Hello, hello, everybody, and welcome. Thanks for that introduction, Alan. I, don't think I've ever been described as a slightly different fish before, but I'll, I'll take that as a compliment.
And yeah, I wanted to add thank you very much to the webinar vet for, asking me to, to contribute to this session, Saint Francis to sponsoring it. And having been sitting in my kitchen listening to, Susan and Caroline, some excellent content has been delivered there, and some really good pointers, to set you on your way to marketing your practise, for the next 12 months and beyond. If you have any questions, please do, as we're going through, please type them in, and we'll have some, some time for questions at the end.
And we'll continue. So first of all, just a quick slide to say, I, have no just a quick disclaimer. I'm employed by White Cross vets, I've been, been there for 5 years and absolutely love what I do.
So all views I'm gonna present today are my own, and I'm really, I'm passionate about helping vets, with their marketing. I, I absolutely hate seeing vets struggle, promoting their business, and I think by, by good marketing, we can boost their business and we can provide a greater quality of life for, for, practise owners and the team, and everyone that works within those practises. So first of all, starting off with a bit of a confession, so I was invited to, to participate in this website about, in this webinar about 8 months ago.
And at that point, I, I thought I would have a brand new website, I'd be able to show off. But I don't because things take longer than, than you would anticipate. So, the website I'm responsible for, White Crossvets.co.uk is, just over 3 years old.
3 years ago, it won, awards for, the veterinary marketing digital award. For the quality of it, but things change so quickly in digital marketing, that what was industry leading, 3 years ago, decays over time and, and. The, the standards, and things we, we accept and take for granted on the internet change.
And so it, it has really changed. So I'm working flat out now to a, to build a new website, but it takes longer, it takes longer than you think, and I, so I'm a full-time marketeer with a marketing manager working for me, responsible for, for 17 practises. And so I'm very sympathetic to those of you who are trying to balance clinical work and, and life in practise juggling, the day to day on the front desk, giving excellent, client care, with also trying to, trying to do the marketing for your practise as well.
I think that's a real challenge. And so if I can give you some tips today and help steer in the right direction. Then that's what I'm aiming for.
So it's, it's important to be aware of what your website does and, and what it doesn't do, and be honest, and it, it's kind of canvassing opinion from, from other people, what is it that your website doesn't do. So when I built the website back in, 2015, I built it, to look really good and work really well on a computer. And actually, most people these days look at, your vet's website, your practise website on their mobile phone.
Our website isn't easy enough to use a mobile phone. Speed is all important. We'll go on and look at that in a bit more detail, but it's too slow.
That's a technical, side of things of how it's been built by the developers, it's too slow. And it lacks focus. It's just too busy.
And so I will, To give you an example of this, this is a website links cards, very entertaining. If you go and have a look at that, and I actually see this as a metaphor. Can you hear me now, Alan?
You're back now, thanks, we've just dropped out for a few seconds, so thank you so much for saving us. . So this website is just like my current website is trying to pack in so much stuff.
It's too distracting, there's so much going on, and I think it's worth asking yourself, is this your practise website? Is there so much going on that it's distracting people from what you really want them to do? Here we go.
And, another thing to, to say is in 2015 when I built the website, the mantra online was very much bigger is better. So I was trying to build the biggest site I could, have as much content as possible. Fill it with blogs, news articles, profiles, and so on.
And actually, the internet has moved on since then, and it's all about being very focused and very concise. So the message really is what worked in 2015 doesn't work now. Every 3 years you should look to be, updating your, updating your practise website.
And I've just got here some examples of sites that work really well, and you can do this, you can have a look around the, the internet, and when, whenever you find a website you like, make sure you bookmark it. Or save it and decide why you like it, why it's a really good experience on there, and then keep that somewhere ready for when you're, updating your own practise website and try and integrate other people's ideas into your, your own practise website. How can they be used in the veterinary industry?
So HelloFresh is a fantastic, simple site. It's, they've got a very complex, busy business, but they've managed to distil it down to, the, the catchphrase dinner is solved, which says exactly what they're in the market of doing, making tea time easy. Other websites, Shopify, so these, these guys are huge, and yet they've managed to distil, their entire business model down into 11 very short snappy sentence, e-commerce platform made for you, and they are luring you in with a, with, tempting you in for a free trial just by popping in your email address.
