Hi there and welcome to Vet Chat, a new podcast for the veterinary profession brought to you by the webinar vet. We're gonna discuss all things from clinical cases to hot topical debates. I'm your host Ben Sweeney, and for the first time in my life over the episodes ahead of us, I'm aiming to listen more than I talk, and I can't wait for you to join me for the adventure.

Hi everyone, on today's episode of Vet Chat, I'm joined by Suzie Samuel, who is the founder of Vet Digital and Vet Health Direct, and I think it's safe to say that Suzie is to veterinary digital marketing what Cornish pasties are to Cornwall. She has got a wealth of knowledge in this sphere and has really driven that digital revolution within veterinary practises to try and improve that relationship with pet owners and to improve the experience for them, and as a result really look to. The reputations of the practises that she works with with their clientele and attract new clients.

Suzie's funniest story, she reckons from practise, I am told on good authority that this is the only one that's clean enough to be told on on a podcast, is that she was once looking to clip the nails of an African grey parrot, and as she goes to clip the first one, the parrot looks at her and says, ouch. Fortunately she got through the rest of the nail clipping, and they parted on good terms without any quicks having been cut. So, Suzie, thank you so much for joining me.

Obviously, I mean this is a topic that I love at the best of times anyway, but it, it's great to chat to someone who is, you know, a proper expert in the field. So what, what kind of, what drew you to that, that, that sort of digital sphere and space in the first place? Thank you so much, Ben, for having me.

It's such a pleasure to be here. I'm not really 100% sure what drew me to the digital space, particularly, other than that I had the idea for the. Checker.

I just noticed over my time in practise, people coming in and just feeling very anxious and unsure about whether they were wasting my time. And then at the other end of the spectrum, people coming in, and just leaving it far too late and coming in when their pets were actually really sick and that feeling of frustration that it would have been so much better and more effective to help them earlier on in the process. So I had the idea for the symptom checkup and having sort of turned it over in my head for a few years, I realised.

That it was actually a reasonable idea, and, and that's when I started just learning about the internet, learning about tech and digital, and just immersing myself in that, and I just absolutely loved it. Yeah, and I think, you know, it's obviously, it's something that is perceived as very, very new and exciting, but actually it has been going a while and sort of when you first got involved with it, what was it that you sort of, what, what was your aim to make a difference in? When I first got involved, my aim was very much to answer that very.

Specific thing of helping people decide what to do with their pets when they were ill, and they didn't know what to do and and just helping them to sort of understand when they needed to call a vet and trying to prevent them from putting it off too long and bring them in at the right time. Since then it's really evolved because I can just see the huge potential that the internet and digital has got to just educate people so effectively, and on a scale that's just never been possible for the veterinary profession before. Yeah, I mean, you've got, you were saying you.

Have over like, you know, 1 million independent visitors to the Vet Help Direct site every year now, which is from a stand-alone practise point of view, almost unfathomable. But you've obviously got this great opportunity to connect the practise to that end client as well. But you know, why do you do that?

What excites you about it? As a vet, I used to love trying to help people understand about their pets' needs, and trying to explain things to them in a way that they could understand. And that's great and it and it's so.

Effective, but you can only see them when they come in with their pets, you know, say at vaccination once a year, or if they come in with a particular problem. But the really exciting thing about digital is that you can actually be part of somebody's life, you know, pretty much every day of the year. Some of the practises that we work with that on Facebook, they will be interacting with thousands of people every single day.

So that ability to engage and and show information in different ways, you know, when I was, when you're consulting, you can only speak. Whereas on the internet you can use graphics a lot more easily, you can use video, there's so many different ways to educate people and to help them understand the welfare needs of their pets. You know, as vets we see pets, you know, maybe sort of 3 or 4 times a year if we're lucky, but the owners are with pets every single day of that pet's life, and that's gonna have the biggest impact on welfare.

Yeah, and I think, you know, there's something that when we look at the involvement of, of the profession with our pet owners, you know, you look at this increasing. Science on on tech across various different professions, but obviously we've got this kind of profession where the physical exam is always going to be necessary. So do you see that digital space sort of being, you know, a big sort of competitor to practise or do you see it as something that, you know, practises can really utilise?

