Web Marketing for Vets

Shawn Wilkie: Hey you’re listening to the veterinary Innovation podcast

Ivan Zak: You’re listening to Vishnu going to be action podcast name is Ivan Zak and I’m here with a friend of mine Sean Wilkie and let’s introduce our yesterday

Meet our guest – Randy Valpy | LifeLearn

Shawn Wilkie: Thanks Ivan super excited to be with a friend of mine Randy Valpy ,probably one of the world’s experts when it comes to web marketing for veterinarians and veterinary clinics Randy Valpy’s the top dog at life learn and has had a very interesting career normally the top dog at Platts plus US during his tenure with Western Financial company to develop key relationships with Walmart to create their first in store pet insurance offering which rolled out in over 200 stores in Canada alone Randy is on the board of directors of the Guelph Humane Society and in 2018 his current company made the growth 500 list for the fourth consecutive year personally Randy has attended a Neil Diamond show in 2012 and attended the 2013 Canadian open met Margaret Atwood in 2015 and has a beautiful rental that I believe is on Airbnb in will feel Nova Scotia so plug for your Airbnb rental there Randy we’re SuperDuper happy to have you on this episode and I think we’re going to have a fairly engaged in fun conversation so welcome to the veterinary Innovation podcast

Randy Valpy: Thanks very much Sean and eivin and I obviously share too much my life on social media for you to know all that stuff

Shawn Wilkie: Consider us internet stalkers

Veterinary web marketing

Randy Valpy: That’s right guess it could be worse so those are the highlights out of my social media I’m doing okay so we’re just going to jump right into it what would you consider a great example of Veterinary web marketing people that’s a pretty wide question there’s lots that can go on and certainly different different clinics mix two different things throughout the world and certainly in North America were a lot of our Focus has focuses on you know I think for veterinarians differentiate themselves these days because of this such a competitive industry it’s important that they do more than just have a website we come across all kinds of different websites in our and our sales process everything from where the veterinarian has had their teenage daughter son design their website to that’s using GoDaddy or Wicks and then getting into the custom type of websites that are copying others provide the do you think from that aspect they have to differentiate itself just to have a landing page isn’t going to do it nowadays so it’s more about engaging both their current clients and obviously prospective clients if they’re trying to grow their business and that’s by constantly adding different things to their websites but also doing much more than just having today they have to be engaged in social media whether that be Instagram Facebook Twitter probably lesser so to LinkedIn other properties like that you know unfortunately veterinarian is get very busy in their day-to-day life practicing medicine so quite often these sort of things are left aside and not focused on and that’s another companies can come in and assist them don’t allow them to spend the time delivering the medicine that they so want to deliver but without having to worry about the business aspects of their marketing

Ivan Zak: That’s interesting right knee in right knee in so maybe a practical question because we try to also incorporate some practical things for vegetarians here what do you think of the web so what are the most common mistakes that veterinarian do because I’ve seen obviously we’ve seen quite a few websites with you know what I’ve done in my career and Sean and then when you look at the website what it is those high level things when you look at the website and say okay they should not be here and these are the things that alack what are the five components that every vet should have certainly some obvious things are you know launching your website in 1990 and not having updated it since then websites have to be a constant work in progress the technology changes the Styles change so they have to be constantly reviewing that at least every two years if not annually I think the other thing that I see that it’s not just for veterinary clinics is for a lot of businesses I see they start a blog or they start some sort of newsletter with links to it from their website and they start off great they post every week or a couple times a week or every month whatever their frequency is but then they just stop and you go on to the Clinic’s website or any business’s website and you go to their blog and their last posting was from 2016 is that really the business that I want to be doing this is with where they’re not being proactive and keeping up to date on these sort of things it does send a, I think a bad message to prospective clients if you’re not going to do it then delete it just don’t have it there but if you are going to have it then you’ve got to constantly updating. Another thing along those same lines has staff changes and they happen and everybody’s business but for clinics very important that most websites for clinics have have the team of the team pages of the receptionist and the groomer and the veterinarian staff that those are updated as well and I think the other big thing is that engagement that I’ve mentioned in my opening comments is trying to engage with your clients because they want to know that they can come in there and learn from you as well and I think for having an engagement whether it be through a blog or certainly highlighting your Facebook with websites nowadays you can incorporate your latest Facebook post or the last couple poster Twitter post so they’re right there on your website and you don’t have to click off to go and open the Facebook or Twitter or whatever other social platform you’re looking at it

Ivan Zak: Makes complete sense yeah I totally grew the only long and the newsletter initiative it really has to be a strategy where other than the individual initiative that never leads to anywhere just like probably podcasts

