Veterinary practices have some of the best content for social networking

Susie Samuel from Vet Help Direct outlines the key digital marketing areas that need attention

Susie Samuel from Vet Help Direct gave the second talk on Friday morning in the Business Theatre at the London Vet Show.

Seventy one per cent of UK companies increased their digital marketing spend in 2014 and according to Ofcom we are a nation of media multi-taskers.

While admitting that many practices are using the internet for marketing very well, Susie explained that to be effective in 2015 there were five important areas that would need attention if marketing was going to continue to be successful.

1. Engaging content

It is really important for companies to get people to interact with them. Veterinary practices have some of the best content for social networking (I.e.pets) and it is important to engage our clients to help in our marketing strategy. A good way to do this is to use 'trendology' -  picking up on the trends or topics that are popular and add your own comments to them.  In this way you will engage with a much higher proportion of people. Users of social media want to be entertained, so lots of pictures of pets and people in your surgery will be attractive. Even better, try and encourage clients to be photographed with their pets and use them in your content.

2. Paid Adverts

Increasingly businesses are having to pay for their advertisements on social media, so it is important that money is not wasted on ineffective advertising. Adverts should be targeted demographically and budgets set for each day week or month and most importantly they must be monitored for effectiveness.

3. Reviews

You are looking for a fair reflection of your services on social media. This is very important as 58 per cent of people use online reviews for finding out about services. The real problem is getting people to write reviews and it's well known that most people will be much more enthusiastic about writing a bad review rather than a good one. It's a good idea to allow reviews on your practice website and to email clients to ask them to leave a review if they are happy with your services.

4. Emails

Emailing Is probably the simplest way to market practice services but it is one of the most underused social media. Emailing is still very effective and practices should aim to collect emails from all their clients. To be really effective, it is important to be selective with emails so that the correct clients are targeted with the correct and relevant information.

5. Local search

Practices need as many links as possible to their websites so that they are easily found on Google searches. Having consistency in name, telephone number and address is vital here so that your details are not diluted by variation of information. Susie recommended all practices to have a Google plus business page which is also linked to the practice website as this will help to up the ratings for the practice.

Susie summarised her talk by saying that it is more difficult to get your message across on social media than it used to be, but no practice can really afford not to spend the time on social media marketing strategies.