Thank you so much, Alan. And, also a huge thank you to the webinar vet for inviting me. It's really exciting and, and slightly surreal to be sitting here in my conservatory, talking to you guys, and, yes, absolutely fantastic, initiative.

So, today, session is multi-channel marketing. So this means marketing through lots of different platforms, as Alan alluded to. So it, whereas sort of historically, it may have been OK to have a Facebook page, talking to Facebook people.

And a website talking to people looking for a vet. Now it's really crucial for reasons that we'll go into next, that you, you as a veterinary practise, have a presence on several marketing channels. We're gonna be focusing today on digital, but actually, the concept of multi-channel marketing applies to your offline marketing, as well.

So I'm gonna take you back, in explaining why you should bother with multi. Marketing, to the zero moment of truth. So this is a concept that Google introduced in, about 2010.

And it was trying to explain, how things were changing, and how internet marketing was affecting people's buying pathways, the consumer buying pathways. So they said that in the old traditional marketing model, people would see a stimulus, for a. So they might see an adverse or something like that.

And then you would have the first moment of Truth where they saw the products on the shelf and they, and they took one off. And then the second moment of Truth where they got the product home and tried it, and, and whether they liked it or not would affect how they felt about it. And it used to be the case that if you've got those stimulus, first moment of Truth, second moment of truth, if you've got those working really well, that you would have a successful product and you'd be able to sell it.

But Google noticed that this had all changed quite significantly due to the internet, and they did a lot of research with an institution called Shopper Science, and they found that there is now a very clear extra step in this pathway called the Zero Moment of Truth. And in this extra step, people were going online, they were looking at all the different products that were available. They were looking at reviews, they were looking at videos.

And they were using that before they'd even gone in the shop, or whilst they were in the shop before they'd had their first moment of truth. So, obviously, we were absolutely fascinated about how this would apply to the veterinary, client cycle. So we, sort of created what we thought, how we thought it might work in, in veterinary.

So the stimulus could be that you've driven past the practise or that your friend has recommended a vet practise. The first moment of truth might be when you see the vet and you go in, what your experience, as a client, what your experience is like in the vet practise, what the waiting rooms like, what the vet's like. And then perhaps the second moment of Truth is how the animal responds to the treatment.

So we use that concept as a sort of mind map and that allowed us to then focus on what is this zero moment of truth, and what does it look like for pet owners. So we did, . A big survey about 2 years ago, where we interviewed, just over 380 pet owners, and we asked them the question, if you had to choose a pet, what would you, now, what would you do?

We've just literally now just repeated that survey. So we, went to the national pet show this time so that we could talk to pet owners that were not actually online by the very nature of the fact they were answering a survey online. And we've then extended that survey.

So we had 382. That answered our survey at the National Pet Show. And then we went home and we then ran that survey online, to a further 1000 pet owners.

So we have a huge sample here, and we haven't got, around to full analysis of this yet, but we're hoping, to be able to do so and, and publish that imminently. But really fascinating answers coming through, very similar, actually, to our findings two years ago, with some really interesting changes. So we still found that Asking friends was a really crucial activity.

But just look at those percentages. They don't add up to 100%. So what this tells us is that those people that are asking friends are probably doing a whole load of other activities as well.

And that's what we're gonna be absolutely fascinated, to drill down and find out a lot more about. But very interestingly then, you've got people checking online reviews, as the next most important activity. You've got people Googling the vet practise, you've got people looking at the practise website, obviously ringing up, asking local, local pet experts.

So there's, there's several different activities, that these people are doing, and, and we think that this, these are probably some of the activities that make up the zero moment of truth. And we have other questions later on in the survey, and that provide a lot more detail about those exact, actions. So we think there's a very good chance that this zero moment of truth concept is, is definitely happening with veterinary practises.

So it's really important, that people are looking at several different channels when they're choosing a vet, and that this is playing an important part in their decision making. Google have gone on to elaborate further about this, zero moment of truth, and they have noticed another change in people's behaviours, which is that instead of sitting down and saying, right now, I am going to research finding a bed, and they might sit down with their partner, you know, maybe 4 or 5 years ago, they might have got their laptop out, and they might have all sat down and and researched it together and come to a decision. Now, that behaviour has shifted very much towards what they're called.

Micro moments, which is where people are just grabbing their phone when they've got to maybe wait to see the doctor, or maybe whilst they're waiting for something to load on their laptop, they'll grab their iPad and have a look, a quick look on their iPads. And these predictable daily sessions that people used to have are being replaced with many very short fragmented interactions, and that may be going instantaneously, with some other looking at another platform. So mobile searches for best have grown over 80% in the last two years.

So people are just picking up their phones, right, OK, well, what is the best bets, just very quickly whilst I'm in the middle of doing something different. So this is all playing into the fact people are using several different channels now when they're looking at some information on their phone, one minute, the next minute they might be looking for information on a completely different platform on their laptop. And there's also a lot of evidence that people are using multiple social networks.

So we know that 76% of UK adults use social media. That was 2017. And we know that 67% of online adults use Facebook.

