How to attract clients to your clinic

Internet has changed the “pet owner journey”: before telephoning a vet to ask questions or actually taking an appointment, the client will search the Internet (sometimes just to find a telephone number) and will have first information about your practice through it. Will there be reviews about your practice? Can one easily find practical information on your website? What is the look and feel of your Facebook page? Unlike some years ago, pet owner will start forming an opinion about you long before contacting your staff. This chapter will give you the basics on how to improve your digital presence as well as your telephone skills.

Zero moment of truth

How do pet owners choose a vet? In 2011, Google came up with the term “Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT)” following research it undertook with Shopper Science to discover more about peoples’ shopping habits (Jim Lecinski, 2011). The traditional marketing model prior to this was a model of a Stimulus, when the shopper saw an advert for a product, the First Moment of Truth when the shopper saw the product on the shelf and decided to purchase it, and the Second Moment of Truth when the product was used and the shopper experienced it. If marketers could get those three stages right then they would be able to sell their products. The research from Google showed that there is now an extra stage in this model that Google terms “The Zero Moments of Truth” or ZMOT. The ZMOT is when shoppers go online to compare products, look at reviews, watch videos and read blogs; the research showed that this is now a highly relevant and important stage in client decision-making. Figure 1 shows the illustration of this model in the context of an owner looking for a vet. [...]

Figure 1: The ZMOT model applied to the context of an owner looking for a vet.