You’re not alone in feeling the discomfort of having fewer veterinary leads coming your way. While many veterinary practices are improving their per-client transactions, the slower economy and more competition mean that they’re seeing fewer clients.
A full-time veterinarian should be able to generate leads that reach the 2k mark per year. However, many are having difficulty doing so since most lead generation strategies are being affected by how most veterinarians aren’t exploding the opportunity for digital marketing.
To get more potential customers, you need to know how to work in your lead generation by integrating the traditional yet new strategies to get more sales-qualified leads.
Most of the time, the right steps to marketing qualified leads are to start with knowing your clients and set more than one lead generation strategy your team or yourself can work to improve lead scoring and with it, naturally, your clients.
Although this is more of a service, you can have a wide view of generating veterinary leads as any other business. Sales teams, lead generation tools, sales pipelines, and strategies like content marketing can be integrated and used while being adjusted to your goals and niche.
To lend a hand and guarantee you don’t make as many mistakes as others during your lead generation process, we can share some steps and strategies that will be just the beginning of your journey.
Find Your Ideal Client
Before you even start to attract leads to your business, you need to think and form a picture of your ideal customer.
Knowing the type of customers, you are looking for makes it easier to find them. Overall, it is important to have a clear idea of whom you are targeting.
Think about people’s needs and what you can do to solve them. Just try to make their lives easier.
You should refrain from making broad statements about your target market that would usually limit those interested, like focusing on specific animals or pets, especially when you can manage any type.
Avoid overstating your audience. This will just hinder you from creating viable targeted strategies for attracting new qualified leads.
Direct Response Marketing
The best way to reach out to people is to target your market with messages. You need to use techniques to get them to take a specific action.
Take some time and learn how to create ads that appeal to your ideal clients. Give them something of value to help them get started in your funnel.
Remember, direct response marketing techniques are important. They will help you focus on the results that matter and show your current clients and leads that you are sensitive to their pain and can help make it better.
Work with Other Businesses
Another great way to expand your veterinary business’s reach is to join hands with other companies:
- Look for other businesses that cater to the same clientele: Try writing down a list of companies or even brands that appeal to the same audience.
- Think about what you could offer your clients: You might partner with a local animal goodies store to give away coupons for appetizers. Partner with a dog grooming store (for example) specializing in dog fashion to get a complimentary health check session. It’s up to you what kind of marketing materials and paperwork you create in order for customers to use and benefit from the deal you are offering.
But the partnership doesn’t stop here. When you attract new customers through it, you still need to figure out a way to make them return.
You could use membership discounts cards, special cards, or coupons to convert leads into clients on your partnership visits, thanks to the offers for their pets or any animal.
Organize In-Person Events
Let people know you and your business. In-person events are a great way for people in your area to get to know you and your partnership businesses.
Public workouts and pet gatherings can easily be held in parks. Pet salons can host style shows and request volunteers to be hair models. Although you are not the latter, you can join and have similar events that will help to bring potential clients your way.
Don’t forget to make sure that you offer freebies to all the people who attend your event.
An excellent way to collect their personal information is to let them know that you will send coupons to their home addresses or email. This way, you can build your own lead list.
Take the chance and use social media to create a hashtag and host a contest in order to engage new clients in your online marketing.
Don’t neglect your marketing efforts by underestimating the number of employees you actually need. Include as many extra employees as needed and make your event a complete success.
Offer Discounts & Freebies
Remember what we have mentioned about offers, discounts, cards, and all the goodies so far? They truly work.
If you want to attract more leads to your veterinary business, offering discounts on the services you provide may be a good choice regardless of your location.
Although it might not be the best strategy for growing a business, giving away freebies will prove to be a great way to expand in the long term.
For example, if you are a veterinary business owner, offering a free check-up on a client’s first visit will surely help you convert them into loyal customers.
Remember that people care for their pets greatly, so if you treat them well, their owners will come back whenever they need your services.
Don’t forget to ask your clients to leave a testimonial in return for offering your services free of charge. It is a great way to increase your customer base.
This is indeed a good way to improve your business, but keep in mind that you must never give away more time or money than you can afford.