But we know that all these online adults that use Facebook, there's only 32% of those people that only have a Facebook profile. So, a lot of what's happening, and a lot of people are saying, oh, Facebook's, you know, getting old fashioned and, and things like that. And, and that doesn't actually seem to be what the statistics are showing.

The statistics are showing that people that are still on Facebook as much as they ever were, but they're also on lots of other platforms as well. And multiple devices. So this is quite incredible.

The majority of UK adults have access to 6 devices in the home. So this feeds in again, to what I was saying earlier, that people are going to be accessing your information as a veterinary practise in many different ways, often very quickly and often on a mobile phone. So, you need to do multi-channel marketing because people, this is an important part of people's decision making for pretty much every decision that they make in life, this zero moment of truth.

And also because people are using lots of different platforms now routinely. They are on lots of social media platforms. You can't just target them on Facebook and expect to hit everybody because the next day they might be on Instagram, and you want to get that message across to them in a drip feed type way.

So, obviously, this is a sort of step up from the, sort of strategy that you might require just to run a Facebook page. And multi-channel marketing, like Alan was saying in the last, in between our sessions, is just so crucial because it's very easy with digital marketing to do lots of different things and be very busy, but not necessarily achieving what you need to achieve for your business. And what we're finding with digital marketing now is that it is very time consuming.

It, and where it becomes time consuming, it suddenly becomes a very significant expense, which is fine because it really delivers, and we've done quite a few calculations recently to show it delivers an enormous return on investment. But when you start to invest that type of time and money, it's really important that you're doing it in a strategic and planned way. So we have developed, 5 steps, of multi-channel marketing for veterinary practises.

And I'm gonna run through those 5 steps now. And then when we get onto platforms, I'm going to be focusing slightly more on Instagram and Twitter, because Caroline's obviously been speaking about Facebook, just, just now. So the brand, is.

The essence of your vet practise. It's, it's what, what you think is special about your veterinary practise. And we very often talk to vet vets, and, and we'll say something like, you know, well, what's special about your practise?

Why should people, come to you? You know, if you, if you live locally, why would you go to your practise rather than another practise? And 9 times out of 10, Let's get really, really passionate telling us why their practise is so brilliant, and so much better than all the all the competition.

But then very often when you go on to then look at their marketing messages on social media, on their website, it's really hard to work out any of those factors. So the brand has to underpin every single communication that you make, to make sure that you're always fully reflecting your brand, and showing people what the practise is all about. When it comes to working out what your brand is, there's three sort of layers to this.

There's, there's the what. So this is what people normally come out with first, I find when I say what's special about your vet practise. And they might come out with, well, we've got, A digital X-ray, we've got a really good ultrasound machine.

We've got a really great new prac practise, building, you know, really nice air conditioning. They might even say, then they might move on to the house, and they might say that, you know, we have staff that are really highly trained. We've got some certificate holders.

We do quite a lot of work in-house that people would sometimes refer, and we can do that at quite a low cost. And they, and they get, you know, really passionate about that. But what they often don't talk about is the why.

And this, inside out branding and marketing, is, is, is very, very powerful if you can do it properly. And it's starting off with Why are you bothering? Why do you even have a vet practise?

Why did you want to do this? And, that, if you can mark it like that, if you can get messages across with the whys rather than the what's, it tends to be much more powerful. And, and I'm sure you've all probably seen on YouTube, Simon.

And Cinex, TED Talk, on this. And if you haven't seen it, I strongly recommend, that you go and have a, a watch of it, because it's, it's really inspiring. And it's ever, it's completely true.

So people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. . And sadly, you know, if you look at the American election, I think that this is something that Trump did really brilliantly.

He was constantly focusing on the whys, you know, Make America great again. He never went into any sort of silly details about what he was actually going to do. It was all on the whys, and, and that was incredibly powerful.

But on a, on a nicer note, when veterinary practises start marketing with the wise, it can be equally powerful, but much nicer. So. I'm gonna talk you through, a case study here, the London Cat Clinic.

So I don't know how many of you guys are familiar, with Jeremy Campbell, who's set up a startup practise, in London, especially for cats, and he has got why marketing. So this is his brand message. We do what we do because cats are unique and they deserve a special place.

We believe this place is the London Cat Clinic, and we hope you'll feel the same way. And when, Jeremy came to us, about 6 months before his practise opened, he had that incredibly clear vision of why he was doing what he was doing. And that underpins all of his messages and, and everything that he talks about.

. So we actually worked with him, we actually set up his Facebook page a month before he opened, because of this really sort of clear vision and, and why branding that he has, we had a huge, following by the time his practise opened. And on the day he announced his practise opening, instead of having to sort of gradually build up followers, we, we had an enormous reach, right from the very first day. And now he's got this clear brand, you'll see that it then underpins everything that we write for him on Facebook, because he's got a really clear brand when he uses us as an agency, it's great for us because we know exactly how he wants everything to be communicated, and how he wants us to write his Facebook posts.

And so it means that. Multiple agencies can work together, and that him and his staff can come on board as well, and it just makes life very easy. And because of, again, this really powerful brand, he's managed to get a huge amount of, of PR actually.

So he got an article in the Independent about his mission to make cats less terrified. So you can see that all everything that he writes on Facebook, even down to his videos, are all demonstrating this belief that he has, that cats deserve a special place and and cats are a special, and different. This video makes me have a huge grin on my face of voices.