Well, that's a really interesting question, and I think that practises at the moment are really good at getting that instinct that when people need offline help. With their pets, there's that instant reflex that they call the vet. But what's not necessarily a reflex is when people need help online to be able to contact their vets.

And I, I think it's absolutely imperative that local vet practises provide that service. People are so used to now being able to access services whenever they like, very seamlessly and easily, and they expect that in in all aspects of their life. So our clients are also consumers, so they also buy things on Amazon.

They also have video. Consultations with their doctors, so their expectations, of what vets provide is changing all the time, and that's shown really clearly in some of the research that we've done. And obviously sort of, you know, many vet practises now look at things like their, you know, they outsource their out of hours and things like that because, you know, they don't have the staffing and the manning powers in order to be able to run a 24 hour service.

But are there ways that we can sort of put a, a step in the process to help practises because of. Of course at the minute they go from one practise to another practise and then potentially back to that practise overnight. But you know, as someone's own practise, do they need to look at how they offer 24 hour services but not necessarily a physical presence?

Do you think that might have a future in the profession? Yeah, absolutely. I, I think this type of thing is important out of hours, even more so than any than at any other time of the day, because of that lack of instant availability of, of your own vet to sort of maybe ring up and.

And chat things through with. And so it's even more crucial then. And I think things, providing things like live chat, symptom checkers, video consultation is absolutely crucial because it's, it's actually really inconvenient going into the vet practise.

And so providing all those things, you're just reducing friction, and then that makes it more likely that people will access veterinary services. Once clients are using these tools like symptom checkers, live chat, video consultations, you've then got the opportunity to really explain in a really convincing and personalised way. Why they need physical veterinary care and to convince them to make that sort of slightly more higher energy input and actually physically take their pet to the vet.

So I think that all these things only work alongside physical assessment, physical consultations, and what they actually do in our experience in our sort of 13 years of helping vets with the symptom checker on social media, with live chat and and Twitter and things like that, is that they increase the number of people going to the vets. So we've been talking to pet owners. You know, as vet help direct for, as I say, for 13 years now, I would say that 95% of the questions that we get asked.

We'll chat with the person about the question, we'll answer some of their, as much as we possibly can, but then we'll be saying go to the vet. What we'll be providing is a bit of information around that, why they need to go to the vet, the time scale they need to go to the vet in, what they need to do to present when they present to the vet, do they need to bring in a urine sample? Do they need to measure how much the water, water the pet's drinking.

But what we're always doing. It's telling them to go to the vet, and in all those 13 years, we've never once had somebody say to us, all you're trying to do is get us to go to the vet. These people that are going online using tools like this, they're not trying to avoid going to the vet.

They're just doing that research step that they know what they need to do. And if they know they need to go into the vet and have a physical assessment, then they will do that. So the easier we make it people to access all these types of information in a way that suits them, the more likely they are ultimately to present to the vet.

I do think there's also some consultations like. And follow up consultations, post-op consultations, where actually they can be done via video. So I remember, in practise, you know, sort of quite often really wanting to sort of see an owner again, you know, maybe in a week to catch up on how treatment's going, just check that the dog's sort of moving around normally and looking OK, but very aware that I'd actually need to physically get the pet into the vets, especially if it was a sort of nervous cat.

And then booking a telephone call instead of a consultation. So, you know, actually, I think there's quite a lot of. Go to use remote tools like that sort of after the physical assessment as well as before the physical assessment.

Yeah, I mean, I dare say that most of us in companion animal practise have been in that situation where you've been doing the post-op check on the psychotic cat, that you conduct from about 10 ft away and kind of go, yes, the sutures are still intact, and I value having 8 fingers and 2 thumbs. So I think, yeah, that's a, a definite one that, you know, we do look at and you think actually for that cat it's a much less stressful experience as well. And I think obviously.

You know, this digital interface is great, but are there any areas where as a profession we particularly maybe fail and fall short in terms of our digital adoption? Well, you know, the vets we work with, I'm like really super impressed with them. I think they're doing a great job as small businesses to keep up as much as they possibly can with technology and digital, and, and as a company that's purely focused on that, we can sort of help and assist them to do that.

You know, it's tough, it's difficult, expectations are changing. So incredibly fast. I think there are areas, you know, obviously that that practises could improve on in in general, and that's just when we compare the service that vet practises are providing compared to owner expectations.

