Why Most Veterinarians Hate Their Marketing Companies
Unlike most veterinary marketing firms, GeniusVets has a DVM as a founding member. Dr. Michele Drake, Owner of the Drake Center and Co-Founder of GeniusVets, regularly weighs in on our marketing efforts to let us know how to approach helping veterinarians by looking at the world through their insanely busy and ultra-focused lens. What we’ve come to find out over the years through Dr. Drake and many of our clients is that far too many veterinarians don’t like—nay, hate!—their marketing companies. This loathing is a huge issue when you consider how hectic the schedules of veterinarians are, particularly right now. The last thing they want to deal with is failing marketing efforts on top of the inevitability of clunky curbside service, phone lines ringing off the hook, and clients who are not used to having to wait. The only way to get out of this unfortunate situation is to look at what these marketing companies are doing wrong, and that’s exactly what we do below.
The overarching theme of the inefficient ways these other companies approach marketing for veterinarians is that they approach this very unique industry with a "one-size-fits-all" marketing plan.
The Mistakes Most Veterinary Marketing Firms Make
An Inadequate Support Team
When veterinarians have a sliver of a break in their busy days to assess their marketing plans, they want answers, and they want them now. Many of these companies don’t assign veterinary hospitals or clinics a point person who can be there whenever they need them. This leads to slow response time and, in turn, endless frustration on the part of veterinarians.
On the other hand, some marketing agencies have too many clients per support person, which ultimately ends up in the same slow response time. Not having a dedicated team leads to mismanagement of accounts, with marketing team members often not knowing what the other team members are doing. This lack of communication and the fact that the left hand usually has no idea what the right hand is doing can and does lead to costly mistakes. Person A in social marketing may never talk to Person B in SEO who also never talks to Person C in website support, rendering their efforts useless. This is a practice called siloing, and something you definitely want to avoid.
Lack of Transparency
Just as we as marketers would have no idea how to perform a spay or neuter procedure, veterinarians generally have relatively scarce marketing knowledge. Many companies prey on this lack of knowledge and use a lack of transparency to underperform. Besides, they think, who’s going to notice that they’re not delivering what they could be?
They’ll also often tell veterinarians what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear; and not shooting straight with them can have disastrous results. We’ve even heard of instances in which marketing companies register a veterinary hospital’s domain for them, but they don’t do so to be helpful. Instead, this is an underhanded move that restricts the veterinarian’s ownership of their website, making it more difficult to leave a marketing company if they want to. These companies don’t want to partner with veterinarians to help them to be successful but, instead, want to render them helpless and dependent upon them.
They Overpromise and Underdeliver
At the core of this premise is simply the fact that many marketing companies only care about the sale. Once you’ve signed on the dotted line, they don’t care about their results, which, in turn, means they don’t care about YOUR results. Once the sale is made, they expect you to drive your own sales strategy, which is the most crucial feature they should be providing you. We’ve heard of some companies who will bill for services they haven’t even delivered, such as SEO, thinking that no one within the hospital or clinic will do their due diligence to notice.
Lack of Desire to Understand the Veterinary Industry
There are two components to this. Many marketers approach each industry in the same cookie-cutter way, which is a huge disservice in a highly nuanced field like the veterinary industry. The second part of this is that they use this lack of two-way knowledge to talk down to veterinarians and try to sell them on services they may not need. Something we see and hear quite often is that marketers have led veterinarians to believe that an aesthetically pleasing website is all they need, but the truth is, if that website isn’t getting you results, it’s like having a beautiful sports car gathering dust in your garage.
Of course, we already have a leg up having Dr. Drake on staff, as The Drake Center is one of the top-performing and most profitable veterinary practices in the country. Dr. Drake ensures that GeniusVets staff have a good understanding of the life of veterinary practice owners and staff, and that our recommendations are built around that perspective.
They Render Vets Unable to Assess Their Results
No one loves an ill-informed veterinarian more than a deceitful marketing agency. Instead of partnering with them to set them up on a dashboard that they can use and understand to interpret the results of their marketing efforts, these agencies will purposefully leave them in the dark. How is a veterinarian going to be successful if they can’t see what’s working and what isn’t? The answer: They won’t be. And as Dr. Drake has mentioned, “Many veterinarians don’t know how they really feel about their marketing agencies, as they have no idea that they’re not being served.” These agencies will promise to drive results, but the actual results don't seem to be any better than they were getting on their own, without any expert marketing knowledge.
The GeniusVets Marketing Difference
When you sign up with GeniusVets, you are partnering with us to set you up for success, and this is what you can expect:
You’re Assigned a POC and a Capable Team to Suit Your Needs
You’re given a Client Services Manager who is the point person for all of your needs, and this person ensures that the right hand is always aware of what the left is doing. This allows for streamlined communication and fast response times that will improve your efficiency. Our most significant hallmark in this regard, however, is that we team WITH you and teach you how to be effective in marketing. While we are the experts in marketing, you are the experts in veterinary medicine, so we set you up to adequately portray yourselves as thought leaders through blogging, ads, and other means.
Full Transparency
From the moment you choose GeniusVets, you partner with us in your marketing success. But as we’ve mentioned, we fully believe that for you to be successful as your authentic selves, we can’t just take the wheel from you entirely or disappear behind a magic curtain. While we do the “heavy lifting,” you will understand what tools we are using and why we use them, and you will have a say every step of the way. We partner with you to ensure you’re working alongside our Geniuses to put out the best content that is on-brand so that your target demographic has a seamless end-user experience.
You Get What You Pay For
It’s really that simple, as it should be! GeniusVets promises to deliver you marketing results that you can be proud of. Not only that, but, as you are our partner throughout the experience, you can weigh in on our marketing efforts at any time. We also welcome you to use your dashboard; we explain how to use it; and we show you the results you’re getting from us.
We Understand the Veterinary Industry
Quite frankly, we are "all in." Our team is staffed with pet owners, pet lovers, and many of us have many years of experience in the veterinary field. Of course, the biggest differentiator between the rest of the veterinary marketing companies and us is having Dr. Drake on our leadership team. She keeps us abreast of what’s going on in the industry and lets us know how the evolution of things can and should affect our marketing efforts.
We Deliver Results That You Can See
Remember that sports car that is just sitting there in your garage, gathering dust? Not with GeniusVets! We go far beyond the pretty website to ensure your multifaceted marketing campaign is getting you the results to set you apart from the competition. The average veterinary practice website in the US gets about 1,000 visits per month, however the average GeniusVets client website gets 7,880 visits per month (across all of our client websites). The proof is in the numbers, and we make sure you can see the results you are getting.
Do you want to learn how the GeniusVets Way can help you hire and retain the best employees and improve your profitability? Schedule a demo!