The GeniusVets Show with David Hall - Your Website has a Job to do

 

On Wednesday, Feb. 22nd, 2023, GeniusVets Co-Founder, David Hall, discusses what the real job of your website is. For anyone who missed it, or wants to see it again, the replay is now available here:

 

Welcome to another episode of the GeniusVets Show. I'm your host, David Hall, co-founder of GeniusVets, and today we've got a super special guest for you, me. Actually, I do have a presentation that I've been giving for the past few months at several large veterinary events, and it's been going over really, really well. Veterinary practice owners and managers have been telling me that it's really kind of opened their eyes to some things that they hadn't really considered before about their communication strategies, about the role that communications play in their practice, and the central hub of that communication strategy, their website.

For years, I've been talking with veterinary practice owners and managers, and when I ask, "What do you think the job of your website is?" A lot of time, I'm met with blank stares or just not exactly really sure. And your website really does have a job to do, an important job to do. And so today, I'm just going to help you understand what that job is. I'm going to give you some tools so that you can figure out if your website doing its job or not? How do you evaluate the performance? And I think that you're really going to enjoy this. So let me go ahead and start sharing my screen and let's dive in.

Is your website doing its job? The one thing veterinary practice owners need to know. So if you've been joining the Genius Pet Show over the past few months, you're aware and familiar with myself, David Hall. I've written a bunch of books on search engine optimization, been a Forbes Agency council member. I've been in online marketing for a long time. I've been specializing in the veterinary industry now for eight years. I count myself very lucky. In the bottom right-hand corner, it's my beautiful wife and kids and our 115-pound silver lab, Bodie. He's a good boy.
 

The mission of your veterinary practice. It's so important.

When you look at workplace satisfaction surveys today, actually and for over the past eight years, the monetary compensation does not rank at the top of the list for what's correlated to high rates of workplace satisfaction. Typically, it's somewhere between four or five on that list. The number one most strongest correlated factor in workplace satisfaction is whether people feel like they are aligned with the mission, with the values, with the culture of the place where they're working. People have a lot of options, especially in the veterinary industry. For doctors, for techs, they have a lot of options of places that they could go work, and the compensation is going to largely be similar. So what's the differentiator? Do they really feel aligned with your veterinary practice? So let's go ahead and dive in. Let's talk about the mission a little bit because this is such a rallying cry to start with and create your internal communications, get your staff aligned so that you can communicate to the world.

We'll take a look here at the Drake Center and at their mission statement for example. The Drake Center's mission statement is to provide the best medical and surgical care in a compassionate environment for our patients and unsurpassed service for our clients. Now here at GeniusVets over the past eight years, we've led marketing boot camps and a lot of marketing workshops for many, many veterinary practices. One of the things that we've done as part of that is done workshops to work on creating a mission statement. And while all veterinary practices tend to come up with something that's unique and special to them, they tend to be pretty similar. And I think that some of the points that are in this mission statement tend to be very common.

So I want to hone in on two important points from this mission statement. Number one, let's talk about the best medical and surgical care. Always important, right? Every doctor that I've ever met and talked to, they really hold what they're most passionate about is practicing great medicine, taking care of the pets. So now to provide medical and surgical care in a veterinary practice, what goes into that? A lot of stuff. The doctors, staff, facilities, equipment, instruments, supplies, kennels, furniture, computers, software, your PIM systems, your phones, payment processing, policies and procedures and so much more. All of the things that go into delivering medical and surgical care, we'll call falls in that category of delivering the best service, delivering the best service. And this is very much the focus of practice owners and the staff that work all day, every day in the hospital, working with patients, working with clients, delivering the services. It's all part of the in-hospital experience. So because that's what you're doing day in, day out, of course, it's the majority of focus for practice owners, for managers and staff.

But when you really take the time to consider the perspective of pet owners, the majority of their experience as pet owners takes place outside the veterinary practice. And of course, this also applies to the perspective of future doctors and staff, those potential doctors and staff that might work for you someday, that maybe you want to recruit and attract and hire and retain, but they don't work with you yet. They don't know you yet. So this is the same thing. Their perspective all takes place outside your practice. So let's take a little time to step outside of the practice and look at it from the perspective of an outsider.
 

Looking from the outside in. The perspective of the client.

