If you’re a veterinarian or are managing the marketing for a veterinary practice, you owe it to yourself and your customers to explore social media advertising. With some strategy and some great content of your patients, you can generate new customers from a virtually untouched audience.

Your competition more than likely isn’t there. We audited communities for all the veterinarians that were advertising on search locally, there are almost zero social media advertisers in the space.

What’s the hottest content on social media?

I’ll give you a hint: it’s not even human.

Pets. More than nature scenes, more than people falling off things, even more than beach body bikinis, pets move social content.

So why, then, do so many veterinarians have poor social media pages?

Because they don’t know how to make it change their bottom line. They can’t figure out the ROI. They don’t have a strategy, and that will never equate to more customers in the door.

The good news is, there’s a pretty easy fix. The first step in getting more customers for your veterinarian practice is realizing that you actually can do it (and measure their actions, and track your ROI) through social media advertising.

Below are 5 reasons Veterinarians need social ads right now.

Vets have the world’s greatest content.

Social is, above all, visual. And animals are photogenic by nature. It’s a match made in heaven. The problem is that organic social media no longer generates enough reach to make a difference in a business.

This can’t be emphasised enough. Organic posts on Facebook or Instagram will only ever reach 2.5% to 5% of your fans. If you want to play, you have to pay.

Street Sign the Direction Way to Inexpensive versus Expensive

Social ads are incredibly inexpensive

So we’ve determined that social media is now pay to play. The good news is that the pay part is relatively tiny and the play part (the number of people who’ll see your ads) can be relatively enormous.

Depending on what you tell Facebook and Instagram you want your ads to do, you can have a large or as small of a budget as you want and, unlike in adwords, it won’t affect the performance of your ads, just the reach.

facebook ads screen shot for creating a new ad

Boosted posts aren’t social ads

Well, technically they are, but it’s just scratching the surface.

If you’ve ever managed a Facebook or Instagram Page, you’ve probably seen a notification that says something like, “This post is doing 90% better than your other posts! Consider boosting it.” 

This is the “entry level” of social ads, and you will never be able to consistently grow your customers using only boosted posts. You’ll get more likes and comments, maybe, but you’ll never be able to take advantage of everything social ads have to offer.

Writing note showing Social Engagement. Business photo showcasing post gets high reach Likes Ads SEO Advertising Marketing written Coffee in Red Cup the Grey wooden background. Top view.

Social ads have different objectives for different results

Here’s another reason Boosted Posts don’t produce results: they’re not telling Facebook what to do. There are actually a series of different levels of objectives that tell Facebook what to do with your content and who to show it to.

For people that just watch video on Instagram, you can tell the ads to just show to those particular people. For people that click on ads and tend to sign up for, say, newsletters, the ads can be changed to have a high Call To Action.

Audience concept on tablet with glowing light bulbs

Your Audience Is There

Forget what you’ve heard about people leaving Facebook. Forget what you’ve read about “social media is dead.” They’re not. It’s not.

Social will always be here, and it will always grow. Platforms may change, and content fads can fade in and out, but social itself isn’t going anywhere.

Bonus:

 

Your competition more than likely isn’t there. We audited communities for all the veterinarians that were advertising on search locally, there are almost zero social media advertisers in the space. 

The Takeaway

If you’re a veterinarian or are managing the marketing for a veterinary practice, you owe it to yourself and your customers to explore social media advertising. With some strategy and some great content of your patients, you can generate new customers from a virtually untouched audience.