So they've stripped out all the complexity of their business into, into, into being very single-minded. So I think it's worth just spending a couple of minutes talking about what the role of your practise website, what is it there to do, and, conversely, what is it there not to do. As Suzie touched on, when someone is choosing a, choosing a vets for the first time, they will consult multiple things.
They'll ask their pet owning friends. What's that vet like? Are they any good?
Where do you go? I'm worried about my, my pet doing this. What do you recommend?
And so they'll consult their friends. They will, they will Google it. They will do type in vets in and then the town that is sitting.
Before choosing a practise, they will, stalk you on social media. What do you look like? What are you saying?
Do you look like someone I would trust to care for my, to care for my child, to care for my baby, and is that the place I want to, will they treat my, my pet, as I will and, and, as I do? So a client will look out to your website and that will provide them with an insight to the quality of care that pet will receive, when that pet comes in and spends the day with your practise. The difficult bit I always feel for veterinary surgeons is who have spent years and years qualifying and honing their skills and practising great quality medicine, but clients can't, can't tell that from the outside.
They can't assess that, so they make assumptions and they will make assumptions based on the quality of your website. And that there will be a correlation between the quality of your website and the quality of the facilities in that practise and the quality of the medicine you're practising in there, which is a scary leap of faith, I know, but that's how clients have to do it because they, that's what's in front of them. And a website very much supports the great work you and your teams do in practise, day in, day out.
Again, Suzie picked up on, vets had veterinary practises are treating wildlife for free. They are, reuniting strays with their owners. They're going into primary schools and teaching children about responsible pet care.
They're doing all this great stuff and our website really will support, the practise in that by, generating new clients, so driving footfall into the practise, helping back up the conversations people have had in the park with their pet owning friends, and persuading them to try White Cross bets for the first time. And it will also, help educate existing clients about other services you offer. So in the consult rooms, you're offering your free dental check, dental health checks, you're making recommendations that that pet needs a dental or that pet needs to go on to a weight loss diet programme.
A good website with good quality evergreen content will back up those recommendations that were made in the consultation room, and the, the pet owner can sit on the sofa at home with their partner, and they can, they can use your website to find out a little bit more about dentals, and it will help convert, and that's what we want, isn't it? We want to do everything we can to increase the likelihood that a Petone will take up a recommendation. For treatment of that pet because it's best for the pet.
And so in terms of where we are in 2018, I thought it was useful just to have a, a few fundamental changes. So it's all about mobile first. Again, as Suzie said, people tend to, research things whilst on the go.
You grab a few minutes while you're in the dentist's waiting room, you grab a few minutes while you're waiting for your train. To come or you're waiting for your sandwich to be made in, in sandwich shop, you just, doing micro research in essence, and you're doing that whilst you're on the go. So websites should respond to how people should be built and designed for how people are, are viewing them.
And so they need to be mobile first, whereas in 2015, mobile friendly and responsive was acceptable. Now you design it so it looks great on a mobile phone, and the desktop is almost an afterthought. And this is backed up by, so every website should have Google Analytics plugged into them.
It's a free tool provided by Google, and so you, if you don't yet have access to that, ask the person to create the practise website for you, the developer to give you access, and in there you can go have a look around and see what people are doing and see how they're viewing your website. So this was taken from the White Cross vets website last night. So, so far this year, 63% of our traffic, people looking to our website have done so on a mobile phone, when you add in, tablets, because, similarly, the screens are smaller than a, a, a computer screen.
So 73% of our traffic is via a mobile phone. So that should be your first and foremost consideration when you're looking at how someone uses, looking at what your website looks like. And to do that, what you can do is you can, either, whip out your phone and have a look at it on there, or if you're using your, desktop computer, shrink the browser down.
So just drag it down until it resembles the, the ratio of a mobile phone. And you'll see, as, as you do it on a website, certain bits of content come and go depending on the size of the screen. And so this is very much how you should be reviewing your practise website.
Whenever you have any designs done, make sure, the first designs presented for you are mobile first, and, the desktop, as I say, 27% of people will look at it there. So, focus your efforts on what, on how most people will see it. And I have a recommendation here, for you for a, a tool I really like.