It so this is him on Instagram, and you can see different platform, but same message. So many people are using Facebook and Instagram. Well, you, I mean, often they can't even remember where they've seen a particular post.

They just remember that they've seen it. So it doesn't matter if they're looking on Instagram or Facebook. They're getting the same, the same why, but coming through in slightly different messages and different posts.

So he's reaching lots of different audiences, as well as reaching the same people several times. This is another example, of using a quote from a client, and this is a meme that Caroline, was referring to, in the, in the last talk. So just overlaying, an image with writing so that people can share it.

And like she was saying, it's brilliant then, because if people share this image, sometimes the actual words that you've written. Get lost, but of course they don't do that if it's a meme. So this London Cat Clinic branding will follow this image wherever it goes, as well as also the words, that, that we've written there.

Obviously the watts can sort of feed into, the, the branding as well, and, and Jeremy's really a slick, shiny, building is, is obviously a really important part of, of his brand, although it's all underpinned with a Y. So this is another, this is a really interesting fact about brands, from Nielsen. 43% of people are prepared to pay more for a brand known for its social value.

And most of the practises that we work with, are aiming for really being a sort of gold standard, practise. They're, they're not really going for under, undercutting people on prices. And so I think this is really important.

And, and the, the frustrating thing when I, I, you know, I know and I understand. And that people are prepared to pay more for a brand, that they think has social value. And, and I know from being a vet that all vets have huge social value.

I haven't worked in a single vet practise on any day, where I haven't seen nurses going way above and beyond what's strictly required to look after the patients, where I haven't seen vets driving after they've finished work to go and drop off a bag of food to some, an old lady that can't drive very well. I haven't never met a practise. That won't treat wildlife, and, and practises, of course, are always rehoming strays, looking after, animals that come in until their owners can be found.

So pet practises are doing this day in, day out. What they're also doing is providing free education. They're improving the general welfare of, of pets throughout the UK, day in day out by educating, and providing those resources on their website and social media.

So, I just think Since we're all doing that, it's really important, to shout about it and to let people know about that. And it doesn't have to be in a showy offy type way. The beautiful, the beautiful thing about Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, even your website blogs, is that you can tell a story, and by telling that story, you can open the practise up and let people see what you're doing as your normal day in and day out.

And just to give you a quick example of that, this is from the London Cat Clinic, and I'm sure you guys have posted, lots of posts like this, that, people, needing, to, sorry, cats needing to be rehomed, and, Then educational resources provided for free, just making sure that people are aware of them. And people are, are grateful, to their vets. They expect their vets to be providing, online education, and they do really value it, when it is provided.

So the next stage of multi-channel marketing, once you've really got a very clear vision of your brand, is to work out what, well, hopefully, you already know what your business aims are, but to marry up your internet marketing, and your business aims, because At the end of the day, that's, that's the whole point of what we're doing. And although sometimes it might be a very long burn process, for example, on Facebook, building up a vibrant, active community, so that when you post something, it's instantly seen by hundreds and hundreds of people, and building an engaged, warm audience, you feel happy and confident to respond to your questions, takes a lot of time and doesn't have an instantly, always an instant moment of people coming in and buying products from you or using different services. But at the end of the day, it's all got to be working towards those aims.

You're building up that community because you want to have people, that communication with people so that you can then further your business aims. And I'm just gonna give you some examples of the types of things that our clients tell us they want to achieve through their internet marketing. So our, this is our sort of, that help direct line, educate, gain and retain ideal clients, and I think that's really what pretty much every veterinary practise that we encounter wants to do.

But they might have more specific aims. They might have recently just got a new dental machine and they might want to be focusing on increasing dentals. They might want to increase the number of sign-ups the Healthy Pett Club.

We get a lot of people wanting to raise awareness of the fact that they do keyhole bays. Show that they're doing their bit. We get this a lot.

We get people saying, well, we don't really need new clients, but we just want to show that we're doing our bit, to educate our clients. And I suppose that all feeds into that, creating a social value for your brand. Make us look up to date.

We get that a lot, and it, and it sounds a bit superficial, but actually, it's incredibly unfair that you do automatically judge a business by its website or by its Facebook pages. And if you go to the Facebook page and the last post was sort of like a, you know, 3 weeks ago, and then you go to the website and it looks like It was last updated about 10 years ago. Unfortunately, you know, your practise could be have people that are absolutely dedicated to the highest clinical standards, but people are just gonna think that you're outdated.

So it really is important to have an internet marketing presence that's as up to date as your practises. Increasing new client acquisitions is obviously, a very common one. And reduce lapsed clients.

And, and I always think, focusing on reducing lapsed clients. You know, some people come to us and say, right, we want to increase new client acquisitions, the first thing that we want to know about is their lapsed clients, because actually, It's generally a lot easier to stop clients lapsing than it is to increase new client acquisitions. So we nearly always want to do those two things, at the same time, because it makes no sense to increase new client acquisitions and just let all of your clients, you know, go elsewhere or never hear from you again.

