3 Reasons Your Veterinary Business is Not Growing

After a long, hard day, there may be a moment where you sit back and wonder why your veterinary business is not growing. There are many reasons a business fails or succeeds, and sometimes, it’s a matter of luck. We think the luckiest people are the ones that are most prepared. While we can help create content to grow your business, it’s also important for you to take time and determine what’s working well and what could be improved. We speak with veterinary hospitals around the world, and there are some similarities with things that go right and things that go wrong.

What’s going wrong out there?

According to Investopedia, a few of the top reasons for a failing business in any industry are:

• Inadequate Management
• Business Plan and Infrastructure Issues
• Marketing Mishaps

Sound familiar? If you’ve ever worked with a veterinary consultant, they’ll tell you that these are the top three reasons veterinary hospitals end up closing their doors. There’s a lot of information out there and a lot of voices to listen to in the veterinary world.

You are trying to copy what everyone else is doing.

The majority of WhiskerCloud clients come to us because they heard about us from another hospital or saw a website they loved that was built by the WhiskerCloud team, and we love that. The one thing that all of our clients hear us say, “we’re glad you like their website, but you shouldn’t copy them.” There are so many online groups and conferences where ideas are shared, and it makes it easy to say, “I want to do that!” Ideas are great, but be sure to make them unique to your brand. Find the colors and branding that fit your clinic. Create an infrastructure of internal processes that work for your team. Offer specials that work for your business. Choosing a veterinarian is a big deal for most families, and it’s important to be the right fit for them because of who you are, not because of the ideas you implemented from the internet. Be unique, not a clone of another hospital.

You aren’t taking chances.

Getting a new website is a great start. A new website from WhiskerCloud comes with hosting, security, SEO, mobile-responsive design, and unlimited support. Even better, we offer custom social media management and advertising for our clients. Remember, your digital presence is just one piece of the pie when it comes to growing your business. Think of it as an ecosystem, you have funnels like drive-bys, social media, SEO, advertising, word of mouth, community events, employee referrals, and print marketing to name a few ways of gathering new business. If you’re still advertising in the yellow pages, sending mailers, or advertising on a billboard, you need to try some new tactics.

Google ads are a great way to drive more traffic to your website. What makes them so great? Using transactional keywords, we can help you show up at the top of Google when someone is searching for a veterinarian or a service that you offer. They search, click to your website, like what they see, and request an appointment right from your website. It’s that simple.

We also recommend grassroots marketing ideas like partnering with an animal shelter, sponsoring community events, or working with local pet shops. Imagine partnering with an animal shelter with an offer for all newly adopted pets. If the shelter adopts 100 pets in a month and all 100 are offered your special, even 10% of them using that offer means 10 new clients a month and 120 a year, just from this one promotion. Plus, you get to help shelter animals in the community, which we think is an amazing thing.

Whatever it is, there are always more things you can be doing. Think big and get creative!

You aren’t taking the time to grow your business.

“I’ll get to this soon!”

“I’ve just been so busy.”

Not many people on Earth can understand what it’s like to be in an active veterinary hospital every day. We know you’re busy, but it’s also important to remember that time must be set aside to strategize about growing your business. Work with your team to make time for discussion and implementation for your big ideas. Maybe it’s a new special you want to offer – how will it run and be managed? You’ll need to email it to your clients, add it to your website, and promote it on your social media channels. Do you have a process for that? WhiskerCloud offers unlimited support so that these types of campaigns can be thought out, created, implemented, and tracked for you.

Growing a business is like anything else in life, you get what you put in.

Are you creating the time to grow your business? If not, things can get stagnant really quickly, especially if your competition is doing all of these things well. Just because something is working for someone else doesn’t mean it will work for you. Find a partner that can help you get on the right track. As always, we’d love to hear all about your big ideas on a free demo.