Web Marketing for your veterinary practice
You probably already know that there are literally scores of people looking for your veterinary practice on the World wide web – the challenge is how to get them to discover you! This article can only provide a quick overview – but with a little luck it will be a handy place to start.
Building a website for your veterinary practice is the first task if you don’t already have one. It may seem like a daunting job if you haven’t built a website before. In fact it’s not that hard – but many people have far better things to do with their time (like running their veterinary practice for example!). So why not locate a couple of sites that you love, and call the designers of those for a quote (the designers name is sometimes shown at the foot of the page). Alternatively, you could outsource the work on a site like Elance – which will usually cost less.
Ensure you set up a web stats program like Google Analytics or similar on your site. It’s amazing how few people do this, and that’s a huge mistake. Without web stats, you do not know how many prospects your site’s getting – and you don’t know where they came from. Without that information you also have no idea which of your online promotion activities are effective. Many of these systems are totally free – so don’t ignore this step!
One of the primary ways to boost your website is to secure links from other websites. General directories of websites, like Yahoo and Dmoz are a great place to get back-links. Some are free (like Dmoz), others (for example Yahoo) you have to fork out for. Yahoo is a touch on the expensive side at $299 annually, but there are some other paid directories such as JoeAnt that offer much better value.
If you can find directories that focus on veterinary practice then it’s invariably worth uploading your details to them – even if they charge money for a page (as most of these vertical market directories usually do). It is generally worth paying though – since they will probably perform far better than the more general directories. One free veterinary practice site that’s definitely worth looking at is http://www.ClickVets.co.uk/. They do require detailed details on your veterinary practice but it is really worth the work for the additional customers they’ll be able to send you.
Among the quickest methods to get prospects to your web site is using Pay Per Click advertising solutions like Google Adwords. These can be put in place in a few minutes, and begin sending traffic immediately! Obviously you should take care and ensure you’re not spending too much – but since you only pay for individuals who visit your site – not for those who look at your ad but do not click, it can be an effective way to bring new customers. It’s vital to monitor your Pay Per Click campaigns carefully to make certain they’re profitable for you – so it’s great that you installed Analytics software already!
It’s wonderful getting customers to your site – but one of the fastest ways to get visitors is to remind individuals who visited before to come back and find out what’s changed. Email is a great way to accomplish this – and for that you’ll require clients’ email addresses and their consent to mail them when you have new stuff for them to see. Implement a service like Aweber to make this happen. You can even automate the entire process by producing a sequence of emails upfront and setting them to be sent out at defined intervals – without you having to lift a finger.
Promoting your veterinary practice on the web is a big topic – but I hope the summary offered in this post has been helpful. If it’s motivated you to find out more, then that’s fantastic – there’s loads more detail available on the internet, so if you get started right now, you’ll be hearing from new clients very soon indeed.