It's called peak user testing. So it's an American website and they offer, free video appraisals of your website done by real live people. If you want additional, appraisals of your website, you can pay.
Actually, for a free tool, it's absolutely amazing. So you go to peak user testing, you put in and you register with them, you put in the web address of your practise, and I think it is within 48 hours, a real person will review your website, and they will, they will narrate what they're thinking when they review your website. So they'll, talk about how easy it is to use the menu, do they understand what you are, that you're a veterinary practise.
Do they understand your proposition, and just as a way of seeing through someone else's eyes what your website is doing and conversely, isn't doing, we'll give you so much insight and inspiration that perhaps it's time to, to upgrade your practise website and put some, invest some time. Something else to pick up on is looking at Google Analytics, and again it backs up what Suzy said is over the last 3 years there's been a steady decline in the amount of time the average user spends on the White Crossfit's website from 2.5 minutes down to, it's now 150 people spend on our website.
And that I believe is because they are, there's lots of distractions going on in people's lives, and they're using, the internet in different ways, so they're micro browsing, and so your, your website really has to, to capture them in that ever decreasing amount of time. And I, I would say another thing to add is you don't, fully need to understand how all, every element of digital marketing works. You just need to know enough so that you can manage someone to do all this for you.
I think actually, in the today's sessions with Caroline and Susie, there's absolutely enough information there that, will empower you to go and put in place a strategy and find the right people. To help you with your marketing, whether that's, empowering the team, the front of house team to run your Facebook page, whether that's finding an external agency, to help you with your blogs, your content management, and, and website and so on. So the next key thing for, for 2018, and you see this on all the examples of websites I I'll show you now, is to be absolutely single-minded and conversion focused.
What do you want people to do when they get to your website? And I, a good example I found of this is, Doctor Dave Nicol and his blog, called The Hamster Wheelmaically titled. And he puts, he managed to make put it very succinctly, when someone visits your website, you're looking for one of three things, right, looking for money, and so by that we mean to buy something, and to put that in vet terms, veterinary practise terms, that we're looking for them to phone your practise.
We are, and then on the basis that they're doing so via a mobile phone, it's really easy for them to click on the, on the phone number on your website and phone the practise to book an appointment. We want them to email you. This is another point of money, to book an appointment, to make an inquiry, to, to find out a little bit more.
They might be concerned about the health of their pets I want some reassurance. Or directions to your practise, and, and this all I think feels, I feel it sits under money, driving directions to your practise, how far away are you? How do I get, Google will tell them what, how long it takes in the current traffic.
And so on. You want reviews, you absolutely want reviews, social proof from other people that you really are, a great place to, to, to trust, to look after their pet, and so you're looking for reviews on your website, looking for reviews on Facebook, Google, and third-party sites like Vet Health Direct. And really what you want is you want to spread those, those reviews across, all four of those sites.
So, Lots of different sites all saying great things about your practise will drive people through the door. And social proof. And, the third thing you want is recommendation.
So as we, we touched on earlier, one of the main reasons people choose veterinary practise is because their pet owning friends, use you already and recommend you. And so think about how can your website, support the recommendation, how can you back it up? Can you incentivize your recommend a friend, programme?
So that's, I challenge you to, to look at the website in a new way and for supporting information on that, have a look at the, Doctor Dave Nicol and his hamster wheel blog, which is excellent. Back in 2015, it's worth pointing out that the, the way to do this was to put your phone number in the top right-hand corner of the website, and that was deemed sufficient. That isn't sufficient anymore.
We need to be smart. We need to make it easier for the user to get in touch with you because that's what we really want them to do. Everything should funnel them into doing what we want them to do, which is contacting us for money reviews or recommendation.
So now on the websites we'll look at and you'll use yourselves in your personal lives, and they have floating buttons so when you scroll up and down on the mobile phone, the phone number appears at the top of the top of your mobile phone screen. We should be cutting back on noise. We shouldn't be like linking car's website with loads of stuff going on, distracting people.
We should be very single-minded in our proposition. Think of HelloFresh, dinner is solved, and a button to click on to, to join them. And yeah, a good design gives prominence to all those elements.
So your, your website needs to be fast. It needs to be technically well built. Again, you don't need to know the intricacies of how to build a website, so it's fast.
