When I start talking about marketing strategies with my customers I border on hyperventilation.   I get about as excited as a monkey in a banana store, but I guess that’s what marketing geeks are supposed to do.  This happened again yesterday.

I was conversing with a customer in his beautiful new practice. The discussion topic surrounded web sites and their ability to be a working part of a business (the key term being working). The folly of many small business owners, veterinarians included, is the “if you build it, they will come” philosophy.   This applies to the physical practice itself and their websites.

The general purpose of this blog and our business is to get veterinary practices noticed.  Many of the  marketing strategies we develop include, or center around, a strong online presence.   This is vastly different than just building a pretty web site because just having a website is about as functional to growing your business as just having walls and bathroom.  The simple existence of a building does not make a business; subsequently the existence of a website doesn’t mean a business has a working online presence.

For 99% of businesses the goal of a website is simple, to increase customers.  The problem is this whole world wide web thing – it’s just not that big of a secret anymore.  Most businesses, many individuals, and even some kids have their own presence on the internet.  The Big Fish household has 7, and that’s just mommy and daddy fish, the minnows can’t use the computer yet.

So this presents the dilemma of getting found.  The terms SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing) describe the strategies and tactics used to get you found on the internet.  And most discussion of getting found on the internet start and end with Google as greater than 70% of searches are done there.

I have two articles that are good introductions to this topic.  The links are listed below . If you have further question leave them in the discussion section and we will answer them quickly.

How To Make Your Website Pay

How To Get Your Site To Rank Well In Google

This is a guest post by Platinum Pet Memorial Service.  It is an organization I recently worked with.  After touring there facilities and getting to know the owners better I could tell they had a true passion for their work and an honest desire to serve the veterinary community.  I asked them to do a guest post for me, it is displayed below.  You can learn more about them at www.platinumpetms.com

When a “Private” cremation is not really a PRIVATE Cremation

Many crematories offer “Private” and “Communal” cremations for pets.  Most of us (including our clients) understand a communal cremation is when a pet is cremated with other pets.  One would think that a “Private” cremation is when a pet is placed in a crematory alone.  Unfortunately, that is not always the case.  Many crematories partition their crematory, thus placing several pets in the crematory at the same time by (say) placing one in each corner or placing them in a circle.  Obviously, this is a way for the crematory to save money.   However, it can also cause many issues – for you and your client.  The two biggest in my opinion are: (1) this is not a private cremation – the client is being misled (2) is the operator organized and not confused such that a pet is returned to the wrong owner(s).

The practice of grouping Private cremations has been going on in our industry for some time and is even recognized as appropriate, if the client fully understands.  However, we are finding that more crematories are now performing this type of service – and maybe without you knowing.  When you receive a “To whom it may concern” letter offering a better price, be sure to ask the right questions. 

We know people shop around for better prices in all areas of our industry.  We believe that once a client has decided on a service there should be no confusion in that service (is a private rally a private, etc.).  Some would chalk this up to “you get what you pay for” and while I agree with the saying you also have to add that you should know what you are paying for before you agree to the price.  It is not always an apples-to-apples comparison. 

At Platinum Pet Memorial Service we offer a Private Cremation.  It is our guarantee that when you or your client pay for a Private service there will be only one pet in the crematory.  We do not and will not offer Private or Individual Cremations where there is more than one pet in the crematory. 

Platinum Pet is open to the public and we encourage you to visit our facility.  We offer a private viewing room for your clients.  We entered into this business knowing we could operate our business and maintain our values.  We believe the relationship between an owner and pet is special and we will maintain that special relationship and treatment to the end.

An open house can be a great way to boost revenue and increase new clients.  They can also be a lot of work.  Pulling one off usually requires more of a time investment than most veterinarians anticipate.  Here is a short checklist of a few things that may make your open house go more smoothly and make a great first impression on some potential clients.

