Presentation on social media marketing strategy for equine veterinary practices, focusing on aligning goals with measurable results. Presented to the Equine Business Management Strategies conference on September 11, 2013

1. Social Marketing Strategy for
Equine Veterinary Practices
Aligning Goals with
Measurable Results

2. About Me
• Equine Legacy
– Granddaughter of Dr. William R. McGee, DVM
• Six years as HVMS administrator at
Hagyard Equine Medical Institute

3. About Me
• MBA Thesis research:
Joining The Social Bandwagon: A
Benchmark of Social Media Use
Among Local Small and Medium
Sized Businesses
• Social Media Coaching
• Equine Best Practices – Client
Advocate

4. What We Will Cover
• Social Media Marketing vs. Traditional
Marketing
• What Makes SM Hard for Small
Businesses
• Setting Yourself Up For Success –
Strategy
• Key Performance Indicators and ROI
• Implementation and Tactics

5. What makes social media
marketing so different than
traditional marketing?
• Traditional:
– Fixed, unchangeable
– One-way communication
– Marketer-determined content and message

6. What makes social media
marketing so different than
traditional marketing?
• Social Media Marketing:
– Two-way interactions with consumers
– Enables more accessibility and transparency
– Customer influences the content and
message
– Inexpensive (free) PR and word-of-mouth
– Manage customer satisfaction in real time

7. The Problem for Small
Businesses & Social Media
• Small Budgets and less time and/or
human resources to commit
• Untrained – don’t know how to best use
social media
• Just don’t understand it
– “I don’t understand this “Tweeter” thing”
• Don’t know how it is supposed to help
business.

8. The Problem for Small
Businesses & Social Media
• Inconsistent advice from “experts”
• Don’t want staff playing Facebook games
all day.
• Difficult to measure effectiveness
without expensive software
• Difficult to calculate ROI
• Don’t believe there is any ROI

9. Discussion:
What is the most difficult part
of implementing a social media
plan within your practice?

10. Setting Yourself Up for Success
By defining the key components of your
social media strategy, you will be able to get
the most effective use of the time and
resources you put into it.

11. Your Social Media Strategy:
Components
• Target Market Analysis
– Who are your potential customers and where
are they online?
• Competitor Analysis
– Who are your primary competitors and where
do they have a social media presence?
– Where are they absent?
• Social Media SWOT Analysis

12. Your Social Media Strategy:
Components
• Identify your SMART goals and objectives
– Financial and Nonfinancial
• Controls –
– What metrics will you use to define success?
– KPI’s
– Financial and Nonfinancial Returns
• Detail your Grand Strategy – What you
want to accomplish and why.

13. Your Social Media Strategy:
Components
• Implementation &Tactics
– What social networks you will use
– Types and frequency of content
– Develop a content calendar and task list
– Who is responsible?
• Contingency Plan
– What is the plan if your tactics do not
produce desired results?

14. Target Market
• Demographics
• Recognized market trends and growth
• Where are these people interacting with
brands on social media?
– This may take some sleuthing online

15. Competitor Analysis
• Identify specific practices you compete
with:
– What social networks are they on?
– What activity do they have? – types of
content, frequency of original content.
– What content gets the most engagement
• Other sources of competition
– Online pharmacies
– Out-of-state equine clinics

16. Discussion / Brainstorm
• How will you define your Target Market?
– What are their interests?
• Competition:
– How can you use your competitor’s strengths
and/or weaknesses to your advantage?

17. SWOT Analysis
• Strengths (examples)
– Human resource capabilities
– Factors that differentiate your practice
– Vocal clients who are your advocates
– Already established a social media fan base
– High motivation

18. SWOT Analysis
• Weaknesses (Examples)
– Not very tech savvy staff or owner
– Low motivation

19. SWOT Analysis
• Opportunities (Examples)
– Any place your clients are online and you are
not
– Any place or online network your competitors
are absent or weak
– Great case studies to share

20. SWOT Analysis
• Threats (Examples)
– Competitor’s strong presence online
– Economy
– Any other online source of information
(petmd.com, non-competitor equine practices
with great content)
– Online vet pharmacies

21. Discussion / Brainstorm
Identify the strengths, weaknesses,
opportunities, and threats to your practice
and brand on social media.

22. SMART Goals & Objectives
• Common goals:
– Brand Awareness and/or Loyalty
– Better Customer Support
– Increased Word-of-mouth
– Increased referrals
– Increased sales

23. SMART Goals & Objectives
• S – Specific
– Both financial and nonfinancial goals
• M – Measureable
– Make sure goals are tied to metrics that can
be accessed
• A – Achievable
– Be realistic in time and scope

24. SMART Goals & Objectives
• R – Relevant
– Try to make goals that really do benefit the
practice.
– e.g. Klout score does not = $$$
• T – Time Bound
– Decide how long it should take to see results
– Note: the point of social media is building
relationships and communities – these take
time.