Going back to that mission statement, there's a second component here that I want to hone in on. It talks about service for our clients, that aspect of service for the clients. Now, veterinary services are delivered to the pet. I apologize, it's an overly simplified statement. It's so basic. In fact, you might be familiar with a name, there was this very famous football coach named John Madden, and he was one of the most famous football coaches of all time. When he was coaching teams, he's coaching men, professional football players, have been playing football their whole life at a high level and are now professionals. And he would start each season by gathering his team together and holding up a football and saying, "This is a football." It sounds ridiculous, but it's important to align on the most fundamental basic concept, and I think that's really important for us to do here for just a moment.

Veterinary services are delivered to the pet, right? It's medical care. You're putting your hands on, palpating the pet, delivering surgery or whatever it might be, delivered to the pet. From the perspective of the client, veterinary care is primarily about information. It's not about laying hands on and solving the health issues of the pet owner. So for them, they don't know, and frankly, I mean, as a pet owner, I don't know hardly anything about my cat, my dog, my tortoise. I don't know. I know I love them. I know that they're cute and cuddly. The tortoise isn't as cuddly, but it's super cute and cool. But I don't know really about their physical health needs because I'm not a doctor. I've been studying now more and more for the past eight years, I've really been learning a lot about veterinary care in working with the hospitals, and I know a pretty good amount now, but still, I mean, I've got questions all the time.
 

Veterinary care is about delivering information first and services second.

Veterinary care is about delivering information first and services second, and that's a really important idea to sit on for just a moment, because from the perspective of most practice owners and doctors and techs, it's all about delivering the services. That's what you're focused on day in, day out and want to practice good medicine. But none of that gets to happen without delivering information first, without helping that pet owner understand what care does this animal need, and do they really need it enough to go to the veterinarian? And do we really need to take the advice of the pet owner? The average pet owner has several questions per week related to pet care and pet health. Several questions a week.

How much time per year on average does a pet owner spend in a veterinary practice? Do you know? There's so many hours in a year, right? Thousands of hours in a year, somewhere around, I believe it's 6,800 something like that, hours in a year. How many of those hours does a pet owner actually spend in a veterinary practice? One, two, throughout the year? Here's a graph that actually represents the hours in the year, and there's this little green sliver there, right there at 12:00, just to put a little perspective, and that's actually an over-representation. Pet owners don't get to spend a lot of time in the practice.
 

Where are Pet Owners getting their pet care information?

If the only way that they can actually get information from the veterinarian is by standing in front of you in exam room and asking the questions, where are they getting their information? They're going to Google, and we all know this. We all know that people are getting their information from Google, but where are pet owners really getting the information from? Dr. Google isn't actually a thing. Google is a search engine that searches the internet. But when they search the internet and they go looking for this information, what does Google do? Google is recommending blogs written by well-meaning blog writers who love their pets, but they're not veterinarians very often, companies who have something to sell. People that are making recommendations that are just flat out wrong. I mean, shouldn't pet owners be getting their advice from a veterinarian.

Here at GeniusVets that's very much what we believe and that's what we're all about, is ensuring that people are getting their pet insurance from a veterinarian. One of my favorite trends in pet care over the last decade has been so many more, it's just a pop culture kind of a thing. But I love seeing t-shirts and bags and when vets are walking around holding a coffee cup, it says, "Please don't confuse your Google search with my medical degree." You all probably have one of these, right, don't you, or have a colleague that does? And they're funny, but they're funny because it's true.

They're funny because you run into this all the time. They're funny because you have so many instances where someone is in your clinic and they got an itchy dog and you're like the itchy dog, it's probably either an allergy of an environmental or a food allergy. You can start by using the shampoo and taking this pill and see how that goes. And then we make some other changes maybe to the diet and look at environmental factors. And they go, "Well, shampoo, a pill. I read this blog and it said, put coconut oil on it, so I was just wondering if I should be adding some baking soda." And you're like, "This isn't medicine." We want them to get their advice from you.

It's not that once that misinformed pet owner is getting their advice from you, that you can't as the doctor overcome that, but should you really have to fight that battle. When somebody doesn't know something, the first information that they get about it tends to... Now this is the first thing they knew about it, and that becomes a little bit hard to defeat because that created their whole scope of knowledge in that area, even if it was wrong information. And this happens all the time. And even when presented evidence from an expert, how often are people questioning that expertise, and sticking to whatever the first information was that they found out about that? It's just super common behavior.

