Fast Track to Success: 10 Steps to Growth for B2B Veterinary Marketers
Executive Summary
Ready to ride the fast track to successful B2B veterinary marketing? Follow these ten steps to kickstart your journey to creating campaigns with lightning-fast results. Each industry has its own nuances, and veterinary medicine is no different. Our team has been revving our veterinary marketing engine since 2010, and we’ve got tips to accelerate your journey to veterinary lead generation. Ready, set, let’s go!
#1 Leverage In-House Data
Much like a finely tuned race car, a great marketing strategy needs the right fuel to leave competitors in the dust. Analyze your own data to identify your most popular content. Next, repurpose and repackage long-format content into shorter pieces to broaden exposure or make more of the content your audience loves.
Surveys and quizzes are great ways to learn more about your audience, but look to your own internal data first. You can find out an immense amount of information about your audience’s preferences by analyzing the following data sources:
Website Traffic
Find out what pages they are going to, where they spend the most time, and, as importantly… where they’re not spending time. If you don’t currently have a blog where you host downloadable content, on-demand webinars, and articles with veterinary-professional-rich keywords, you’ll want to add one right away.
Form Conversions
Use forms to gate your downloadable content and on-demand webinars to generate leads and gauge what your audience is most interested in.
Demo Conversions
Leverage your CRM to identify which marketing campaigns result in the highest percentage of demo conversions. This can show you what content is yielding the highest quality leads.
Sale Conversions
Create reports in your CRM to identify which campaigns have the highest demo-to-sale conversion rate. This metric shows you which marketing campaigns are driving the most sales-ready leads.
#2 Shift into SEO
From keywords to backlinks, there are many ways to enhance SEO performance. Here are a few veterinary-specific quick tips:
Update your website pages to include cross-links for improved indexing so you can climb the SEO ranks and breeze past the competition. For example, if you have a great webinar about how your product addresses pain, make sure you cross-link to it in your blog for Pain Awareness Month in September. One of the easiest ways to update your website is to go back through old blog posts and refresh content and add cross-links to newer content.
Get backlinks from household industry names. There are many big companies in the veterinary space that you can partner with to do collaborative work–and to get backlinks. Think media companies, non-profits, and established companies with adjacent interests that you can host co-sponsored education with, etc. You’ll want to target companies with high site authority for backlinks, use this free checker from SEMRUSH!
Create a keyword strategy. Select the top keywords you want to be found for and integrate them into your website copy, image descriptions, blog, etc. Before you establish which keywords you want to optimize for, use a tool like SEMRUSH’s position tracker to get a baseline for how you are ranking and to determine which keywords are realistic for you to rank for based on the competitive environment. For example, a general industry term like “VetMed” might be difficult to rank for, but “Non-Invasive Canine Cancer Treatment” might be less competitive.
#3 Don't be Afraid of Fun
Put the pedal to the metal on social media with playful content and interactive games! Yes, we said games. It’s #VetMed, and they work. Explore lighter social-appropriate content formats for increased engagement on social media. Fun campaigns anchored by veterinary awareness days are also a great way to kick lead generation into high gear.
#4 Collaborate on Social
Speaking of industry awareness days… hit the gas on industry awareness days by tagging relevant organizations, using hashtags, and planning social campaigns far in advance. Using social for lead generation requires more than throwing out a “Happy National Puppy Day” post. Use these tips from our friends at VetMedux to make the most out of industry awareness days.
Social is also a great way to engage with your audience at key industry events such as VMX and WVC. Ensure you post on the show floor and use the live event hashtags to increase your brand exposure at conferences.
Of course, social is also a prime location for connecting and communicating with customers. Veterinary professionals are very socially active on Facebook and Instagram and place a lot of value in peer recommendations, making social media a great place to build meaningful connections.
#5 Testimonials/Referrals
Very few things are more powerful than a testimonial from grateful customers–in any industry. Take the metaphorical victory lap by leveraging social proof and peer recommendations through video and written testimonials, then integrate them into your content strategy. These videos are great for social media, your website, and pulling static quotes to use in your emails.
Here’s an example of one we developed for our brand:
#6 Standard Naming Structure
This might seem like an odd tip, given that we’re talking about lead generation growth strategies, but stick with us. If your file naming system is inconsistent, you’ll face several headwinds:
Wasted time searching for files and objects in your CRM.
Confused sales reps who can’t find sales enablement tools and don’t know how to label content in the CRM for proper marketing ROI attribution.
Disorganization can hurt the company long-term.
A messy CRM that isn’t useful down the road.
With an organized database, finding what you need will be smoother than a well-oiled pit crew. For a streamlined approach to storing files and keeping your CRM tidy, adopt standardized naming conventions for efficient file organization. Our favorite format is: Year_Month_Content Type_Details.
For example: “2024_03_Blog_10 Steps to Growth for B2B Veterinary Marketers”
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#7 Make the Most of Your Leads
What’s cheaper: finding a new lead or working on the ones you have? We’re all guilty of it. We all go out chasing the next shiny thing and forget that we have leads under our noses, ready for warming. Don’t move on from currently engaged leads too fast. Our current engagers are throwing signals that they want to talk to us–so let’s talk!
Focus on nurturing existing leads through email campaigns and targeted social ads. Tools like HubSpot can help your team keep conversations going with those precious engagers.
#8 Capitalize on Veterinary Industry Trends
Stay ahead of the pack by harnessing the latest veterinary trends. Align your content strategy with current industry hot topics to boost product exposure. One of the most effective ways to use industry trends in veterinary medicine is to create education where you can leverage a product placement as part of popular topics.
For example, if BOAS is a trending topic (pst… it is) and your product can help–use it.
#9 Turbo Boost the Lead Generation
Rev up your lead generation with targeted social ads. You probably heard that social media can’t be used for lead generation, but that’s not the case.
Take a deep dive into leveraging Facebook Ads for high-volume lead gen, or use our step-by-step guide to start making your first ad.
#10 Use Content Marketing to Drive Database Growth
Fuel your brand’s visibility and authority with a strong content marketing strategy… oh yeah… and generate leads along the way. Who doesn’t love a win-win?
Many B2B veterinary marketers are shifting their focus to database growth to generate their own opt-in list of veterinarians who want to hear from them. Engaged databases allow marketers to use in-house email with promotional channels, enabling them to execute winning campaigns for less money.
SMS is also an emerging content marketing channel in B2B veterinary marketing–start collecting text message opt-ins now for big wins later!
Got More Questions? We've Got You.
We have a strong background in lead generation and bring over a decade of industry experience in content creation, digital marketing, and automation. Feel free to do a little digging around on our website or click the button below, and we'll get back to you soon.