Recharge Your Reminder System
While reviewing your reminder system, you need to ask yourself some questions: Do you send out email reminders to your clients? How many reminders do you actually send?
Keep in mind that the system should be about 80% effective. This means that you have a response rate of 80% after you’ve completed the entire reminder program protocol.
This is a tedious practice since there is no one right way to remind people. You will need to tailor your reminder system to achieve the best results.
If you want to lighten your work, try using email and text message reminders to increase the effectiveness and free yourself from this repetitive and tedious task.
Sending at least three reminders every 30 days is a good way to start. Program the type of reminder according to the number of times you’ll be sending them.
For example, you might send a simple postcard as the first reminder and a tri-fold note for the second. Most of the time, a pet reminder postcard is sent for the third reminder.
If you take a minute to check your reminder statistics after you start working on it and give it some time, you will notice many high-quality leads come thanks to this method.
They may have brought their pet in for skin, eye, ear problems, or other medical conditions. The important part is that you are getting your clients. Just make sure you are always present and stay in touch with your system.
Start a Practice Outreach Program
The best way to introduce yourself to your local area is to interact with other owners or managers of local businesses such as pet grooming salons, dog daycares, or pet shops.
Many animal-related businesses share clients. Imagine how many clients you could attract if your local facility referred people to your hospital.
Also, before doing any partnership, you must ensure that the business you approach has a great reputation and provides high-quality service and care.
If you offer veterinary health care, you won’t want to be approached by other veterinary facilities. So try aiming for pet shops, cat clubs, or dog training facilities in your local area.
You’ll likely find someone who is open to your call once you make it.
Here’s a good idea of how you can improve your business by implementing an outreach program:
- Visit a local pet shop and invite the owner for lunch. Talk about cooperation while showing your veterinary clinic good points.
- Held an educational meeting with pet store employees about first aid and signs that an animal is in distress. This practice should be given to pet store employees as a VIP tour.
By doing these kinds of practices, some veterinary hospitals have seen at least a 60% increase in the number of new clients. These new clients are mainly referrals from pet stores.
Pet stores employees deal with pet owners every single day, so it isn’t strange for some people to ask which veterinarian they recommend. Don’t miss the opportunity and be the one they mention.
Go out of your clinic and establish relationships with local rescues, charities, and doggy daycares.
Make all those businesses be aware of how wonderful your practice is. This way, you can make them recommend your veterinary services to others.
It’s quite easy to network by simply visiting and calling local businesses. This can help you become the top referral source for new high-quality leads.
But wait, it is not just about making your business grow. It is also good to educate the community about your services and values.
Social Media Can Always Be Leveraged
You should abuse social media. Take a look at the demographics in your area and engage new leads by posting about your veterinary business and the services you provide.
If you don’t have any idea about how to use social media, just ask your employees or take a short yet intensive course online that will help with the basics. Essentially, you can start right with some knowledge and not every detail pieced together.
Social media can be a powerful marketing tool. You just need to invest some time to create good quality content about your practice and post it.
If you don’t have the time, just delegate this task to one of your employees while you keep an eye on it yourself.
Work on Your Website
Many practices neglect their websites or simply don’t have one. Don’t be one of them.
A website is an interactive way for your leads to find out about your business and how they can bring their pets and request new appointments.
Sites that provide a virtual hospital tour, with many photos and links to helpful resources, are the most popular.
Remember that your website is your digital image of the practice. So, take your time and do it right. You can always hire a professional to make one and teach you how to manage it properly.
Websites like “Groupon” are also a good method to increase your visits. For example, you might advertise a service on a coupon such as a complete physical exam.
Then the coupon holder must submit the certificate to you. If the coupon holder does, they will be eligible to receive your services with a discount or totally free of charge.
Groupons are generally available only for a limited time and usually come out in the morning.
Keep in mind that the response determines the cost of Groupon. If you don’t receive a response, it won’t cost you absolutely anything.
Search Engine Marketing
When in trouble, people immediately go looking for a solution on the internet, pet owners included.
