Strategy and Tools

This chapter will give you practical tips (what to do, what not to do, main pitfalls, etc.) on blogs, websites and social media and how to encourage clients to leave positive reviews on the web, with the goal of creating synergy between the different tools. We will also
outline general considerations about communication including branding and consistency.

Webmarketing strategy

The first step in developing an Internet marketing strategy is to understand the audience, How old are they? What Gender? Are they professionals? Do they have families or are they retired? Which types of pets do they own? How old are those pets? Some of this data can be found in the Practice Management System (PMS) however information such as owner age and status is unlikely to be available, Facebook provides detailed demographic information about the page’s audience but often it is worth running a client survey to find out more details about the likes, dislikes, and demographics of your clients. Bear in mind that the demographic of people you wish to target to become new clients may be different to your existing client base. “Personas” are a useful tool used in Internet marketing to visualise these statistics. They are fictional people chosen to represent a large section of the client base, this is not a scientific process and not everyone will be represented however they are a very useful tool.

“Personas” can be used across the Internet marketing strategy, for example, to test a website. “Would Maxime be looking at the website on his mobile?”, they can also be used to design promotions, e.g., “How could we reach Maureen to explain the importance of a dental check for her cat?” See examples on following page.

Establishing the aims of the Internet marketing strategy and the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure performance is the next step. The beauty of Internet marketing is that it can be measured; success can be quantified and rapid feedback can
be provided as to what is working and what is not. High level KPIs such as New Client Acquisition are affected by too many other factors to be useful as the sole measure for the success of an Internet marketing campaign, these top level KPIs can be translated into a series of more focused KPIs which are more useful for day-to-day management of digital marketing. If these low level KPIs improve the top level ones will improve alongside this. [...]