We're not going to change the fact that people are going to go to Google. We're not going to change the fact that people are going to go to search engines, that people are going to go looking for this information online. But what we can do is we can help veterinarians actually be the ones who show up. And this is actually very, very possible. Google, in fact, wants veterinarians to show up. They do. So, I'll talk about that a little bit more later.
 

Your website has a job to do.

Let's talk about getting back to this mission of veterinary care. Your website has a job to do. It's important to realize that the mission of veterinary care has been updated. The mission of veterinary care, the job of the veterinary practice website is to provide a pet care information resource that local pet owners can find and use when they need pet care information. That's the job of your website.

If the mission of veterinary care is to actually help the animal have a better life, you have to start by informing the pet owner of what that is, and you need to become the go-to pet care information resource in the life of your clients. That's the goal. And here's the thing, when I say Google actually has built their algorithm to be in your favor, they didn't do it specifically just for veterinarians, but here's what they did a couple years ago. I think this is really fascinating. I can tell you very quickly what they did and why this is so impactful. So Google, obviously, people go there and they look for recommendations on everything. Well, when someone's search has to do with your money or your life, these are very sensitive areas where Google has an additional responsibility based on the recommendations that they make. Because when something comes up at the top of Google, people just take that as, "Hey, this is the best information that's out there in the world. I should take this advice."

If that advice is coming from someone who's not an expert, if it's bad advice, it could lead to real serious harm if that person was searching for information that has to do with their money or their health. And so any searches, any queries that have to do with your money or your health, a few years ago, Google introduced a special algorithm where they identify those searches and they kick-in a special algorithm. And the purpose of this algorithm is to try and give an advantage in Google search to experts, experts in the field of those questions that are being asked. So what does expertise look like to Google? They're trying to identify information resources that have demonstrated expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, and there's a whole set of criteria that Google uses when it comes to that.

Now, because veterinary care is in medicine, this means that when a doctor, when a veterinarian is giving advice online, an answer to a question, that they get some special consideration, they get a boost. It's not the entire algorithm. Google's algorithm is complicated and it has hundreds of factors, but it's a very powerful one in this area. So because of that, if your veterinary practice website actually has the answers to the questions that people are looking for, you get a huge boost.

Now the second thing that gives you a huge advantage is this understanding that Google has, that veterinary care is considered what's called a highly localized service business. Now, what that means is that Google understands when people start by looking for an informational query about veterinary care, "When should I get my cat vaccinated? When should I spay or neuter my puppy?" Or whatever it may be, Google knows that informational query, in a few simple steps, the next query leads to a search for local services, and Google always wants to shorten that gap.

Now look, if you go to Google and you type in, where's the best pizza? Well, the best pizza? The best pizza is probably in Sicily, or maybe it's in New York or Chicago depending on how you like your crust. But Google knows that's not what you're looking for. You're looking for a recommendation for a local pizza place because you want pizza in your mouth in 30 minutes or less. Google knows that. So you type in where's the best pizza, you're going to see all these local results. And veterinary care is very much the same way because it's a highly localized service business. So what this means is when people start looking for information related to pet care, local veterinarians have the advantage of showing up. But you still have to actually be answering the questions people are looking for. You actually have to have an information resource that's relevant to what people are searching for. And that's the big question.
 

Examples of veterinary websites.

So, let's take a look at a few veterinary website examples. I want to show you some website examples that can help us understand what does it look like if your site is doing its job versus not doing its job. So I've brought up a few examples of websites that are not doing their job. I've brought up a few examples here of websites that are doing their job. And what I'm going to do is hop through this and kind of show you. Let's start with the websites that are not doing their job.
 

Examples of veterinary websites – Not doing their job.

Example 1.

Here's a website, Lake Travis Animal Hospital. It's actually a really pretty website. You can see, they've got that really cool parallax look that's so popular. They've got an app going for them. They've laid it out nice. They talk about services that they've got going on here. You would look at this site and say, "This website seems to be doing its job, it's representing the place nice." Right? By the way, you can always look down at the bottom of a website and see, "Hey, who built this website?" So Web DVM built this website. It's pretty. When we look at the services pages and we go through here, we can see. I mean, first of all one thing, veterinary practices offer a lot more services than this, a lot more. In fact, in talking with doctors and working with veterinary practices, most veterinary practices offer somewhere in the realm of about 85 or so different services that people are actually looking for information related to those services all the time. So this is really missing a lot when it comes to that.

