The Complete Guide to Veterinary Marketing

1. How to make a veterinary marketing plan
Effective marketing starts with a solid marketing plan. A veterinary marketing plan is a document that lays out your marketing goals and the strategies and tactics you’ll use to reach them. It provides you with a clear view of your objectives, audience, and resources, as well as the concrete actions that need to be taken to achieve the anticipated results.

If you’ve never created a marketing plan for your veterinary clinic, the thought of writing one from scratch can be a little intimidating. But you don’t have to do it all at once, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be a super formal affair; simply putting your plan in writing can give you a better understanding of your goals and enable you to make more effective use of your marketing resources. Keeping the plan simple ensures it doesn’t end up in the too hard basket! Here are a few things that your veterinary marketing plan should include:

Objective.
Target audience.
Competitors.
Marketing channels.
Action plan.

1. Objective

The first step is to define your objective. What is it you want to achieve? Whether your goals revolve around growing your client base, increasing revenue, or driving product sales, clearly defining your objectives will give you a stronger sense of direction and inform many of your marketing decisions further down the track.

You’ll also need to be mindful of your resources and consider how much you can realistically invest into your marketing efforts in terms of both time and money. Few veterinary practices will have the luxury of working with limitless resources, so focus on the objectives that will ultimately deliver the best bang for your buck.

Make your objectives SMART. That means they should be:

• Specific.

• Measurable.

• Achievable.

• Relevant.

• Timely.

Vague objective: Attract more clients.
SMART objective: Increase client base by 10% in the next six months.

Vague objective: Increase revenue.
SMART objective: Increase sales of canine care products by 5% in the second quarter.

2. Target audience

It’s easy to waste a lot of time and money marketing to people who aren’t interested in your services. Defining and truly understanding your target audience will help you reach the market that matters most: the people who are actually interested in your products and services.

Start by going through your records to collect some basic information about your clients. Some good demographic information to look for includes:

• Gender.

• Age.

• Location.

• Occupation.

• Marital status.

• Number of pets.

• Relationship with animals.

• Number of children.

After collecting the data, segment your target audience into a few different buyer personas. Buyer personas are semi-fictional representations of your target audience, based on your data, industry knowledge, and experiences with past clients. You may also wish to assign psychographics to your buyer personas, which include subjective data like behavior, needs, interests, opinions, tech savviness, and values.

Fleshing out your buyer personas can be an effective way to get to know your customers better. They also allow you to tailor your marketing material and services to meet the unique needs of your target audience.

3. Competitors

Competitor analysis is key to understanding where your veterinary practice sits in the marketplace. Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your competition can help you find a gap in the market and differentiate your practice from other clinics in the area.

Your competitors are primarily other veterinary practices located in close proximity to your clinic. What constitutes “close” depends on your location. If you’re based in a busy urban area, your competition might be veterinary practices within a tight three or four-mile radius of your clinic. On the other hand, if you run a rural veterinary practice, your competition might be clinics within, say, 15-20 miles of your business.

Once you’ve identified the competition, it’s time to do some research. There are a few places you can easily pull information from, including:

• Your competitor’s website.

• Social media pages.

• Google reviews.

• Your competitor’s promotional and marketing material.

Look at your competition with a critical eye. What are they doing right? What could they improve on? To help you get started, here are a few questions to keep in mind while analyzing the competition:

• Where is your competitor located?

• What is your competitor’s area of expertise?

• How many doctors are working at your competitor?

• Does your competitor provide special facilities or equipment?

• How much do your competitor’s products and services cost?

• What does the market think about your competitor?

• How does your competitor promote their business?

• What marketing mistakes have they made?

• What is their competitive edge?

• Is there an opportunity to collaborate or build a relationship with your competitor?

Write down your answers and keep the document somewhere handy. Gaining insight into your competition sets the foundation for an effective marketing strategy that can help your business stand out from the crowd.

4. Marketing channels

There’s a wide range of channels you can use to achieve your marketing objectives. Some channels are better suited to certain goals than others. A radio jingle, for example, can be a great way to build brand awareness, while a targeted digital advertising campaign may be a better way to convert prospects into paying customers. Your choice of channels will also depend on the size and structure of your business. For instance, a mix of marketing channels that works wonders for a six-doctor emergency hospital may not be the right fit for a one-doctor mobile equine practice.

