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As a local or regional veterinarian, your first priority is to care for the critters coming through your door. Of course, making money needs to be your second priority to ensure that your furry patients are receiving the best care. Veterinarians can use content marketing to improve awareness of their services and identify potential new customers. While there is an abundance of content marketing tactics for veterinarians, start with these four approaches.

1. Local SEO

Before you begin to think about creating content or boosting Facebook posts, your customers (both new and existing) need to find you. Google and Google Maps make finding a business’ information online easier than ever. With this in mind, your office needs to have a solid local SEO (search engine optimization) plan in place.

As BrightLocal defines it, local SEO helps businesses promote their products and services to local customers at the exact time they’re looking for them by using a variety of strategies. These strategies can include:

• Link Building
• Local Content Creation
• Online Reviews
• Business Listings
• …and more.

When potential customers search for veterinarian services in their local area, you want to appear near the top of the results. Go ahead and search for this phrase in Google or other search engines: “veterinarian [insert your location].” Does your business show up? If not, it’s time to implement a local SEO strategy ASAP.

2. Blog Content Creation

Pet owners have questions—lots of questions – about everything from animal behaviors to medical queries. A lot of pricey vet visits could be avoided if the patient had the answer from the beginning. These visits do drive revenue for your business, but they take up a time slot which could have been used for a pet with a serious ailment.

Creating educational and intriguing blog content is a must in content marketing. This content is the foundation for an ongoing level of trust and loyalty in the patient-veterinarian relationship. When potential clients see you’ve taken the time and effort to help them care for their pet outside of your office, they’ll begin to trust you more and more with each visit.

Blog content creation and distribution offers other enticing benefits such as increased conversions and quality backlinks. But the trust you build with patients as a result of that content is priceless.

3. Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing may seem like a common sense marketing tactic for veterinarians. Who doesn’t love seeing pictures of adorable animals in their newsfeeds? But while cuddly kittens and puppies are enticing, these cute pictures and videos are not enough to drive business to your office.

Social media gives potential clients a glimpse into your clinic. Use it to:

• Share your informative blog content
• Promote various marketing campaigns
• Generate online reviews
• Answer questions from potential clients and recurring patients
• Interact with your followers

The social media marketing goal for your veterinarian clinic should be to grow and engage a loyal following of potential and current clients. Remember, the content you post on social media should be 80 percent entertaining or informative and 20 percent promotional!

4. Influencer Marketing

If you’re not up to date on the latest social media trends, this next sentence may sound a bit crazy.

Pets are now social media influencers.

Ogilvy Cannes reports that 74 percent of people turn to social networks for guidance on purchase decisions. And according to Twitter and Annalect, 49 percent of people say they rely on recommendations from influencers when buying.

From Grumpy Cat to Doug the Pug, pets on social media make up a huge sector of influencers. Why not partner with an influential pet as part of an ongoing influencer marketing campaign? These fluffy social media stars can include posts about your office, services, or other marketing objectives in their content. They might be your best bet in conveying your marketing message and building trust with potential consumers. Just remember: when working with influencers (even those with fur, quills, or wings), be sure to have all the terms and conditions spelled out and agreed upon in advance.

Use These Content Marketing Tactics for Veterinarians Today

The best part about these strategies? You can start using them today. Try these content marketing tactics for veterinarians and watch your patient list grow.