You just need to know it needs to be fast. And there is this great tool from Google called Test My Site. You can go to test my site with Google.
You can put in, your, the web address of your practise page, or you can put in someone else's. It will, it, processes it for about a minute and it spits out a report. So I have, picked a, veterinary practises website here.
Which I happen to know went live, less than 4 months ago. So it's a brand new website built by veterinary Press in the UK. It, it looks great as a, on a, on a computer to use it.
It's got some quirky features like you can click a button to pick which video it shows you, a cat, a dog, or a rabbit. But when you actually get into the usability of the website and you test how quickly it loads, it's taking 10 seconds to load on a mobile phone. Which if Google here gives you a hint, it comes up in red, it says it's 4, and it estimates that almost 30% of the people coming to have a look at the website of that veterinary practise will get bored before they get to that and get to the homepage, and they'll click back and they'll go off and look at another vet's website.
So best practise is less than 3 seconds. So, this website is taking 10, and again, you don't need to know the intricacies of it. You, you put your website URL in to test my site with Google.
It gives you a free report, and then you send that to whoever built or designed your practise website, and they can work through the, the actionable steps to improve the speed of your website. It's very simple, very easy to measure. Another thing for 2018 websites is now a requirement for them to be visually beautiful.
We are all so busy in our lives. You can, some people blame it on millennials, some people blame it on Snowflake generation. The reality is there's just so much going on, so much competing for our, time and our attention span.
Our attention span is massively shrinking. So in 2018, people can't be bothered to read a webpage. They don't read all the words on the page.
And we know this because we all do it ourselves. We, we scan a website, you scroll up and down and we make, a gut decision in 3 seconds, but do I trust this company? Do I trust this veterinary practise to look after my pet?
And so it has to be clutter-free, not like Lis cars, and it has to be really well designed to be visually beautiful. So, a couple of good examples here, Tails.com is a UK pet food, company, who are heavily online based.
They have a huge e-commerce and e-marketing team building their website, refining it. So let's, let's use their experience and their expertise and what can we learn from them. They have a, a very clear call to action, claim your offer.
They have a social proof in, this case, it's by Trustpilot, the review, review system, and it's really, really simple, which is where we need to, where we need to be aiming. Again, we have, and next we have Uber is, again, a very complicated, huge business, but they've distilled down their website into a very, clear proposition, get there, your, your day belongs to you, and they have a very clear call to action in terms of they want you to, if they identified people looking on the website for Uber are potential drivers for them. And so they want you to sign up to drive for Uber here and there, and now and then.
And they will make people patterns are making decisions, on your practise. Are they a good vet based on how visually beautiful, and your website is? So it's something to take into consideration.
I thought I would, showcase a couple of vets websites that I think, I think are really excellent. So all the, the webs, vet's practise websites I'll show you, they're all, all between 1 or 3, sites in their, in their group of practises. So they're proof really that you can do it to, anyone watching this we can do it too.
And these guys are trailblazers. They, they are setting the standard of practise websites. So, after this webinar, go and have a look at their websites, you add these to your selection of websites you like looking at, and you want to, want to learn from.
So, the neighbourhood vet, practising group 3 practises in London, doing a really good job. They're bright, they're fresh, they work really well on a mobile phone. We've got Whits Bay vets, I know, this practise recently won a Veterinary Marketing Association award for their, for their marketing, quality of their digital proposition, again, really clean, clear, single-minded, so, so, a great inspiration for us all to look at.
And also CM vets, one branch perhaps up in the northeast of the UK, really bright, really bold, works great on mobile phones, and so loads of ideas from people like, like you who are doing it, already, and so you can, you can aim to emulate them. And as I said, keep looking around the internet, picking websites you like. It can be from within our industry, like, like these three, or they can be external to our industry.
So perhaps you go down the dental and healthcare routes, see what they offer, or perhaps you go the, the, the websites you personally use day in, day out, and what do you like about their website, what features can you, can you pick up and can you borrow to integrate. Into your, either updating your existing website or to To, to build a new one. I would like to share, share this with you.
I think this deserves a special mention. So this is vetsone.co.uk.
