The sun is out, the kids are (almost) on vacation, and people are enjoying the warmer temperatures. Not only are people ready to enjoy summer, but their pets are too. Bring the fun into your business with these summertime marketing ideas for your veterinary practice:

Summertime Marketing Pet-Related Content

Summertime offers a great opportunity for veterinary practices to engage in themed content. Engaging content should be an integral part of your marketing strategies so be sure to treat your content like royalty.

Here are some content examples you can implement:

Summer Pet Infographics: Create an infographic to highlight important information for pet owners that is summer specific and share it to Pinterest. Some ideas include: Top 5 Summer Safety Tips, Dogs In Hot Cars: How You Can Help, How To Keep Your Pet Hydrated, and Summer Pet Travel Tips.

Summer Pet Light Content: No one can resist a cute dog or cat enjoying the summertime. Be sure to also share light themed content. Videos and photos you share from other Facebook pages with bigger followings tend to have higher engagement.

Blogs: Remember that content is king so be sure to include some summer pet related blogs on your website. Expand on the topics from your above infographics and be sure to keep SEO in mind to make sure your content is optimized. Blogging is a great way to offer your social pages content that is directly from your practice and not harvested from potential competitors.

Social Media Pet Contests

Social media contests are a great way to encourage engagement across all your social media platforms. These types of posts are more likely to receive comments, shares and likes.

Here are a few contest ideas you can use:

Timeline Photo Contest: Keep it summer simple and do a short photo contest with a Facebook post. Ask people to post their summer, vacation or keeping cool theme pet photos in Comments. Use Likes as one of the ways of choosing a winner or simply select your favorite based on theme and appeal.

Photo Contests: Go big and create an online photo contest using a platform like Wishpond, Woobox or similar tool. With a small learning curve, these will integrate seamlessly with your website and Facebook.

Summer Pet Memes: Find a summer related pet photo (the funnier, the better) and ask people to comment on how they would caption the photo. Pick your favorites and create memes out them to share across your social media channels. Be sure to add your logo to the graphic to help build your brand awareness.

Summer Sweepstakes: Have a giveaway sweepstakes where people enter their pet and you draw a prize winner. These attract attention since they are easy to enter. Just be sure that the rules require the winner to pick up their prize in person with I.D. so that all of your entries are local.

Connect With Your Community

People are more likely to be outside during the summer. Most clients use a vet within 5 miles of their home, so consider connecting with your neighborhood.

Be Visible at Local Events—Have a booth at a summer event but don’t just hand out cards or brochures. Offer water for hot pets. Have a kiddie pool filled with ice or hot paws. Offer pet first aid. Be there to help and connect with your neighbors. They will remember you.

Fun Neighborhood Event—Summer time is not the time to invite people indoors for educational events. Throw a barbecue, promote it with social media posts and ads, or neighborhood signs, local papers to invite the community around your practice. Have music, offer tours, have games and prizes–make it fun for the neighborhood to stop by and get to know your practice. Bonus–collect food, towels, etc. for a local shelter.

Offer Discounts Or Special Summer Promotions
One last summertime marketing idea for your veterinary practice is to offer summer themed discounts and promotions.

Discounts: Offer discounts to both your current and potential customers. This can include buy one, get one half off on all grooming services. Summer is the time people are more likely to bring their pets in for grooming because of the hot weather.  Another idea is offering free nail trims or a free night of boarding to first-time customers.

Summer Promotions: Incorporate your current services into your summer themed content. Promote your boarding services since many people will be vacationing and will need your services. Summer training classes tends to be popular as well since kids are on vacation and can participate with the training of their pets.

Social Shares: Generate activity on social media by offering a $10 discount if your client takes a photo of their pet while they are at the hospital and posts it on social media with your hashtag. They would show you the post at checkout.

Don’t forget to use Facebook advertising to make sure your summer pet contests, promotions and content are seen by your current followers and potential customers.

Beyond Indigo hopes these summer marketing ideas help your veterinary practice! If you are interested in social marketing but don’t know where to start, please let us know.