By Cheyanne Flerx & Janel Hutton

Welcome to the new world of marketing your veterinary practice! With all the new changes happening, we wanted to offer you some ideas to support you as you navigate the uncharted water we face. Ready to dive in and recalibrate your marketing journey? Let’s go! 

Topic Ideas for the Vet Clinic Blog:

Keeping your blog up to date with helpful and educational content is still a useful tool to utilize. Here are some blog topics to get you going: 

• Share tips on how pet owners can protect their pets from fleas and ticks
• Tell what Telemedicine is and how your practice is offering this service. 
• Share five ways owners can safely “spoil” their pets during National Pet Week.
• Share ways your practice is still serving clients during the pandemic.

Video Ideas:

Video is still one of the most consumed pieces of content across multiple social media platforms. Use that knowledge to your advantage! 

Try these ideas: 

• Video Idea #1: Virtual Nail Trim Demo – Video or slideshow of demonstrating how to clip pet’s toenails. In the video, use a pet that is very easy going about the different steps on how to clip pets’ nails. PRO TIP: Use pictures to show what and where the quick is. 
• Video Idea #2: Curbside Service Preview – We have talked before about making videos of how a patient is checked in and how an examination occurs. This time, try showing your clients how curbside check-in works! Put clips together of someone calling in, a team member answering the call, and then coming out to the client’s car, and retrieving the patient. Here’s a crucial part of the video: show how the exam will go and where! Show how your team is still providing patients with the same amount of compassion as you always have and will. Then show the pet reunited with the owner. Showing this process can put some owners at ease and allow them to understand that your clinic is still practicing the best care possible for their pets. 
• Video Idea #3: Show and Tell How Telemedicine Works – Is your practice offering Telemedicine services? Illustrate how easy it is for clients to reach your team using your telemedicine services with a video demo. In the video, show how a telemedicine appointment works! Clients will love the fact that they can still speak with their veterinarian in the comforts of their home while practicing social distancing.

Facebook Post Ideas:

• Post Idea #1: Encourage Home Delivery – Do you use an online pharmacy at your clinic? Right now is a great time to promote your online pharmacy. Encourage your clients to order their pet’s medication from a reliable vendor and have it delivered straight to their door! Tell them or SHOW THEM how easy it is! CTA: Remember to include a link to your website or online pharmacy. 
• Post Idea #2: Educate on Parasite Prevention – Parasites don’t practice social distancing! It’s parasite prevention season and those ticks, fleas, and mosquitos are coming out. Remind your clients that even though you and your pets are spending more time indoors, that doesn’t mean they still can’t get those nasty diseases and bugs. Find more ways to promote your flea and tick preventives here.
• Post Idea #3: Celebrate National Pet Week! (May 3-9th) This is a great week to get engagement from your audience! Ask for submissions for photos, do a small photo contest, or ask your followers what they love most about their pet, etc.
• Post Idea #4: Show Telemedicine in Action! –  If you are offering telemedicine, give a glimpse as to what they can expect. Take a picture of one of your doctors preparing for a telemedicine appointment. Or snap a video of an appointment with a client and pet on the screen in progress. 
• Post Ideas #5: Patient At Curbside – Take a picture of a patient in the car with their owner, while they are waiting for their appointment. In the caption, mention how the owner and patient are utilizing curbside services to keep everyone safe.

Facebook Banner Ideas

Here are some examples of banners you can use to spruce up your Facebook page. 

• Banner Idea #1: Spring or summer theme! – Ask your followers to help brighten up your Facebook page with this example. 

• Banner Idea #2: Highlight your team! Show off what makes your clinic special, especially during this challenging time! It’ll also make your team feel special.

