VMP 063: How To Identify Marketing Data That Actually Helps Grow Your Veterinary Practice

Have you ever though about what actually matters when you are doing content marketing, or direct response marketing? I hear practices tell me all the time, "we've tried that (insert marketing platform) and it doesn't work", but what does that actually mean? In this week's episode I try and help you determine what kind of marketing results you should be focusing on and one type of result that you shouldn't be worrying about, which I call Vanity Metrics.  Vanity Metrics can be things like, impressions, reach sometimes "likes" or re-tweets, basically anything that on the surface seems impressive, but when you dive deeper you discover that it isn't really producing anything. When the metrics you are following are just activity based rather than results based is when you can get into difficulty with  your marketing. A lot of times too, these kinds of results seem impressive or exciting, but they don't help to drive clients in to your practice.  I will say that there is always difficulty in trying to figure out what the ROI of your marketing is or should be. I think that a lot of times in social media when you are building community, educating clients or creating engagement that it can be difficult to quantify the result in terms of ROI but you should be able to quantify the engagement and drill down into what meaningful engagement actually looks like. For example posting an educational article that you are doing solely for educational purposes and then to have no one like, comment share and you get a low click through rate would be pretty easy to identify as a loser.  Creating marketing with the end goal in mind will help you be a better marketer and allow you to generate better results. Instead of saying "This marketing doesn't work" you'll be able to find out what part isn't working, correct it and create success.