And bond our existing clients to say pretty much the same as reducing lapsed clients. So once you've got your business aims very clear, you want to start creating campaigns around those business aims, and of course, they also feed into. 5 because they provide that essential thing for internet marketing, which is a way to measure your results.

The next step is content planning around those business aims. You really want the same messages to be going out on all the different platforms. So, these are factors that you need to take into consideration, what your educational aims are.

So, if it helps, we quite often say to vets, what was the, what's the one thing that you wished your clients knew that they don't know? And that's often quite a good sort of trigger for lots. Of other thoughts about what they'd like to educate their clients about.

And then, of course, the areas of business that they want to grow. So if you're wanting to grow dentals, it makes sense to try and improve people's understanding of dental disease, using case studies to show what a difference it makes to animals once they've had a dental, how much happier they are afterwards, and, and linking that, concept of, of dental disease actually being painful, for pets, just like it is for humans. And then, of course, you've got the time of the year and seasonal events, and this is actually really, really big, when we're planning content for our vets.

If you just stick to your own agenda about what areas of your business you want to grow, it doesn't chime with people, it doesn't resonate with what's going on with their life. Whereas if we Post, on behalf of our clients about things that are happening in their life. So, on Valentine's Day, if we post about Valentine's, or, you know, if we post about what the cold weather's like, and if we post about what the hot weather's like, we get far more engagement because it's what people are thinking about at that time.

Many years ago, when we first started out, working, doing internet marketing for vets, and we were sort of, made a few mistakes in the, in the very first year. And one of those was to schedule a post on, worms in cats for Christmas Day by accident. And that's really not a very happy Christmas message, to receive on Christmas Day.

So, it, it is really crucial. You might want to just push your own agenda, but you've got to build up that community. And like Caroline was saying, the algorithm, for Facebook is likely to change even more.

It's trying to stop these promotional posts from businesses coming through onto people's news feeds unless they're paying for them using Facebook ads. But what they have said is if, if you've got a a business. Page where people are engaging with you and talking about nice things in life, and then they won't be affected.

So I'm really hopeful that most of our vets, where they happily chat away about what their community wants to talk about for most of the time, I think should come off relatively unscathed from this algorithm change. Local events, again, that's what your local community are thinking about, and it shows that you're in tune with your local community. And then this, what the community likes is so crucial, you wouldn't believe how different the communities on different that practises Facebook pages are.

They're all completely unique and, and one community will react in a completely different way to another. So you'll get to know your community, you'll get to know what they like, you'll get to know what they engage with and what they don't engage with. And, so you'll be able to start making posts and writing them in a format that they like.

And then, you know, obviously, you want it all planned as much as possible, but the good thing about social media is, is immediacy. People do want to see what's happening in practise that day. You can never tell what's going to be on the news or what weather conditions are gonna happen.

So do leave some space for post. On the day. And we, we do generally find that if you post something that's happening there and then, it does again tend to get a little bit more engagement, than if you're posting about something that's been scheduled in advance.

So it's important to leave space for that. This is the type of, calendar that we then start to create. So we have, the, call to action, which is, in this case, this example here, come in for a dental check, so that's what we want them to do.

And we find that this, type of promotion works really well. Then we want to make sure what the key message. So there's obviously a number of different messages that you could have behind a, a dental health check campaign, say signs of dental disease, how to brush.

And we've been focusing recently a lot on the signs of dental pain, particularly in cats, where it's so difficult to spot. And then you can start getting creative with how you can get that message across on different platforms. So each platform needs its message written and delivered in a slightly different way.

Still the same message, but just delivered slightly differently. So for a blog, you might, have like a case study of what happens on the day of a dental, you might have a before and an after comparison. We find that case studies for blogs are really compelling.

They seem to get a lot more engagement, than just a sort of, we just wrote an advice piece on dentals. It's just so much more interesting for people to get involved in a story. Our vets are sometimes quite surprised because when we're writing a blog.

The first thing that we want is the owner's telephone number, because actually, most of the content comes from them, because other owners are actually really interested in how that owner felt, how they felt the pet was, and how they felt the pet felt when it was coming in for the, the dental. And how the pet was afterwards. And we quite often use quotations, and, comments directly from the owner, and they really seem to add sort of life and, vivacity to that.

And I'll be showing you an example of that a bit later on. Facebook, you can, once you've written the blog, and I'll show you in a second how the blog can be the sort of real linchpin of your multi-channel marketing campaign. So you can link from Facebook to your blog.

But you probably also want to try and stimulate a conversation in the community around, whatever. Your key message was. So asking the community if they brush their dog's teeth.

Perhaps asking the community to post pictures of them brushing their dog's teeth, asking the community to, post what they think are signs of dental problems or running a quiz, we find quizzes are very popular as well. Email marketing is sort of less fancy than some of the other platforms we find it's incredibly effective, particularly for these offer type campaigns. And so we would certainly want to send out an email.

And in the email, when you're putting that message across, you can be a slightly more direct, slightly more offer-based, and then where on Facebook it needs to be more sort of interesting and engaging for the community. And then video will come on to video again in a minute, and you saw Jeremy with the cap around his neck, and video is just such a powerful way to get across so much of your brand. And so a short video showing how to check, check a dog's mouth for signs of dental problems could be very effective with that.

