By Carol Hurst, LVT, CVPM, CVJ
If the conversation buzz at your hospital doesn’t at some point center around how to engage clients on social media, you’re already behind. We should be routinely coming up with ideas to engage our clients, track ROI and use a thoughtful approach to planning and reaching our marketing goals.
I love using the New Year to start initiatives. It can give you the perfect excuse to develop a plan and follow it. Before I go over my Top New Year’s Engagement Initiative, I want to set the foundation first.
Step 1
What are your social media goals for 2020? Are you looking for new clients? Do you need to actively show a ROI in order to justify increasing your marketing budget? Do you simply want to further solidify the relationship you have with your bonded clients? Maybe you want to make a name for yourself in your community. Whatever the plan is, you need to start with your goal. This conversation will likely need to involve your practice owner.
Step 2
What does success for your goal look like? For new clients, there are benchmarks out there to set a standard. Use this information, paired with your monthly average for 2019, to come up with a realistic goal. Account for factors such as seasonality when making your projection. Further, show ROI with this goal by calculating roughly how much revenue these new clients should be generating for your practice.
If your goal is to solidify the relationship you have with your bonded clients – do you know how to calculate your bonded client rate? We love the VetSuccess reports because they calculate this number for you on their Practice Overview Report. Knowing where you currently stand can help you generate a goal. Their reports also give a benchmark for this figure based on all of their clients. If I were putting a monetary amount to this figure, I may print out my Top 20% client list, and find out what their ACT (average client transaction) is to give you a general figure for how much your bonded clients spend at your practice. There may be a few other factors to consider here. Sometimes calculating ROI means getting creative with the data that we measure.
Step 3
Develop concrete tasks that need to happen over the next year to help realize this goal. Maybe planning 2 more community events will get you closer to your goal. Perhaps hosting a focus group for your best clients and picking their brain on what you do that brings them value outside of the practice can help get you closer to bonding your clients. Maybe simply identifying who your clients are so that you better know how to communicate to them is your first task.
Once you have these tasks outlined, break them into what needs to happen in the next 90 days. Make these tasks as specific as possible (SMART Goals) is key. Who will be involved, how long do you anticipate it taking? What resources do they need? What is the budget? 90-day goals should be broken down into what needs to happen in the next 30 days – with just as much detail and clarity.
Client Engagement
Fantastic! Now that you have the rough basics for creating a marketing plan, let’s talk about New Year’s! My Top Client Engagement Initiative is – drum roll – weight loss! This is a timeless subject that greatly benefits the patient (so good medicine), can be refreshed to fit our advancing technology and gives you content for however long you are running the contest. Plus, this is an area that a lot of people focus on around the New Year.
Biggest Loser Weight Challenge:
- Use your industry partner who makes up the majority of your dietary recommendations to help come up with a contest reward for the winner.
- Define your goals for this challenge. For example:
- Increasing your dietary recommendations/awareness by xx amount
- Getting xx pets started on a weight loss diet – and aiding them in reaching their weight loss goals
- Plan Outline
- Give clients xx amount of time to enter
- What does entry look like? Do they need to have a current BCS established? Maybe you offer a free body condition evaluation (can be done by a technician) – for current clients. The clinic should be the one setting the weight loss goal.
- Define how the winner will be picked. Is it % body weight lost? Is it if they simply reach their ideal weight? Detail that purchase will be necessary (of the pet’s recommended food).
- Make sure clients know any visit/engagement obligations they may have. For example, weekly weigh-ins. Or maybe they need to send weekly pictures, or allow pictures to be taken for social media.
- Give clients xx amount of time to enter
- Get Social!
- This is where engagement is fun. Come up with a catchy hashtag (#) and encourage participating clients and cheerleading clients to use the tag whenever on social media.
- Encourage “activity days” where participating clients can get something extra for showing them via a picture getting out and being active with their pet.
- Maybe you create a list of healthy, low-calorie treats and clients get something extra for showing that they are using these treats at home.
- What if, on the very last day of the contest, you host a puppy party at a local park? Or at your practice?
- Define perks that participants get. Maybe free treats at each weigh-in or a loyalty “stamp” or “point” at each weigh-in.
- Plan out your social media posts through the duration of the contest.
- Look up facts about weight loss in people. How long does it take to establish healthy habits, for example?
- This is where engagement is fun. Come up with a catchy hashtag (#) and encourage participating clients and cheerleading clients to use the tag whenever on social media.
- Define your goals for this challenge. For example:
These are just a few ideas of how to make a common theme your own, using social media to encourage engagement and really bring together your community. At minimum, you need a solid plan with step on how to execute that plan. Check out our VetSupport Social Team Planner to get started! Social media should be fun! It should be a way to bring those who love your practice together! Happy New Year!