They are a small animal practise in the UK and What they do really well, the website is, is designed OK. Technically, it's OK, but what they excel at and, and possibly better than anyone in the UK is they are unique with the story they tell. They have fantastic content, and this story follows through, on all their material, so the literature they produce in the practise.
And on their social media. So actually I'm going to give you a moment just to take a read of this and just to let it all sink in. And if you, if you're working away reading that, I think you'll agree it's very unique.
It's very compelling. It shows personality and in an age when, corporate veterinary practise are an ever-increasing, challenge for, for all of us. Actually, this, this personality and tone of voice, can't be copied.
This is, this is unique to them, . And it's, I don't know about you, but this makes me want to take my, take my cat, take Poppy, down, down in to see them because I believe they, they understand how important Poppy is to me. And it's very unique.
And so, they've done a fantastic job there and that that flows through all their marketing. It flows through their videos. So, a fantastic example, an inspiration to us all.
I have some, pointers and kind of useful resource. So once you've, over the last, 3 hours, you've had some great webinar content, to, to digest and to, to implement in practise. And then what else do you do?
So I'd encourage you to join the Veterinary Marketing Association where you will find, if you're in the UK, that is, where you will find like-minded, people in like-minded practises wanting to, to do better. And so that's a great, great resource to, to learn from. Everyone loves a, a book recommendation.
So mine is Robert Caldini, and his book is called Influence, available on, on Amazon. And his, his book is all about social proof and people believe people. So this is why, reviews, online reviews in multiple places, so in on Google, on Facebook, on, places like Vet Help Direct, your own website, are really important.
Because it's word of mouth, it's, it's, one person communicating peer to peer, one person communicating openly with another, why you should trust that better practise. And it will always be the biggest reason people choose to practise. Follow resources, so things like the hamster wheel blog, it is excellent.
I think it's once a fortnight. Doctor Dave Nicoll will give you some, some very, Insightful advice into, into how you can improve your practise marketing, what you can do, how you can do it slightly differently. And, meet, be it with people at non-cometing practises who are in a, whose objectives, who share the same objectives as you, share the same frustrations of they're so busy dealing with their clinical case load, or they're so busy, dealing with the giving exceptional client care at the, the front desk, that they don't have time to do the marketing, share, share ideas, resource.
And speak to people like Susie at Vet Health Direct, who have, been then, done it to support multiple practises, to grow their business, to, to increase the likelihood at at owns take recommendations for services such as dentals and neutering and, and weight clinics, that will help you, help you build your practise. So just spend a little bit of time now talking about blogging and the, the theory behind blogging. So in theory, the successful blog will improve your search engine optimisation, to target keywords.
By that we mean vets in. The, the local, local area, it might be, how much does it cost tone to my pet. It might be how much do vaccinations cost, it might be, how to toilet train my pet.
So that's what we're talking about with with target keywords. It's all about, appearing in Google in the search results. And you want to drive traffic to your website, which, as we talked about, once you've got traffic to your website, then the website's job is to convert them into money, views, or recommendation.
And it's to increase your domain authority, so a, a good quality blog with good quality content and lots of engagement. Will increase your domain authority, and domain authority is the trust and the emphasis that Google, places onto your website. And so, in, in short, the higher the domain authority of it perhaps his website, the more likely it's going to be to show up in searches, when people type in vets near me, and keywords and the like.
For a, a successful blogging strategy, it takes, it takes an awful lot of planning, so you want to plan out your activity for the, the next few months, next 3 months at the very least, and What you'll do then is you'll build out a, a blog calendar of events, so it might be external events, things like we just had a bonfire night where we know there's lots of fireworks going off, we just had Christmas where we know there'll be lots of, dangers in terms of the pets can eat, be it chocolate, be it tinsel, be it wrapping paper, be it grapes, so you, you may base your, your, blog calendar around external events like that. You may pick up on industry, events such as Rabbit Awareness, month or veterinary nursing Awareness Month. Or you may pick up on what's important to your practise, and, you might have invested in a digital dental X-ray in your practise, you might be wanting to do more dentals.
So, so dentistry might, might be a big part of your blog calendar. Once you have, decided which topics you're going to blog about, you then need to think about what keywords you want your blog to appear, for. So when someone's typed into Google phrases, what phrases, are they likely to use if they're thinking about?
