8 Tips For Getting More Veterinary Clients

Are you struggling to get new clients for your veterinary practice? Over time, you may have created a community of loyal veterinary clients. However, you need new pet owners to visit your veterinary clinic for it to grow further.

So how can you entice more veterinary clients to support your practice? This blog discusses various steps you can take to ensure veterinary client retention. Here are tried and tested ways to improve your marketing efforts and patient communication:

1. Make Customer Service a Priority

Customer service is the key to any business. This sentiment is especially true for pet parents who may be extra stressed or worried regarding their beloved pet’s health. Excellent customer service can mean many things. This entails a smooth appointment-making process for all veterinary clients. This means all information about old and new clients is obtained without issues.

Excellent customer service is when clients get information about your veterinary services in a timely fashion. There’s no need for clients to follow up or try different channels to reach you, especially for urgent concerns.

Even if you have a very efficient work process, certain things may be out of your control. For example, there might be a case wherein a pet parent has a particular haircut for their dog in mind. However, your vet practice doesn’t offer that style.

Another typical case is when you’re servicing an old pet owner who doesn’t know how to fill up your online registry forms. This person might be used to the old-school way of doing things.

So what should you do in cases like these? With everything on your plate, you may be unable to handle all these issues yourself. Moreover, it would help if you considered other pertinent matters to provide the best veterinary clients. Is there a sequence in which documents need to be completed? Is there a way to offer customized services systematically?

If you want potential clients to get the best customer experience, you should hire employees that share your enthusiasm for animals for your work and that put your clients first. Your staff should have a good attitude towards clients, regardless of their backgrounds. Your people should also be unafraid to ask questions and provide suggestions if they have a great idea to improve your clinic operations.

Learn more about A Beginners Guide to Veterinary Appointment Scheduling.

2. Update Your Contact Information

Potential clients looking for local pet stores will probably search for options online. Hence, you must ensure your information is updated across the board. Your veterinary practice website should be updated with your contact number and other ways to get in touch with your business.

At the same time, you should claim your Google My Business Profile so that new clients will obtain the correct information should they search for local pet stores via a search engine. You should also ensure your social media platforms, such as your Facebook page, have correct and updated information.

It would also be a great idea to look for veterinary clinic business directories and ensure that information on your animal hospital is up to date. Incorrect business information might turn off new pet owners and drive people away from your practice. Every time your business changes contact information or address, you should ensure that all channels are updated so it would be easy for people to find your practice.

3. Choose a Professional and Modern Design For Your Website

Think of your practice’s website as a digital portfolio of your practice. It’s vital to have a professional and modern design for your website.

Be mindful of every element of your veterinary website to maximize your revenue and provide a satisfying client journey. Here are key factors that can make or break your veterinary practice website:

• The color theme of your website.
  Colors have the power to influence people’s perception of your business. A suitable color scheme can help you reach your target audience effectively.
• Font (size and readability).
  Your fonts should be easy to read, regardless if visitors are browsing it via mobile or desktop. Plus, the font size should be big enough for people to read the text without difficulty.
• The quality of your copy and how much of it is on your website.
  Your website should be able to explain your services to people without confusing them. You should also ensure that veterinary clients can obtain all the necessary information to encourage them to book an appointment.

Here are some additional tips to avoid on your website:

• Scrolling text.
  These texts move onto a website page by following the direction you define for it. Some people might find it annoying when your website copy doesn’t fit on their screen of choice.
• Flashing intros.
  While you want pet parents to have a good impression of your business, flashing intros might overwhelm their senses and drive them to exit your website.
• Extremely bright or hard-to-see colors.
  Your website should be pleasing to the eye; more veterinary clients would be enticed to explore it further. Using extraordinarily bright or hard-to-see colors might discourage people from reading the website copy you’ve worked very hard to produce

Learn more about The Do’s and Don’ts of Veterinary Websites.

4. Respond to Online Reviews

Whether good or bad, but especially if they’re nasty, you should promptly respond to online reviews from patients or clients. It’s easy to respond to positive reviews, but how do you handle unflattering words about your business?