25. Nonfinancial Goals
•
•
•
•
•
•
# Followers, Likes, Mentions, Shares, etc.
Increase in Reach (Facebook)
Klout Score
Increase in website traffic
Increase in phone inquiries
Newsletter subscriptions

26. Financial Goals
• % increase in online sales
• Decrease in cost per new customer
• Increase in sales due to a Facebook
promotion
• Increase in referral revenue that stemmed
from a share or mention on Twitter.

27. Financial vs. Nonfinancial Goals
• The investment, the gain, and the return
must be measured in the same currency
(Blanchard, 2011)
Let’s take a look at what controls you should
consider:

28. Controls
How will you define “success”? Make sure
your metrics match your goals.
So, if your goal is to increase brand
awareness and word-of-mouth, you should
measure Facebook “Reach,” shares, and
mentions.

29. Controls
If your goal is to increase referrals, you need
to develop a system to track the source of
new business via survey or other means.
For increased sales, you will have to have a
direct way to track sales specifically from
social media, such as promotions and
coupon codes.

30. Discussion / Brainstorming
• What are your financial goals for social
media?
• What are your non-financial goals?
Think about the answers to these questions
as we look at the metrics and tools that tell
you if social media is benefitting you.

31. What is ROI exactly?
• Return on Investment
(gain from investment – cost of investment)
cost of investment
It’s not difficult to measure. It’s difficult to
prove.
(Blanchard, 2011)

32. Financial Returns:
Five Marketing Metrics You
Should Care About
•
•
•
•
•
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Ratio of Customer Lifetime Value to CAC
Time to Payback CAC
Marketing Originating Customer %
Marketing Influenced Customer %

33. Customer Acquisition Cost
(CAC)
• Total average cost to acquire a new
customer in a specific period of time.
• Sales and Marketing Cost (S&MC) =
Program and advertising fees + salaries +
commissions + overhead
CAC = S&MC ÷ # New Customers

34. (CAC) Example
Sales and Marketing Cost (S&MC) (this
example looks at social media costs only) =
Program and advertising fees = $200
+salaries = $520 ($13 x 10hr/wk x 4wks)
+commissions = n/a
+overhead = $500 (Internet, cell phones,
paid marketing tools,
etc)
Total = $1220

35. (CAC) Example
• Sales and Marketing Cost (S&MC) =
$1220
• # New Customers = 4
CAC = S&MC ÷ # New Customers
CAC = $1220 ÷ 4
CAC = $305

36. Ratio of Customer Lifetime Value
to CAC
• Estimate of the total value you derive from
each customer compared with what you
spend to acquire the customer
Formula
LTV:CAC

37. Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
• The total value you derive from a
customer
• Lifetime Value =
(Revenue the customer pays in a period –
Gross Margin) ÷ Estimated churn
percentage for that customer.

38. Churn Rate/Percentage
• Churn ~ lost customer
• Churn Rate = measurement of the
likelihood of your customer to become an
ex-customer (opposite of growth rate)
(# of churns during period)
÷
(# of customers at beginning of period)

39. Ratio of Customer Lifetime Value
to CAC (LTV:CAC)
• The higher the LTV:CAC ratio, the more
ROI your marketing is delivering to your
bottom line.
• Spending more on marketing may lower
the ratio but also speeds growth

40. LTV:CAC Example
•
•
•
•
•
Churn Rate = 3% (may be an estimate)
Avg customer pays per month = $120
Gross Margin = 30%
LTV = 120 x 0.30 ÷ 0.03
LTV = $1200
LTV:CAC =
3.93:1

41. Time to Payback CAC
• Shows the number of months it takes to
earn back a customer’s CAC
• Margin Adjusted Revenue (MAR) =
How much client pays on average per
month
Time to Payback CAC =
CAC ÷ MAR

42. Time to Payback CAC (Example)
• This should ideally come out to be less
than 12 months
• The less time it takes to pack back the
CAC, the sooner you are making a profit
with a new customer.
Time to Payback CAC =
$305 ÷ $120
= 2.54 Months

43. Marketing Originated Customer %
• A ratio that shows how much new
business derives from marketing efforts
• Requires a system that identifies the
source of the new customer.
Formula:
(New customers that started as a marketing
lead) ÷ (New customers in a month)