So for example, we know from our research that more and more people would expect pretty much an instantaneous reply if they asked a question over social media or and say providing something like live chat is gonna accommodate that need for instant advice or the symptom checker. We know that. 40% of people would like to have the opportunity to have video consultations with their own vet, and obviously that's not a widespread practise at the moment.

And it's really interesting just as an aside, that when we ask them if they'd like video consultations with a vet as a sort of general question, or an organisation that they trusted, that went down to 7%. So this is not people wanting a different service to their own vet. It's simply that video is more convenient some of the time.

OK, so, and, and I think, you know, there is obviously, you know, we're. Aware of that, that loyalty across the profession and and stuff as well. And I think, you know, that is, frankly, that's something to be celebrated.

I think the fact that, you know, you know, we do have this, this loyal client base. And in terms of, obviously we see different people doing different things, there's that sort of option for a practise really, isn't there to sort of go, right, OK, we've got, you know, one of the, one of the younger ones, and I sadly now can no longer class myself in that category, where we go, right, OK, this kid's a whiz kid when it comes to like, you know, in. The gramme and and Facebook and that sort of thing, and you know, they're really good.

Oh my goodness, they've got 20,000 followers and things. Is there the argument to use that kind of skill set in the practise, and what's the benefits of sort of equipping yourself with those skills versus maybe using an agency to, to help you actually build that, you know, is is there a difference between the two? Is there a better way of doing it for a practise?

Well, Ben, you seem pretty young from where I'm sitting, just by the way. I'll take that. So yeah, absolutely.

If you've got somebody like that in practise, use them as much as you possibly can. Whenever we we obviously run a digital marketing agency purely for the veterinary industry, and we would always prefer it if our clients have as much as they can in-house, supported by us, because you, when you're actually in the practise, you can see everything that's coming through the door all the time. So you can take brilliant photos, you can make.

Hear what people questions people are asking your team, and they get really local and detailed understanding of the sort of content that people are interested in. Fortunately, not all practises are lucky enough to have somebody like that, and, and perhaps even if they do, their time is incredibly valuable, perhaps as a vet, and we all know how hard it can be to get hold of, vets and veterinary nurses at the moment. So agencies can fill in the gap, certainly in that respect.

But I think the other thing that we do as an An agency that's probably quite valuable is work alongside people like that. So we work alongside digital marketeers sometimes in practises, and marketing managers, and just providing a bit of support with strategy, a support with paid ads, which is quite a specialist skill, and you can get a much bigger return on investment by running those ads, sort of technically a best possible way. Just a bit of experience in creating landing pages, measuring conversion, all that type of stuff.

They are. The situation is to be working alongside someone as you've just described, and that's when we can get the best possible results for the practise. And, and obviously, like, you know, there's all people who will have a little bash at these things, and it's great, and obviously, you know, we, we have got an increasingly competitive veterinary market, you know, when you look at the number of thousands of practises that there are now compared to 20 years ago, that, you know, people are competing for, for, for clients against, you know, the practise down the road and the practise round the corner, but you.

Sort of what, what mistakes that people maybe make or, you know, what have you seen people doing that have maybe been sort of damaging or or non-supportive of their practise in trying to grow. I suppose the biggest thing that we see probably is just a lack of input. So, you know, practises, thinking that they'll just do it themselves, that they're maybe not getting that consistency and not posting regularly enough.

Each post you make on social media is pretty much got the same chance of being seen. Obviously depends a lot on what the post is. So the more you post, the more people you're gonna reach.

People not using things like paid ads, which, you know, really, you just can't reach sort of a fraction of the people unless you're, you're using paid ads. And maybe just sort of taking a bit of a sort of do it-yourself approach to websites and things like that. So, I mean, one of the things we see that I personally find, really, frustrating on behalf of the vet practises is that we go and talk to vets, independent, sometimes vet practises.

They're talking to us about their brand, they're talking to us about the stuff that they've got, the team, how passionate they all are, how they all go above and beyond all the time, how much their clients love them, all the things that make their practise special and unique. And then you go onto the website, and it just looks like a bland corporate stock images. Just you couldn't, like, even if you were a detective, you couldn't tell any of the things that the vets are telling us from.