So, in case of a problem or emergency, your website should appear in the search results for pet owners searching Google for “best pet clinic in my area.”
You should invest in improving your online visibility. Your marketing efforts are only half-finished if you don’t.
Suppose you’re just starting with Search Engine Marketing. In that case, Google AdWords is a great Search Engine Optimization tool to help your website be up there among the first results when people look for veterinary services.
Reputation Management Is Crucial
Ask your clients to rate and write reviews about your clinic. Your client’s opinions about your services greatly influence your business’ growth.
Encourage them to share positive words about your services right after you have provided them. Their testimonials can be displayed on your website and social media posts.
Word of mouth advertising is the best way to promote your business and the largest source of leads.
Online reviews are super important since they greatly impact your business growth.
Remember that most people use the internet to look for anything, and existing clients will likely Google search you before even calling you.
If you have been doing good work managing your website, they’ll see customer feedback and star ratings right away. If your clients feel valued, they will be loyal.
By asking them to leave online feedback, you can take your time and respond back to their comments. This will show that you care about their experience and let them know you are listening.
Google and other review sites are the most important to focus your attention on them.
Client Relationship Management (CRM)
In order to properly manage a good business relationship, you should have a strong database of clients.
As a veterinary business owner, you need to use a Practice Management System (PMS). Most owners usually get an inbuilt CRM Module in their veterinary computer program.
All veterinarians need to know how to effectively use their veterinary computer programs as CRM. These are the steps you need to follow in order to do the same.
- Send your leads and regular clients a welcome email: This way, they will be able to see that your clinic is professional and uses modern technology for communication.
- Send promotional emails from time to time: Include discounts and freebies. This will encourage them to visit your clinic more often than usual.
- Use automated reminders: They can be sent to remind clients about routine or periodic visits. This will save you some time and eliminate the need to send reminders by mail to clients.
- Get feedback about your service: Ask for feedback and suggestions to improve your service. Customer feedback is invaluable in helping you understand their expectations and meet them.
- Cross-sharing is always an option: This can be done for additional products and services, such as pet food and medicines. The CRM database can greatly help you by providing details about your patients, such as their age, food tastes, etc.
Use User-Generated Content
You can actually get really creative with your business’s social media channels by running a user-generated campaign (UGC).
Try interacting with your clients and promoting a photo contest, best comment contest, or others where customers are rewarded for having the most likes and shares.
These campaigns are a great way to nurture existing customers and get exposure for your business so you can generate even more leads.
Give Back to Others
Leads may choose to support your brand if they see you are supporting a cause. Offer your services as a sponsor at charity events by having a table or booth available.
Play around with your app and see how many people you can bring. Remember never to underestimate these kinds of events.
Pay attention to fundraising campaigns in your community and ask for a chance to participate to finally move onto the previous strategy of organizing or taking part in some events.
Give special attention to the winner of the raffle or auction and invite him to redeem the coupon. This way, you can give personal attention and show what they can expect at your business.
Meet New People Whenever It Is Possible
You can attract more leads if you have more people who are aware of your services. Not only focus on other business owners and managers to promote your business.
Get some help from your own employees. They are also responsible for marketing, and even your family and friends can be a helping hand.
Your employees should do the networking. Allow them to find qualified leads by allowing them some time in their work schedules.
Treat them well and promote your business by inviting them to events and nights out. Give them coupons and other freebies so they can talk about your brand.
Please Share What You Know
Did you ever find yourself enjoying the work of an artist more after hearing them speak about it or seeing how much effort went into it? You sure did.
Successful owners enjoy talking about how they started up their companies, so don’t be afraid of sharing the successes of your business.
In your case, try sharing your favorite moments treating patients and pets, how you helped them recover and how grateful their owners were towards you afterward.
You can also share videos of your veterinary practice for educational purposes. Young students will surely thank you for giving them some tips.
Sharing information in local publications, such as news magazines and food magazines, is also a great method to promote your business and tell your story simultaneously.
People will be more interested in your services if they know what you do and how good you are while doing so.
