1. The veterinarian is simply filling a market need: the need for someone to provide medical care for pets. The focus is on providing medical services and on the desires of the doctor/owner.
2. The wants and needs of the pet owner become more important: issues like location of the hospital, operating hours, waiting times become very important. The clients' needs become more important than the hospital staff needs. The practice becomes client-centered.
3. The goal of the hospital is no longer to just meet the needs of the client but to surprise and delight her with great architecture and interior design, music, food and drink, great personal service. Many practices have caught on to the architecture part but still grade as mediocre to OK on the client service side.
4. Top retail companies today have gone beyond great client service to providing through their companies chance for connectivity between their clients, providing fun and meaningful experiences for their customers, opportunities for public service. Marketing that provides fun and enriching experiences and on-location experiences that have meaning for the client represent the cutting edge of modern retail businesses.
Where does your veterinary hospital rank on this 4-step path of development?
For a hospital that's working on achieving this fourth level of growth, what would you say are the key components of a great marketing plan? I'm especially interested in hearing what you believe to be the most valuable aspects of a marketing plan in our current challenging economy.
ReplyDelete---Jasmine Bachrach / Rose City Veterinary Hospital
Jasmine,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your question. The first challenge of marketing is still to get potential clients walking through your front door. The addition of new clients is particularly critical in these difficult economic times. The good news, by the way, is that if you succeed in driving business during bad times, you will emerge stronger when the good economic times return because you will have increased your market share.
How do you get more people through the doors and fulfill a client-experience marketing strategy? It's not that difficult. Give away what you can afford to give away–knowledge and information and fun. Free is a very good price, even in tough times.
You can hold public events featuring speakers in pet behavior, pet communication, how to set up a dog friendly park, sponsored by the hospital. Some of the people attending will become future clients and in the meantime, you are creating tremendous good will in your community.
Jasmine,
ReplyDeleteA public event can work wonders. We sent out e-mails (free) and produced flyers in house (very inexpensive) for an alternative medicine seminar at our clinic. We mailed the flyers with a general cover letter to local homepaths, naturopaths, chiropractors, acupuncturists and osteopaths.
5 local veterinarians gave talks on homeopathy, laser therapy, acupuncture, energy medicine and chiropractic medicine. We had it last night and more than 50 people showed up, only a third of whom were clients, and we booked appointments on the spot for new clients. This group also had suggestions for further speakers.
The best part? After the talks each vet went into a separate exam room with some materials about their topic and was able to have one-on-one bonding with attendees who had further questions.
Ron,
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing the details about your successful public event. Sounds like you did a great job!
I like the idea of emailing and sending flyers as a low cost way to publicize. Having the doctors go into individual exam rooms after their talks to spend one-on-one time with attendees is a good idea, too.
After reading about your event, I am more enthusiastic than ever about holding public events in our hospital.
Jasmine Bachrach / Rose City Veterinary Hospital