We then tend to go on and produce a, a far more, padded out one so that we've got all the posts there ready to go and ready to upload to, scheduling, once the vets have checked them. But you can work really with in whatever way you works best for you. But it is good.

Our account managers do find it's worth having this type of spreadsheet somewhere, so that you have a record of, of what's been posted. So, once you've done your planning, the next step is to think about platforms. And before we move on to the different platforms, focusing, as I said on Twitter and Instagram, I just want to have a word about the website because it is, the central part, of the multi-channel marketing campaign, and most of the time that's through the blog.

So, I would urge you really as a top priority for digital marketing, to start blogging on your website, . Or to start, or to commission an agency, to blog on your behalf, because it really needs to happen consistently. It has so many benefits, not only for making the website more interesting, which I'm sure Justin will come on to later.

But also because it then allows you to link out to all of your multi-channel marketing areas. So, as I was saying, to Facebook and, to Twitter, and post a link to your blog, so that they're actually then coming back onto your website, and If you can guide people back to your website, whether it's onto a landing page for a promotion, if you're running a promotion via email, and then they can come onto a landing page, all about that promotion, or using Facebook ads, then they're actually on your property. When they're on Facebook, you know, Facebook could change their algorithm tomorrow, and then, then every, and then they could stop your things from working.

All sorts of things. Whereas when they're actually visiting your website, they're actually viewing things on, on your terms, and you have the opportunity then to collect their email address, and things like that. So, not, not always, but as a general rule, it's nice to have that.

And, and some of the posts on Facebook, you wouldn't want linking back to your website, like I was talking about when you're trying to get people to post pictures of their pets. Post advice, talk within the community, but for this sort of thing, it, it works very well. We also believe that that should have a pretty comprehensive, online resource.

So when people, local pet owners are worried about their pets, it's fairly instinctive for them to pick up the phone and call you if they're thinking offline. We believe that online is really just an extension of of Normal life now. And so we do think it's very important that you have that resource there, for people to be able to access.

And whether that's fact sheets that you've written yourself, plug in fact sheets like these ones, it's important that when you're in the vet consultation, and I think Caroline said it, you know, people don't always take in everything that they're told in the consultation. What they need to then be able to do is come home and sometimes look things up in their own time. And if you haven't got the resource on your website, then obviously, they're gonna have to go and find that information somewhere else.

So it's having the resource there, but also letting people know about it. And you can do that through your social platforms. So, linking back to these advice sheets if you're talking about them on social media.

So this is just a quick, graphic that I've put together to show how the website can be the sort of hub of your multi-channel marketing campaign. So with Facebook, putting links to your blogs, using Facebook, posts and Facebook ads to run promotions on things like free dental checks, linking to a page on your website that's all about that particular offer. Email marketing, you might have offer emails.

So if we just take that example of that dental check, you might email out, if, if you're focusing on a particular demographic, email out a details of the dental offer. Linking back to an office page on your website where they can gain more information about that. And for a dental, you maybe wouldn't want to segment quite so much because you probably want all animals coming in for a dental check, where it's things like, rabbits, checks, or if you're doing senior health checks, then do make sure that you segment your email database so that your Only emailing your cat owners, or you're only emailing your senior, your owners of senior pets.

Likewise, with the blogs, what we tend to do is we tend to run blogs on the vet practise websites in maybe a couple of months. And then we'll email every other month, one month, we'll email cat owners with, links to the various blogs that have been published with cat content that would be interesting to them. And maybe a cat offer, and then the following month we'll email dog owners, so they're always getting information that's very much tailored and customised to them.

Google My Business, this is all about really search engine, optimisation, so being found in Google. But there's now a feature on Google My Business where you can actually put posts, so you could take a, snippet from your blog and stick it onto Google My Business. Obviously you want reviews, but you want reviews.

Needs to be displayed, on your website, so you can take reviews from a third party platform and display them on your website so that when people are looking at your website, trying to decide whether to call a vet, they can see those reviews on that website, making sure that your reviews are also visible on Facebook and email, so that whichever channel they access your practise from, they know that they can trust you, because they can see that other people have used you and had a positive experience. And having reviews on as many channels as possible, so as many platforms as possible, say, Facebook reviews, all the other review platforms that there are, Google, that Herect, and any UK bet all helps with bringing your practise up the rankings in Google. You'll notice that Instagram's looking slightly lonely there without an arrow to the website.

And that's because it's actually quite difficult to link content on Instagram, to the website at the moment. So you're really just running that as an engagement, community building, but you still want the same content, the same branding going out there. And obviously you can use content from your blogs and you can tweet links to your blogs.

And of course, you can also do it the other way and get posts from Facebook and Twitter on your website so that everybody can see, that, that, you, those social profiles when they access your website. And it just brings some of the life and energy of those social platforms into the more static version of your website. I'm only gonna talk really briefly about websites, because I know that Justin's covering them later.

But again, it's just a really good opportunity to portray your brand. And this is just an example of a website that uses video quite effectively, as its header, to, convey, convey the brand. I'm sure that's still playing now.

So, you just access it, that's show being accessed through Google, and then the video plays automatically. This won't work, on a mobile. So it's really important again, to be very considerate to those mobile users, and make sure that there's a mobile version of your website, and a really good photo that it works really well on mobile.