Dentistry for their pet? Does my pet need a dental? And you need to, plan to work those, those keywords into the body copy of your blog article.
Authoritative links. So, a blog, you need to find good quality content elsewhere on the internet, which will back up the, your blog. And it's, if you link to those, that will help, that will help boost your own blog.
Google will look at that and say this is good quality content, because it's also linking to good quality content. And they'd be more likely to recommend you, more likely to, to, list you higher up. The structure of your blog, so it should have, should be broken down into bite size paragraphs.
It should have, headings and subheadings throughout the blog to break it down. And really the keywords you've just chosen, earlier on in, in the planning element, those keywords should be worked into the headings and subheadings, of your blog. And in terms of the length of your blog, about 500 words is a good, is a good length, a blog.
Any more than that, people aren't, going to read it the whole way through. Any less than that, you're probably going to struggle to get the, the amount of keywords into your blog, that you, that you'd hoped for. Something I haven't put on here is, including, including video content, and perhaps you might have a, a blog around, Rabbit Awareness Month, and you might supplement that with a, with a video taken by one of the team can be recorded on the, on, on some mobile phone.
Backing up, what, back up the article, and we all know it's, it's much easier to, to passively watch a video, rather than the effort it takes to, to read 500 words of, of content. A good blog will, have multiple authors, so you'll have lots of contributors at all levels of your veterinary practise, writing for it. You may have a, a blog written by a front of house, team member, you might have one written by a nurse, one written by a vet, one written by a client, you have clients talk about their experience of using their practise.
So it is useful to get lots of voices. And this is a challenge with outsourcing a, a blog, is it needs to feel authentic, it needs to feel like it was written by, by your veterinary practise, it needs to be, representative of the experience that someone would get when they come into your veterinary practise. It needs to have the same warmth as the, as the greeting they would get when they brought their pets through the door of your veterinary practise.
Then once you have started to write your blog and publish it regularly, there's no point just putting a blog up on your website and hoping people will find it by, by magic. What you then need to do is have a plan for distributing it. How are you going to help people find your blog?
How are you going to signpost it? And so there's a number of ways you can do it. Most don't cost anything, apart from time.
And so I would straight away, you should be sharing your, your blogs on Facebook. And you may want to share it in slightly different ways over a over a period of time. On Facebook, so, always with a link, but perhaps with a different image and, and headline, enticing people to, to click on the link.
I think of clickbait, when you, when you look at, Facebook, lots of, lots of posts are written, so you just can't resist clicking on them, to go through and read, read the article, and that's definitely how you should be sharing it on Facebook a couple of times in slightly different ways to, to entice people to your website. You should be producing an email newsletter, as, we've heard earlier today, and so your blogs, should be featured in your email newsletter, not in their entirety, but you should be including links, and teasers in the body of the email newsletter, driving people and encouraging them to click through on the link, you read it on, on your website. Suzie mentioned a few minutes ago about Google My Business, have recently, probably about 2 months ago, have created the opportunity to put posts on your Google, Google My Business page.
And so, absolutely, that's another place, you should be sharing any what content you produce. Any other social media, so Instagram or Twitter if you're using it. And then, in practise, so offline, so on the perhaps you've got TV screens in your practise, that should be showcasing information on your blog and signposting people to go and have a read for more information.
And any literature you're producing, so could your vaccination record cards or appointment cards have links to your blog, encouraging people to go there, and read and find out a little bit more about it. I will share my experience of blogging with you all, in terms of when, once I'd finished creating our current website, my focus turned to how do I promote this and how do I increase our search engine optimisation and how do I increase our domain authority. And so I tasked a a network of people to run a, a weekly, to run a blog on our behalf, and every week for 9 months, they were, they were planning content, researching, going through all the steps we've talked about.
I would then approve it, they would write it, and it would go live and they would push it out. And share it on lots of all the, all the platforms we've just talked about. What I would say is, anything that is taking up resource, so time, money, of yours, which is, you know, the most valuable commodities we have in, in our lives and veterinary practises our time, you should be measuring and monitoring and see what happens with it, .
How many, how many people are visiting your website as a result of that, . Is it making your phone ring? Is it driving people into your practise?
