A brand new Veterinary Practice, based in South East Melbourne, selected Business Assist to help them grow their local business, increase their customer base and grow the brand incrementally.
We worked with them collaboratively to create a digital marketing strategy that would bring in customer leads from the local area while maintaining a pragmatic CPA.
If you own or run a veterinary practice and are looking to grow your business using digital marketing – you might find this case study beneficial for understanding the potential for your business.
Activity
We conducted a Business Needs Workshop (BNW) for the client. This is a deep dive into the business’s objectives and how to reach them, challenges and how to overcome them, and customer types and what motivates them.
The workshop forms the basis for the creation of a digital strategy and is a live document referred to by the specialists working on an account as a reference point to the what/how/when/where/why of developing the overarching strategy and tactics.
The outcomes are the following;
- Business Objectives and Benchmarks Overview
- Competitive Landscape and Trends Map
- User Roles, Motivations, Obstacles Framework
- Digital Strategy Board with Customer Journey Mapping
Initial Strategy Development
Business Assist prepared a full digital marketing proposal utilising Facebook (Meta) Ads and Google Ads to advertise the practice to new audiences.
Facebook (Meta) Ads were chosen as a channel to target local people to generate awareness for the new vet clinic. Analysis suggested that Facebook Ads would reach a significant number of locals for a very low cost. Some of the data in the first 6 months show:
Google Ads were chosen because of the ability to locally target a demographic of Melbourne, searching for vets in their area.
Landing pages were built and incorporated to optimise the advertising spend.
What is a landing page? A highly focused webpage designed with a single objective in mind: to convert traffic. These pages are generally designed differently from your main website and tend to have a unique URL that can be used to send specific campaigns to the page.
What is the purpose of a landing page? If you’re paying for traffic, you’re most likely going to be interested in whether it’s a profitable activity by looking at your Cost Per Acquisition costs. Landing pages ensure that the traffic you’re paying for matches the journey the users are on and the objectives the user is trying to fulfil. By closely aligning what the customer wants with what the page offers, you increase the page’s propensity to convert.
What makes it different from a page on your website? Landing pages focus the user’s attention on a single task, e.g. Filling in a form, downloading a PDF, or making a purchase. Anything on the page that does not serve to support the main page’s goal is considered a distraction. This includes navigation links, internal linking, and mentioning other services and blogs, amongst other things.
Google Ads Strategy for a Veterinary Practice
Over 450 keywords were targeted by Google Search Ads, triggering over 34,000 different searches.
Services promoted included:
Puppy School; Dental; BOAS Surgery; Greyhound Corns; MicroChipping; Vaccinations; Desexing and general Veterinary Services.
Specific animals targeted included:
Cats, Dogs, Rabbits, and Guinea Pigs
Results
Phone calls were the primary objective, and within the first 6 months:
- The Google Ads campaigns generated 264 phone calls at a very low cost per call.
- The Google Search Ads were seen by nearly 15,000 people
- Remarketing Display Ads were shown to 2,782 people – greatly assisting with the awareness of the vet clinic to people who had already shown an interest in Veterinary services
In the following 2 years, additional budget was allocated to the Google Display Network and the ads were displayed just under 2.5 Million times to potential customers in the local area.
Over 2,400 phone calls were generated during this time at a very low cost per call.
The strategy switched to incorporate the generation of leads via form submissions on the website. This change saw:
- Over 1,100 form submissions or appointments booked
- 4,795 phone calls generated
- Nearly 1,000 people clicked on Ads and then clicked on “Get Directions”.
Facebook (Meta) Ads Strategy for a Veterinary Practice
The campaign strategy launched with the KPI of creating awareness, with the focus on reaching as many people within their target market as possible. Awareness campaigns are the most effective campaign type for supporting brand awareness, brand recognition and brand exposure.
Brand awareness ads must be carefully considered, as they are at risk for low ROI and lead generation.
We selected this type of campaign to incorporate clear branding and unique brand messaging to instil trust in the audience, especially because this was a new vet clinic to the area.
Initially, building brand awareness and trust does not have a direct (trackable) ROI (which is why this type of campaign must be used with this in mind). However, as a new business entering the market, it was an essential part of the marketing mix.
Within the first 6 months:
- We reached over 150,000 people within their target market.
- We achieved an extremely low average cost per result of approximately $0.19
Once the team was confident in the brand awareness strategy, we shifted some of the focus towards generating website traffic. Our primary aim was to encourage Facebook users to visit the website and collect their IP addresses in support of Remarketing and Lookalike audiences.
As experienced digital marketers, we know Facebook (Meta) users have a different intent from other channels like Google. Users on Google search are actively looking for your services, while Facebook is pushing a message to people who may or may not be in the market for your service. If a user visited the website, we felt more confident in retargeting that user (or a lookalike) as they were actively moving through the customer journey – the top of the funnel.
Using Facebook’s Ads keeps the brand top-of-mind, and when their need for a veterinary service arises – they’ll recognise and possibly search for the new vet clinic.
More recently, the vet clinic has shifted to highlighting some of its key services on Facebook, including Puppy Pre-School and Desexing.
Feedback from the client
The vet clinic has seen incremental, positive growth in the business thanks to its digital marketing campaigns. This has provided the ability for them to open a new veterinary practice in 2023, which is now open.