A lot of people, I'm sure Justin will go and say about building websites mobile first, which means that the first consideration is people on mobile phones and they design the mobile version first, and then they build the desktop version later. And that's, you know, a pretty good way to, to go, really. So this is, the preliminary results.

This is from the National Pett show, when we ask people what social media they used, and it really does reflect, sort of national statistics. But you can see Facebook's still the most popular by a long way. And not only is it the most popular, but it's also the most easy to use commercially at the moment as well.

So, you know, for all this talk of multi-channel marketing, please don't neglect your Facebook. Because we find that for the time and hours you put in, if you put them into Facebook, you'll get probably about 5 times as much back than than any of the other platforms at the moment, really. Obviously, using them all together, it gives you that extra cumulative, effect.

So, it's definitely worth using the other platforms, but Facebook still should be the primary platform for the vast majority of practises. But, so we were quite interested to see, again, not unexpected, looking at national statistics, but the Instagram is the second most popular platform. Followed by YouTube.

So Twitter's quite a long way down there, really. And actually, Snapchat's almost catching it up. Although Snapchat has got a much younger demographic than Twitter.

So currently, in terms of reaching pet owners, Twitter's probably still a lot more effective than Snapchat. Also, Snapchat's a very young platform, and it's not set up massively well at the moment to use, for local marketing. So, it's probably not one.

And to consider at the moment, unless you have a very, very young demographic of owners, in which case, I would say experiment and have a play, because, you know, you may get some things out of it. And again, LinkedIn, if you live in, if you have a demographic of owners who are sort of business and people, then it may be worth considering using LinkedIn. And certainly, from a personal, professional perspective, LinkedIn's quite nice, because you can keep up with colleagues and things like that.

So we're just going to focus a little bit, on Instagram. We are actually getting really good results, with practises on Instagram. This is Heathy bets.

They run the Instagram themselves. So this is a post that they put up on their Facebook page, where they have, I think, 2000 likes on their Facebook page. And you can see they've got 4 likes, which is fine, you know, posts sometimes don't.

Don't do massively well. But when we put it up on Instagram, they got 22 likes. And that's pretty much a trend that we're finding.

People are getting a lot of engagement on Instagram, and it's quite, a sort of long, long burning thing. It seems they keep, they keep on picking up likes over a longer period of time than they would do on Facebook. Obviously, Instagram is owned by Facebook.

So in time, it will probably be subject to the same algorithm changes as Facebook. But for the moment, it seems to be a way to sort of, avoid the other hordes of businesses trying to be seen, and to get a bit of exposure for yourself. So, I also think that that practises, really suits the use of Instagram because Instagram is pure, really very image focused.

I know there's Quite a lot of copy down the side here. But actually, when you're using Instagram, it's the images that come first. And obviously, as that practises, you know, every, every minute walking through the door, we have amazing, image opportunities.

So I think, it lends itself really well, to Instagram. And certainly the practises that have started using it have, have, you know, had a fair bit of success with it. It's certainly in community building.

There's Less, less evidence yet whether these people are actually turning into owners and whether those people are actually local, which is another problem with Instagram. You can end up, sort of engaging with people that are, actually, in Australia, just like you can with Twitter. But it's certainly worth having a go.

It's not very time consuming. And with Instagram, you could just post a few pictures and see how they do. You don't necessarily have to have the same volume of posts that you do, on Facebook.

On Instagram, people tend to have niches. So Instagram accounts do best when people post the same type of photos, again and again, so people know what to expect. There's nothing wrong with always having pictures of pets in your waiting room.

That can be your sort of niche and your theme. You don't have to always have, like, a wide variety, and memes and things like that. So in some ways, it can be quite, simple to run as well.

Instagram users are a bit younger than Facebook users on average. You can see there that the, 18 to 24 age group is very represented, but also the 25 to 34 age group, as well. So Instagram works much like Facebook where you follow somebody and when you follow them, if they publish an image, then you can see it in your newsfeed.

So you just start out by following people if you know local people. And the challenge with Instagram really is going to be keeping it local. So if you can possibly stick to only following local people, that's extremely helpful.

And when you start following people, then that can be seen as a sort of invitation for them to follow you back. So, that's a good way, to start out. And you can direct message people just like you can on Facebook, and .

This is an Instagram post that we made from that Herect so you can as you can see, it's mainly, mainly image-based rather than text-based. So this is, this is where, Instagram is sort of slightly different to Facebook. The hashtags, and are really, really important.

So you can see here, we've posted, something on Facebook. And then underneath, we've mentioned people that we thought we think might be interested in the photo. So then those people can see it, it draws their attention to it, and they can engage with it.

And then Hashtags. So by putting this hashtag, say, for example, here, you can see Cas Instagram as a hashtag in this post. So that means that if anyone searched Instagram for Cats of Instagram, that they will see Heathside vets posts and this is Heathside Bets one.

So Heath side bets are suddenly opening themselves up to a whole new audience of potential new clients. And you can see Cats on Instagram is huge, but there's, so what you might find, and, and what is our big challenge to help people with when we're, helping them set up Instagram, is to try and find out what their local hashtags are, who their local influences are, because although it's very sort of, gratifying to have it. You can see here this little cat's got 233,000 plays on its video, which is very nice.