Let's look at how this site is actually performing. So this is a tool called Semrush. This is a professional marketing tool. It's very cool. It allows us to look at any website and understand how it's performing. So what this means is this site here, Lake Travis Animal Hospital is getting the traffic. It gets 360 visits a month. We can see the trend line, we can see the traffic it gets, and then the way that they determine that is they actually pull in, they have an API to Google search results, and they can show you all of the different keywords that this website is ranking for in Google. And here, that's the keywords here. A keyword is just whatever someone types into Google. And then it shows the position, what position. Now on a Google search result page, there is up to 10 blue links. There's 10 blue links on page one of Google, 10 blue links on page two.

Page one, goes all the way to spot 10. Once you get to 11, that's page two. Really, you only get clicks in Google if you're on page one. So that's really all that matters, statistically. So what this shows, they're showing up in page one for this stuff. It's basically the name of their practice. It's a hospital. This is an area that's close to where they're located. This is the actual name of the doctor. That's great. But it's basically, it's really very, very generic. Now, when you're showing up for the area that you serve and something like animal hospital or your exact name, that's not good. That's not a website doing its job. That is the bare minimum. That's just a website exists. And Google's really smart. It looks like when people search this, it looks like this is exactly the business they're searching for. So this is a website that's really not doing their job. This is just the basic bare minimum default and it's only getting 360 visits a month.

Example 2.

Let's take a look at Highlands Veterinary Hospital. Here we go. Oh, very cool animation. Let's reload the page. Maybe these images will come up. Oh, there we go. And hey, it's really pretty. Oh, that's cool animation, that looks neat. Love how that looks. That's nice. People love stories. Okay, that's pretty cool. Website designed by, this is Digital Empathy. So, it's a very pretty website. Let's take a look though at how it's performing. If we look here, if we click on something like dentistry, well, so there's not a lot of information here. It basically boils down to a couple of paragraphs that say something to along the lines of, yeah, dentistry is important for pets, and we do that here.

Let's take a look at how this website is performing. If we get here into Semrush Highlands Veterinary Hospital, this report will come up. 595 visits a month. We can see here, what is it ranking for here in Google? We can see it's basically Highlands Vet in its area, basically variations on its name and the area, variations on its name and the area, variations on its name in the area. That's all it's showing up for on page one. Again, unfortunately it's a pretty website, but it's not really making any difference in the business. It's not doing anything that it really should be doing to serve pet owners.

Example 3.

Let's look at Main Street Vet Clinic, Texas. Pretty site, love some of the animations. This is all pretty basic stuff. Now, we can see who built the site. If we take a look, Main Street Vet Clinic, 641 visits a month. Let's look at what does that look like here? What are they showing up for in Google? All right, so they're showing up again for their name, for their name, for their area, and for their name. There's a lot of variations on Main Street and Main Street veterinarians. They're showing up for all of them, but that's it. It's basically all just variations on their name.

Let's look at just one more of these example websites that really aren't doing their job. Again, pretty website, looks like it leads to, and they have some stuff on some of their services. If we look at a service page, what have they got in here? Well, it looks like they've got a lot more information that has to do with dental care, but there's some problems here. It talks about periodontal disease in this stuff That's great that it's got some more information on here. Let's take a look at how the site overall is performing. Only animal works. Only 596 visits a month. It does look like it's been growing and then kind of shrank a little bit. But if we look at what is it showing up for and we look at the details, we can see here, drum roll, again, dog vaccinations. So at least it talks about a service. How to talk to a cat. Huh, interesting. I don't know about that. Dog emergency surgery, that's great, emergency surgery. So this has a few things that's showing up for that aren't just the standard doctor name, practice name and veterinary practice in this area, so that's pretty cool.

If we go down, I don't know what this is. I'm sure you do as a vet, but showing up for a couple things. So that's great. And you can see that because it talks about, it looks like a little bit more, it's showing up for a little bit more stuff. Now there on the dental, I still didn't see any dental stuff showing up, which is unfortunate as I look through here and it did have a little bit more information on that page. But it's not just about putting some information on the page. There's actually a lot of stuff behind the scenes that help search engines like Google understand that what the information is and what it's relevant to. So there's some behind the scenes technical work that needs to go on to make it really shine.

Those are some examples. What it looks like is typically veterinary websites have under a thousand searches a month, visits a month. I can see them and see that, hey, they're really just showing up for these generic things and they're not really doing what they should do./

 

Examples of veterinary websites – Doing a great job.

Example 1.