The Local Lead Generation Process for Your Veterinary Business
All right! So, everything is about building properties and generating leads. But how does the process actually take place? Are there other steps I need to know?
The steps I mention below are what students from our local lead generation program follow to generate leads for businesses like yourself. So I’ll help you see what we do. And how if you join our program, you can simply generate leads for your own business (unless you want to start a side hustle and build a laptop lifestyle business).
Essentially, our lead generation can be divided into four steps:
The first is prospecting. You need to take the time to do market research on a niche (industry) and determine how many phone-driven businesses are there.
Keep in mind that this is local research as you need to know how many companies need leads. For example, you may search for “plumbing services Youngstown OH.”
You will find dozens or even hundreds of businesses trying to get themselves in front of the customers by ranking on Map Listings, organic results, and even Ad.
The second step, building. When you find a niche (plumbing, tree services, a software company, real estate…), you will need to start building your digital properties. You don’t need to be an expert in HTML or coding. It can be easy with the right tools.
The third step is now taking time to rank your lead gen website. With the site done, you need to work on SEO strategies and start dominating those Google search results. If you’re new to SEO, it stands for Search Engine Optimization.
To keep it simple, it consists of the entire process of growing a company’s visibility on search engines like Google and generating organic traffic. And remember this, local lead generation is part of the strategies.
Moving on to step four, once you rank the site, you will start getting your ROI and profits. You only need to rent it out to a local business interested in the leads the site generates. You can offer a couple of free leads to their move on with the actual pay per lead.
To review steps 1-4 above, I described it to a normal student who is building a lead gen business to help local service providers generate more calls. But replace the student with you as the business owner. And replace sending the leads to a business to simply siphoning the leads to your personal business.
By the way, fun fact, about 20% of our students in our local lead gen program are actually business owners who went through the program. And they use the skillsets we teach to generate leads for their own business.
An Example of Lead Generation: Home Advisor
You must be thinking, “if lead generation sounds so good so far, how come I haven’t seen any company?” That’s the thing; there are many out there. You just don’t know they are dedicated to it.
HomeAdvisor is one of the best examples you can find on the Internet as it is a top lead generation company that has spent millions building its brand but also earned even more zeros for this same reason.
They started small as everyone else but invested in building their brand awareness to make people who are looking for home services go to their website and find what they need. They are over 75% of people’s first choice when they need those services.
If you don’t get HomeAdvisor that much or need a refresh, users need to submit their information to request a service and get a professional or expert who can provide it.
HomeAdvisor’s job is to share your information, which makes you a lead, with local companies so they can contact you and offer the service you’re requesting. For sharing this lead information, HomeAdvisor gets paid by the companies. This happens for every single lead they send to multiple businesses.
Business owners who don’t have marketing skills or don’t even know how to have any online presence will always rely on those pages to list their services. They will save time and effort, but companies like HomeAdvisor can make them spend lots of money as leads aren’t exclusive (one lead is sent to multiple companies after all).
Using Facebook Ads aka Paid Ad Platforms: Do They Generate Leads?
They DO generate leads. If not, no one would use them.
However, you need to remember two facts:
- Paid ads or platforms can be expensive.
- They don’t generate “natural” leads.
Whenever someone sees or clicks in one of those ads, over 80% of them did it by accident or are trying to close/report it.
Why? Because they aren’t looking for those services. At least not at the moment.
What those ads do instead is interrupt their time on the platforms. Users aren’t there to find companies or businesses unless they are searching for a specific company’s user, and for that, there’s a search bar. This is why it is hard to convert them to actual customers who will show interest in the companies’ services. Also, you’re limited by a budget.
When using lead generation, everything is organic. You aren’t forcing others to pay attention to your business but rather being there when they need you. This is why Google’s organic traffic will always beat paid ads, and the reason companies continue investing in it, which is a lot cheaper as well.
What Is Local SEO?
Don’t worry… I didn’t get it at first either. Following the short explanation, local SEO focuses on scaling businesses’ visibility on search engines. However, this is only for those who serve their communities face-to-face.
What does this mean?
Experts and professionals like painters, plumbers, and dentists (but not only them) offer their services to their local customers. Why? Because they can’t deliver them unless they are located in the same area of their customers.
