The field of digital marketing is constantly evolving, and veterinary pharmaceutical distributors must adapt to its transformative power. Automation technology and big data analysis have become essential tools for these companies, allowing them to leverage digital advancements to their advantage. Ignoring digital marketing can result in missed opportunities, as digital platforms offer scaleability, affordability, and measurable results. To help our clients stay ahead of the curve, we have identified five key trends in digital marketing specifically tailored for animal health and veterinary pharmaceutical distributors. In this blog we’ll discuss how animal health distribution companies can take advantage of strategic digital marketing to grown revenue and expand their business.
1) Unleash the Potential of Email Marketing in the Animal Health Pharmaceutical Sector
Email marketing is an incredibly cost-effective strategy across many industries to engage target audiences of current and potential customers. E-commerce brands, including veterinary medicine distributors, that sell products online are uniquely positioned to take advantage of email marketing because they are constantly collecting new emails, as well as data (more on that below) through their website shopping tools and e-commerce platforms.
Email marketing can take on many forms, but at its heart, it consists of targeted campaigns directed at contacts including initiatives to push their products, announce specials and coupons, distribute educational content, initiate important recalls, and build long-lasting connections with veterinary hospitals and clinics.
There are numerous email marketing clients available to companies including the more well-known Constant Contact and MailChimp. Email marketing clients that integrate a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool such as HubSpot and Klaviyo can really help companies take advantage of their customer data and actions to make their emails more effective and targeted.
By utilizing precise targeting and compelling messaging that the audience are interested in reading, email marketing emerges as a powerful tool to drive sales and foster unwavering brand loyalty within this industry. Furthermore, it provides companies with the opportunity to gather valuable customer data and feedback, enabling them to continually enhance their digital marketing strategies.
2) Streamline Sales and Marketing Efforts with A CRM To Take Advantage Of Automated Marketing
If you’re a veterinary pharmaceutical distributor selling products online, chances are you already have a CRM in place to record your customer data and sales. As mentioned above, a CRM system can really take your marketing into overdrive when you deploy strategic and well-thought-out marketing automations that take advantage of this customer and sales data.
An example of simple marketing automation is creating a coupon pop-up on your website that offers a percentage off of a new customer’s first order in exchange for providing their email address. The marketing automation here would be to send the customer an email with their coupon code as well as highlighting important products, specials or other relevant information to a new customer. But the automation doesn’t have to stop with the one email. What if the customer never uses their coupon or purchases a product? With marketing automation you can set up a drip campaign to continue sending the coupon and other announcements until it used by the customer. And what if the customer does use their coupon and makes a purchase? With marketing automation you can automatically move that new customer into another campaign for additional follow-up purchases. And all of this can happen automatically from the single pop-up form fill.
With marketing automation the sky is really the limit. Have you ever been sent an email by a company reminding you that you left an item in your cart? That’s marketing automation. Want to send your customers a special offer on their birthday? That’s marketing automation. Or what if you want to send a reengagement email to customers who haven’t purchased in a year, urging them to come back? Perhaps you want to send an email 60 days after a purchase urging the customer to refill their supply or leave a review on the product. This is all marketing automation and a robust CRM system combined with strategic marketing minds can really fine-tune marketing efforts to take your company to the next level. The only limits are the data you collect on your customers and your marketing investment.
Another common use of automated marketing is to seemlessly merge sales and marketing teams and operations. For example, with a CRM and marketing automation you can automatically assign contacts to sales team members based on certain actions or criteria. So in the coupon example above, you can also schedule a sales call to be performed by a team member one week after the customer initially provides their information if the email isn’t quite doing the trick.
Other examples of marketing automation include:
- Sending special offers to customers who bought a specific product
- Sending special offers to customers who visited a specific website page
- Serving social media or Google ads only to customers who visited specific pages or purchased specific products ensuring your ads budget is fully optimized.
- Sending recall information only to customers who purchased a specific product.
- Assigning a new customer to specific sales team member based on criteria provided in a lead form
- Formatting your daily, weekly or monthly marketing emails to show specific / different content to contacts based on past actions or products purchased.
By integrating a CRM system with automation, companies operating in the animal health pharmaceutical industry can elevate their customer engagement, boost lead conversion rates, and ultimately fuel revenue growth.
3) From Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to Search Intent Optimization (SIO) in Animal Health
Perhaps one of the most important digital strategies you can implement in the veterinarian pharmaceutical industry is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts. Everyone wants to rank higher on a Google search engine results page (SERP) and doing so ensures your site will receive more impressions, more clicks and ultimately more conversions (Sales!). What affects SEO? SEO is continually evolving as Google and other search engines continually update algorithms but at its core, SEO involves providing solid, relevant, informative content that helps a searcher or customer answer their question, learn about a product, or complete a purchase. The old adage rings true. Content is King.
A standard search engine optimization strategy involves looking at the content of your website and constantly optimizing it, adding to, and improving it until it performs better. It involves in-depth research into your target audience, your competitors, industry keywords and ultimately what your company does and provides customers. A content calendar with scheduled improvements to your website is a great place to start. Maybe it’s adding longer and more thorough product descriptions. It could be building an FAQ page filled with the questions and answers that clinics and hospitals want from an animal healthcare distributor. It might be adding videos. Perhaps it’s an engaging and interest blog that expands your reach to topics and and articles that go beyond just your products and services.
All of these strategies will help SEO from a content standpoint, however there are other SEO strategies to deploy as well. Website metadata including page titles, descriptions, schema markups and URL structures can affect SEO rankings. Even things like having the proper alt tags on your product photos can make a difference in where you page shows up on a Google SERP.
Technical components including site speed, mobile responsiveness, accessibility and basic site security can also affect SEO and best practices should be ensured.