The website. So just making sure you sometimes need, I think, somebody with a bit of experience in graphic design, a bit of experience in brand, to be able to get all those idiosyncrasies across and funnily enough, actually doing it yourself can result in the opposite effect to it being a, a sort of a, you know, really unique and, sort of really telling people about your practise. So it's almost key to get that bit of personality of the practise.

Exactly. And we're seeing now, you know, the corporates have obviously You've got, you know, lots of really, professional digital marketeers working in them. And, you know, it's great because they're sort of pushing our profession forwards, I think, in the industry forwards.

And we're seeing, like, brilliant websites coming from some of the corporates, and you go on a corporate website and it can, they're very individual and quirky, and then you go onto an actual independent vet practise website and it just looks bland and corporate and full of stock images. So I think that's, that's a bit of a, a frustration for. For me, and something I'd really like to help vets improve on just giving a really fair reflection of themselves on their website.

Yeah, definitely, and I think, you know, certainly we've we've all looked at the odd practises that are . Yeah, it sort of looked like from the dark ages on the basis of the websites for sure. And then the practise is always just really amazing when you go into the funny thing is, but again you sort of wonder actually, you know, you look at that practise and say, well actually, do they need to worry too much about their digital presence because maybe their, their physical presence and their physical reputation is, is so strong.

And, and often that is the case, but so we tend to see. Those practises when they start feeling the pressure from a competitor, and, and they just, you know, they often sort of say, you know, it's, it's just so annoying because we know that if you walk into our practise, you know, you get the best gold standard client experience, you know, you've got incredibly experienced team that have all been here for years and got all these extra qualifications, and you go down the road and, you know, whatever they think of their competitor, that's the opposite to them. But, you know, at the end of the day, people, the general public can only Make a judgement from really what they see on the website, what they see on Facebook, and yes, you've got word of mouth recommendations, but unless you're using something reviews very actively and and pretty slickly, people are not gonna be able to tell that unless they happen to have bumped into somebody that's been to your practise.

And it's interesting you should touch on on reviews there. That was something I was very keen to sort of pick your brains on, really. So this, this sort of review culture that we've almost become a Part of nowadays, where you know you can review everything to, you know, your view from the bedroom in the morning or, you know, the chips that you've had with your dinner.

And, and I think, you know, that's something that in a profession where mental health struggles are very much front and centre at the moment, there's, there's always a risk that, you know, these, you will, you will get this negative review that pops up, you know, this one star, and actually it turns out being somebody that's never. Even been to your practise potentially. But these things can obviously have quite serious ramifications for people, and the flip side of course is that seeing all of the five star reviews can be really sort of, supportive to your team and really encouraging.

But if you're a team who are getting negative reviews, what, what can you do, what can you do about that? I think you've just made such an interesting point, Ben, because you've made it from the perspective of the staff and the practise and where you. Tend to think about it as a brand thing and and new client acquisitions and things like that, but we know, reviews have got such a big impact on staff morale, and it's yet another reason to get it right.

In our experience, the more proactive practises are about getting reviews, the higher the average star rating. And the reason for that is that if you don't have a proactive reputation management strategy. And you just wait and see what happens.

People leave reviews that are feeling passionate about the service that you've provided. Now, some of those will be passionately happy and passionately good, but some of them will be passionately unhappy. And all the people in the middle who've just come into your practise, had a pretty normal experience.

It was really perfectly good, and they quite liked it. They're never gonna bother to leave a review when they get home again. It's only the passionate people that are So what we find is that if you just leave people to it, those passionate two ends are overrepresented and the middle just generally happy majority are not represented properly.

So when people start being really proactive about reputation management, they start emailing everybody that comes in. Asking for a review, that's when you start to see the average star rating go up. And of course, then, like you've just pointed out, that's got repercussions for staff morale because, yes, you're, unfortunately there's nothing you can do to avoid seeing negative reviews and however perfect the practises, they're always gonna have a negative review somewhere.

But at least as a member of staff, you're able to at least say to yourself, when you've calmed down a little bit, well like, I've got 50. Reviews and one bad review, and it's probably this person's problem, not, not the, you know, nothing that I did. I, I guess the other thing probably to think about just to give a really sort of balanced answer is that there's the guessing of the reviews and then there's also the fact that it's important to remember that you're not really people can't really judge you on clinical standards.