1. Exploit Your Vendors:  This may be the most important.  An open house can get costly so use your vendors to offset some expenses.  Approach them about product samples (food and dental especially), providing refreshments, or giving short product demos.  If you support them, you deserve support in return.  Some budgets have been trimmed over the past 18 months but they can still come through in creative ways.
2. Highlight Your Clinic: Give tours, show off your equipment, explain your processes, and introduce your team.  What may seem mundane and routine to you and I can be very exciting to others.  Have some new x-ray equipment, an air powered dental unit, or a new laser? Show those babies off and let folks know why you’ve invested in them.
3. Rotating Seminars: Use your techs and your exam rooms to do short demos on important topics like dental care, geriatrics, diet and nutrition, blood work, or parasite control.  Education is the key to client compliance so take advantage of the captive audience to fill them full of animal health goodness.
4. Rent A Bounce House: I don’t know if it will help anything but I think they’re cool.
5. Announce It: Don’t just stick a sign out front – promote the daylights out of it.  Doing a targeted direct mail campaign (here) can exponentially increase your attendance.  Run a small ad in the newspaper, hang up signs at the grocery stores, and send out emails to everyone you know.  You can even run a contest to see which employee can bring in the most pet owners.
6. Schedule Appointments: Run a special on dental cleaning and do a free visual exam during your open house.  Schedule appointments that day. The goal is to grow so don’t be afraid, you did give them a free hot dog right.
7. Collect Email Addresses: Do a sweepstakes for a free anything. The winner is announced by email and all they need to do is sign up for the clinics newsletter.   If all you do is collect email addresses at the open house, from everyone that walks in, you have made it a success.

I am always willing to answer questions for you so don’t hesitate to shoot me an email.

What makes a good blog good?

There are so many blogs out there, some are really dynamite.  The question is; What makes a good blog good?  Is it agonizing over design, perfecting keyword placement, the color palette, pictures, or any of the other visual items bloggers ponder over?  Or is it the content? Or the title?

Content is important, as is design, but they’re not the most important.  If your knowledgeable about your subject matter and your passionate about it, the content comes naturally.  If your content is good then the design, though important, matters less too.

I submit the most important element, the single variable that causes some blogs too really shine, is the person behind them.  For a blogger, loving the subject matter you write about is crucial.  Without the passion it becomes work, if a blogger has to work for content the reader can tell.  Not that blogs aren’t work in the sense they take time because they do take time.  Research, writing, and proofreading all go into good posts.  But if you love it, it’s not work.

Here are some of my favorite blogs. The people behind them are genuine, passionate, and I love their content.  Check them out for yourself and see if you can’t sense that they really love what they do.

The PT Money Blog

www.ptmoney.com

Frank C Barnett’s Marketing Blog

www.frankcbarnett.com

Andrea Bea Photography

www.andreabphotography.com/blog

Joe The Runner

www.joetherunner.com

Steve Farrar Ministries

www.stevefarrar.com

Veterinary Social Networking.

If the term viral marketing makes you think of donning a biohazard suit, you’re not alone.  Online marketing as we know it today has caused countless businesses to rethink their marketing strategy, rewrite go to market plans, and some have even created special teams of employees to tackle the challenge of social networking and exploit the growth opportunities these mediums offer.

If the thought of twitter makes you shutter, the only Facebook you know is your kid updating his page at the dinner table, and you think a blog is an enormous gelatinous creature oozing through the streets of a bad seventies movie, rest easy because you’re probably in the majority of today’s small business owners.    Even the most seasoned marketing professionals, especially the ones trained prior to the social media boom, have been forced to learn a new way of thinking and grasp a new sense of how ideas spread.

Since the term viral comes from the scientific field, let’s examine social marketing from a scientific standpoint. R_0, from epidemiology, defines the reproductive rate of a ” virus” (or sheep for that matter). To stop the transmission of a virus you need a R₀ number of less than one.  A number of greater than one can become an epidemic and spread exponentially.  Essentially, viral marketing, attempts to establish a reproductive rate of an idea that is greater than one: R₀ > 1.  So the idea is to create a “meme” that is easily sharable and relevant between people.  Quick side note, a meme is best defined as a talking logo.  An audible business card so to speak.

There are basically eight types of social media avenues:

• Blogs
• Micro blogs (twitter)
• Social networks (Facebook, linked-in)
• Media sharing (You Tube)
• Voting Sites (digg)
• Review sites (yelp)
• Virtual worlds (second life)

Some of these are infinitely more important and have a greater impact on small businesses than others.  On that note it is important to state that business size is irrelevant.  There are many highly successful and highly profitable one man operations that exist and prosper strictly on the basis of a successful social media marketing campaign.  Your reading this article currently on our blog which serves as our front door to our audience.  For us it is an indispensable tool that we use to communicate what we know best (marketing and management) to an audience that is interested in reading what we have to say.  Your practice has an incredible growth opportunity using the same strategy with this and similar tools.  Your customers are online and the interested in what you have to say.  So why not start communicating with them.  You can start a blog right now, for free.  Click here for our favorite blog engine. To get started I recommend reading other blogs first to get ideas and find your voice.  I’ve included links to a few below.  Really the examples are endless, just use a blog search engine and get to reading.  Good luck.

http://ptmoney.com/

http://www.dolittler.com/

http://drcarrollplanovets.wordpress.com/

http://www.trail-running-blog.com/

In our live webinars we discuss this topic in more detail.  Click here to view our schedule.

