Clinic owners and leaders are reselling the services of his or her staff in the veterinary clinic. To create a lasting relationship, employees have to provide sound reasons for each client to highly value his or her experience and desire to return in the future.

Pet owners who have a relationship with their pet care provider not only bring their pets in for wellness visits and sick care visits, but also they refer their friends and acquaintances to the clinic as well. They do this because they want others to have the same benefits they receive when interacting with clinic staff. They understand that supporting their favorite clinic is just as important as the clinic providing excellent health care for their pets. (more…)

Tags: Beyond Indigo Pets, Client Relationship, G. Lynn Davis, Marketing to the Relationship, Veterinary Marketing
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The 5 P’s of Marketing: Product

Wednesday, February 20th, 2013

Last time we talked about Price and the role it plays in marketing your veterinary practice. Today I’m going to discuss another of the “5 P’s” of marketing, namely, Product. In veterinary practices, we sell both tangible products (i.e. prescription food) and intangible services (i.e. sick pet visits), though every practice has a different mix of products and services. As few veterinary practices actually produce products, acting more as “resellers” of prepackaged items they purchased elsewhere, the service component of our businesses is by far the most important “product” we offer.

Practice owners need to be constantly growing their business because there is no “treading water”: you’re either growing or dying. And I believe that one highly effective way to grow your practice is to focus on the little things that have an outsized effect on the way your clients and employees view you. That’s right….the way your internal clients (i.e. employees) view you will play a big role in how they act in front of clients. Especially in a service business where clients have a choice of where to go, little things matter. If they see you cutting corners, they’re going to cut corners. If something is not important to you, it won’t be important to them. If you don’t return client calls enthusiastically, it will send a message that client communication isn’t that important.

So what are some other examples of the “little things” that matter? (more…)

Tags: 5 P's of Veterinary Marketing, Mark Olcott, Product, Veterinary Marketing
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The 5 P’s of Marketing: Price

Wednesday, January 30th, 2013

Many medical professionals don’t think of pricing as part of their overall marketing plan, but correct pricing for products and services is critical to long term success and profitability. If you don’t charge enough to cover your costs and leave a healthy profit, your business will suffer. For example, maybe you are starting to realize that you’ve been working hard for 40 years and have no retirement savings to speak of other than your practice, which isn’t worth as much as you had hoped because it isn’t very profitable. Or maybe key staff members are leaving because they haven’t had a raise in 5 years. As an aside, the “dead wood” and embezzlers never leave, but that’s a topic for a different day. In this regard, employees are like clients: many don’t tell you the REAL reason they’re leaving because most humans are inherently conflict avoidant. They just smile and “vote with their feet”, but you never learn the reasons why. This is one reason that exit interviews are such a great tool. (You are doing these, right?)

Rather than get into how to set prices for vaccines or office visits, which is information that is readily available elsewhere, I think it’s more important to take a step back and ask yourself some more fundamental questions. Questions you may never have asked yourself before. (more…)

Tags: Beyond Indigo Pets, Content, Online Veterinary Marketing, Price, Profit
Posted in Mark Olcott, Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Veterinary Marketing, Websites | Comments Off

Your Marketing Journey – Part 2: Where to Stop

Wednesday, January 23rd, 2013

Many times at Beyond Indigo we talk to people who are moderately to extremely overwhelmed with their marketing Journey. For most veterinary hospitals they do not even know where to start, what to do or how much time it is going to take. I don’t blame people for being overwhelmed. There is significant amount work, time and knowledge involved in a marketing program. If you are on the overwhelmed train, here are some points to consider that I have gleaned from 1000‘s of veterinarians about why planning for this Marketing Journey can be so overwhelming. Maybe you can relate to some of them.

Overwhelmed Issue Number One: Since most veterinarians and their staff have had to conduct very little marketing until recently, there is a steep learning curve to get up to speed. Most veterinarians still tend to be between 1996 and 1999 in their online marketing initiatives. Hospitals still try to build websites themselves, have servers located in their physical buildings and are struggling weather to use Yellow Pages or not. The problem is how to quickly learn 15 to 17 years of knowledge in a short period of time? Where to start?

Overwhelmed Issue Number Two: Who in the heck does the marketing program? Many hospitals are trying to tackle it completely by themselves and noticing it causes a juggling problem. Multiple people are tapped to do different aspects of the marketing program but nobody really is in charge. Then the message from the hospital is not consistent either in tone or timing. Or the marketing program goes really great until a new problem or focus comes into play and it is forgotten for awhile. This causes gaps with building and growing relationships which is the primary function of online marketing today. The problem is how to have the staffing resources and time to keep the marketing program ongoing. (more…)

Tags: Beyond Indigo Pets, Beyond Indigo Veterinary Marketing, Content, Digital Marketing, Facebook, Positive Based Marketing, social media, social media marketing, Veterinary Websites
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Your Marketing Journey – Part 1: What to Pack

Wednesday, January 16th, 2013

When a person goes on a Journey we think of a trip that has multiple stops and extends over a period of time. Other times we use the word “Journey” to mean a process that is an every changing that allows us to grow and develop. It is time to think of your marketing program as a “Journey”. A process that involves more than one “stop” and is every changing and every growing. Why? Because frame of mind is everything to embracing a process. If you are still in the mentality that you check the box once a year on your marketing and then go back to medicine, then your business has a higher chance of not maintaining and gaining new relationships. Lack of maintaining relationships could mean less customers and that would be suboptimal.

For your marketing Journey there are a few essentials to sneak into your travel back pack that will be your roadmap and guide along the way. Every aspect of your marketing should fall into these guidelines.

(more…)

Tags: Beyond Indigo Pets Marketing, Beyond Indigo Veterinary Marketing, Facebook, Search Engine Optimization, social media marketing, traffic, Veterinary Marketing
Posted in Content, Digital Marketing, Facebook, Google, Marketing, Social media, Veterinary Marketing | Comments Off