A final strategy that should not be overlooked is backlinking. Backlinking is the the concept that the more external websites that link to yours, the more Google thinks your page is important and ranks it higher. But backlinking can be tricky and it can also be spammy. There is no shortage of companies that will promise you quick backlinks? But are these backlinks of high quality? Does Google respect these backlinks? The more respected an external backlink is, the better it will help your page perform. In some ways backlinking takes on a public and media relations component. If your animal pharmaceutical company is featured in a Wall Street Journal article for example, this will be very valuable to your company’s SEO efforts.
Don’t forget SIO
While SEO focuses on optimizing web pages based on keywords for the best search results. But in recent years, search engines have focused more on the user’s search intent and offer the most informative and relevant results for those searches. Thus, search intent optimization (SIO) has gained prominence with its questioning and analysis of the real goal of a given search. Animal health pharmaceutical companies should optimize all their websites, blog posts, and social media pages using user intent. This may include learning about a medication, comparing prices, learning about a distributors services and policies, or buying a medication. SIO allows companies to have a better understanding of their audience and what they are searching for, ultimately increasing their website’s visibility and driving more traffic. By creating valuable content that aligns with user intent, animal health companies can improve their search engine ranking and attract potential customers.
Digital Advertising For Veterinarian Pharmaceutical Distributors
Digital advertising has revolutionized how companies in the animal healthcare pharmaceutical industry reach their target audiences. There are many different types of digital advertising however the most common include search, display, product, video and social media advertising. Each has their own advantages and a dedicated marketing agency or partner can really help you determine the best strategy and formats to choose, however all digital advertising across all platforms and formats provides some important common benefits.
Digital advertising can be extremely targeted
There are many ways to target your audience when it comes to digital advertising. Search advertising allows you to target search engine users looking for very specific terms. This type of advertising may reach lower in the funnel because someone is very specifically looking for something you may be offering. Display advertising, or the image and gif ads you see around the internet has the ability to target audiences based on visits to your website, demographics and location information, product purchase intent and the types of websites they are visiting. Lookalike lists allow you to upload customer data into advertising platforms and then find similar contacts based on data those platforms hold. So for example if your customers tend to visit very specific websites, a lookalike list will find other people who visited those types of websites and target them with ads.
Digital advertising can be extremely cost affective, flexible and scalable
One of the best advantages to digital advertising compared to traditional media including TV and print publications is its ability to adapt and change quickly, allowing adjustments based on real-time data and insights. This agility gives businesses a competitive edge in the animal healthcare pharmaceutical industry. Digital advertising can be deployed in a very short amount of time for a very low cost. It allows pharmaceutical distributors to see what’s working and what isn’t, to quickly turn off campaigns and scale up the ones that are performing best. And it doesn’t take a huge budget to start and see what’s performing well. For as little as $100 a day you can reach a large audience and start accumulating data on your ads. Obviously, the more you spend, the more impressions and clicks your campaigns will receive, however there isn’t a huge barrier to get started.
Digital advertising can be extremely strategic
Smart marketers love digital advertising because it is an extremely strategic medium to reach customers. In addition to the targeting options mentioned above there are countless ways to tweak and implement campaigns for peak effectiveness. Whether it’s integrating your CRM to target customers who visited specific pages on your website, taking advantage of social media to serve ads to those who interact with your brand, or serve youtube videos to those watching videos on a very specific topic, digital advertising strategy is really something to exploit and take advantage of.
The Influence of Social Media on the Animal Health Pharmaceutical Industry
Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter provide a unique opportunity for animal health pharmaceutical companies to directly connect with their target audiences. Through these channels, they can share valuable product information and engage with customers through comments and direct messages. In today’s digital age, maintaining a strong social media presence is crucial for animal health companies to stay relevant. Social media advertising has become an indispensable tool for making a significant impact. Simply having an online presence is often not enough; leveraging the power of social media is essential. By implementing well-crafted social media campaigns, companies can effectively connect with potential clients in the industry. By targeting their advertising to specific demographics, companies can personalize their messaging and successfully reach their desired audience. Furthermore, social media enables real-time engagement between animal health companies and their clients, allowing for prompt support and the dissemination of valuable information. Through social media giveaways, companies have conducted interactive and engaging events that cater to animal healthcare practitioners. These events serve as opportunities to learn about new products, industry news, and case studies. Additionally, content marketing plays a critical role in delivering insightful and educational content to potential clients, positioning the company as a thought leader in the industry.
Vet Tech Week Campaign from Leading Animal Health Pharmaceutical Company
Conway Marketing Group successfully executed a captivating digital campaign on Instagram and Facebook for our client, Amatheon Animal Health. As a leading distributor of prescription drugs to veterinarians, Amatheon Animal Health collaborated with CMG to host an exclusive sweepstakes giveaway dedicated to veterinary technicians in the United States, coinciding with NAVTA’s Vet Technician Recognition Week. The campaign produced impressive results, demonstrating the influential impact of strategic digital marketing in the veterinary industry. To delve deeper into the outcomes, kindly click here.
Supercharge Your Animal Health Digital Marketing with Conway Marketing Group
Conway Marketing Group (CMG) is a leading innovator in the animal health industry, providing tailored marketing solutions. Partnering with CMG offers opportunities to leverage their expertise in digital marketing and social media strategy, ensuring effective brand messaging. CMG excels in social media campaigns, targeting demographics, engaging content, and increasing brand awareness. Trust CMG’s dedicated marketing professionals to amplify your brand’s voice in the animal health sector. Contact us today at or call us at 1.916.426.6929 Let’s collaborate and elevate your brand to new heights.
Sources:
Hubspot, The State of Inbound Marketing Report.
Hubspot, The Ultimate List of Marketing Statistics for 2022.
WebFX, B2B Marketing Statistics.