The opinions regarding dental health month are as diverse as veterinarians themselves.  Some feel dental health month represents a great opportunity to grow the dental site of a practice while others feel it forces them to give discounts to existing customers that would have undergone the cleanings anyway.  Either way it is impossible to argue the importance of a pets dental health.

Should you choose to use February as a month to grow your dental procedures there are a few marketing tips that can greatly increase your success.  However, it is important to remember that a client needs to believe that you have their, and their pets, best interest at heart when recommending dental procedures.   Like most marketing efforts, knowledge is key.  Show and tell plays a big role in educating your clients.

Here are a few suggestions to get you started:

1. In case you haven’t been following the previous posts I will reiterate the importance of any marketing effort being a part of a system.  This month represents a great opportunity, especially for new customers, if you have a good follow-up system in place.
2. Beef up your in-clinic marketing materials and include several presentation binders in the waiting room that include success stories, before and after photos, helpful articles, and instructions (take home copies) for at-home dental care.
3. Exploit your vendor relationships to obtain free swag such as toothbrushes, rinses, and pet food samples.  If you can’t obtain enough to give to every customer than put together a few nice gift baskets and offer them as prizes.  Everyone that schedules a dental exam is automatically entered into the drawing.  This way you can offer a sweepstakes with little to no monetary investment on your end.
4. I love open houses; done correctly they can quickly boost new customers and represent some good PR opportunity.  Design and host a dental health open house.  I have done a few of these, if you need help please feel free to give me a call, I can give you some advice.
5. Promote the event on the homepage of your website and announce it to your facebook followers.
6. Send out a targeted direct mail campaign centered solely around promoting your dental specials.
7. Contact your local newspaper and volunteer to write an article highlighting the importance of dental health to pets.  Include your name, website, and phone number in the bio line.  This is much easier than it sounds and it is something I do often.

Remember that successful marketing should be primarily educational based;  and when educating your clients on the importance of dental care, make sure to carefully word your recommendations in a way that shows honest and sincere compassion.  Good luck and call me if we can help.

For any small business, veterinary clinics, plumbers, even consultants, standing out just a little bit from the competition is the fundamental key to success.  In the early 90’s quality was the hallmark spawning movements like TQM and Six Sigma.  At the turn of the century flexibility and service were the key buzzwords.   Today, more and more companies both small and large alike are placing increasing emphasis on creating a sustained competitive advantage through the use of intangible assets – in particular human capital. 

Human capital is a fancy way of referring to your team.  I like the term human capital for two reasons. One, it just sounds smart and makes me feel fancy when I say it; but most importantly because capital is usually thought of as a tangible asset – capital equipment, cash, vehicles, and such.  In accounting capital assets are any item that can be assigned a hard monetary value. These physical and financial assets are extremely important and not to be devalued. Yet, by some estimates, up to 75% of a company’s value can be found in its intangible assets; human capital being one of four.  (Weatherly 2003)

Managing and exploiting this asset requires a dedication to recruiting, selection, training, performance management, and compensation.  I have several chapters of my book that attempt to scratch the surface of these topics (you can have it free here).   Delving into any of them in detail would require much more typing, and it’s late, and I’m tired so you will have to settle for an introduction to the topic.  Basically it can be summed up by looking at Southwest Airlines. 

Southwest doesn’t have better planes, tastier peanuts, or by no means more legroom. Yet time and time again they outperform their competitors in growth and profits.   Why? It’s all in the way they treat their employees, the company’s dedication to hiring individuals that fit the company culture, a sincere desire to provide a fun and meaningful work environment, and a heavy emphasis on training.  Especially cross training; a technique that provides their employees with the skills necessary to do multiple jobs.  Cross training benefits the employees through job enrichment and the company through cross functionality. Through their dedication to their employees Southwest in turn sees loyal, flexible, and highly productive employees.  Happy employees make two things – happy customers and a happy boss. 

I made a post a couple months ago that discussed a not so great customer encounter I witnessed.  It was by no means a rare exchange (read it here).  It could have been the result of many things, the most probable being a lack of empowerment.   Empowering employees means giving them the autonomy, responsibility, and authority for all aspects of their job; most notably customer service.  Empowered employees are held accountable for service standards; and in return they share in the rewards and losses of the results.  Empowered employees take ownership of their positions, dedicate more of themselves to their work, have higher, lower turnover, and lower absenteeism.  

