Nowadays, all businesses and sectors need to be present on the Internet and therefore need to have a good digital strategy. The case of veterinary clinics is no exception. Moreover, people who have a pet generally consider it a member of the family, and when they have to go to the vet, they will choose one that has a positive online reputation, because no one will want to go to a veterinary center that has negative comments, an unprofessional website, or an unfortunate communication on social networks.

Therefore, regardless of the size of your veterinary clinic, it is essential that you consider digital marketing as an important factor for the proper functioning of your business in the present and for its growth in the future. You will be happy to know that digital marketing is more cost effective than traditional marketing because you get better results with less investment.

To start managing the digital marketing of a veterinary clinic, as in most cases, you need to take into account these three basic steps:

1. Planning: You need to define goals, strategies, and actions. Think about what you want to achieve, how and when. Once these objectives have been set and a budget has been defined, it will be easier to segment the actions necessary to achieve the goal we have set.
2. Action: Plans need to be translated into concrete actions. It is important to put our plan into action. If we do not have the knowledge or the time to dedicate to our digital strategy, it is advisable to count on professionals in the sector who can help us.
3. Measure: it is not enough to do; it is essential to analyze the results. Through data analysis, it will be easier to make informed decisions based on the behavior of our website users or the way our audience interacts with the digital content we publish.

To cover all the bases in your digital strategy, your practice will likely need SEM, SEO, social media, email marketing, content marketing, and link building efforts. And for this, there are a number of free digital tools that will facilitate your tasks and optimize your efforts:

Google Ads: is the basic tool for SEM (Search Engine Marketing) on the main search engine, Google; that is, to optimize the visibility of your veterinary clinic’s website. It is used to manage paid campaigns and your ads will appear together with the results of organic searches. There are several formats to choose from, from the classic text ad on the search network to text, image and video ads on the display network, including more interactive platforms such as YouTube.

Google Analytics: Thanks to this tool, your veterinary clinic’s website can give you a lot of information. Which pages are the most visited, what content your readers are most interested in, how long they stay on your site, and so on. This will give you clues to make content marketing, essential to generate content on your website that really interests your potential clients and is useful to them about the world of pet health.

Google Search Console: another fundamental tool for veterinary marketing (and not only), as it allows webmasters to check the status of the indexing of their sites on the Internet by the search engine and optimize their visibility, as well as providing much more valuable information about positioning by keywords, traffic segmentation by country, usability on mobile devices, etc.

GtMetrix: This tool, on par with Google’s Page Speed Insight tool, helps you analyze the loading speed of your website, which is an important factor for positioning. If it takes too long to load, users will lose patience and leave your site. In addition, GtMetrix not only gives you a score for your site’s load time, but also provides tips and recommendations on how to fix the problems it identifies, helping you improve your site’s performance.

Hootsuite: A truly indispensable tool for managing your social networks. With Hootsuite, you can not only schedule social media posts and monitor what is happening on your Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter pages, but you can also save a lot of time by responding to comments directly from the platform.

Canva: This is a very versatile and easy-to-use tool for creating graphic content without any design skills. Canvas offers a variety of free and paid resources and templates that allow us to create content in minutes without having to be an experienced graphic designer.

Mailchimp: Thanks to Mailchimp, you can easily manage the sending of your veterinary clinic’s newsletters to your database, sharing with your clients the latest news or any valuable information you deem necessary. This tool will help you manage your email marketing efforts by providing you with data on email open rates and more, so you can optimize the sending of your communications.

Survey Monkey: This is the ideal tool to send any type of survey to clients, target audience, employees… Knowing your audience’s opinion about your veterinary clinic and the services you offer is key to improving and growing.

Have you seen all the options? Take a look at these digital tools for your veterinary clinic and start now to communicate and position yourself better in the digital world. Most are free and easy to use, so choose the ones that are most useful to you.