Instagram Post Ideas:

• Post Idea #1: Honor Your CSRs on Receptionist Day (May 13th) – If you missed Veterinary Receptionist Week in April, here is another opportunity to celebrate your hard-working Receptionists. The week of, do a highlight each of your front desk team members. Talk about how long they have been at your clinic, what customers say about them, their pets, what their favorite part about their job is, a fun fact, etc. If your team is large and would take centuries to highlight each member, consider creating one post celebrating them all as I (Janel) did for my clinic:

• Post Idea #2: Behind the Scenes: CSR Edition – Show behind the scene footage of what your receptionists do in a day. Give your audience a glimpse of all of the love and care your CSR team provides. Ask your followers to say something encouraging. Your team will appreciate all the fantastic comments from your clients.  
• Post Idea #3: Mayday for Mutts (May 5th) – Dedicate this day to show off your mixed breed patients in a unique way! If you don’t already have photos, try to capture pictures of mutts that come into your clinic for appointments. Fun Tip: Ask followers to guess the breed mixes for a fun and engaging way to get your audience to interact. This aspect of your social media marketing is super valuable right now. 

• Post Ideas #4: Delivery! – Show a picture of a delivered prescription from your online store. In the caption, share the benefits of ordering from your online pharmacy and link to the store—bonus points for using flea and tick preventives as an example. 

Instagram or Facebook Stories Ideas:

• Story Idea #1: Host a Receptionist TAKEOVER! Leading up to National Receptionist Day, ask your front desk team to take pics of their day to day routine, have fun, take selfies with patients, etc. Incorporate some fun graphics on premade story slides on Canva and Instagram stickers when posting.
• Story Idea #2: Ordering as easy as 1, 2, 3! – Demonstrate how easy it is to order from your online pharmacy with a short video tutorial.
• Story Idea #3: The doctor will see you now – Follow a patient coming in from curbside and show the process that the patient goes through during their appointment. Highlight how the team lovingly interacts with the patient. 
• Story Idea #4: Telemedicine Tips – Explain how easy it is to schedule a telemedicine appointment and what type of appointments are best for virtual visits.

Cheyanne’s Bonus Biscuit of the Month

Keeping your content organized is essential to maximize the time you have to work on social media. I have a few tools I use to help maximize my time without sacrificing the quality of my social media content. 

Here are my top 3 favorite tools: 

• Milanote: I used to plot and organize my tasks for projects, files, and ideas.  
• Airtable: used to plan and track my social media calendar. This is where I write out all my captions and add my graphics for each social media post and share it with my team. PRO TIP: Organizing the content this way, provides me with a backup in case my scheduled posts get deleted. 
• Creator Studio: I use this tool to help me to schedule all my social media posts for Facebook and Instagram ahead of time. 

If you want more tools recommendations, download this pdf!

Psst…I’ve created a bunch of planners to help you save time on creating your own marketing plan! I just came out with one focused on marketing your telemedicine services. Check it out here! 

Janel’s Bonus Biscuit of the Month

Social media is changing! If you are a social media insights nerd like me, you may notice your numbers are all over the place! Posts that generally do well at certain times aren’t getting attention or tons of attention, and what is with all the messages?! 

While people are sheltering at home, they are on social media more. You also may notice in your newsfeed that big businesses and local businesses are showing a lot more ads. They are trying to take advantage of all the consumers online right now. Even though this might look like a great strategy, it’s not going to work in the long run. As the country settles into this new normal and gets back to regular business, those ads will most likely cost these businesses more, and their engagement will go down. 

During this weird time, look at your insights EVERY DAY to see your numbers and how they are changing. Post more engaging content through different times of the day to attract NEW followers. Post information that is relevant and important to your clinic’s current COVID policies but ask for a CTA (Call To Action. Check to see who is liking your posts, and if they haven’t liked or followed your page yet, invite them. This is an easy and excellent way to get new followers. 

People are craving entertaining content to escape from this new scary world. With adjusting to this “new normal” and altering the way you approach your social media, you can make light of these strange times and attract new clients, connect more with current clients, and have a super successful social media page! 

So, have some fun! Take more pictures of your team members, pictures of patients, shots of your team and patients interacting, make your own memes (or have a contest of asking people to caption the photo), post fun videos, etc. 

Hang in there, friends! We are all in this together.

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