Shawn Wilkie: note to self

Randy Valpy: People go to a conference and I hear you should be doing this and they go yeah that’s a great idea and they come back and they instigate it into your point these to get it but they just get without a plan life when veterinary clinics it’s somewhat easier to do because you can certainly create a bunch of content about seasonal things you know heartworm testing so you can lay out a lot of that content ahead of time but have a plan regardless of what you’re doing

Ivan Zak: Yeah make sense so with vigilante were absolutely right about the fact that they’re focused on you know veterinary medicine and how to treat the patients and two degrees hard to engage them in a marketing activities that that’s what I found so what is your strategy when you work with a veterinary clinic isn’t sort of partner up on the initiative do you take completely hands-off and help them or do you engage with a certain goal in the clinic and health coaching them through what needs to be done to be consistent to continuously post on the social media how does that work in terms of the engagement with this staff

Differentiating one clinic from another

Randy Valpy: I think it varies by clinic in certain clinics have staff whether it’s the owner one of the veterinarians are practice manager that maybe more so savvy than others so much of our relationships start either at a trade show or an outbound telephone call from our sales office here I think you know for us the first thing that we want to do with any client is a needs analysis to fully understand what capabilities they have and how much time they have to devote to these these sort of things I mean we can make a website is big and beautiful as any Clinic wants with the content but understanding that to add that content to really make their Clinic shine is going to take a certain amount of their time for us to interview them to get all the information that we need, others don’t have that time and may want something more simplistic but really understanding that needs analysis the other thing is for us you know life learning for years has done custom websites but we also understand that that’s a painful process for many clinics to clinics to change the website so and they may be very happy with their website whoever they engaged to build it’s done a great job but where they need help now is with SEO or custom content to help with their SEO help with Facebook and other types of marketing campaigns on Google Etc so we determine all that through that a needs analysis because we appreciate that one size doesn’t fit all with every Clinic that we talked to and we certainly don’t want to provide them with the service that they’re not going to need we’re not going to miss a service that they do need in order to help grow their Clinic

Shawn Wilkie: It’s interesting Randy you know that and that makes tons of sense you know you’ve been in the vet industry for a very long time I’ve got a quote here that I really really like from 2014 to get consumers attention you can no longer be average you have to be remarkable how do the Vets out there how do these business owners that are also Physicians that are also that VP of Finance how did they be remarkable and how do they know that you know your company or another web company is not just a used car sales person trying to sell them a used car I’m not going to name names but I could everybody’s experience is that the different Veterinary shows where you go in and there’s people that are dressed in suits they’re trying to sell you the world’s best thing how do consumers put themselves on the other side of that coin and educate themselves to understand that maybe the promise or the garden path that you’re being represented is not accurate how can you help or what kind of information can you provide our listeners so that they can understand that there’s some depth behind what as being pitched to them at some of these conferences