But if those people are all over the world, it's not necessarily going to be too helpful for your practise, and you really need to focus on local. So a very, brief, summary of Twitter. Lots of, lots of practises are using Twitter.

In some areas it can work really well. So this is a post that we put out with, with Twitter, obviously, you've got the smaller, smaller post lengths tend to work better, although that's not obligatory now. And, You can share posts from blogs.

I think one thing to really avoid doing just one key message is sharing posts from Facebook. So you can set up Facebook so it automatically shares your content onto Twitter. But really, I think it's actually a negative for your brands to do that because when the posts come onto Twitter, they look really wrong for the platform.

We talked earlier about how each message needs to be written slightly differently for the platform that it's going on to. So if you put a Facebook post onto Twitter, it doesn't, just doesn't look right to people that are are Twitter users. And also because you see the Facebook link, you know that if you reply to it, there's no one there really, you're just it's just a robot giving out the message.

And it, and it just looks quite empty and, and, and I would say it's a negative really rather than a positive. So if you don't have the time and resources to run a Twitter account. I wouldn't worry about it too much because you can, like I said, you can probably get a far more out of really focusing on your Facebook page.

If, however, you're in an area where you feel a lot of your clients do use Twitter and that they'd like you to use that to communicate with them, then by all means, go for it. But do take the time to write posts specifically for Twitter. Twitter, like Instagram uses hashtags and mentions, so you need to start working out which are the hashtags that are important to your local area, which ones you want to start appearing on.

And it's very much about engagement. So it's very much about responding to people, having conversations with local people that are asking pet questions, building up those individual relationships, and so that you can start to build followers and start to build up, exposure, on Twitter. And in some areas, that's worked really well.

There's a, vet practise in Brighton that I think, Mark, the vet, runs their Twitter page, and because he's on Twitter all the time, he, he's managed it brilliantly, and there's loads of engagement. But, but if you, if you have someone in the practise that's always on Twitter, they might be able to make a real success of it. But do be aware that it does take a huge amount of time input, and it's very, very slow sometimes to get off the ground.

So this is another example of Twitter behaviour. So you can see this is actually a post from East Midlands Firedog, which we retweeted. So we, we're then showing that post to our followers.

And this sort of reciprocal behaviour, maybe then if they see a post that they like, they might share it with their followers. So that's, the way Twitter works, really, is, is by just trying to build up those relationships, with influential people on Twitter, and get them to share, your content. So video, we're gonna touch on briefly.

I'm just gonna show you, quite a sort of formal introductory style video that we made for a vet practise website. But do bear in mind that shorter video I showed you earlier of Jeremy with the cat, and those types of videos, are so easy and quick to make. What I say to people is Next time you pick up your phone to take a picture, just try turning it onto a video instead.

And if you turn it on to, just take a really tiny short video, of, a, a, instead of taking a picture of the cat, take a 3 or 4 2nd video and get the staff talking to the cat, and you'll get so much. More across about your brand that way. But there is a place for these very formal videos as well, which I think, just a very persuasive when people are in that zero moment of truth, doing their research, looking at reviews, watching videos, trying to work out which veterinary practise to choose, and you know, as a hospital, we're able to look after.

Very critically ill patients as well as the routine things that boost all the acts that we have to offer so we. So that seems to have started in the middle. I think it's because I was checking it worked early, which was a mistake.

We're, we're the first and only veterinary hospital in Stoke on Trent. The hospital was built specifically in 2011, and was built, you know, designed as a veterinary hospital. We're able to look after, very critically ill patients, as well as the routine things that most all the vets would be able to offer, so we cater for, for everything.

My name's Jordan. I'm the reception coordinator at Landry's. Always got on site 24 hours a day, which also gives extra care for the patients they're not being moved from practise to practise.

Being able to help the clients and give them the gold standard service by doing everything that we can afford them, and when they go out happy it always makes you feel like achieve something. We also have the pet health plan which is brilliant for first time pet owners, which gives them all that gives them money off, neutering obviously in spaying. We also give them more dental work and it gives them, sets them up with like of what they need to do each month in terms of the worming and flea treatment and that kind of thing so just make sure that their pet has the best animal health and checks.

I would say the clients, it's a, it's a team effort, you know, we, we, we work as a team here and we work as a team with them. We can't look after their pets, you know, without, you know, their help and vice versa. Knowing that we've provided that care, nursing and mental health, you really get to know all the little quirks, so it's really, it's really rewarding to also to see like the impact we have on the client, like the joy that they get when they actually go through.

It's really nice to see. Well we just want to thank them very much for all the 40 years on that they have looked after. I always think when I go out to it's gonna be OK because the girls may have that.

Absolutely. So, I'm gonna just, pause that now because I think you've got the, the general, effect. And if you want to look at the rest of the video, you can go to Lime Tree's website where the, the full version, is on there.

But I, I think, when, when you look at that, it really does give such a, a clear and detailed, demonstration of their brand. So I think you really would struggle to get across so clearly just with copy and images. So I would really strongly urge you to start using and incorporating video, into your, into your multi-channel marketing plan, on the website like that, and as I say, just with these very short, videos that you can get on Facebook.