Empowering employees requires a dedication from management; most notably on finding the right team.   Once you have them in place there are a few important principles for managing you team in a way that will lead to an environment of empowerment.   You can find them in my book. Get it free here.

Weatherly, L. (2003). “Human capital: the elusive asset.” HRMagazine 48(3).

Wondering why its been a little while since my last post?

Big Fish just added to our family.  A little boy – which is good because Daddy fish has been out numbered in the school for some time now. 

I will resume postings after the first of the year.  Merry Christmas to all of you.

I wanted to post some good stuff about email marketing.  I want to tell you how, if done correctly, it can be one of your biggest untapped resources for communicating with your clients.  However, there is a fine line between relevant and requested email communication (marketing) and spam.  Spam being the reason so many eyes roll when I suggest a good email marketing campaign.  I decided to dedicate my January newsletter to the topic of developing an effective email campaign – so be sure and subscribe. However, before I can do this I need to explain a very important concept that will make the difference between success and a major crash and burn; and it boils down to one very important word – permission.

Seth Godin is who marketing geeks like me look up to. If it wasn’t completely weird I may have a poster of the guy hanging in my office.  An MBA from Stanford, Seth has revived the movement of honest, passionate, sincere, and permission based marketing.  As a matter of fact I think he coined the term “permission marketing.”   He sums it up best by saying “permission is like dating. You don’t start by asking for anything at first impression. You earn the right, over time, bit by bit.”  Too many marketers want to show up and pop the question without first engaging in the dating process.  Dating is where you earn respect, where your clients get to know you, and most importantly for veterinarians, where they begin to trust you.

It may be better if I first explain the opposite of permission marketing; which is the Darth Vader to the Jedi movement, the dark side of marketing.  Interruption marketing is why so many business owners are lying to themselves by saying “marketing isn’t important” or “it’s a desperate attempt to boost sales or its intrusive”; if it’s done wrong, their right.  Here is an example.  I check my account balance a few times a week to see how little money I have at any given point in time.  Chase has my permission to keep my money but they do not have my permission to interrupt me with a pop-up screen, before I can see my balance, with some stupid offer for low interest credit cards.  This is irritating to the point of me wanting to leave the bank.  Interruption marketing at its finest – the boneheads.  Have you ever bought something online and were required to enter your email so they can send you a receipt?  Then, by some mysterious twist of fate, you’re getting marketing material from the company for the next 6 months until you “opt-out.”  Why should you have to do that, when did you ever opt in?

Permission marketing is the art of getting your customers to agree to communicate with you, easier than it sounds really.  The tricky part is keeping that permission.  To do so requires a two way relationship. You deliver relevant information designed in part to solve some sort problem (that term is used very loosely); and in return they give you their attention.  And attention is what marketing is all about.    Veterinarians are sitting on a gold mine with this concept.  Pet owners have pets because they love pets; right?  So talk about pets, teach them home care techniques, holiday do’s and don’ts, keep them updated on trends and new diseases, etc.  The topics are literally endless.  In return you get permission to use their email; and you can use it to remind them of appointments, heart-worm medicine, last minute promotions, and such.

Another example from yours truly.  I give my book away for free.   Anyone can get a copy by simply subscribing to my newsletter.  They get a book and I get a chance to send a newsletter once or twice a month showcasing the knowledge I have about the art of marketing.  Pretty good two way relationship so far.  So what is the catch? There really isn’t one.  I just feel if I can stay in front of enough veterinarians by providing them useful information they will come to me for any personal marketing help (which I can charge for).

The last time I talked about this topic a vet approached me at the end of the seminar and said he actually loves when his competitor up the road uses email because it drives customers to him.  Well, if you haven’t read anything I have written so far let me make this very clear. If done wrong, any marketing technique has a dark side, a Darth Vader.   That shouldn’t scare you away from marketing, it should just make you want to be a Jedi. 

If you want more on this topic, pick up a copy of his book “Permission Marketing;” its several years old now but still one of my favorite quick reads.  You can get it on Amazon for just a few bucks used.  Maybe I should get a cut of the sales for recommending it?

Sign Up For My Newsletter (Here) For More Free Marketing Tips Specifically For Vets.

By Frank Barnett, MABS

Emerson once famously said, “build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door,” and many a business owner has followed that advice to a spectacularly quick demise.  The simple fact is that it doesn’t matter how good your mousetrap is if nobody knows you’ve got one for sale. 

