Volume 1, Issue 9

Each issue of Veterinary Marketing Tips provides suggestions for reaching out to clients and prospects with marketing and communications strategies and tactics. Please feel free to email us at Lindaw@lwmarketworks.com if you have questions or would like to find out more about our marketing services. – Linda Wasche/LW Marketworks, inc.

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TIP: As the holidays approach, make sure that your practice is thinking about marketing plans for the coming year. Having a proactive game plan in place is essential to focused and targeted marketing efforts.

HOW: To get started, follow these tips:

1. Assess your practice’s marketing efforts during the past year. What was successful in 2010 and what may be worth repeating? What was NOT as successful and what did you learn from these efforts?

2. Revisit your marketing goals. Do last year’s goals still apply or should they be revised? Remember that your marketing goals should be measurable, so make sure that you also have the necessary data tracking and analysis in place.

3. Revisit your competition. Take a fresh look at your competitors to see what they may have added or changed. Do you have any new competition – or have any changes in the local competitive environment opened up new opportunities?

4. Review client communication. What channels of communication are you currently using to reach clients? Are clients responding? Are you taking advantage of social media to help connect clients to the practice? What other channels might offer additional client outreach?

5. Make plans to mystery shop your practice. Set up a series of mystery shops to make calls and visits to your practice with the goal of evaluating what it’s like to be your client. Predetermine what you would like to find out about the client experience and make this part of a mystery shopper guide.

6. Look carefully at your practice website. If not continuously updated, your website can become out of sync with the practice. Make sure that the practice that the online visitor sees on your website is the same practice that clients see when they walk in the door.

7. Make it a point to listen to clients in 2011. The best marketing strategies and ideas do not come from the practice or from its marketing firm. They come from clients! Find out what clients think about your practice at all “moments of truth.” This will help you discover ways to further strengthen service delivery and add value to clients’ experience.

IDEA: Establish a timeline for the above actions that includes specific tasks along with roles and responsibilities. This will help make the work less overwhelming and provide practical timeframes for completing each step.

Veterinary Marketing Tips is published by LW Marketworks, inc. Copyright © 2010
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