Can data help veterinarians optimize their veterinary marketing performance?

The quality and completeness of data can provide any veterinary practice with a deep insight into the lives of their existing and target customers. But how can veterinary clinics use this data to optimize their veterinary marketing performance?

Data-driven marketing isn’t as difficult as it sounds. Setting all the necessary tools up to ensure your marketing efforts aren’t wasted will take some time and effort. But this approach will allow you to reach the right customers at the right time, a marketing solution that will work for your clinic.

We have gathered all the best information to ensure that vets can use this data-driven approach to improve their marketing performance. Read on to find out more.

Free Download: Digital Marketing Guide for Vet Practices

1. What is data-driven marketing?

Data is an extremely valuable resource that vets can use to improve their marketing efforts. Data-driven marketing is a marketing strategy that uses data collected from customer interactions and engagement to better educate and sell to them on an individual basis.

Once you understand why, where, when and what your customers engage with, vets can optimize veterinary marketing, amend the timing of ads, where the ads are shown and the audience they’re shown to.

Watch this video to know exactly how using data can help launch a successful marketing campaign.

1.1 Does data-driven veterinary marketing work?

This strategy is hugely popular due to the deep insight that can be obtained and of course, its ability to improve marketing efforts.

Here are just some of the amazing statistics on how data can impact your marketing efforts:

• A study from Forbes found that 88% of marketers used data to improve their understanding of each customer
• 69% of marketing data is used to focus on better offers, messages and content.
• 53% of marketers say said that data makes them more customer-centric
• 75% of companies see an increase in consumer engagement with data-driven marketing
• 87% of marketers say that data is the most underused asset within marketing

 Using this strategy is a great opportunity for your clinic to improve their marketing return on investment (ROI) and personalize your marketing efforts. It will take time and effort to build, but once set-up you can see what works best for your clinic and invest in a marketing solution that works for you. Check out this infographic to understand why being data-driven matters.

2. Data-driven veterinary marketing strategies your clinic needs

If you still have no idea how your clinic can use data then fear not. Below are specific examples of data-driven strategies you can use for your clinic.

2.1 Retargeting

Retargeting allows businesses to reach out to customers who have previously shown an interest in a particular product or service. This allows businesses to follow potential customers wherever they are.

Retargeting works by placing a small piece of code on your website which tags a user when they leave. The next time the user browses the web, your advertising can retarget them.

This strategy is highly effective because you can focus your efforts on customers who know of your veterinary practice and have shown an interest in your services.

Veterinarians can leverage this technology by offering potential customers relevant offers they want and it can all be performed on Facebook. A good example of a Facebook marketing campaign would be to remind owners to visit the vet.

More than a third of cat owners and 15% of dog owners failed to visit the vet within the last year. Gently reminding owners to visit your clinic for a check-up could bring in customers to your practice.

Create a list– Creating a list of existing customers (using the customer email database) or website visitors (by installing the Facebook pixel on your website) to retarget is an important first step. This needs to be hyper-targeted to the audience you wish to reach in order to maximize response to the advertising

Creating an e-Book– You can create an e-book on pet care which people can access once they give their email address. Do ensure you ask permission to use their data for future marketing purposes when they download the book. This is a crucial tip for your Facebook Ads campaign to succeed.

Upload the list to Facebook’s custom audience manager– Once the list is complete, import the list into Facebook’s audience manager to match email addresses with Facebook profiles. Leave this for a few hours to generate enough of a target audience to work with.

Determine the destination URL– You can create your Facebook ad campaign by clicking “Create Ad”. Here you can decide if you want to send customers to your homepage or anywhere else on your website.

Segment your Ads– Here you can select your target audience and the geographical location. You can also segment your audience by interest, behaviour, age and other settings that will allow your ad to be hyper-targeted.

Set your budget– You should already have prepared a budget for this campaign. Facebook ad campaign costs will depend on the duration they run for and the breadth of the audience that you are targeting. In the settings, set a lifetime budget for the duration of your ad campaign and adjust as you go along.

Create your ad-. An important detail to know about this is that the image size for ads is 1200 x 628 pixels and images can only contain 20% text, the headline underneath the image can only be 25 characters long and the text above the image is 90 characters long. Each ad can have 6 associated images. This helps you test and optimize your campaign depending on what users respond to.

Monitor your progress– Now you are launched, you just sit back and optimize where you need to.

This infographic is the ultimate guide to Facebook ad targeting campaigns and is what you need to launch an effective Facebook ad marketing campaign for your veterinary practice. You can read more about it here.

2.2 Landing pages

A landing page is the web page that your customers first see when they visit your website. For most visitors this will be your home page, but it could be the blog post, contact page or services page, depending on how you are advertising your site. You can create specific landing pages and optimize them for different segments or search queries, so customers see the most relevant page for them.