Based on that, I took a decision that there are so many other things competing for my, my time as a veterinary marketeer, wanting to promote our practises. It's important to get your reminder systems right, your Facebook content and advertising is a, a huge, project in its own right, but also very rewarding and will drive people and pet owners through your door. So focusing on that, getting reviews is incredibly important, so that's fighting, that was fighting for my time.
And also the, the pet owners' experience when they walk into your practise, how does it look, how does it smell, what are they, what are my, team members on the front of house saying, how are they greeting pet owners? How are they, ensuring that every pet owner leaves, having booked their next appointment. So there's so many elements that kind of fall into the full marketing under the umbrella of marketing.
For me, I decided my time could be better spent. Focusing on other areas rather than a blog, but the, the website, the social media is absolutely a huge part of the marketing role. What I would say in terms of, now we are focusing our website on having much, Much more folk much more concentrated content, and I guess the jargon word for it is evergreen content.
So you should be, rather than chilling out, rather than focusing on the volume of content your website is producing, it should be on the quality of the, the content. So spend, spend time and effort creating brilliant pages about dentistry, about the cat clinics you're running, about how you are, the steps you're taking to reduce the, the stress, experienced by. When it visits your practise, build great pages about weight loss and weight management.
So can you produce some, really insightful content, back it up with a video, and, a strong call to action, urging the pet owners to book an appointment then and there. Can you put time and energy into your pre on into the web page on your, about your pet health plan? This is really key, key focus for, for most veterinary practises in the UK.
So rather than creating lots and lots of content about the pet health plan, can you, can you spend that time, effort and resource making, fewer really, really good insightful pages? So next steps, what should you, what should you take away from this and implement in practise, from, from now on, review your practise website, submit it to peak user testing, get fresh eyes on, on your website. You, you've probably seen it hundreds of times, canvass opinion of friends, and family, of, of experts, and really, listen to what they have to say, and how they use it, especially on their mobile phone.
I urge you to identify 5 things you're going to improve, whether that's the images on your website, the quality or the quantity of those images, . You've, you've reviewed how it looks on mobile, so perhaps you can, you can pledge to increase the ease of use on the mobile phone. Conversions, have a look at how single-minded your, your practise website is.
Now we're thinking that the three things we want someone to do when we visit your web page is money, reviews, or recommendation. Perhaps having that mobile, having the, the practise phone number in the top right-hand corner isn't enough anymore. Perhaps you need to change the design, so it's more single-minded, driving people to, to, book an appointment or to email your practise or to get directions.
Can you take some inspiration from vets one and rewrite your story, again with fresh eyes, read what your website says about you. Is it generic? Could that relate to any single practise in the UK, or does that really tell a compelling story about how much your particular practise cares for the pets that the pet owners trust you to look after?
Everything requires resource, so, allocate a resource in terms of both budget and time to do it. There's no point throwing money at it if you don't have time to manage it, and vice versa. This is really, really important part of your marketing mix, so put some, resource behind it.
And then finally, the most important thing is to do something. We can't put our head in, in the sand, and just hope it will go away. People are looking at your website every single day, and we want to make sure that's representative of your practise.
So please do, do something, and be realistic, whether that's you're going to. Tweak your existing website, your existing, existing company has done that for you. Perhaps you can send them the results from the test my site with Google, and some, some videos from peak user testing, and that might be enough to, to improve your current website, or does it require a brand new website, and all the time and money that goes with that, .
So be realistic, but please do something. So that brings me to the, to the end of my, presentation. We have a, we have some time for questions if there are any, .
I would urge you to Follow up on all the recommendations you've heard today from Susie and Caroline. Please feel free to get in contact with me if you have any questions. I'm more than happy to, to look at your website and give you some, some, some opinions and some friendly advice on it.
You can, say contact me here or by my LinkedIn profile that's available. So please do get in touch, more than happy to help. Justin, thank you very much.
That was, really good coverage of, again, a really important subject, and I would encourage anyone who's got any questions. We do have about 10 minutes now to run, so if anyone has anything at this point that they'd like to put to Justin, to clarify anything or to add to that conversation because it was a big subject and, you got through it very well. Just, just, I'm not sure if Susie's still on the, the, the call as well, but maybe to both of you, just, we've heard a lot of information today around, you know, Facebook in particular, the multi-platforms, you've done a very nice job of actually bringing us up to date with websites.