Exceeding expectations

Randy Valpy: I think several things I think first off first impressions mean a lot in any business and we go through a tremendous process and hiring the right people here because they’ve got a with our culture and understand our business and equally important understand our clients business so I think that’s first video testimonials on our website so clients can go on our website and see what some of our customers are saying about ourselves and our products and their names and Clinics are on there for all to to check additionally they can ask any of us for further references and we can help provide that information so if they want to check it out because for most of us in this business it’s not a one-time fee that we’re delivering a website for a set dollar amount and that’s the last you’re going to hear from us most of us run SAS based businesses where we’re providing a service for a monthly fee so you’ve got an ongoing relationship with us and for many of our customers would be we’re celebrating our 25th anniversary today and we just delivered a cake to a local Clinic here who is one of our first customers have been with us for 25 years so it’s so important to have the kind of relationship that clients will stay with us for 25 years and and see the see the value in the what we’re providing them is a great testimonial to life learn and just goes to everything that we’re trying to do is it company and we’re trying to help the Clinic’s business again it’s not just a matter delivering a website or our client education or think you know with the heartworm season we put out a package that clinics could then print off and do posters in their clinics we’re helping with content for their Clinic that they don’t have to spend the time or have the creativity to create so there’s a number of those different things that we do to try and differentiate ourselves because the other day is like amazing pet insurance is no different for websites or anything else websites web site is website to certain extent patent returns suspenders entrance but it’s a differentiation that you have the nuances within your product but most importantly it’s the staff that you have representing your customer that is so critical and for us here we have 74 and we have an organizational chart on our wall here and and I’m on the bottom CEO because it’s really everybody else above me that’s making this company successful my only job is to keep us on track if we beer off which we occasionally do as any company does so that’s why we spend so much effort making sure we have the right people representing us on the top of the chart that’s excellent and what a testimony I want to congratulate you for 25 year anniversary with a customer and also congratulate you for finding someone 25 years ago that you could convince that they need a website with veterinarians I mean that’s incredible actually thought that I had when you were you were talking about I was just in Ontario and from Guelph know he’s in Kitchener and part of daily I think they are kind of you is actually and what’s interesting is that you know I was just thinking about it that it’s so hard to explain Visionaries what thing is I was just talking to him and I said what do you what do you do for marketing perspective in your clinic and I was just floored with the answer because he said well you know we have a website and it’s a word of mouth and I said well is this a problem do you find that you don’t find the customer so what he said it actually was was very interesting he said that our problem is not having enough clients our problem is processing the existing and the more I think about it I think that our industry is actually the demand is actually more than the supply and the more this consolidation more the turnover and less interest from the veterinarians in building a careers of engineering full time it’s actually becoming more and more truth so do you see the decline in need of marketing because there’s more demand than Supply or do you see people more interested in advancing their business skills and interested in marketing more recently in the last couple of years you know if I could there’s certain differences in geography and one area in Canada may be different than another area in the United States certainly believe especially larger markets it’s very competitive I’m thinking of one clinic in Burlington Ontario that’s we got 12 competitors within a very short radius of where they’re located in how they differentiate themselves because you know new vet moves in and they’re going to start to cannibalize or many of the other clinics the area’s business and so for them I think it’s very important that they’re still marketing if nothing else to maintain their position because if they don’t some day in this is you know the business has large swing sometimes 2008 the more reason than that visits were down and now for many clinics in business going back up so you may not need to do the marketing today but at the very least you want to maintain your position because it’s a lot harder and a lot more expensive to bring that back up so if you’ve got the number one or second spot organically on Google results for clinics in Burlington you want to make sure you maintain that you know to glues that and be on page 2 now to rebuild that is going to take some effort yeah that makes complete sense so so from the Ontario perspective if you want to build Clinic it sounds like she didn’t get you know at Burlington but certainly from the offender and provider the services clinics for example in Burlington I assume you have several lines in the area how do you as the same agency that provides with the marketing Lee many markets we don’t have that issue there’s over 30,000 clinics and we’re just one of many companies offering especially websites we have some products that are very unique to us but from a website perspective there’s 17 companies just in this industry Supply websites not to mention the godaddy’s in the mixes of the world family Etc so in many areas it’s not an issue for us in other areas where we’ve been established like the gwelf area of Ontario or just in the surrounding area we have many clients very close to each other and and it is it’s a challenge but it’s you know trying to again understand their needs understand what makes their Clinic unique and playing off of that even though they’re both providing veterinary medicine well they may have grooming and kennel Services the other one maybe focus on just feline so we can play off of that fortunately touch wood I’ve been here two and a half years my role and I’ve never received concern or complaint or comments so I’m assuming that we’re doing a good job of that but at the same time I know it’s not easy awesome so really I’ve got another one of your quotes here I’m starting to like them it’s really interesting the quote is that if a new idea doesn’t scare you it’s probably not that Innovative and so you know with that context what are you all doing in life learn that’s Innovative right now to tell us a little bit more okay it’s tough right in this industry as you guys know there’s a new startup weekly there’s all sorts of conferences and meetings that bring these startups together and encourage other