If search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click (PPC) or other lead generation techniques are carried out correctly, you will be driving a serious amount of traffic to your website.

Converting website visitors into paying customers all depends on the relevancy of the landing page. Below are some useful tips to ensure your landing page (the page they click through to) is relevant to your customers.

A strong header: This is the first thing a visitor will see. This should be a strong and compelling header that immediately attracts attention. This should be clear in text and be congruent with the rest of the text on the page. If not, potential customers will leave.

 Clear call-to-action (CTA): Your CTA should be featured at the top of the page stating “Book Now” or “Book Online” using online booking software such as Vetstoria to integrate these into your patient management platform. This should be prominent, in a contrasting colour and state the action customers need to take to proceed.

Mobile responsive: Most individuals will use mobile for web browsing and other needs. They will ignore websites that don’t respond or work properly on mobile.

Optimized page settings: The URL and title of the page should clearly and succinctly inform the visitor of the contents of the page. The meta description (the short description on Google search results that explains the page’ content) should also contain keywords and summarize what visitors can expect on the page.

Nice images and visuals: The graphics need to be relevant and interesting to keep visitors on your website. Creating your own graphics would be a great way to stand out from the competition.

This infographic provides more information on how you can optimize your landing page.

2.3 Targeted email campaigns for effective veterinary marketing

A targeted email marketing campaign can allow you to group your desired target audience together and send them specific content. But how do you build a targeted email campaign?

Building a hyper-targeted email campaign

Define your goals: You must determine the purpose of this email campaign. Upsell opportunities? Boost your clinics awareness in the local community? Define what you want to achieve.

Did you know 22.6% of a veterinary practices business profits comes from medicine sales and 61% of veterinarians deal with companion pets? An email campaign educating customers on symptoms for common illness in cats and dogs, along with a medicine from your clinic that can help could be a goal for your campaign.

List segmentation: By targeting specific audiences, you can drive this group to specific content you want them to see. You can target customers based on animal type, age, location and hobbies, for example, 81% of primary pet carers are female. This would be a good place for you to start.

Creating the right content: Once you have your target audience, what do they want to see? Your texts, images, CTAs and email layout should be tailored to this demographic. Delivering the right content to the right audience can lead to outstanding results.

Measure and optimize: This campaign will teach you what people responded to. Observing open and clickthrough rates will help you understand what works and what does not.

3. Top tips to build the ultimate data-driven strategy

To help you develop the ultimate data-driven strategy, keep these few tips in mind:

Stick with it: You must be ready to dedicate the time and resources necessary for this strategy to succeed.

Integration & automation: You are going to be dealing with a lot of data and this can overwhelm anyone. Manually, this task cannot be completed. By integrating new marketing tools and technologies, you can spend less time looking at data and more time using this to create highly personalized campaigns. Google Analytics, MailChimp and Crazy Egg are some examples of tools you can get started with.

Collaborate effectively: High-quality data is a must for this strategy to work. Different departments will use data they collect for business goals. Sharing this data throughout your clinic is crucial to ensure its managed correctly.

Keep an eye on the competition: Learn what strategies other veterinary clinics are employing and identify what works well for them to give you some inspiration. Implement new data-driven veterinary marketing techniques into your strategy. This ensures your strategy is up-to-date and always changing.

Monitor, optimize, repeat: You’ve done the hard work and set up the marketing campaign. Now you optimize. The tools should be in place to analyze data in real-time and determine the effectiveness of your marketing campaign. You can learn what works, what doesn’t and optimize your campaign accordingly. These learnings will ensure future campaigns are even more successful.

Use Vetstoria: Our real-time booking software is the first piece of software you need to build information about your customers. This software automatically schedules appointments into your management software, reducing admin. This gives you and your receptionist time to focus on other efforts, like marketing.

Vetstoria also requires customers to answer pre-consultation questions. With this information you can determine what service your customer may need, saving you 10 minutes per appointment. Clinics can use this data to provide a better service to clients and foster better relationships.

3.1 Personalized veterinary marketing

Being able to reach the right people, with the right message, at the right time is essential. Data-driven marketing allows you to do exactly this. Customized campaigns can allow vets to convert potential customers due to the relevancy of the message and a deep understanding of their customers.

3.2 Improved customer experiences

Data can allow you to conduct surveys to determine areas of your service that need improvement. This allows you to focus on aspects important to your customers and to improve their experience.

4. Conclusion

Using data in your veterinary marketing strategy is the only way to make informed decisions on how to promote your veterinary practice.

Delivering targeted messages based on deep insights will help you stay ahead of the competition and promote your practice.

Vetstoria’s real-time booking software can reduce admin giving you and your receptionist time to focus of building deep insights into your customers.

By understanding what your customers want, when and where they want it, you can provide a much better service.