Any view on the future of social media and where it's going? We've got demographic shifts, we've got technical shifts and all sorts of things, but of course what we would like to be is a little bit ahead of the curve. Any thoughts on that?
So I guess my, the danger with social media is we, we don't own it. It's Facebook, Facebook dominates social media and they own it. So it's, it, we play Facebook by their rules, if you like.
So, whilst, over the last 5, 10 years, practises have worked really hard to gain likes on their Facebook page, because this, we thought alike, pet owner like in our site meant we could communicate them, communicate with them one on one, at no cost through Facebook. So we've built up the 234 1000 likes on our practise Facebook pages. And then overnight, we're hearing the news that Facebook has changed their algorithm.
And, now Facebook is going to kind of suppress posts written by, by businesses and veterinary practises in favour of showing it by showing, showing people content by their friends. And within, within hours of that announcement hitting the news, it's actually happened. So, I logged into Facebook this morning and it's, it gave me a notification saying the algorithm has changed.
We're now going to show you content from your friends rather than businesses, so. It is, that, that it should be a bit of a wake-up call for assault because it's, it's frightening, and it's ever more reason to put resource, time and effort into. Elements you own.
So, so by that, I mean website, reviews, the experience that happens in practise, because we own that, that's we can control how people interact with that. Whereas, we can't control how, what Facebook will do in, later this year, in a few years' time, how they will change their rules. And Facebook will change definitely in their algorithm has definitely meant it's.
More of a requirement for businesses and veteran practises to pay for their content to be seen on, Facebook. It, it makes complete sense from a Facebook business point of view. They're going to show your content to less people unless you pay for it.
You don't have to be too cynical to work out that's, that's what their, their intention was. So I, I think it's important to be conscious of, of that and make sure we do a really good job of the elements we own. So our website, our reviews, and our experience in practise.
I don't know if Susie, you have, you're still there, whether you've got anything to add to that? I am Justin. I just have to nip off, owing to incoming children, but, I, I didn't hear the question because I've only just come back into the room, sorry.
I had to nip out for 5 minutes. Sorry Susie, we'd just had a very good run through of the websites and, and the, the updating those. My question was, is there any view on the future of social media and where it's going, and Justin made a very good point that we don't actually own social media, it owns us more or less.
So, but it's the direction and particularly for small business, where is it going and what should we be looking out for? So I, yeah, and I just heard Justin talking about the change in, in algorithm, and, you know, I think, you know, absolutely agree that they, they've been tweaking it really for the last 4 or 5 years, very, consciously towards making more money out of the platform. And I think that this may turn out to be another step in that direction.
. Having said that, he was quite clear that pages that are getting lots of engagement and having real proper discussions, we won't be, as affected as as businesses that are sort of, you know, just broadcasting a bit more. So I'm quite hopeful, actually, that that practises will escape this one unscathed. I think what will be true across all the platforms is that they're all desperate to create.
A great user experience for the people using the the Facebook every day. And so I think, making sure that what you're posting is, is a nice thing for your animal owners to see, your pet owners to see, and for your pet owners to engage with. And you're not gonna go too far wrong across all of the platforms.
But I totally agree with what Justin was saying about, you know, not owning it as well. Thanks Suzie and go and chase children. Thank you very much for your contributions today as well.
Thank you. OK, Justin, that seems to be . The comments, thank you very much for the offer to help people with that.
Obviously your experience in practise at the coalface helping grow a successful practise is invaluable, and I think that's, that's something people can take advantage of. So once again thanks for the contribution today and the general contribution over all. Ladies and gentlemen, I think you've had a fantastic 3 hours of, digital and social media updates.
I've learned a huge amount in all this. I've got lots of pages of stuff here to go and talk to my marketing people about. If there's any comments that you'd wish to pop into the Q&A or the chat box for our panellists.
Just as a bit of feedback, but once again, I think it's been a great series. Thank you to, Saint Francis Group once again for supporting, this series and making it worthwhile and their ongoing support of practise management in general in veterinary practise. And thank you to the webinar vet for a fantastic, Virtual conference over the last couple of days, hope everyone stays on board for the clinical information to follow.
So me, Alan Robinson from Vet Dynamics, thank you all and speak to you all again soon.