startups so it is tough especially for an older company like ourselves so I guess one of the things that we did it’s not that new but it’s certainly knew within a lot of the stuff we’ve done I mean we spent many years developing Sophie which is our Veterinary Medical Medical Search tool each tool built using IBM Watson’s technology so we launched about a year ago and that was I think very Innovative it’s got a huge Runway ahead of it it was a very expensive proposition for us but we think we’re going to see tremendous success for that another thing that we’ve done recently is we just purchased 50% of that folio seeing itself is nothing new but it’s how you deliver Cee today that is unique people no longer have an hour to sit down at their computer and go through a course they want microlearning little Snippets of Education delivered in five to 10 minutes so we’re spending a lot of effort on that folio right now recognizing that and we doing how we deliver see you know those are a couple of things right off the top we’ve got obviously plans in the pipe that can’t get into about other things other part as I said earlier it’s having the realization that can’t sell a website to everybody else so how well it’s can we serve the veterinary clinic and that’s when we launched an SEO offering a Content offering advertising offering that you’re so not really Innovative but just recognizing that there may be areas that because I think at the end of the day you can be Innovative as all get out but if there’s no demand for your product it’s not really going to matter so this goes back to us really listening to our customers and what they need from us and then going away and building a solution the other one we launched this year was our pet nurse product and after hours till hell triage lots of talk in the marketplace about Telehealth and you know the rules and regulations governing so that is going to be changing the years to come so we’ve done our first launch our first phase of our launch on that with the after hours and we’ve got a number of clinics using that now to tremendous success and that also came about from listening to our customers so I think for us that’s where a lot of innovation for lack of a better word comes from is fulfilling our clients needs very interesting and it kind of brings to mind you know this understanding of microlearning and for the continuous education but I wanted to ask you what your thoughts are on all dictionary education because if we’re so becoming so lazy learning after school you know the new generations that are in school I assume with the Millennials and gen I can follow ZX whatever they are they are also not as patient as the previous generation so with the veterinary students having less and less attention may be similar to their future patients dogs destructive Behavior squirrel do we do you see any changes in a potential core education with smaller bite-sized for the students is that something that may happen or for now it’s just sort of went to see e world so I think it’s more of a see I mean I universities out there delivering veterinary medicine you know not sure what their plans are certainly other Their audience the students are going to start dictating to some sense that what they need and what their education is a whole really really has evolved evolved tremendously over the years I mean Veterinary students still leave without a huge understanding of the business aspect of veterinary medicine that got the Medicine piece down but they really suffer with the business piece and and it’s been like that for forever yet that hasn’t changed so whether universities will change and start doing the micro learning and things of that nature I don’t know I think you should and you need to if you want to attract the right type of student Etc but certainly once they leave the school that’s where we can assist because everybody’s using their phones these days and that folio is now mobile friendly Sophie was built around being used on a telephone and they aren’t going to develop your products for the users of today then you’re going to get left in the dust Rani is really interesting to hear you say that one of our previous podcast guess we asked him that question question you know are we doing enough in Veterinary education to give to morose veterinarians and business owners the tools and it was really interesting because he kind of called us out me and Ivan he said you guys are the opportunity to impart that wisdom in the students and I would go on to say they people like you as well Randy like coming to the vet schools and having a conversation about business and the different avenues that one can take after becoming a Veterinary doctor I mean I’ve been here a clear example you went to school twice to be a veterinarian and two countries only to do it for a little while and ten years and then to start a company and I don’t think you’re going to be going back and practicing veterinary medicine anytime soon correct me if I’m wrong nine that capacity but the difficulty of explaining the veterinarian’s of the the value of marketing or the value of any business aspect it seems like what dr. Koh Kim mentioned is that student which means students don’t go to vet school to learn about business so they learn about veterinary medicine but this is an essential part of it and when to get out of it I think that where you know I think that we’re kind of missing out in the educational piece the value of the business and there’s I think there’s two vet schools that teach MBA within the program I think is Colorado and Texas I’m just thinking that maybe it should be a necessary part of the vet school maybe we should be a little bit more proactive during the missionary education for example for you running you know your co-located perfectly with the Ontario Veterinary College there do you have any connectivity earlier sort of in their career to influence their knowledge or the direction they’re going or is there any connection between life Lauren and Ontario Veterinary College I know for sure I mean we got our start we were actually a department within the Ontario Veterinary College over 25 years ago and in spun out of the University 25 years ago and created life learn so we have very close ties to the university you guys are probably familiar with the veterinary entrepreneur Academy that was launched to couple of years ago or a few years ago and we are sponsor of that this year we’ve got a first-year student finish your first year going to Second as an intern this year for understand the business components of the animal health industry and so I give ovc credit I think they sponsored three or four their students in this this year and still there’s only don’t quote me on this but probably less than six or seven universities that are participating in this program with Texas am certainly being at the Forefront and more schools have to do that to open the students eyes to what other opportunities are out there and even if they stay in veterinary medicine to understand the business components of that to understand the value of marketing your business because it can make such a huge difference it can have two clinics within five miles of each other one having 25 percent growth in one having either