If You Don’t Answer Your Clients Questions Online, Others Will

A New York Times ‘article’ entitled the 5 Questions All Cat or Dog Owners Should Ask Their Vet dialed my burner up to medium high. Here’s why.

The article is a repurposed blog produced by Wirecutter, a company owned by the New York Times, that is in the business of writing about products, providing links to purchase those products, and then earning a commission on the sales. It’s not so much the business model that upsets me; it’s that in its role as one of the world’s most widely read newspapers, the New York Times is publishing ‘articles’ clearly angled to boost sales of one of its subsidiaries and not report information that is of genuine value to its readers*.

Here’s The List

As an example, here’s the list of questions they urge pet owners to ask their vet:

What kind of food should I feed my pet?
How’s my pet’s weight?
How much exercise does my pet need?
How do my pet’s teeth and gums look?
And the last one that really got me smoking, Can you explain my bill?

Now I don’t know about you, but the only question that I see in that lineup that would possibly make my list of top 5 is the one about oral health. The rest of the questions are just an excuse to hyperlink to pet foods, treats, leashes, sweaters, and pet insurance that are all marketed through the site and for which the site earns a sales commission.

Pandering To The False Claim That Veterinarians May Be Unethical

But it’s the last question that is especially irritating because it uses a common client complaint to sensationalize the article: that veterinarians are unjustly charging for their services or are unethically making recommendations for services that are not necessary. This kind of pandering is inexcusable in light of the mistrust that it casts on veterinary care providers and is especially nauseating when it sells out a profession for a mere 3% sales commission on something like dog food.

If Someone Is Going To Have An Online Voice, It Should Be You

If you know me, you know I regularly advocate writing original online content for your website and using the Internet to increase the reach of your voice. The 5 Questions That All Dog And Cat Owners Should Ask Their Vet should not be written by the staff girl at Wirecutter, but by you and the other members of your team.

Clients Want To Read Stories That Matter To Them

I have been heavily involved in helping privately owned veterinary practices draft and publish online content for 10 years now. I can assure you that it is read, enjoyed, shared, and commented on by the practice’s existing client base as well as by potential new clients, not because I’m a good writer, but because we focus on building content specific to the tastes of our audience and our community. For example, we never write about ticks in general, we use the Companion Animal Parasite Council’s disease prevalence map and write about ticks in our area. We never write about general dog breeds, we pick the top five that our clients own and write about them.

We Link To Resources Because They’re Valuable, Not Necessarily Profitable

We also make use of the ability to hyperlink to our online pharmacy when recommending products that we believe will be of genuine value to our clients (though you have to be careful about promoting your online pharmacy through sites like Facebook) or hyperlinking to Amazon in the case of products that we do not sell at our practice or on our online store. The latter is made possible by the Amazon Associates program and earns us a small commission on any products that the pet owner purchases within 24 hours of being directed to Amazon.com by our site.

You’re Talking About It Every Day, You Might As Well Write It Down

Writing and digitally publishing the things that you say to pet owners every day means that you are magnifying your voice; that you are laying claim to your expertise and experience; that you are engaging your clients more frequently and earning their loyalty. If you don’t contribute to the online dialogue about pet health and care, someone will take your place at the mic and fill the void. The girl at Wirecutter already has her fingers poised above the keys of her computer. Beat her to the ‘publish’ button.

use Content As A Way To Phish for New Clients

Pet owners have questions and they’re not going to the Encyclopedia Britannica for the answers; they’re going online. Whenever you build content on a particular topic, make sure that pet owners know that if they want to take their query to the next level, they can call you. If you they have an app like AirVet, this call can be monetized, but we give these brief consults away free of charge because it has proven to be an excellent loss leader (the invitation comes with a qualifier saying that they we won’t spend more than 10 minutes on the phone with them, and the service is only available if they live within 10 miles of the practice). The blog posts that we write that include an invitation to call the practice for advice typically result in one to two queries a week for which we have a nearly 100% conversion rate. Given that most of these cases are real head scratchers, this new client acquisition strategy brings in no less than 4K per month for no more than the cost of time it takes to write and publish the article. Interesting fact, we often take calls outside the 10 mile area and people still choose to come to the practice for a visit with the vet to continue the discussion and to have our vets do a physical examination of their pet.

This is how we’ve organized some of our more popular posts under the heading ‘Second Opinion’. Click on this link to see these articles in more detail and how we invite clients to call for their free 10 minute consult.

Want To Stand Out In Online Searches? Put A Video Testimonial On Your Home Page

Sites that incorporate videos in which vets talk about certain medical issues, cases that they’ve seen, or even about why their vocation is important to them are incredibly attractive to their clients and potential clients. Extra credit if you bring your sense of humor to your posts or speak as a fellow pet owner as well as a veterinary professional. Why? Because your clients don’t want generic veterinary information, they want your take on things. They want to see, hear, and interact with you. Why are you reluctant to step into your own lobby? Because you know some adoring client is going to glom onto you and steal 15 minutes (or more) of your precious time. Capitalize on that attraction and manage your time better by giving clients another way to see and hear you: online.

Attend This Year’s FetchDVM360 Conference For More

If you are not writing content for your site; if you feel that you don’t have the time or that you don’t know what to write about, please reach out to me for help. You can also hear more on the topic at this year’s FetchDVM360 Conference in Kansas City where I will be lecturing on this and other marketing and management topics.

*To be fair, the Times does state that the author of the above mentioned article, “Is a staff writer at Wirecutter, a product recommendation site owned by The New York Times Company”, but the formatting and style of the article make it almost indistinguishable from any of the rest of the news reportage.