Once upon a time in the not-too-distant past, “being visible” meant taking out an ad in the newspaper or buying space in the local yellow pages.  But this is 2009, and as you may have heard, times are not great for salesmen selling a ¼ page ad in either of those mediums.  Whether you’re a veterinarian, retailer, a lawyer, a doctor, or even a church, you probably understand that the people you need to reach are looking for you online. 

Unfortunately, that’s where most businesses stop.  They hire someone to put up what amounts to an online yellow pages ad and wait for the phone to ring.  Others, recognizing that there are billions of websites out there, will spend the extra money to make their site look good.  In both cases, though, the business owner isn’t considering how to make sure their site gets seen. 

So how do you make sure that website gets seen?  If, as numerous statistics show, virtually all searchers give up after the first 2-3 pages of search results, how do you make sure your site is part of that top-ranking group? 

The first step in answering that is to properly define what your website is and what it is not.  First, your website is not a yellow pages ad.  Your website is an outside salesperson.  Their job is to get in front of potential clients or customers and convince them to do business with you. 

There are three ways to get your website in front of potential clients and customers: SEO, SEM, and PPC.  We’ll define each and explain the benefits of each. 

SEO is primarily concerned with the code and architecture of your site, so that the search engines see that your site offers a relevant answer to your potential customers’ online searches.  Without question, every site needs proper optimization when the site is built, and then ongoing efforts to keep your site in top performing condition.  Your SEM efforts will deliver “link juice” to the site.  If your site doesn’t distribute this in an optimal manner, even the best SEM efforts can have only a limited effect. 

SEM overlaps with SEO, in that it’s concerned with building your site’s online reputation, through off-page marketing efforts and link-building campaigns – which the search engines do take into account when considering how highly to rank your site.  In fact, over the past few years, the most accurate predictor of a site’s rank has been the number and diversity of off-page, inbound links.    

Pay-per-Click marketing (PPC) is the third tool to get your site seen.  Because Google has a market share of more than 80% of searches, this typically means their Adwords program, although Yahoo and MSN both have PPC programs, as well.  PPC has many benefits, most importantly, of the three, it’s without question the fastest and most precisely measurable way to get customers and clients to your site.  As a marketing initiative, the cost per conversion is dramatically less than virtually any other medium, including email, direct mail or newsletters.  Its strengths are best leveraged for a two types of sites: sites that need highly targeted traffic, and sites that have a measurable conversion metric, such as a sale, a lead generation, or a registration.  Sites without a measurable success point should probably avoid PPC marketing.  Similar to a billboard, PPC will deliver “eyeballs,” but compared with longer-term strategies like SEO and SEM, that traffic is expensive.

While mastering these three tools can be pretty complex, there are a few basic steps anyone can do to help their websites rank.  We’ve listed a few here to get you started:

SEO (On-Page Improvements):

-          Do you know what keywords your customers are searching under?

-          Do those keywords appear in your Title Tags (the title tag is what shows up on the very top of the browser when you’re looking at a website)?

-          Do they also appear in your description tags (the page description often is what shows up on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) underneath your page title)?

-          Do you use those keywords in the text on your homepage?  How about on sub-pages?

-          Do you use those keywords in the links on your page? 

SEM (Off-Page Improvements):

-          Do other sites link to you?

-          Have you published any articles to popular article directories that link back to your site?

-          Do you regularly participate in meaningful, substantive discussions relevant to your site’s main theme on message boards, with links back to your site?

-          Do you comment on other blogs when they discuss topics relevant to your site’s main theme?  

PPC:

-          Do you know what keywords your customers are searching under?

-          Avoid using “broad match” keywords.  Instead, use phrase match, or – where possible – exact match keywords, as these are much more precise (and measurable) and typically much cheaper.

-          Use negative keywords to eliminate irrelevant searches.  For example, if advertizing computer keyboards, you’d want to eliminate musical keyboards or electric pianos.

-          Constantly split test your ads in order to maximize not only click through rate, but also conversion rate.

-          Above all, make sure your landing page has targeted content to deliver on the promises your advertisement is making.

These steps should get you started, and even a little time invested in internet marketing will get you ahead of much of your competition.  However, if you’d like to really see what your site can do, you should look at what a professional can do.  The search engines change their algorithms all the time and without notice – which can have a dramatic effect on your rankings and your PPC prices.  It’s often well worth the investment to hire someone who spends their days working to optimize and promote sites and monitoring the latest search engine updates.