Money Meets Marketing: Happy Together

Train Your Practice Team to Produce Social Media Posts That Sell

by Constance Hardesty

Money and marketing. They look different, but their deep-down goals are the same: to make your practice profitable, to increase revenue, and to maintain cash flow.

Practices win when key team members understand the relationship between finance and marketing. The good news is, “most practices are small enough that managers don’t need an MBA in marketing to be effective,” said Bash Halow, CVPM, LVT, owner of Halow Consulting.

And, while everyone benefits from understanding the relationship between marketing and money, one training program doesn’t fit all. Staff who are hands-on with social media may benefit most from having time to stay in touch with trends, new or updated platforms, and reports (like time-of-day studies) on what works.

Managers, meanwhile, might get the most out of self-study, like a case study that asks them to apply to social media marketing what they already know about budgeting, strategy, conflict management, and staff development. And for the practice team in general?

“The best marketing meetings with your team don’t have to be instructional; they can be conversational,” Halow said. “What do your employees think will work? What do they want to see your company do? Throw something at the wall and see what sticks. Whatever you lose in terms of marketing success, you’ll gain in employee engagement.”

Halow also added that “high-functioning team members are proud of what they do and the company they work for. They don’t just want to punch in and go through the motions; they want to participate! They want to contribute!” Give your team a chance to contribute with the following training exercises.

Training Exercise 1

Money Meets Marketing

This training introduces and reinforces the idea that social media marketing is goal oriented. After this training, each team member can guide their own brainstorming to generate fresh ideas and then evaluate each idea for its value to the practice.

Learning outcomes:

1. The team understands that marketing is not an end in itself but a means to an end—that is, to make the practice profitable, generate revenue, and manage cash flow.
2. Team members adopt the perspective that an important goal of social media marketing is to sell products and services or to inspire new behaviors and habits that lead to purchases.
3. Team members develop a simple, durable skill set for generating fresh ideas that serve the marketing purpose.

Application outcomes:

1. Team members use brainstorming to generate fresh, productive ideas for social media posts.
2. The social media team uses a simple algorithm to quickly distinguish between a clever idea and a clever idea that also serves marketing purposes.
3. The session produces provocative examples from team members’ own experiences, which the social media team can use as jumping-off points to develop posts that promote your practice’s products and services.

Training Tools

This game uses three training tools.

Lightning Rounds are brainstorming games lasting only one to three minutes. Use encouragement and direction to limit team members’ responses to five words or fewer. Use a note-taker to capture the team’s ideas.

Guided Conversations stimulate thinking, direct attention to points you wish to emphasize, and keep the conversation on topic. To help team members transition from high-energy Lightning Rounds to thoughtful Guided Conversation, write the topic on a whiteboard and allow for a moment of silence to let everyone think about it before launching the conversation.

The Facilitator’s Script appears in italics. This is only a suggestion, of course. It is assumed that the trainer has experience in facilitation and time management and can guide the conversation as needed.

Our Social Media

(Guided Conversation, 2–3 minutes)

Money and marketing. They look different, but deep down, their goals are the same: to make our practice profitable, to increase revenue, and to maintain cash flow. Today we’re looking at social media and how we can make it work for us. Let’s start by recognizing all the good things we’ve already done!

Consider:

• Who has contributed to your practice’s social media and what did they contribute?
• What benefits have the team seen from a social media post, like a dental promotion?
• Which social media promotion in the past six months earned the best results in terms of client visits and/or new revenue? (You will need to do your homework for this.)
• Applaud everyone who helps out with social media!

Make It Work

(Lightning Rounds, 6–10 minutes total)

This is the most important component of the training exercise. It demonstrates from team members’ own experiences that effective social media marketing leads to purchases or to adopting new behaviors that often lead to purchases. This is obvious, but it is easy to overlook.

1. With a timer set for one minute, ask team members to name things they have promoted or sold on social media. Offer prompts if team members are slow to get started:

• Fundraisers
• Concerts
• Clothing
• Fitness equipment

2. With a timer set for one minute, ask team members what they have bought or acquired on social media. You’ll need no prompts, but if no one mentions it, suggest:

• Wellness items
• Clothing
• Electronics

3. With a timer set to two minutes, ask what new behaviors they adopted from social media. Offer prompts:

• Tasted a new food or tried a new recipe
• Took up a new sport
• Changed passwords
• Adopted a healthy habit

4. With a timer set to two minutes, ask what products or services they purchased because of their new behavior or habit. Acknowledge expensive products like fitness equipment or closet organizers, but also suggest smaller recurring purchases: a monthly gym membership, annual park pass, internet security subscription, new cooking equipment or ingredients, a journal, apps or books, etc.

What Works For Us?

(Guided Conversation, 5 minutes)

Today, we looked at results-driven social media marketing. We’ve just seen that social media can lead us to make purchases or adopt new behaviors. And that new behaviors lead to new purchases and new habits lead to regular, recurring purchases.

Here, simply pause for five full seconds. If no one breaks the silence, ask: Any thoughts? Are we seeing any patterns here? What can we apply from the social media that we use?

Point out parallels between examples of actions team members have taken in their own lives and actions you would like clients to take, for example:

• What does promoting your child’s school event have to do with promoting our veterinary practice? Can we craft a message around caring, family, and parental pride?
• What does gym membership have in common with a pet wellness plan? Can we craft a message about health and enjoying life?
• What does changing your password have in common with vaccinations? Can we craft a message around safety and security?
• What does adopting a healthy habit have to do with applying flea/tick preventive? Can we craft a message around “That is hard, this is easy”?

