Digital Veterinary Practice Spring Clean
HOW TO GET YOUR VETERINARY PRACTICE PURRFECT FOR THE SUMMER MONTHS
The sun is out, and there’s no better time to make sure your practice is shining just as brightly!
This month we’re talking spring cleaning, and how best to ensure that your practice is looking tip-top.
You may already have read the opening half of our spring clean guide, which looked at the practical jobs you can do in and around your practice today to make your clients and their furry friends feel more comfortable when they pop in to visit you.
What we’re talking about today is the digital space – where a bucket and soap may not be quite as effective, but a spot of elbow grease can go just as far!
MAKE SURE EVERYTHING ONLINE IS ACCURATE
Throughout the year you will regularly make minor tweaks to your practice, whether that’s new faces in the team, adding equipment and services, tweaking branding, or any of the other improvements that come from your passion for your work.
In the push to make sure your team is happy, your clients are satisfied and your patients are healthy, amid these changes you can forget one key aspect – telling people about them.
Now is a great time to take stock.
Think about every digital touchpoint that references your practice. Is all of the information up to date and maximising the opportunity to sell what you offer?
One thing that every practice needs to be mindful of this spring is Covid – and the need to remove it from your website! Take down any pictures of team members wearing masks 😷, and get rid of the banner announcing protocols you’re not following anymore. And good riddance! 😁
Are your Google Business and social media profiles in line with your website, and is your branding consistent and up to date?
Have you updated your website, whether that be in the services you offer, contact details or team member bios.
On the subject of team bios, are they evergreen? As a rule of thumb, we should avoid mentioning things that will lose relevance, such as a new puppy in the family, or an intention to study for further qualifications – unless, of course, you fancy regularly updating the section when that puppy is all grown up, or that course has been passed with flying colours.
Pro tip: never say that a member of the team “joined five years ago”. Five years from when? Stick a date on it, or avoid it altogether.
SHOW A LITTLE LOVE TO GET A LITTLE BACK
We’ve talked here long and often about the value provided by lots and lots of five star Google reviews.
It’s your reviews that help you to rank highly on the Google map pack. And it’s ranking high on the map pack that gives you the best chance to be found online by new clients.
That’s why it pays off in spades to have a strategy for cultivating lots of reviews from your happy clients – and why if there’s one job you want to tackle as part of your big spring clean, this one could prove the most impactful.
Don’t be afraid to ask your clients to leave you reviews. Respond promptly and positively to every review you receive. Really make this a priority, and watch how visitors to your website soar.
And while you’re at it, we’re in the market for reviews ourselves…
OPTIMISE YOUR SEO
Search engine optimisation, commonly referred to as SEO, is one of those techy, marketingy terms that can inspire concern or confusion in those outside the industry.
And even if you’ve put some thought into SEO in the past – or paid someone to do so for you – the odds are that afterwards, you put any thought of it onto a dusty shelf in the cupboard reserved for things to forget in the dark recesses of your mind.
Put simply, SEO is a catch-all term for a series of technical processes which combine to dictate how likely people are to find your website on search engines such as Google.
The thing with SEO is that it’s an ongoing process, and needs constant work for its effects to be maximised. But it’s so important that your website is ranking competitively online. If not, clients just won’t find you.
So give it some thought. Even if you have done in the past – do it again. And if you have no idea where to start, feel free to talk to people who do. Such as… us!
We hope that we’ve given you a few ideas for how to inject some fresh energy into your practice, whether that’s during the dying embers of spring 2022, or any time you fancy getting creative to give your practice and teams a boost.
And of course, if you have any questions about the topics we’ve discussed, we’d love to hear from you. Get in touch
