Editor’s note: This blog is several years old, and no longer fully represents how we’d guide you on marketing your vet clinic. (These were awesome, but things change. We’ve leveled up!) We’re keeping it here for SEO brownie points, but we would now recommend you first focus on developing a clear brand strategy. That way, you don’t need “post ideas for spring” that will make you look every other vet clinic. Instead, you already have a unique brand to market year-round! If you’d like to learn more, we share a lot of free tips via email – snag a spot on our list here. (Or check out our courses and coaching programs!)
By Cheyanne Flerx and Janel Hutton
Spring is in the air, can you feel it where you are? With the weather starting to warm up, we all know that means that parasites and insects will be making more appearances.
How do you plan on educating your clients in a fun and engaging way that will convert into business for your hospital?
The month of April is full of educational topics for you to choose from to use for marketing. Perhaps your clinic wants to focus on parasite prevention, increase the number of fecal tests sold, or share more about first aid for pets. Don’t worry if you don’t have a plan yet because we’ve got your back, boo!
For the Clinic Blog:
Topic Ideas:
- What’s Eating Your Pet?
- How To Protect Your Pet From Heartworms
- 4 Tips For A Heartworm Free Household
- How To Create a Pet First Aid Kit At Home
- 3 Ways to ID Your Pet
Video:
VIDEO IDEA #1: Do a short video of your staff thanking your veterinarians for World Veterinary Day. If you want to include your patients, include them in the video barking and meowing, then add subtitles of them pretending to say, “Thank you.”
VIDEO IDEA #2: Ask for followers to submit a video of their pet enjoying/taking their heartworm preventive. Bonus points if they do a trick!! Remember to include a call-to-action detailing what clients can do to refill their monthly preventatives.
VIDEO IDEA #3: Show off your patients enjoying the sun as they play outside!
VIDEO IDEA #4: Use a video to grab attention to remind pet owners to give their heartworm preventives. Be creative! It can be a doctor talking or a pet
Facebook Ideas
POST IDEA #1: Educate your clients on how to make their Easter celebrations safe and fun with an infographic. Make sure to create an infographic that is clear, simple, and shareable.
POST IDEA #2: Have fun with Bulldogs are Beautiful Day and ask your bulldog owners to share pictures of their bulldogs in the comments. For your post, you could take a picture of one of your staff members with a bulldog patient and include a call to action for owners to share their bulldog pictures.
POST IDEA #3: Celebrate World Veterinary Day by highlighting your veterinarians, either on that day or throughout that week. Do an “interview” with them and ask them questions like “What is your favorite ice cream?”, “Would you rather…”, “What is your hidden talent?”, “If you could only eat one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be?”. Create a dialog that gets your followers attention by humanizing your veterinarians. Use their bio pictures from your website for the post or a fun picture. Include a link in the caption to where people can learn more about each vet on your website.
Instagram Ideas:
POST IDEA # 1: Share a tip that will make your clients lives easier like ways to help reduce stress for their pets or share safe options pet owners can use during Easter.
POST IDEA # 2: In your Instagram story, share some quick tips about parasite statistics local to your area. Use the “Poll” sticker or the “Question” sticker to engage clients and ask them trivia questions on the subject.
After sharing some statistics, you can do a simple story clip on your parasite prevention giveaway by directing people to your bio link in your profile (which hopefully is going to be directing people to a custom landing page with all of your Instagram links). Don’t have a page like this? Request a demo with WhiskerCloud custom veterinary websites to discover more about how they can help. (You’ll save big on start-up when you mention you’re a Snout School follower).
POST IDEA # 3: Use Boomerang App to show off your veterinarians in action at the veterinary clinic! Use hashtags like #worldveterinaryday and #weloveourveterinarians, plus local hashtags that are relevant to your community.
Janel’s Bonus Biscuit of the Month
USE VIDEO! Using video to create engagement is one of my favorite posts. There are so many editing apps out there, but all you really need is your phone. Take a short video of a dog wagging, doing a trick, or running around the lobby. Highlight your staff. They don’t even need to talk to you, take a video of them waving or doing their task, or even just petting a cute dog. Use video to show how personal your staff can get with your patients and show that you truly care.
Facebook loves video uploaded straight to their platform. Facebook will push more followers to see your video in their newsfeed to grab attention. You’ll also see that people love watching videos and LOVE SHARING THEM. Especially if the video features their pet!
So if you take a video of a pet, while asking for permission, show off the video and let the owner know that their pet will be Facebook famous. That owner will love the bragging rights and share away! If the pet has its own Facebook page or Instagram page, TAG THEM. The more ways to grab engagement and attention, the better!
Add a call to action. At the end of the post, let owners know they can book an appointment, pick up their heartworm prevention, visit our website for more info, etc.
Tools of the trade: My favorite apps to create videos are iMovie, Boomerang, and Ripl. There is a slideshow option in Facebook when you create your post from a computer, but from my experience, it doesn’t work all the time. But when it does, it is pretty cool! It turns your photos into a video slideshow. Play around with it and see what you can create.
Cheyanne’s Bonus Biscuit of the Month
If you are wanting a way to promote your sales for your flea and tick preventative or heartworm preventive, consider hosting a giveaway to entice your clients. I run my giveaways on a point system, so for each purchase, the client receives one entry towards winning the grand prize. If the client purchases a year’s worth of preventive, I give them 5 entries into towards the grand prize (or one for each purchase plus one for the buying a year’s worth).
I try to keep it simple to help keep the entries organized and easy for me to track. I only will give entries to clients who purchase products from us to incentivize our client to convert and make that purchase.
PRO TIP: Ask your reps, of the product you are looking to increase sales in, to sponsor the grand prize. For my last contest, I was able to get my Merck rep to sponsor the grand prize and a Facebook ad.
After our Bravecto contest ended, our Bravecto sales grew over 50% compared to last year’s sales. THAT’S AMAZING! Make sure you can track your conversion that your giveaway generates right from the start so that you can measure how your sales were affected by the giveaway.
About The Authors
Cheyanne Flerx
Cheyanne Flerx is the owner and founder of Hey Cheyanne, LLC and a former Veterinary Assistant now turned Veterinary Social Media Marketing Coach. Cheyanne is on a mission to use her experience and knowledge to uplift and empower fellow Veterinary Social Media Marketers and train them to do their jobs more effectively and efficiently. Follow her for more social media post ideas, marketing trainings, and guidance on her website.