Don’t expect immediate results. It takes time for things to percolate. Today you have created a goal and a durable skill set for generating insightful, creative, and attention-getting social media posts that sell.

Closing

We started today by celebrating our social media successes. We explored the idea that the goal of marketing is to make our practice profitable, to increase revenue, and to maintain cash flow. And we looked at ways we all personally respond to social media by purchasing things or services or by adopting new behaviors and developing new habits. Finally, we saw how we can use our experiences with social media to craft messages for our own practice!

As we go forward, let’s all keep on dreaming up creative social media posts. And let’s make our ideas work for us—so they are creative, clever, silly, and productive!

Plan to revisit the learning outcomes in future staff meetings or trainings. And be sure to celebrate team members whose ideas for social media reflect what they learned today.

Training Exercise 2

Social Media Marketing Case Study: How Would You Fix It?

The fictional Hollis Family Veterinary Hospital is a rural-suburban, one-doctor practice. All the benchmarks say it’s wildly successful. The team is close-knit and truly high functioning, except for the occasional blip. Read through this example situation and consider the questions below in a group conversation or self-study session.

CASE STUDY

Mike Olson, lead tech: I’m crushing it on social media. You don’t need to go to college for this; you just look at what everyone else is doing and go for it. Weird diagnoses. Wellness tips. Gross teeth pictures. Cat videos (I know . . . but they work!).

I’ve got all this benchmarking data that tells me how I’m doing compared with other practices. Hollis Family Veterinary Hospital is at the top of one-doctor practices when it comes to the percentage of clients with pet insurance (so we can sell more treatments!), full utilization of wellness plans, and number of dental appointments booked per year.

It’s because of me that we got to expand our Saturday hours this year. My performance eval is coming up. I’ll be asking for a new job title, digital marketing manager, a $5,000 raise, and a video camera with microphone so we can start making videos and podcasts.

Stephanie Pereira, DVM: I’m maxed out. My new client list has grown 10% over the past three years.

When the Animal Friends Clinic over in Bayview shut down in 2020, things got so busy. I’d like to think people are driving the extra 20 miles to my practice because I’m a great vet, but, actually, I’m the only clinic around. I know I need every new client I can get, but we really need one more doctor and two technicians. Problem is, I can’t find anyone who will move here. When I mention our patient load, expanded Saturday hours, and 24/7 on-call, they’re out.

Kris Thompson, lab tech: Are you kidding me? Mike gets a half-hour break every day to sit around and post cat videos. Meanwhile, the rest of us are running—running!—to stay on schedule.

J.T. Iliffe, receptionist: And you want to know the worst part? I bet if we actually paid Dr. Pereira and our vet techs for all the hours they actually worked, we’d be broke.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

After reading the case study, whether you are working alone or with other team members, ask yourself:

• What’s wrong with this picture? List the mistakes or problems in order of priority, based on the problem or threat they pose to the practice.
• Who is making the mistakes? Are they mistakes of perception, planning, or implementation?
• What personnel issues are affecting the team?
• Which team members might benefit from skills training and which from coaching?
• Which problem would you tackle first? How would you fix it?

Sample Response

We asked Bash Halow, CVPM, LVT, owner of Halow Consulting, to respond to this case study. A positive approach to team building is his trademark. So, it’s no surprise that
he approached this case study not with the mindset of solving “the team problem” but by relating thoughtfully and compassionately to each person. Here is Halow’s response, from the perspective of a manager at the practice:

Mike

I love Mike. He’s impassioned and ambitious. Still, I’ll bet his confidence invites a lot of efforts by others to “bring him down to earth.” Don’t be that leader! This boasting
of his is probably just cover for insecurity. When talking to him, I would acknowledge his gains and try to incite thoughtfulness on how he can improve.

Let’s schedule him some time to work from home on social media. Three to five hours every two weeks is probably enough. If he says he needs more time, ask him to map  out  why and give his proposal some consideration.

As far as a raise goes, we can pay him a different rate for the work that he does when marketing, which should even
out the fairness of our pay scale. Having the work done at home when no one is worrying about how busy they are compared with Mike should mitigate intraoffice sniping. In addition, we’re going to hold off on the additional camera purchase until we’re sure that our measurements of return on investment (ROI) are accurate. After all, we want to be responsible with our spending.

Stephanie

I’m not going to lie to you and tell Stephanie that the exposure Mike is garnering online is going to capture the attention of a wayward vet and get them to apply for a job.
That said, stranger things have happened. Stephanie should support Mike in his efforts. With a recession looming on the horizon, there may come a day soon when she’ll be thankful that Mike is doing such a great job at getting the practice’s name out there.

J.T. and Kris

They sound upset. Let’s fix that right now. 

I would ask them: Why are you so mad about Mike? Are you not feeling valued or as valued as he is? Because that’s not the case. You’re both very important to the practice.
If you have wage concerns, recognition concerns, or fairness concerns, I want to hear them! Those are all legitimate worries. As your manager, I can’t think of anything more
important to our success than your belief that you are working for someone who likes you, is fair to you, and wants to see you excel at our work together.

 

Constance Hardesty is owner of Hardesty Communications, which specializes in marketing, advertising, promotion, and communications. Her clients have ranged from Adobe, Brother, and Scholastic to Argonne National Laboratory, Hallmarq Veterinary Imaging, and leading organizations in the companion animal health industry.

Photo credits:andresr/E+ via Getty Images; ArLawKa AungTun/iStock via Getty Images; SDI Productions/E+ via Getty Images; Xxx/iStock via Getty Images