44. Marketing Originated Customer %
• In our example, we are looking at the ROI
of social media investment only
• In order to determine if a new customer
came from your social media efforts, you
can
– Ask how they found out about you and your
practice
– See if they follow or like your social media
pages and profiles

45. Marketing Originated Customer %
Formula:
(New customers that started as a marketing
lead) ÷ (New customers in a month)
1 of 4 new customers started
as a social media lead =
25%

46. Marketing Influenced Customer %
• Similar to the previous metric but includes
new customers that had any interaction
with marketing efforts.
Formula:
(New customers that interacted with
marketing efforts) ÷ (Total new customers)

47. Marketing Influenced Customer %
• If a new customer heard about you
through a friend or saw your booth at an
event, but then checked out your
Facebook page, that would fall under this
category
Formula:
(3 New customers interacted
with social media efforts) ÷ 4
75%

48. Tracking Marketing Metrics
• Track the previous 5 metrics over time to
see trends in your marketing and social
media efforts and to determine if social
media is playing an increasing part in
attracting new business.

49. Other Ways to Measure
Financial ROI
• Coupons
• Promotions
• Tie social media to metrics you can or
already do measure
– For example, if you sell products online, you
are probably already using Google Analytics.
Use it to see what percent of online visits
stem from social media sites.

50. Google Analytics:
• Standard Reports
– Traffic Sources
• Social
– Overview

51. Google Analytics:
• Standard Reports
– Traffic Sources
• Social
– Network Referrals

52. Google Analytics:

53. Google Analytics: Goals and
Conversions
You must define Goals in Google Analytics in order to track
Goal conversions. Goal conversions are the primary metric
for measuring how well your site fulfills business objectives.
A Goal conversion occurs once a visitor completes a
desired action on your site, such as a registration or
download.
If you set a monetary value for each Goal, you'll also see
the value of your conversions.

54. Macroconversions
You'll need to track actual Ecommerce in order to
analyze online sales effectiveness. Ecommerce
tracking is Javascript code on your shopping cart or
site that collects information about each transaction
as it occurs.
Coordinate with your website programmer or host
to set up ecommerce tracking.

55. Microconversions
Micro conversions are activities that visitors
frequently engage in before purchasing. Sites
commonly have several kinds of micro conversions,
so it's likely that you'll want to set up at least two or
three goals. Examples of goals that you may want
to set up include:

56. Microconversions
•Email signup: Create a URL Destination goal and
define your “Thank you for signing up” page as the
goal page. Establish a value for this goal. This
value will be used to calculate Avg Visit Value in
your reports. To determine a value, evaluate how
often the visitors who reach the goal become
customers. For example, if 10% of email signups
eventually result in a purchase, and your average
transaction is $50, you might assign $5 (i.e. 10% of
$50) to your "Signed up for email" goal.

57. Microconversions
•Created account: Create a URL Destination goal and
define your “Account setup completed” page as the goal
page. Create a funnel for the goal. Add a funnel step for
each step in the account creation process.
•Browsed site extensively: Create a Pages/Visit goal. The
number of pages that you set as a threshold for this goal will
depend upon your site and what you consider to be
extensive browsing. Ask yourself how many pages eventual
customers view before purchase and set that number as
your threshold.

58. Microconversions
•PDF Download: You'll need to track each
download as a Google Analytics event. Edit your
site code and add an onClick event to the
download link. The onClick event needs to
call_trackEvent so that it triggers a Google
Analytics event.

59. Google Analytics Resources
• How to Track Social Media Traffic with
Google Analytics:
http://www.webaholic.co.in/blog/how-totrack-social-media-traffic-with-googleanalytics/
• Google Analytics Campaigns for
Beginners:
http://analytics.blogspot.com/2013/05/getti
ng-started-with-analytics.html

60. Google Analytics Resources
• Google Analytics Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/user/googleanalyt
ics/videos
• Google Analytics Support:
https://support.google.com/analytics

61. Tools to Discover
Nonfinancial ROI
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Facebook Insights
Simply Measured – Free Reports
Hootsuite Analytics (Owl.ly)
Bit.ly Stats
Google Analytics
Google Alerts, Talkwalker Alerts
Pinpuff.com (Pinterest “Klout”)
Socialmention.com

62. Tools to Discover
Nonfinancial ROI
• Agora Pulse Barometer – Compare your
Facebook page to others.
• Likealyzer.com – get your Facebook page
“score”
• Many more choices with paid services.

63. Facebook Insights (Demo)
Facebook rolled out new Insights
in August 2013.

64. Grand Strategy
Discussion
Knowing your target market, competition,
SWOT analysis, how to set goals, and
methods of measuring social media
success, how will social media fit into your
overall business strategy? What would you
like it to accomplish?