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer here, so think about what will work best for your objectives, buyer personas, and budget. Digital marketing is often popular with veterinary practices due to its low barrier to entry and potential to deliver great results. This includes channels such as:

• Paid search advertising.

• Organic search.

• Social media marketing.

• Blog content.

• Email.

• Video content.

Depending on your target audience, traditional channels such as newspaper and magazine, radio, and TV advertising can be effective when used in conjunction with digital marketing methods. However, traditional marketing channels tend to be more expensive and their results less measurable than digital channels. Events, trade shows, and word of mouth remain powerful ways of building brand awareness.

5. Action plan

Once you know what you want to achieve, it’s time to put together an action plan. This document details exactly what needs to happen to execute your veterinary marketing plan and who’s going to do it. Your action plan should include:

• Step-by-step instructions on what needs to happen to bring the plan to life.

• Timeframes and deadlines.

• Which channels you’re going to use.

• Who’s responsible for each task.

• Associated costs.

• Key performance indicators (KPIs).

Don’t gloss over that last point. Establishing the right KPIs is critical for measuring the success of your marketing initiatives and providing you with the insight you need to know what’s working - and what isn’t. Track real-world outcomes and regularly review and refine results to improve future initiatives.

Distribute the action plan to all relevant stakeholders and seek feedback as required. Schedule regular progress reviews to ensure the wider marketing plan is moving along according to plan and intervene sooner rather than later if you notice anything amiss.

What is branding?

Branding is the act of shaping your audiences’ perception of your business. It involves delivering consistent marketing messaging wherever clients interact with your business. That includes common touchpoints like your company name, colors, logo, slogan, and imagery, as well as less obvious things like staff behavior and wellbeing, your choice of furniture, the layout of your premises, your community impact, your communication style, and more.

All of these things combined contribute to how the world sees your business. That’s your brand. It’s what people think and feel when they consider your veterinary practice, your services, your products, and all the other countless little things that make up your business. Your brand is your company story which, when told compellingly, can help you attract the right clients and maximize your chances of standing out from the competition.

Why is branding important?

In the eyes of the client, the veterinary industry is fairly homogenous - that is, the services and products provided at one small animal practice are likely to be very similar to those available at another small animal practice. If there’s no discernable difference between practices, the only thing influencing the client’s decision is price. This can quickly lead to a race to the bottom as practices vie to undercut each other.

A strong brand can help differentiate your business in a crowded marketplace. It’s the reason why Nike is the de facto choice of shoe for runners; why Toyota has come to be synonymous with reliability. Sure, there may be some minor functional differences between these companies and their competitors, but the key thing driving their success is the strength of their brand.

How to make a strong veterinary brand

People are attracted to brands that they share values with. Communicating these values through your brand can help you build an emotional connection with your target audience and increase the perceived value of your brand - both of which are critical for fostering customer loyalty and capturing repeat business. Research indicates that 57% of customers spend more money on brands they’re loyal to.

1. Do the research

As with most marketing efforts, branding starts with research. The key to building a strong brand and developing that all-important emotional connection with clients is to figure out what resonates with your target market, so start thinking about your audience’s pain points and how your business can solve them. You will have already covered a lot of this research when plotting out your veterinary marketing plan in the previous section.

2. Define what makes you different

Branding is an opportunity to tell the world what makes your veterinary practice different and, by extension, why a client would choose your business over your competitors.

Your differentiation must be valued by your target market. You might be proud of your staff’s qualifications or your state-of-the-art diagnostic equipment, but if your audience doesn’t care about it or understand its value, it won’t be an effective differentiator.

Remember that your differentiators will not appeal to everyone - and that’s okay. The goal here is to attract your ideal clients (remember the buyer personas exercise from the previous section?), not your Average Joe pet owner.

Here are a just a few examples of attributes that can help differentiate your practice:

• Expertise or specialization.

• Size or number of doctors.

• Customer service.

• Years in business.

• Facilities and equipment.

• Communication style.

• Financing options.

• Flexibility.

• Loyalty program.

• Accessibility.

• Standing in the community.

• Ease of use.

• Accessibility.

• Products.

• Fear Free certification.

• General atmosphere.

• Modern waiting area (do you provide hot/cold beverages?).

