We hear about it all the time now. Artificial Intelligence this, Artificial Intelligence that. And as little sense as it might make to you right now, there is no denying that AI can and will be playing a larger role in the veterinary profession in the future. In today’s digital age, marketing plays a crucial role in the success of any business, including veterinary hospitals. However, for most of us, marketing wasn’t something we learned while in vet school, and it definitely isn’t part of the vet school curriculum. If this sounds close to home for you, that’s exactly where AI can come into play for you and your practice. AI isn’t just a cool new tech product that people are using to write songs, create images, and write code. It can also serve as an incredibly powerful tool to help you better market your veterinary practice and master things like SEO, CRM, and social media. Here are a few ways you can start to utilize AI as a marketing tool for you veterinary practice today!
AI Can Help Create Engaging Content for Social Media
It’s time to get social! Social media has become an essential part of connecting with clients and building brand awareness around your community, but how can you use it to its fullest potential if you don’t have the time to?
AI can be your ally in crafting captivating social media content! Whether it’s coming up with clever or catchy captions, coming up with a content calendar for you to follow, or even just giving you some general direction as to what you should try and capture around the practice, using AI as a tool for social media allows you to save time and maintain consistency. Additionally, AI can adapt its voice over time to match the unique tone and style of your veterinary practice, ensuring that your messaging and voice to your clients is consistent both in and out of the practice.
Creating a social media strategy is often the most time-consuming aspect of social media marketing, but by utilizing AI, you’re able to create and execute an entire strategy in just a few minutes. From content strategies to ad strategies, AI can help you build a plan that works best for your practice and for the demographic of the community that your practice is in.
AI Can Help You Create Captivating Website Content
Your veterinary practice’s website is often the first point of contact for potential clients, and often the place where clients will go to learn about you, your team, and the services your practice provides. For those reasons, you want to make sure that the content and copy you have on the page is not only accurate and easy to navigate, but also captivating and engaging for the potential client. AI can play a valuable role in creating the website content you need to win the .com battle!
Believe it or not, an important part of your website is the blog page. Not only can you use a blog to help with SEO to better your search engine results, but you can also use a blog to help further establish credibility and knowledge in the space. Whether you need help brainstorming ideas for blog topics, or just need some general direction on how to write about said blog topics, AI can help you accomplish much of the website copy you might need without having to spend the time writing everything from scratch. Just be sure you aren’t plagiarizing off of what your AI tool feeds you.
What? You can plagiarize off of AI? Of course! Websites and search engines like Google actually have algorithms in place to detect whether or not you are copying content they believe is from AI, so make sure that you are making your changes and adjustments to any copy that you are getting from AI before publishing it to your site.
Outside of a blog, AI can help you write all the important information you want your clients would want to know in an engaging and informative way. From the team bios, to information about the practice, to descriptions about the services you provide, utilizing AI as a tool to inform your clients on your practice’s website is a fantastic way to better market your hospital in the digital space.
AI Helps You Master CRM
Customer relationship management (or CRM for short) is an important part of successful marketing. This includes a lot of things. Phone calls, text messages, and emails to name a few. Essentially, any way you communicate with your clients beyond the walls of the practice falls into the category of CRM. These are often things that take time to properly build content for and should be done with care, as CRM plays a huge role in both client acquisition AND client retention.
So, if CRM is such a personal part of the client experience, how can you use AI to help? There are AI tools available to help you build and create engaging email content for your clients. Whether it’s a follow up email, a promotional email, or a reminder email, AI can help you come up with the appropriate copy and format to build an engaging and effective email for your clients.
Your CSR’s are also probably on calls with clients for a good portion of the day. By using AI to help you create voice scripts for them, you can ensure that clients are getting consistent and accurate communication no matter who they are talking to or what they are talking about. On the topic of communicating directly with your clients outside of the practice, AI can also be your solution to a busy line. Whether it’s using an AI service to communicate with your clients over the phone when the lines are busy, or using AI to chat with clients on social media or messaging platforms, the right artificial intelligence product can help make sure that your clients are always getting the information they need in a timely manner, no matter how busy your team may be.
Sure, it will definitely take some time to get used to, but incorporating AI into your veterinary practice’s marketing strategy can help your practice build stronger connections with your clients and develop efficient and effective content. To learn more about AI and it’s applications in veterinary medicine today and beyond, check out these podcast episodes that talk about AI in our profession:
Cone of Shame Podcast: How AI Will Change Vet Med in the Next 5 Years
Veterinary Innovation Podcast: Transforming Veterinary Student Education and Practice