Reviews we've, touched upon, and, Caroline mentioned as well, really crucial. Do make sure that the reviews are visible from the website. And this is a plug-in that displays, the reviews, and it just means that when somebody's in that zero moment of truth, and they're trying to decide, whether they trust the vet, they know straight away, this is a vet that's safe.

They've been used by over 15,000 people, who all think that they're, they're good. And that, and that gives them, then you start reading the words, and I think it would only take reading a few of these reviews, before you, picked up the phone. So, and, and this is a proven effect.

So reviews with third party authentication are proven to increase the conversion rate. So that's the number of percentage of people actually pick up the phone and call and book in, by 18 to 20%. So this is a proven effect of having reviews on your website.

It's also a good PR. This is a, an award, the best UK Vets Award that Pen Mellon vets, won, and they link that to, a 10% growth in their practise, during that year. So measure, and this is the real beauty and joy of internet marketing is that you can measure what you're achieving.

And I think that you need to decide what you're going to measure right at the beginning, so that you've got a benchmark and you know very clearly then what you're aiming for. And it's amazing how much it really, really just clears your mind and make and makes everybody on the team very focused on making sure that those business aims are achieved. So our KPIs are always absolutely central to every report that we write, to every meeting that we have, to every discussion that we have around our clients' internet marketing.

So one thing, that's very good for new client acquisition is obviously new visits to the website. When you're looking at Facebook, we like looking at reach, so that's the number of people that have seen your content. For emails, we like looking at the open rate, which is more an indication of how good your subject line is, and also clicks within the email.

On Instagram, you might want to look at how many followers you've got, how many likes you've got on your photos, on your images, and on Twitter, again, how many followers you've got. For educating clients and local owners, we like looking at the time on site. So you really want people to be spending a long time on your website, because if they just land on your website, on your blogger, then they spend 2 seconds on it.

It's probably a sign that they're not interested in your blog, and actually that visit's probably not worth including . When you're working out how successful your digital marketing campaign's been. So time on site is always something that you should take into consideration whenever you're looking at visit numbers.

Engagement on Facebook to how many people have liked, shared, commented on your post, and the number of people that have clicked on your email. So, we, I talked earlier about how people are like picking up a mobile phone here, and they're getting onto their laptop, and it means it's really hard to work out what, what it was that triggered them to phone you up, because they might have gone and called your number from the website, but maybe they've seen your entry, in a, comparison review website, and then maybe they've looked at your Facebook page or when they were sitting waiting, for the hairdressers on their phone. And then maybe they've watched your video on their iPad.

And because you're on different devices, it's difficult to link those things. So there are methods, of, cross of measuring what people have done before they get to your website. And there are some ways of doing cross-platform.

Many of these methods involve, using dynamic telephone numbers, which we've always shied away from, because, I think people Vetts is different. People write down the telephone number and keep it for another time. So it really worries me with these people using dynamic telephone numbers, that people will write down the telephone number, and then they'll come back in 2 months' time and ring up the phone number, and it will get through to a completely different business.

So I would just, it's something to be quite cautious of if you're offered a platform like that to make sure you understand exactly how it works and exactly how it's going to be measuring things. So in summary, do, it is essential now to think of your digital presence across several platforms, stick to our 5 point plan, brand business aims, content planning platforms, and then measuring. And you, the results that you can get from internet marketing are incredibly exciting, and measurable.

Thank you. Susie, thank you very much. That was a brilliant coverage of a very broad topic, and I said, gave us a real sense of that, the, the broader platforms that over the whole social media platforms.

It made me feel like a social dinosaur, basically, because when I looked at your Instagram age groups, I wasn't even on there. So I'll leave, I'll leave you younger people to deal with it. But yeah, but.

People listening in, any questions at this stage, Susie covered that in some depth and details. So if you do have any further questions, please get in touch with Susie BetHelp Direct. Susie, it was also nice to see some of our common clients, Heathside and the Limeres and a few others on there doing so well, with their businesses and independent practises as well.

So that's always very heartening to see, the good work you're doing. The one question comes through, local hashtags is generally just your own local town. Yeah, your, your local area, and also events quite often have hashtags as well.

So, what we end up doing is we end up, actually cooking and pasting the same hashtags on most of the posts. So once you've built up the collection, you can then paste them onto every post that you write. So, yeah, I mean, if you're, it depends what sort of town.

Really, if it's a rural town, it might be the surrounding areas as well. It's, it's really your catchment area, you know, where, where clients come from to find you. And, you know, you can put those national ones in as well, but, you know, as I say, you're then exposing yourself to an audience that probably very few of them are going to be potential clients.

OK, thank you for that. With about 1 or 2 minutes. If there's any more quick questions, please pop those through.

I think the thing I liked a lot about that, I think to start with why the Simon Sinek stuff is really important. I was wondering at what stage today I was gonna hear Donald Trump's name. So he got in that 1 hour 15 minutes, so that's great.

And your videos there, but I think that the quote that stands out for me is, what would you want your clients to know that they don't know. I think that's a great, starting point for that branding and strategy, perspective. So thank you for that.