So having really gold standard polished clinical standards, top of the range and all the top of the range equipment. Is exactly what you should be doing as a good veterinary practise. But on top of that, you also need to have a really good client experience when people come into the practise, so things like answering the phone really well, making sure that the reception staff are trained and the reception, is nice and, and the experience with the, in the, in the veterinary consultation room is good.

And it's unfortunately, all those non-clinical things that determine how people judge you as a veterinary practise. Yeah. Somewhat ironic really sometimes, isn't it?

Well, yeah, yeah, and are are there any, are there any big no nos when it comes to like, you know, sort of digital marketing specifically in the veterinary sphere? We've got a little kind of like campaign at the moment trying to just help people see images through pet owners' eyes. I think as vets and people in the veterinary industry, you can get very desensitised to .

Veterinary type images. And, in that, I would sort of class things like dogs in, in kennels, blood, in, on swabs, pictures of operating scenes, you know, and even dogs and cats under anaesthetics. I, I've got a little photo that I sometimes show people when I'm trying to explain this, that's got a picture of a child, a 2 year old child under anaesthetic.

And all it's have got is an otoscope in its ear, but it's anaesthetized. And I just say to people, you know, how does that photo make you feel? And obviously, you know, as a parent myself, it makes me feel horrible.

And then I show a sort of selection of pictures that I've got from vet practise websites where they're showing it maybe anaesthetized animals or animals having procedures. Yeah, even just an injection. And I'm trying to get, just, it's really good good idea to try and just see it as a pet owner.

And we all know that pet owners think of their pets as family. So just do a little trick of just trying to think of the pet. That's in the picture as a child and check that you're still happy with the picture, before you put it on your website, because you, you really don't want to see anything on a website that makes you think, I hope that never happens to my pets.

You want to have a really good feeling about the give people a good feeling about the practise and, and their pets. And that, that, that's a really interesting point, because I think, you know, do we, are we, you often see like the celebratory stories, you know, coming out from veterinary practises and stuff, and, you know, we did. Case and that was marvellous and so on and so forth, you know, there's a brilliant outcome.

But occasionally you do see these, you know, these cases about, you know, potentially say, you know, for those in the know, that, that, that 10 year old pyometra that, you know, ends up actually unfortunately not making it because of that. And is, is there a, a school of thought to think that actually, you know, using these negative stories in, in, in our, our sort of communications with clients. Way of education, is is that a useful tool, or is that more of a hindrance, do you think?

Well, that's a really interesting question. To me, it's probably more about how it's communicated. So, if you're talking about, a case and you, you're communicating with empathy, so that means you're saying how you felt about it as the staff, how the team felt about it, how it made everybody in the building feel, and, and What happened from an emotional point of view for the owners and the pets, then that can be OK to sell, tell bad stories like that, because it's true and it's real and it resonates with people.

When we, when we, I mean, it's a general point, really, for whether it's a good or a bad story is that we try, we've been calling them case stories, not case studies, and because we're really trying to move people away from this, all their, like, sort of years of veterinary training to give a case study with, you know, sort of signal, signs, and move towards something that you that Joe Public doesn't know what signal means. So if you've watched the Super vet, you'll see that 95% of the content is, how was the owner feeling when it happened? How did they.

I think the pet was feeling? How did the owner feel when they went into the vet practise? How did they think the pet was feeling?

What place does the pet occupy in their life? How did they get hold of the pet? How did they feel whilst the pet was in surgery?

How did they feel when the pet came home? And how is the pet now behaving with its family and how does it live its life? And those are the things that people are interested in that People can engage emotionally with, and even if you've got a very clinical point to make or an educational point, the most effective way to do it is by telling a story, and not by, giving it as a sort of scientific case study.

So that's so I, I, yeah, really interesting, and it's always difficult decision things like a sort of a death of an animal, you know, you don't want to. You know, it, it's hard, but I think if it's communicated in the right way, it can be OK. Yeah.

And I think, you know, one of the other things and all of this digital sphere developments generate is data, and you know, there's this phrase that, you know, data is king. But as a profession, what can we, what can we get out of that data and you know, why does that help us? Well, that That's really interesting.

So, in terms of data, you've got on your practise management system, the breakdown of pets, the gender, the breed, and the age. So that's really useful because you can segment your communications, which means that instead of blasting everybody with the same newsletter, for example, by email, you can make sure that cat owners only see stories about Cats, because cat owners have got no interest in stories about dogs. Dog owners have maybe got slightly more interested in stories about cats, but, but not that much more.