• Apologize to your customer sincerely. You should handle the situation gracefully, whether the client was right or wrong.
• Acknowledge the issue. Give the patient reassurance that you value their feedback, and try to make amends if possible.
• Sign up for reputation management tools. VetMatrix can help you save time and money by ensuring all your reviews are attended to promptly. Your team can focus on other pertinent matters when reputation management is automated.

5. Send Out Appointment Reminders

Time is money. Manually reaching out to every client can take up many of your staff’s working hours. You can save your staff time and resources by sending patients automatic day-of reminders using their preferred method of communication.

Automating this process can help your vet practice reap many benefits. You can reduce no-shows and improve patient satisfaction by enabling convenient two-way text messaging. You also give other pet owners a chance to secure an earlier appointment by having a virtual waitlist. Moreover, you can lessen the downtime in your animal hospital, which means you earn more money in the long run.

6. Refresh Your Marketing Plan

Never underestimate the impact of your marketing and when it’s going to have its effect. The way you position your veterinary practice can help drive more veterinary clients to visit your clinic in the long run. While there’s nothing wrong with investing in traditional marketing practices, a solid digital marketing plan can do wonders for your business.

Here is a brief summary of the essential digital marketing strategies that can be total game changers in generating leads and retaining customers:

• Search engine optimization (SEO) and content marketing.
  Optimizing your website organically can lead new pet owners to discover your animal hospital online. The higher your search engine ranking, the more new clients can find your website.
• Online advertising.
  Investing in Google ads is a quick way to help your business reach more clients. Google ads are cost-effective in driving people to your website and increasing your brand awareness.
• Reputation management.
  New clients usually refer to online reviews to learn more about the quality of your services. How you respond to these comments reflects how much you value your patients’ perception of your business.

Read more about 10 Veterinary Marketing Ideas You Have to Try.

7. Send Out Customer Satisfaction Surveys to Pet Owners

No matter how long you’ve been in the industry, there’s always room for improvement. Surveys are beneficial to pinpoint which aspects of your daily operations can be fine-tuned or enhanced.

So how can you encourage more pet parents to share their sentiments about your veterinary practice?

What questions should you ask pet owners? Here are survey questions you should consider adding to your list:

• How did you learn about our pet hospital?
• How likely are you to recommend our pet hospital to other pet owners?
• What did you like best about your visit?
• Based on your visit, will you most likely return to our clinic?
• Is it your first time visiting our clinic?

You can send your clients a survey link via email so they can fill up the form at their convenience. It would be helpful if you offered an incentive for filling out a form, like a 10% discount on their next consultation.

You can also create a text link, so people on their mobile phones can share their thoughts on your services. You already have their contact information in your system, so this is a great idea to make the most of it.

8. Find Out What Your Local Competitors are Doing

Another excellent way to drive more veterinary clients to your clinic is by checking what other practices are doing. You can easily compare your business’ ratings, reviews, and promotions to top competitors with competitive intelligence. After all, checking what other practices are doing gives you an idea of how you can make yourself unique.

Ask yourself, what services could one clinic be offering that another competitor isn’t? Do they have longer operational hours? Maybe the other pet clinics don’t provide specific services like grooming, last therapy, or specialty surgical services.

Analyzing your competitors’ strengths gives you insight into how you can position your veterinary practice in a different light. Moreover, you can learn from their mistakes to improve your marketing tactics moving forward. This will help improve how you communicate and engage with your patients.

Start Driving More Veterinary Clients to your Practice

Attracting more veterinary patients will take time and effort, but if you play your cards right, you’ll be able to enjoy a steady flow of new clients. If you’re interested in harnessing the benefits of digital marketing to boost your clinic, you should partner with experts who can do more of the leg work.

We at iMatrix can help you apply these expert tips and more. To find out more about our services and ways to improve your veterinary clinic marketing strategies,  call 800.792.8384 or click here.