65. Implementation & Tactics
• Create a content calendar to plan out the
tactics you want to use
• Assign responsibilities and deadlines
• Schedule content in advance whenever
possible to save time later.

66. Implementation & Tactics
• Which social media sites will help you to
reach your goals most efficiently?
• What types of content will you need to use
to connect with your target market?
• Do you plan to use promotions, coupons,
or contests?
• Will you invest in paid advertising?

67. Social media success will
come to those who “fully
leverage it for identifying,
acquiring, retaining, and
growing quality customers”
- Hamill Associates Ltd.

68. Social Media Marketing Trends
• Content Marketing
– Visual Content – Images, Video
• Inbound Marketing
– Ebooks, White Papers
– Slideshare
• Conversion to email subscriptions
• Podcasts

69. Social Media Best Practices
• Include links to your social media profiles
in your email signature
• Engage in communities
• Use Calls-to-action
• The Platinum Rule – Give others what
they want, not what you would want.
• Highlight your fans – they like attention too

70. Social Media Best Practices
4-1-1 Rule
For every one post of self-promotion, post
one piece of original content and share 4
things from other sources.

71. Social Media Best Practices
• Use an encompassing platform such as
Hootsuite for
– Monitoring all accounts and key words in one
place
– Posting content to more than one account at a
time
– Has its own URL shortener
– Built in analytics
• Please contact Ali if interested in trying
– 1 Free month Hootsuite Pro and
– 1 Free month Hootsuite University

72. Contingency Plan
• If you have not met your goals by the
prescribed time in your social media
marketing strategy, regroup and change
your tactics.
• Use your non-financial metric tools to look
back and see what worked and what
didn’t.

73. Social Network Information
General Information and Tips for
Using the Most Common Social
Networks

74. About LinkedIn
• Oldest of the popular social networks
• Used by professionals for networking and
job searches
• Newsfeed like Facebook
• Friends are called “Connections”

75. LinkedIn Advice
•
•
•
•
•
Take advantage of LinkedIn Groups
Be helpful
Fill every piece of your profile - SEO
Linkedin.com/skills
Get a premium account – See who’s
viewed your profile.
• Personalize connection requests

76. LinkedIn Advice
• How to send a request to someone
without their email address – Use groups
in common.
• Business pages – Have one for SEO, but
spend more time on personal connections.

77. About Facebook
• FB “is” social media to most people.
• By far the largest social network
• On the forefront of social media
marketing.
• Facebook terms: “Likes,” “Friends,” “Fans”
• New analytics (Insights) features in August
2013

78. Facebook Ninja Tricks
• Graph Search
– “Pages that people who like [insert name of
clinic] like”
– “People who like [insert name of clinic] who
are attending [insert name of event]”
– “People who like [insert name of competitor]
who checked in at [insert name of location]”
• Interest Lists – create your own and follow
others.

79. Facebook Ninja Tricks
• Scheduling Posts
• Switching from personal account to
professional page
– Liking other pages
• How to use Insights

80. About Twitter
•
•
•
•
Microblogging Site
140 characters & spaces per “tweet”
Mostly public accounts.
Tweets are archived at the Library of
Congress
• You can pay for promoted tweets
• Terms: “Tweets,” “Retweets,” “Followers,”
@ Mentions, # Hashtags

81. Twitter Tips
• Twitter Lists – create and subscribe
– Allowed 500 lists w/ up to 5000 accounts
• Don’t be vague with links in tweets
– Tell us what we are clicking on.
•
•
•
•
Use link shorteners – bit.ly, owl.ly
Advanced search
Saved searches
Unfollowers.me

82. About Pinterest
• One of the newest social networks
• Users “pin” pictures and video to pin
“boards” of different themes
• Followers may “like,” “comment,” or
“repin.”
• Recently created business pages with
analytics

83. Pinterest Secrets
• Now allows business pages with some
analytics
• Post original images – link to your website
• It’s ok to go off topic, have fun
• Follow boards, not people
• Fact: Pins have a longer “shelf life” than
content on any other social network.

84. About Google+
•
•
•
•
•
•
Friends organized into “Circles”
Giving a “+” is the same as a Like
Activity is similar to Facebook
Latest layout modeled after Pinterest
SEO Advantages
Google Hangouts

85. How to Contact Ali
•
•
•
•
•
•
Email:
Facebook:
Twitter:
LinkedIn:
Phone:
Address:
ali@essentiallyali.com
facebook.com/essentiallyali
twitter.com/essentiallyali
LinkedIn.com/in/alikelly
(859) 396-2208
875 E. High St. Suite 130
Lexington, KY 40502