To make sure those businesses get more leads, you need to rank them locally by claiming the business listing on Google to place them on Map Listings. Local SEO also involves online reviews, citation management, and how you manage your entire online presence in the local area.
If you are going to bet on lead gen, you need to adapt yourself to today’s world: The Internet.
Keep in mind that although traditional channels and methods like billboards, warm calls, and pamphlets still work, they aren’t part of your tools. Whenever someone needs a service, they go to Google and search for it.
“Dentist in Miami” or “plumbing services in Orlando,” etc. And you can keep coming up with services or professionals people need and look for. Thus, you need to make sure you’re using Google to get the companies in front of their clients.
Users will always click on the first search results (those near the top), and many of them will be either Ad links (people paid to place their websites there), Map Listing, and then you get websites. Almost all of them are your goal and where you should always aim to place yourself.
Can My Veterinary Business Utilize a Local Lead Generation Strategy?
If you want customers, you better know you need it. Following the previous explanation, lead gen is all about placing businesses in front of their customers, choosing them over their competitors.
Put it simply – it’s all about closing deals and having clients for those companies to make money. The main difference with the usual methods companies use for this is how lead generation approaches different channels to get them in the right place of the market to get customers.
Those channels are all focused on the Internet as most people are searching for products but also services across the net. The issue is that the Internet is way too broad, and businesses don’t know how to place themselves. They usually try, but they get one common result: losing money and time.
How Powerful Are Organic Veterinary Leads from Google?
For companies looking for customers, it’s everything. For you? Pretty much the same. When you build a business with digital properties, you get to make thousands of dollars a month.
This isn’t a “get started today and get rich tomorrow” thing, but it is HIGHLY scalable, and ROI + positive results are guaranteed. Learning a fairly decent and very needed set of skills to create your digital properties and start ranking them on Google is required.
I have invested in several online businesses over the years, and if there’s something uncertain, whether you will get your ROI or not, even more than the actual profit.
However, this business moved my earnings from five figures a year to a month in ONLY passive income while sitting comfortably at home.
On my laptop. Anywhere. Anytime.
You can look at one of the first sites I built back in 2016, and it continues making me over $1.000+ every month. The best part is that I don’t need to touch it or the rest I’ve built over the years, just like this digital property.
What Makes Lead Generation SO Alluring?
Here it goes: you can work from home.
The main issue with regular business opportunities is how much you need to invest in staff, equipment, or rent to have a place to sell your products or offer your services.
We all know the hassles of traditional businesses that involve regular expenses, which are extremely high. Can you afford it? I don’t think so, and even if you can, is it worth it? Now, it isn’t only about the money. You also need to put in a lot of work, and it isn’t only during the first couple of months or years. Usually, it is as long as you continue running it.
You can save yourself those headaches and bone-breaking tasks and expenses with lead gen since it is more about generating leads with digital channels—mainly websites.
Websites can be VERY cheap to build, and with many tools online, you get to do it in a couple of hours instead of days. Any virtual or digital business is scalable and won’t need constant maintenance.
So, let’s summarize this:
- You save money in regular expenses with traditional and most online businesses as what you need is yourself and digital properties (websites).
- You can bet on passive income.
- There’s no need to hire more people to get started.
- You can generate leads in multiple industries, which allows you to work on any niche you want.
How Can I Get Started in the Local Lead Generation Program?
Anyone can start and learn. That’s the beauty of this business model. I knew nothing about SEO, Map Listing, and everything I’ve mentioned so far. It is all about learning the skills, gaining experience, and deciding to take the step.
Remember that this business model will never get old as business owners are always looking for leads. They need to do business and scale their companies. Why not do the same while helping others and still making money?
You can start with this local lead generation course highly recommended for anyone wanting to grow in the business. It is a close training that will take you through each step and make sure you are able to get your ROI, profits and take control of your life.
You will be added to an incredible lead generation family ready to help you 24/7 when asking questions on the group. Anyone is welcome who’s willing to put in the work. Click here to watch the lead gen webinar.