Let me show you some examples of what it looks like for veterinary practices that are doing their job. Here's an example, the Drake Center for Veterinary Care. Again, beautiful website and a website certainly should be beautiful. It should represent your practice. These are photos, real photos of the staff in the practice. It should be something with a lot of great information. It presents the doctors. You'd be surprised at how many people want to actually see information about the doctors. They've got some blogs on here and things like that. So GeniusVets' website. If we look at the services, look at the cat services, the dog services. If we look at something like dog dental care, for instance, if I go there, not only is it a beautiful page, but look at this, it's got videos, it's got all of this content that really addresses the most frequently asked questions, and it does that for all of these different services.

This is a truly a really great information resource to help pet owners and get their questions answered about their pets. And how's it doing? Well, it gets 47,300 visits a month. Now, here's the thing, when we point out a website's really doing its job, how much traffic it gets, this isn't 47,000 people asking for an appointment every month. This isn't something that's going to bowl over your front desk staff necessarily just because they're getting traffic. What it is, this is a main resource for everybody in the area to go to find information that's relevant to the questions that they have about pet care. Look at the stuff that they're ranking for, whipworm in cats and stages of heart worm, and stuff about Australian shepherds. I mean, you can see all of this stuff here has to do with... and they're showing up, this is position one. Not page one, position one, the number one top result that they're showing up for all of this different information that people are looking for, that is relevant to the information that they're trying to learn about, the questions that they have about their pets. The Drake Center is showing up on page one for thousands and thousands of keyword searches that are relevant to what people are actually looking for.

Example 2.

Let's take a look at Noah's Ark Vet and pretty website. It does all the things. It has all of the features and all that sort of stuff, because certainly you want clients to have a great experience when they see your site. But more importantly, is the site doing its job? When we look at Noah's Ark Vet, they they're getting 18,000 visits a month. And look, it's all about number one in Google for all of this stuff related to the questions that people are answering. And this is different. They're not showing up for all the same stuff the Drake Center is showing up for, because they're showing up for the content that we work to help them create that is pertinent to the stuff they wanted to talk about. We can see through this, and again, they're showing up for thousands and thousands of terms on page one.

Example 3.

Let's look at Indian Trail, cool looking website. It's all about their branding fits their look and feel. It's about their staff. And one of the big things about when you actually have this as a project that people contribute to, let's say that a doctor is looking at this, right? Well, doctors, what are they looking for if they're looking for a new place to work? what do they care about? They care about practicing good medicine. So if a doctor, they want to go to a place where they can practice great medicine and they look at a website that really isn't talking much about the medicine and about the services, and then they find a website like this that goes extremely deep on all of this information that is relevant to every topic that the practice provides, I mean they go, "Wow, this is really all about the medicine. These guys are really living it. They're putting this out. There's a great information resource." That is so important.

They're getting 35,000, almost 40,000 visits a month, 35,900 visits a month. And again, it's all about stuff, and you see that these are all very different questions and statements and keyword searches than you saw with the other sites, but it's just a great information resource. And when you look at Metro Vet website that looks like them, and it was very customized to their own unique look and feel, 24,000 visits a month, this is what it looks like when a veterinary website is actually doing its job. And when you look at, for instance, about us, when you look at a staff section, when you look at a veterinarian section, where every single staff member in this company has a full-page profile that talks about them, that really shows everybody on the staff that number one, the company really cares about them.

It also allows other people who might be evaluating if they want to work here get a sense for who these staff members are, and that's so important. Who are they potentially going to be working with? Incredibly important. So this is the type of thing, and when you look through and you see, when you see stuff like videos, you see photos that are real for the practice, that communicates people, "This is what the culture is really like here. This is what we're all about."
 

What makes a great veterinary website.

I'll jump back here into this presentation, but I hope that you can see the difference. What makes a great veterinary website? Number one, yes, it's about modern design and it should be mobile friendly. It should have intuitive navigation with information informative, engaging content that actually answers the questions that people have, and informs them and delivers your expertise. It should be easy to update and manage, very incredibly easy. And a modern website should be as easy to manage a page as it is to send an email, just incredibly simple. It should show up in Google search results and other search engines for pet care-related information. If it's not doing that, it's just not doing its job. And when it does do its job, it's incredibly impactful on the bottom line. A great website is the cornerstone for delivering outstanding customer service.
 

Outstaanding customer service.

