Case Study: How Four Mobile Veterinarians Are Growing Their Business

WhiskerCloud works with veterinary hospitals of all sizes—everything from multi-practice facilities to solo practitioner mobile veterinarians. While a lot of our marketing tips and focus tend to be on brick and mortar veterinary hospitals, WhiskerCloud also works with mobile veterinarians around the world. We’d love to tell you about how they are thriving during a weird time for any mobile business.

Starting your own business can be a daunting task, and a mobile clinic is a great way to start without worrying about expensive overhead. With the proper equipment, a car, and your veterinary degree, you can start a business in no time! Of course, there’s more to it than just slapping a car magnet on, driving around, and asking friends to have you over to see their pets when they are not feeling well.

Today, we’ll look at four of our customers that are also part of our partnership organization – the International Association for Animal Hospice and Palliative Care.

Business #1 – San Francisco Bay Area

This business is run by a solo practitioner and offers palliative, hospice care, pain management, and in-home euthanasia. Palliative pet care is an approach of care focused on relieving discomfort associable with some underlying illness, disease, or simply just the changes we see with aging. The goal is not to cure the underlying problem but, instead, to allow your pet to live as gently and comfortably as is possible.

This business provides in-home care to pets from San Francisco to San Jose and focuses on a mix of SEO, social media, and word of mouth to grow the business.

This client had 260 conversions (phone calls and appointment requests) on her website in March and April, with 67% of users being new to her website and 54% of all traffic from mobile devices.

Top keywords in the area are “pet euthanasia” and “in-home pet euthanasia.”

Plus, the doctor goes above and beyond with gifts and paw prints for grieving clients.

Mobile Veterinary Business #2 – Virginia Beach

This business is run by four veterinarians and offers palliative, hospice care, pain management, telehealth, integrative medicine, in-home euthanasia, and aftercare. If your pet is aging or dealing with illness, this team provides any care they could possibly need in the comfort of your home. During the COVID-19 era, they are still offering in-home care and even offering telehealth.

This business provides in-home care to pets in Hampton Roads (Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Chesapeake, Suffolk, Hampton, Newport News, and beyond). It focuses on a mix of SEO, custom content creation, social media, and word of mouth to grow their business. Their team does a beautiful job of creating content and staying close with their community by offering pet loss support group meetings.

This team had 408 conversions (phone calls and appointment requests) on their website in March and April, with 63% of users being new to the website and a whopping 69% of all traffic from mobile devices.

Mobile Veterinary Business #3 – Tampa Bay

This business is run by a solo practitioner and offers house call pet hospice and palliative care visits, along with telehealth video quality of life consultations and in-home euthanasia. This business is run by a veterinarian that also does speaking engagements and has built a pretty impressive national brand to go along with the brand she is building for her business in the Tampa area.

This business had 315 conversions (phone calls and appointment requests) on their website in March and April, with 80.38% of users being new to the website and 74% of all traffic from mobile devices.

The business continues to grow from strong SEO, a great system of referrals (the website includes a referral page for other veterinary hospitals in the area), and a strong social media presence from the doctor and her brand.

Mobile Veterinary Business #4 – New Jersey

Our final business is run by a solo practitioner and his veterinary team in New Jersey. This team focuses on cancer care for dogs, cats, and horses, along with pain management, palliative care, and immunotherapy. Their business model is unique because they offer on-site medical oncology services at nine different locations for veterinarians and their clients throughout central New Jersey. This unique approach allows some pet owners to stay with their primary veterinarian’s office while their pet is receiving cancer care or be seen at one of their convenient locations. These relationships help them keep a steady stream of business coming in.

Along with being the #1 ranked on SEO for pet cancer keywords, this team also works with the WhiskerCloud advertising team to ensure people searching for pet cancer care in the area find their way to them.

This business had 106 conversions (phone calls and appointment requests) on their website in March and April, with 77% of users being new to the website and 51% of all traffic from mobile devices.

In addition to great content, they also grow their business with strong SEO, highly-targeted Google ads, and partnerships they’ve built up in the area.

What do all of these businesses have in common?

1. They built a brand.

Having a website doesn’t mean that you will automatically get new business and have potential customers funnel their way to you. It’s essential to build a brand because you can guarantee someone else in your city is making sure that they give the perception of a big brand. Companies like Lap of Love have done a great job at building a national brand that elicits a response when someone needs in-home care and asks friends who they should call. Every single WhiskerCloud website comes with a new logo and branding package because we know the importance of building a brand with your new website. Be sure that your veterinarians are front and center of that brand because they are the ones entering the homes of clients and creating an everlasting bond.

2. They create content.

With a typical veterinary hospital, the hospital is the brand. With a mobile veterinary business, the doctors are the brand. You are dealing with clients directly, you have been to their home, and you have seen them, their pets, and their most vulnerable moments. Think about the content you want to create for your clients and be sure it ties into the care you offer. Of course, it’s vital to create actionable content that can help clients with senior pets or pets dealing with an illness or pain issue. What should they eat? How should they exercise? What can they do to help their pet when you are not there? These are the pieces of content that will give you more robust SEO, get shared more, and help build trust between you and your clients.

3. They understand what it means to build relationships.

There are two relationships that mobile veterinarians must master—the relationship with their clients and the relationship with other veterinary businesses in the area. Mobile veterinarians offer something unique that most veterinary hospitals just cannot provide: they bring the service to the client’s home. Things like cancer treatments, acupuncture, and euthanasia appointments can be extremely stressful in the hospital, and these fantastic people allow these appointments to happen at home, where the pet is most comfortable. Want to grow your business? Get close to every single veterinary hospital in your area. Let them know that you offer things that they do not provide, and you’re just a phone call away when they need you. This is a great way to expand your business and ensure new clients are always coming your way, plus it allows the veterinary hospital to have another offering for their clients.

4. They have gone fully digital.

It used to be so easy to start a mobile business. You would just order a big magnet or car wrap with your phone number and services and drive around all day. Sooner or later, someone was going to call you, right? Now, you can create content from home and have people searching for the service you offer—just like that, you’ll be there. Whether you’re a mobile business or not, you need branding, a website, strong SEO, good reviews, a strong social media presence, and your forms should be digital, too. Allow your clients to complete all of your forms and payments online before you arrive, allowing you to focus on the animal entirely.

We love working with mobile veterinary businesses, and we’re happy to see them continue to thrive in the future!