• Separate cat area.

• Team culture.

It’s important to note that differentiation is not about finding your unique selling point (USP) – the competitive factors that differentiate your products and services from other veterinary clinics. Indeed, given the homogenous nature of the veterinary industry, many clinics may find it impossible to find a genuine USP. Instead, differentiation is about understanding both your actual value and your perceived value, and ensuring you’re communicating those values to your target audience better than your competitors.

3. Write your story

Storytelling is a fundamental part of the human experience. Stories make us feel like we’re part of something bigger than ourselves; like we’re sharing an emotional connection with the characters in the story.

Your brand is your story. So, try to weave your history, values, and motivations into your brand. What do you do? Why did you become a veterinarian? How do you feel about your clients? How do they feel about you? These are all fundamental questions to ask yourself as you assemble your brand.

Be specific. Use real stories and concrete examples to craft your narrative rather than relying on general descriptions. People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it, so don’t be afraid to let your personality shine through. The more authentic your story, the more like it is that you’ll build an emotional connection with your audience.

4. Name your business

If you haven’t yet done so, now is the time to choose a name for your business. A name should be memorable, relatable to your target market, and, most importantly, clearly communicate what your business is about. Abstract names can be catchy (think Google, Xerox, Hulu, etc.), but if you don’t have the budget for large-scale branding, the meaning will likely be lost on your target audience.

If you’re stuck for ideas, think about incorporating one or more of the following elements into the name of your business:

• Geography: The name of your city, state, or region. This can help build brand awareness in your local community and may offer some organic search value.

• Emotion: Integrating positive adjectives into your business name (think “happy,” “healthy,” “active,” and so on) can help strengthen your emotional branding.

• Wordplay: Puns, rhymes, and alliteration can inject some fun and creativity into your brand. Be careful not to get carried away, as being too abstract can dilute your core messaging.

• Names: Some animal hospitals are named after the founding veterinarian. This usually works best if you have a name that’s memorable, recognizable, and easy to spell.

Online business name generators like can also be useful for brainstorming purposes.

Most jurisdictions have trademark laws in place that prohibit companies from sharing the same name, so be sure to check with your local trademark database before committing to a business name. If you’re based in the U.S., you can use to search the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

You can also use to check the availability of a domain name or social media username.

5. Design your brand collateral

Brand collateral - your logo, slogan, website, signage, brochures, etc. - is often the first point of contact with your audience, so it’s important to do it right. While it may be tempting to try and whip something up yourself or enlist the help of a creative family member, it’s almost always a better idea to get your branding collateral done professionally. Websites like Upwork can be useful for finding experienced designers at competitive prices, or you may wish to connect with a local design agency or freelancer for a more hands on experience.

This doesn’t mean that you can’t offer some input into the creative process. There are many free tools you can use to express your design preferences, which a professional designer can then use as inspiration to bring your brand collateral to life.

• : An excellent way to collate inspiring imagery from around the web and create a branding mood board.

• : A color palette generator and browser that you can use to find beautiful color combinations for your designs.

• : A widely used drag-and-drop tool that allows you to quickly create professional looking marketing material.

6. Execute the branding

Consistency is the key to a successful branding initiative. Your branding should be consistent and incorporated into all client-facing materials, including:

• Website.

• Clinic signage.

• Social media accounts.

• Staff uniform.

• Vehicles.

• Newsletters.

• Blog content

• Email signatures.

• Promotional videos.

• Event banners.

• Brochures.

• Stationery.

• Business cards.

• Any other branded promotional products, such as pens, magnets, water bottles, etc.

7. Live up to your brand

Branding is all about building trust and fostering an emotional connection with your audience. Now, it’s all on you to honor their trust by walking the walk and living up to your brand promise.

Clients are hyper-vigilant of the authenticity of the brands they interact with. A company that fails to deliver on its promise will quickly lose its customers’ trust, which - given the virality of digital communication - can have far-reaching consequences on a company’s reputation.

The key takeaway here is simple: hold up your end of the bargain. If you’ve built your brand around customer service, you have to be prepared to go above and beyond for every single client. If your brand is all about the user experience, your website better be an absolute dream to use.

Failure to deliver on your brand promise will erode your client’s goodwill and encourage once-loyal clients to take their business to another veterinary clinic that lives up to its promises.