zero growth or 2% growth and what are they doing differently because there’s certainly both providing the service of veterinary medicine once doing something a heck of a lot better than the other and that’s where we get involved and we can show the ROI I am using our products and working with us to try that marketing it’s really interesting you know one of the reasons that I lament my University days is because I found that it was a perfect place to expand how I thought and I got exposure to all kinds of different courses but because of the prevalence of Entrepreneurship and business ownership and veterinary medicine to me it seems like a necessary component that may be lacking quite a bit when it comes to the different vet schools across North America so it’s interesting it’s also double interesting because it’s come up twice in a very few number of conversations so kind of cool I think there’s two things what I see students not getting what they need in the school’s right now maybe there’s a couple of doing this but certainly by and large one is certainly the business aspects of we’ve been talking about in the other part is on their own mental Wellness because that is changed tremendously in the veterinary field as the population of change from what was once a very male-dominated industry to what is becoming a very female dominated industry we’re bringing courses on compassion fatigue and compassion satisfaction and others to that folio to address that need as it exists today it’s very interesting to attach on that because that came on its surface several times and I just recently came from the human Healthcare conference where they were talking about the burnout and the compassion fatigue and and the some of the things that they do there is they actually proactively teach courses on self compassion which you can something that’s human doctors do their research or lacking is basically understanding your own needs as an individual because vegetarians are such a high impact sort of they have to be leaders a players and represent the community so we are lacking the the self-compassion so it’s a very prominent topic and I’m glad they few you’re also thinking in that direction because one of the things that industry is thinking about constantly especially with consolidation I think is the effectiveness the efficiency the productivity but they don’t understand the impact and I think it will spiral if we don’t think about improving the mental health off the Visionary professionals what was interesting in that Healthcare conference that I learned is that actually working on Improvement of that aspect in the work-life balance improve productivity efficiency and everything on the other end so it’s really great that you’re thinking in that direction that’s so important you know those are some of the things that we do we don’t just not about selling the the next website of the selling the next package of client at it’s really investing in our industry and our community on also parts and I think that makes us a good business partner for the clinics that do we do work with your innovator you’re a business leader you’ve been in this industry since it really was an industry what are some pieces of knowledge or books that have really struck a chord with you that you would recommend to almost anybody you need you know we’re always want to leave our listeners with a little tidbit so anything that you’re reading or read in the past TED Talks anything anything that you’d say was really worthwhile to check out we play wrongly I’ve never got into the Ted Talk stream as many people do and I get the benefit they have and and podcasts either but I do do a lot of reading and and I think for so many people that mean it’s so much of it as what we do is is common sense when we have to be I think unfortunately constantly reminded of that you know I think as I said earlier the beginning of our talk is things that differentiate one coming from the other really truly believe is a level of service that you offer and we’re all customers regardless of what industry we are we all go to restaurants we go to stores and I think we all have great customer service stories we can tell and also ones where was really pathetic so I read a lot of business books on companies that are successful in leading the pack no I’ve read books on Nordstrom on Zappos and again they’re doing things very similar but they approach it from a different way because I think if you can connect with your clients if you can deliver the service that they expect that they want but even more importantly that you exceed their expectations and I think this is where companies like Zappos and Nordstrom’s have been successful if you read their books there’s all sorts of stories that they’ve told them one employee doing something just totally bizarre to help a client in my previous job I spent a lot of time with our customer service people’s is listening to what our clients are saying and in that case we were b2c business we’re dealing with the pet owner and we’re having one client we call it about their credit card charge had gone through a month and she felt horrible and said that you just lost a family member and everything else we could have just said you know fine thank you sorry we understand and you know we’ll get it up to date when you’re feeling better or whatever but we actually ended up sending her flowers with a note just sorry to hear of your loss Etc or another story of somebody that was telling us they’ve been so busy and they haven’t been able to do this and they haven’t eaten in cetera but we sent a pizza to their place and those are the types of things that really differentiate a company from one to the other and that’s the type of books the stories you know Southwest Airlines when they got going and how they differentiated really redid the entire airline industry and their continued to be a little more profitable airlines out there so that’s where I spend a lot of my effort and then I also go to conferences and I think that’s where you learn a lot to is you pick up little nuggets so I go to a lot of business conferences with business thought leaders and always come home with a page or two of nuggets not everything is applicable to my business but I get enough that you out of there and I can bring that back so for veterinarians whether it’s at vmx or some of the other conferences out there walk away with something because somebody’s always doing something different from you and and I think the other biggest part of my learning is being out there and networking because ouch so scaling up for the growth Summit that’s put on by a gentleman named Vern Harnish and his group called The gazelles but it brings together twice a year 1100 entrepreneurs essentially you know veterinarian clinical nurse an entrepreneur and they bring these people together and as I say they bring the top business minds of that year to talk and most of them have just written a book and might be a best-seller not only are you learning from The Business Leaders on the stage but you’re sitting with a thousand other entrepreneurs and business people so tons of networking time and again you can talk about what’s going on in their business and in many cases relate that to your business.