Veterinary Digital Marketing Made Easier with Vetstoria

To promote or not to promote? The answer is usually yes, especially if your practice suffers from days of low footfall. Promotions or ‘campaigns’ can supplement the flow of pet-owners through your door when done right. There are, however, challenges in creating effective veterinary digital marketing campaigns.

Why control matters in the veterinary industry

One of the biggest challenges faced by practices that run promotional marketing campaigns online is a lack of control. In particular, the ability to control the dates, times, and the number of slots available for a specific promotion.

Let’s say you run a promotion for discounted vaccinations on Facebook. The response is great. You’re inundated with appointments. However, they all happen to be during your busiest times, or with your experienced vets who are already very busy while your new graduate who just joined has more availability. It could end up being counterproductive and create more headaches for your team.

In cases where a vet practice takes appointments over the phone or manually confirms requests, new problems arise. Promotional campaigns can create more manual work for an already busy front desk. And if a scheduling solution that integrates with your practice management system is not in place, the distribution of labor can become challenging. Finally, the campaigns are extremely difficult to track!

Tracking the performance of veterinary digital marketing campaigns

Tracking the performance of digital marketing campaigns is a challenge experienced across many industries. But it is even more apparent within the veterinary industry, as the primary call to action for many practices is a phone call or appointment request, which are both hard to track, since the conversion (appointment confirmation) takes place offline.

To run effective veterinary digital marketing campaigns, you need to track the performance of each campaign. This is made much easier by having a ‘trackable’ action, such as real-time appointment booking, on your website.

It also helps if you measure vital metrics, such as the number of clicks on your promotion, conversion rate (promotion clicks to appointments ratio), and revenue generated. There are additional metrics you can track, too, such as the devices used or time of day appointments are booked.

By tracking these metrics, you’ll be able to judge the performance of each promotional campaign and decide whether to invest more in the campaigns and channels that generate the best results for your next promotion.

This is where Vetstoria’s Digital Marketing feature comes in. It allows veterinary practices to take control of their promotional campaigns and track results, leading to impactful promotions that deliver positive returns on investment.

Digital Marketing with Vetstoria

Vetstoria’s Digital Marketing feature offers an intuitive and powerful way to manage and track veterinary promotions. Here’s how it works:

1. Name your campaign – choose a unique name that will help you identify the promotion, for example, “Cat Appreciation Day – Free Cat Dental Check – Facebook – 20Jan2019”

2. Set custom rules that determine the specifics of your campaign. Some basic attributes include:

• The dates and duration of the campaign
• Maximum number of appointments you want to offer
• The species the campaign applies to
• The specific vets or technicians/nurses that serve the appointments
• Any time or date exclusions you wish to put in place

3. Vetstoria will then generate a Digital Marketing Link, a unique short link for the campaign that you can use across your marketing channels and third-party apps such as PetDesk, iRecall, or Vet2Pet, as well as a QR code that can be used on any printed materials.

4. Pet-owners who arrive on your scheduling page through these links will only see the modified appointments that have just been set up. This is important when trying to drive footfall during quiet periods, as only the selected times and dates will be shown as available.

Using Digital Marketing Links

Once a Digital Marketing Link is created in Vetstoria, it’s ready to be used across various marketing channels, including Google and Facebook. Create a post or ad with content that is related to your promotion, include the unique link, and you’re set. When an appointment is scheduled using the link, you’ll know exactly which promotion it came from.

• 

• 

The benefit of running seemingly one-off campaigns stretches way beyond the promotional period. The campaigns usually sign-post the subsequent course of action like preventative care in a follow-up. For example, a free dental check campaign for rabbits can be set up for technicians, after which follow-up appointments can be scheduled should symptoms of early-stage dental disease be identified. 

However, it shouldn’t stop here. It’s important to track, analyse and compare the performance of your campaigns. For the most effective marketing promotions, the process should be continuous, and Vetstoria provides you with the tools for it.

Analytics, reporting and Google Analytics integration

Within the Vetstoria Digital Marketing Dashboard, you are able to analyse each individual campaign’s performance and view key metrics such as promotion clicks, conversion rate (clicks to bookings ratio), and the number of clients acquired through your promotions.

For practices that have Google Analytics enabled on their websites, Vetstoria integrates seamlessly with the analytics tool to paint the full picture and provide insights to help you get the most return on investment for your promotional efforts. Compare campaigns and performance across your channels and decide where to invest future spending.

If you’re already a customer and want to learn more about our Digital Marketing feature contact our friendly support team.

If you are not yet using Vetstoria in your practice, why not book a 30-minute demo, so you can see how we’ve helped thousands of practices connect with their clients the modern way?