Communication

Focused marketing efforts can cure the ups and downs of seasonality.

Not too long ago, small animal veterinary medicine had a predictable seasonality. From a revenue and transactional standpoint, it looked like a bell-shaped curve — the peak usually in midsummer, the valley in winter and the curve heading up in spring and down in fall. That is no longer the case. Today, the curve looks […]

Is your clinic website optimized for mobile users? Do you populate the website with videos? Now add more.

You evaluate patient wellness using a checklist: physical exam, presenting signs, test results, age, weight and so forth. And from there you know how to advise clients and address health issues. It’s part of your daily protocol, right? But what about the wellness of your hospital’s online marketing efforts? Do you have a daily protocol […]

The most important mobile app — you must have one — is the one with your veterinary clinic’s name on it.

We all know that technology is accelerating, but do we also know how to take advantage of these breakneck speeds? While veterinary practices may have learned to leverage the digital sphere by creating a stunning website loaded with compelling veterinary information, alongside a Facebook page offering great client engagement, the next frontier of technology has […]

Soothe angry pet owners and raise the level of service by training the team to listen carefully and respond the right way.

When faced with an angry client, veterinary team members tend to have two default responses: They either become defensive or suffer in silence. Unfortunately, neither response makes an unhappy client feel any better. While no one likes to be confronted by a livid pet owner, team members who are trained to respond with compassion will […]

Simple solutions start with the initial phone call and extend to the products offered at checkout.

The writer Malcolm Gladwell once said, “We don’t know where our first impressions come from or precisely what they mean, so we don’t always appreciate their fragility.” As practice owners, we know that our first opportunity to interact with and acquire a client may not occur in person or in an exam room. It may […]

Bad body language and a poor choice of words can damage a client relationship.

The veterinarian slumped a little, a sigh revealing her disbelief and signaling her impatience. “Can you explain again how that blood test tells us what’s wrong with Tigger’s pee-pee?” the client asked. The veterinarian didn’t understand what the pet owner couldn’t comprehend. This was so simple. The hashtag #SMH (shaking my head) crossed the doctor’s […]

Maximize your website’s visibility so internet users — and potential clients — can find you easier.

Guessing how many Google searches are performed each year is a bit like guessing the speed of a domestic house cat. Sure, it’s fast, but how fast? And sure, we use Google a lot, but how much are we using it exactly? Well, Google’s search engine performed 1.2 trillion searches in 2016 alone. You can […]

The third most popular social media site is a great way to interact with clients.

The most popular social media sites of 2017 aren’t just getting millions of views, they’re receiving billions of them. That’s right, as of May, Facebook was averaging almost 2 billion visitors a month. The exact figure, according to the online source Statista, was 1.94 billion. When I first started using the platform as a focal […]

Getting to know a pet owner on a more personal level can build trust.

Imagine a 12-year-old pet diagnosed with an operable brain tumor. Most clients would struggle to decide whether to proceed with surgery. Now imagine having to make this decision twice. I know how hard these decisions are because I was that client in 2013. My beloved Papillon, Chloe, came through her first craniotomy with no complications. […]

If creative juices flow in you, print marketing may be do-it-yourself. Otherwise, consider hiring a professional to complete the task.

In a culture that’s deeply invested in online marketing, it’s easy to forget that pet owners still depend upon printed content for information. Sure, you can find loads of information about a veterinary hospital’s services and staff through a couple of keystrokes. But when the computer is turned off, the information disappears into the blackened […]