When I talk to veterinary practice owners and managers, oftentimes what I like to start the conversation with is say, "Hey, tell me about the experience your customers go through when they work with your practice. What's the whole customer experience?" And usually what they talk about, they talk about, well, they call and schedule an appointment or they go online, schedule an appointment, they show up for that appointment, they talk about what happens on check-in, they talk about the exam room, they talk about surgery, they talk about checking them out, they talk about a follow-up phone call, and that's about all they talk about. And the truth is that delivering outstanding customer service means supporting a client, a pet owner on every step of their journey where they are focused on the health of their pet, and that starts with a search in Google.

People start in Google and then pet owners go to get their information from websites and from blogs, they turn to social networks for advice and recommendations. They compare the websites of several local vets. Then they go and they read reviews before reaching out. Current clients read reviews as well. The current clients, any clients that might be on the fence about coming back, or maybe their friends recommended somebody else, if they're not completely bonded to a practice, they're still up for shopping. And then they call to schedule, they do this whole part. But after that, after the follow-up phone call, it's really important that they connect with you on social networks because that's how you stay top of mind and continue to educate. It's important to stay on top mind with email and other online engagements because that's where people spend their time and you want them to post a good review. Because when they post a good review, that really is how they're inviting their friends and the rest of the community. When they engage with you on social networks, that really is how they give you a testimonial nowadays and tell the world that you're a great practice.

This is not about getting an individual client. This is about earning that client relationship for the next decade. And when it comes to attracting and retaining doctors and staff, it starts with creating an attractive work environment. It starts with knowing yourself and building a great mission and values and culture in your practice, and defining what that is and being able to communicate that. And then you establish a brand, a brand that is your communication to the world, "This is what we're about." And when you create a great brand, that brings everybody in the practice together around those mission values and culture. You can't talk about your mission and values and culture enough. You can never over talk about that because you have to continuously align your staff. When you get everybody in sync and you communicate that to the world, great things happen. Great things happen.
 

Attract and retain doctors and staff.

Then you establish a great recruitment program. And we have an amazing HR toolkit. I'd love to turn you on to and give it to you. It's totally free. It's at geniusvets.com. We have our job board, we have our toolkit, free resources for you, and you post and promote your open positions. And this is another area where most veterinary websites, most veterinarians get it wrong. If all you're doing to post and promote your open positions is going to Indeed and posting on Indeed, or maybe you're also going to AVMA and trying to push your post out to other veterinary job boards, you have to understand, what is the process that doctors go through when evaluating the open positions? Because if all they're doing is looking at your job posts versus other job posts, it's black and white words on the page versus black and white words on the page. It's very hard to differentiate yourself.

They're facing a lot of the same things. Yes, you can write your jobs with a little extra pizzazz. You can write them to be more engaging, to be inspirational and aspirational about what you're about. It shouldn't be so much about this is the requirements of the position, you know that you're getting into. Leave that for the interview. The first thing that you're trying to do is get an interview scheduled. So it's important that you, number one, you build a career section on your website. And in that career section, you post your open positions. You have a careers page, and it should list every open position that you have in your veterinary practice. And every open position or even just every position, whether you're hiring currently or not, you want to put these pages up and leave them up all the time.

So, you have a page up for an associate veterans. You have a page dedicated to a vet tech. You have a page dedicated to receptionist. You have a page dedicated to a kennel tech. You have a page dedicated to a practice manager. You have pages dedicated to every position in your practice. And at the top of the page, it should say in big, bold letters, "We are currently hiring for this position," or, "We are not currently hiring for this position. But other than that, you leave this page up all the time. And on this page, you use it as an inspirational page about how great it is to work here, and about what they're going to love about the place. And you have a video from the practice owner that talks about, this is why this is such an important position here and this is why we cherish the people that are in this position, and this is the great experience you're going to have. Have somebody who's already in that position step into the video and give their own testimonial, "This is a great place to work. You're going to love it here. I love it here. We can't wait to meet you."

That all of a sudden, now you are starting to differentiate yourself because they're seeing you, they're hearing you, you're taking away some of the unknown that exists when all they're doing is looking at an Indeed post. I hope that this is making sense, right? Most people have a huge fear of the unknown. If they don't know who's behind the Indeed post. You should never be using the Indeed applicant tracking system because that just keeps them in Indeed. You should be sending them to this page on your website, that actually has a video of you talking about the position and lists out with the position, and then they can navigate your website to see you and the staff and see how much you care about medicine because the great information that's on your site. This is a differentiator. This is how you jump to the top of the list for where this person aspires to work at.
 