And you can make sure that your geriatric, your owners of geriatric pets are getting information about, geriatric, topics and things that are really relevant to them, whilst your, puppies and kitten owners are getting, information that's relevant to them. So, so that's really helpful. Beyond that, I think you can get a little bit caught up with just thinking from a digital marketing perspective, you know, probably your biggest thing is, is he's actually living locally, he's a client, who's not a client, what pet do they own?

You can target people by their own age and their own gender and things, but it doesn't tend to be massively relevant in, in a small, in a sort of local practise, scenario. And I think, you know, I, I just maintain that like it's such a, such a cool and exciting sort of decade ahead of us, looking at how this can, you know, really work hand in hand with, with. Veterinary profession.

But something that I, I've noticed that you guys do, and obviously, you know, awards are great and they, you know, there's awards for all kinds of things now in life, but you, you're very keen to celebrate the practises that you work, alongside. And what, what's the thinking behind that? Well, I think what's always driven me is just knowing how, I mean, I've worked in lots of different veterinary.

My husband was in the navy, so we went all over the place and every practise I've been into, the staff just have a genuine care for the animals that they're looking after, and they go above and beyond every day in so many different ways. And, and I really think the service that you get from a veterinary practise is sort of head and shoulders above most other services that you can get. And I think just making sure.

That people, the public are aware of that, because if we don't manage the reputation of veterinary practises in general, and just like the the reputation of an individual practise, you can end up with these very sort of vociferous one-off voices that are not representative of the general population, and being very negative about the profession, and, and I just think it's really important to highlight all the amazing stuff that vets are doing. And in the long run, that's going to be crucial for the health and welfare of animals, because vets need to be a continual, very central part of a pet's life. And if we're not pushing that message forwards, and then there's a danger that they're sort of gradually getting eroded and sort of pushed to the side and in other people's voices coming to the fore online.

Well, I think, you know, from my point of view, obviously, you know, anyone who knows me knows that I'm I'm a big fan of celebrating veterinary success and and then. The veterinary team, so I think anything that basically gives someone, you know, that, that little bit of a pick me up is fantastic, and I think, you know, especially when it's for a practise as a whole, what a great, great celebration of their achievements. So I think probably just to to wrap up, Suzie, short of telling people that they should clearly all use Vets digital and Vet Help direct, what, what three things can, you know, practise managers, vets, nurses, people involved in practise day to day life?

What, what three things could you give them to? Maybe take away that that might help them moving forward. Great.

Well, I think number one at the moment, really big topic for us is video. I think it's a good time to start thinking about using video consultations in practise and how you could use those, how it might work for you and your team, because I think reducing friction like that, making it easier for owners to access veterinary care is really important and it's going to become more and more important over the coming years. Number 2, is make sure Your website reflects your brand in, like, the 2 seconds that you've got once someone's landed on your website.

So make sure that the photography is really good, and, and please don't use stock photography. Please put that money into a professional photographer. Don't skimp on the professional photographer who's gonna come to your practise and take some photos of your team, your team interacting with animals, your team interacting with each other, and pets interacting with their owners, and get those pictures all over your website, So that you can show sort of straight away how good your practises.

Videos always also really useful and writing a brief so the photographer knows what they're trying to achieve and and what they're trying to put across. And number 3 is probably just sort of thinking about the things that we most commonly see that as kind of easy wins is really to start thinking about using paid ads, if you're not already using them, based on, Google and Facebook, but in particular on Facebook, we're seeing lots of practises now. Very significant amounts of time and therefore money into Facebook.

And if you're not using paid ads properly, you're only gonna be reaching a small percentage of the potential audience. Awesome. Well, Susie, thank you so much.

It's been boss to chat. Like I, I know, well, I know that I just get properly enthusiastic after these kind of conversations. So I'm gonna let you go and enjoy the rest of your day, but thank you so much, and I, I hope people have taken something away from what you've had to say.

Thanks so much, Ben, thank you. Thanks for joining us for today's episode of Vet Chat. If you've enjoyed listening to my dulcet scouse tones as I interview people much more intelligent than myself, then please do click follow and join us for future episodes.