What Creating 50+ Veterinary Brands Taught Me about Marketing Local Businesses
Creating 50+ unique veterinary brands taught me something major: When it comes to marketing a small business, you need to look at the big picture first.
By Danielle K. Lambert
Over 20k veterinary professionals have relied on my advice for marketing their vet clinics over the years. But it’s my deep-dive experience building 50+ unique veterinary brands that gave me the real insight into what it takes to market a brick-and-mortar.
I always found veterinarians would come to me asking for “marketing ideas for vet clinics,” like posting about National Squirrel Day is going to solve all of their business problems.
We have to go deeper and know wtf we are actually marketing if you want to attract dream clients to your small business.
This is why I like to work with startup brick-and-mortars extremely early on in the process.
If you wait to think about marketing your startup vet clinic or med spa until a week before you open, you’re already late.
I like to start working with founders 9-12 months out from their alleged open date. (We all know that date will probably move, but hey- let’s try our best!)
When you come to me to work on marketing your local business, here’s what we do.
1) We don’t talk about marketing until we know what we’re marketing.
Knowing what you’re marketing affects everything from the architecture of your building to how you pitch your lenders. (Vets and dentists - You can earn $1000 toward working with me if you secure your funding through my Provide affiliate link, btw.)
Before sharing marketing ideas for your small business, I’d ask you a lot of questions like:
What problem do you solve?
Who do you solve it for?
Why is that important to them, really?
(RELATED BLOG: WTF Is Your Problem?)
2) I’d have you describe the experience of working with you - as a client and as an employee
How are you different? And no - “We are going to have a plant wall with a neon sign!” or “work-life balance!” isn’t enough to make you innovative.
Your local service-based business needs a lil’ ace in the hole to make it stand out to potential clients and team members alike.
What is that “ace in the hole” for you? If you aren’t sure, I’d have you walk me through the entire experience of being your client - from how I book my appointment to what happens when I walk out the door.
I’d then do the same thing from an employee’s perspective. Literally, what is it like to work for you?
If I didn’t hear anything unique, I’d tell you. I’d work with you to push your vision further! We can’t market boring, baby. ;)
We’d also look at exactly how you plan to back these claims up. We can’t market BS either. It’s easy to dream up a seamless client experience or the best team culture ever, but I know from 5 years managing a vet clinic that reality is a whole different deck of cards.
3) I’d ask for the backstory
You’ve heard it a billion times: “Start with why!” If I’m going to help you with ideas to market your local business, I want to know what made you decide to offer the service the way that you plan to.
I also want to hear about why you plan to be the type of employer you’ve described to me. What happened to you in the past to make you the leader you are today?
Getting these deeper, more personal stories is how we start to build a brand that’s anything but blah.
But I don’t just like to look behind. I’d also get clear on the long-term vision for your business. Is it a single location or will you have multiple spots around town? Knowing where we are going from day 1 is super important.
4) Figuring out your brand archetype
Now that I have a clearer picture of what we are marketing, I’d ask you to look at the 12 brand archetypes. These are personalities for brands - they show what motivates and drives your business. We would see which ones spoke to you and which ones you hated.
Using this info, we’d start to narrow in more on your brand’s personality.
This will make your marketing less boring. Everyone wants to “stand out”, and this is the legwork it takes to do that and call in more dream clients!
5) Double down on POV
After getting some clarity on your brand archetype, I’d ask you to tell me more about your point of view. What pisses you off about the industry you’re in? What do you think needs to be done differently?
Then we’d discuss how “spicy” you’re willing to be in your marketing. I believe every brand needs to have a clear point of view, but not every brand needs to be aggressive about it. Again - we are honing in on that brand personality that will make you more memorable, but it also needs to be authentic to you!
6) Looking at local demographics
This part gets left out by a lot of marketers, but I leave no stone unturned when working with my small businesses. We’d evaluate local demographics to see who is in your local area. What are they spending on services like yours? What’s their income like?
(My husband is an economics consultant, so we can access some pretty cool paid data sets and get really specific, if you want.)
Knowing this information gives us the ability to start to define a dream client. You’re not starting this business - whether it’s a veterinary startup or an accounting firm - to appease everyone! ;)
7) Consider your “competition” and collaborators
At this point, we’d talk about the local market. Who is your “competition?” I love to Google other similar service providers in the area so we can see who they are!
For the record, I don’t really believe in “competition.” This is more so that we can ensure you’re addressing any holes in the market and truly differentiating yourself. These “competitors” could really become some of your biggest referral sources.
On that note - Who are your potential collaborators?
I’m not just talking about other service providers that do exactly what you do. (If you’re opening a vet clinic, for example, we wouldn’t just consider other vets… or even keep it limited to pet-related businesses.)
What other local businesses and service providers could you be collaborating with?! Knowing this information opens up the floodgates for marketing collabs in the future.
Only after all of that would we talk about marketing ideas for your startup vet clinic!
Everyone wants to skip to marketing strategies - eg “should I be on social media, YouTube, blogs, podcasts, email, etc.” But all of the brand strategy work we do first is what helps ensure we have something unique to market. No boring businesses here!
Using all your answers from the previous line of questioning, we’d have plenty to market without posting the same sh*t as every other business on the block.
If we were working on design together at my agency, The Snout Group, I’d also layer in your answers to help us integrate your story and goals into the design work we do!
Eg: If you’re a vet clinic that’s going to see exotics, we could help plot out an exam room for them using custom illustrations as murals on the walls. Hello, cute backdrop for future marketing!
Moral of the story - we’re not skipping right to marketing ideas if you work with me.
I’ve built 50+ veterinary brands from the ground up. It’s taught me that jumping right to marketing ideas is worthless . When we build something together, we’re diving in deep and doing the “unsexy” legwork that will get you better results in the end. I play the long game, after all. If that’s your vibe - let’s chat!
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