The GeniusVets system, and how it works.

Our clients who go through the GeniusVet System and implement these things, they give us testimonials and testimonies about how they went from not being able to attract doctors and staff, to being able to fill all of their positions and why. It's because they're actually communicating to the outside world in a way that differentiated them. They also talk about how strong their business is, how their clients are better clients, willing to pay more. Listen to their advice about how the place is just a happier place to work and more money's falling to the bottom line because communication matters. It makes it all go around. So this stuff is really important.

 

Dr. Ned Trahan said, "Our biggest issue was recruitment. We were short on doctors. After signing on with GeniusVets, we successfully recruited three doctors and now we're looking to grow and GeniusVets has allowed us to do just that. We feel GeniusVets have been a large portion of our success and we're happy to recommend them."

Kim Rue, practice manager of Dalton Animal Care said, "I'd highly recommend GeniusVets to anyone trying to jump ahead of their current competition. We had used several services before and they all pale in comparison to what GeniusVets can do for you and your clinic. We're in a really small market, and I was amazed at the website traffic after the switch to GeniusVets. GeniusVets was an invaluable part of us growing our business and web footprint. Cannot thank them enough. You cannot go wrong with trying GV."

Look, we do a study every year. It's really important to me in marketing that we track metrics and analytics and we see performance. That's how we get better. But we also like to track and see how are we performing compared to the clients of our competitors? How are our clients performing compared to the clients of our competitors? We do this study every year. We did this study and found out that just 10 GeniusVets client websites drive 30% more monthly website traffic than the top 10 clients of our top 10 competitors combined. It's a publicly available study. Love to give it to you. We'll give you the link. We'll put the link in chat. Look, this study, anybody could reproduce this study. It uses publicly available tools. It talks about the directions, how you can go find this information for yourself, the process we use. Gives the full datasets. It's a very above-board study.

This is an astounding difference. All of these companies are people who have dedicated their lives to veterinary marketing. I mean, this is what they do day in, day out. Why are our clients outperforming all of them combined? It's different. This isn't an apples to apples comparison. This is a difference of number one, really understanding veterinary care, really understanding veterinary clients, and really understanding the technologies and communication strategies that make a difference, and actually doing the work and that's what we do.

So today, for coming and for listening to this, I want to give you a myriad of valuable resources absolutely free. I want to get you the slides from today's presentation. We want to give you Dr. Drake's staff culture workshop, video and resources. We will help you claim your enhanced profile on geniusvets.com, all free, okay? All free. We'll give you access to our job board HR toolkit, Hiring Strategies. We'll give you a free subscription to our monthly social toolkit, which is just such a cool resource that comes out, that you can use to get some inspiration and have some great posts to put out every month about veterinary topics that are timely, about pet holidays and things like that. It's great engaging stuff. We want to give you invitations to GeniusVets' webinars, and special events, and we'll give you $1,000 credit towards GeniusVets services when you book a demo with one of our geniuses.

The way that you can get this, we are actually doing a special events. We just did a special event this year at WVC. We call it the Veterinary Practice Owners Track. And this QR code, if you're in the webinar, and if you're not in the webinar, go to Owners Track resources. So that's for you there listening on the podcast. Or you can just book a demo with one of our staff. Go to demo, and they'll help you get all of these resources, because we're really in this to lift up veterinarians.

We're call ourselves GeniusVets, not because we're the geniuses, because veterinarians are the geniuses. You guys are able to give medical care and heal an animal that can't even tell you what's wrong, and in fact, hides its pain. I mean, it's amazing what you guys do. So we are here to lift you up. We're here to support independent veterinary practices, and one of the best ways we can do that is put our best foot forward and give you all of this really valuable stuff. And we do hope that you see that you're getting so much value from this stuff that you become interested and curious about our professional services, and maybe you'll talk with us about those as well. But you can take advantage of all of these free resources with no obligation whatsoever. We're truly in this to help veterinary practices thrive.

I hope that you've enjoyed this presentation today. Thank you so much, and hey, tune in next week. Over the next few months, I'm just shocked at how many industry leaders, thought leaders, people who are influential and doing amazing things in the veterinary profession, how many of them have scheduled to come on the webinar. We've got a lot of great topics coming up. So please, reach out to us. Let us know what you thought. I'd love to see your feedback, and I hope to see you at some events this year.