The Power of Communications in Veterinary Marketing with MedVet

Announcer: Welcome to the Ignite Podcast, the only healthcare marketing podcast that digs into the digital strategies and tactics that help you accelerate growth. Each week, Cardinal’s experts explore innovative ways to build your digital presence and attract more patients. Buckle up for another episode of Ignite.

Alex Membrillo: Guys, this is going to be an absolute blast. We get to talk about patient health and connecting patients with care all the time, and this time we got the cutest patients in the world we’re going to talk about and that’s pets and animal health. I can’t wait to introduce you to my new BFF from Columbus, Ohio. What’s up, Sarah Berger?

Sarah Berger: Hey, Alex, OH.

Alex: IO.

Sarah: IO, thank you.

Alex: Did I do it right? Okay. Let’s see. We’re in Georgia, but I’ve heard that. Wait, y’all just won the thing.

Sarah: We just won the natty.

Alex: Yes, congrats. Our team won a bunch of them lately, so I know how fun that is for our community. Guys, Columbus. If you haven’t been to Columbus, I will tell you this. I was surprised. I went for a conference. The best food in the country. It’s the melting pot of America, so all the food brands test there. Wendy’s has their innovation kitchen, and no, her last name was not chosen based on that. Sarah, where do you work?

Sarah: I work at MedVet and we are founded, veterinarian-owned and led here in Columbus, Ohio. We provide emergency and specialty healthcare for pets. While we have our roots here in Columbus, we actually have more than 40 locations nationwide. Little known secret. [unintelligible 00:01:29].

Alex: How many solo locations?

Sarah: 40.

Alex: 40?

Sarah: 40-plus and growing. We just opened a brand new emergency hospital in Frisco, Texas on Monday. That’s why we’re growing faster than we can keep up.

Alex: Texas. Everybody wants to go to Texas, my birth state. Yes, Texas. Oh, the Southern belt. It’s more predictable, I guess.

Sarah: Lots of pets in Texas.

Alex: Free pets. That’s right. They have tons of freedom in Texas, those pets. It’s crazy. That’s the more predictable place. Now they get more snow than New York does. Here we go. You know what was crazy, Sarah? This will date this, but we have a lot of friends in Florida because we’re in Georgia and they’re dancing around in the snow on the beach. I’m like, “Guys, we’re like laughing at Armageddon right now.” Okay. Podcast for another day. MedVet seems to be specialty. We’re not talking wellness exams. You guys get the more complicated stuff. Is it like a BluePearl? How do we relate?

Sarah: [unintelligible 00:02:18]. We are an extension of your primary care veterinarian, and so when your wellness care vet is unavailable or their closed today, et cetera, and your pet is sick, injured, ill, hit by a car, needs help right away, you can come to our hospitals, 24/7 in most cases. Then if they need specialty care, cardiology, ophthalmology, cancer treatment, other specialty needs, that’s what they’re for too.

Alex: Absolutely. It’s a big part of the gig, making sure that the vets are good referral partners and lots of nurturing happening there.

Sarah: Absolutely. A vast majority of our patients come to us on the recommendation, not different than in human health care. You go to your GP, and they say, “Hey, go see so and so.” We’re fortunate to have a good reputation for expertise, high-quality care delivery. We get that nod more often than not. Then it’s also important to us for emergencies, you don’t need a referral. They happen when they happen. Urgently or emergently, you just come on over, no appointment, and we’ll take care of you.

Alex: The beauty with pets is you don’t need referrals. It’s not HIPAA-governed. It’s not any of that kind of HHS.

Sarah: It’s nice, although MedVet does prioritize patient confidentiality. While we’re not required to follow HIPAA standards, we absolutely do have implemented in our practices a number of those same protections. For example, we don’t talk about patient situations if the media calls us. Sometimes we get on TV because we have popular patients or some trending patients, and we don’t talk about what’s going on out of their privacy. We do hold ourselves to some of those standards, even though it’s not technically required.

Alex: I love that. Privacy, the name of the game. 40 locations. That’s the equivalent of a general vet having 120, because the amount of revenue flowing through you guys. Now, let’s talk about the marketing functions in general. You ran marketing. You also ran comms. Not marketing. Okay. I get it. When you were overseeing direct-to-patient, or even currently, what were the main marketing tools? Because you guys are specialty, there’s less search volume than, “Hey, wellness exam, or, “A sick vet,” or, “I just moved here.” What stuff worked? It will apply to plastics and cosmetic surgery, orthosurgeon, all that stuff. It’s going to apply to the same stuff. What worked?

Sarah: Yes, absolutely. As you pointed out, big difference between emergency and specialty. Emergency, big search volume, because you’ve got to be there in that moment of need. Emergency care need me. After hours care, I don’t want to say basic because it’s a term, but the very descriptive terms from a search standpoint are what really rules the day. Then for specialty, it is referral-driven. Also, if it’s not from the doctor, then what happens, just like in human health care, “Hey, I think I need to have surgery. Have you had surgery? Who did you go to?”

If it’s not the doctors referring, the primary care vets referring, it’s friends and family and their experiences. Also important is, what are those star ratings? Are we being noted as providing quality care, et cetera? Paid search for emergency is essential. I think we found that over the past two to three years. It was interesting in the COVID era, we didn’t need to market at all because a lot of veterinary practices had to close during the pandemic. We were the last man standing because of the ER and specialty service.

Coming out of COVID, that’s what really started to change. You’ve seen a lot more investment in digital to really own that in the moment of need, who comes up first? Do they have a strong reputation? Can I get in? Then it’s all about the service of the healthcare team. When they call, are we answering the phone? Are we kind? Are we demonstrating our compassion, our expertise? Going from there.

Alex: I love that. You just walked through the whole patient experience. It’s not just about getting a lot of visibility on PPC, but when they come, online scheduling, does it work? Is it showing immediate appointments? Then when they actually show up, are the people as nice as the pictures on the website?

Sarah: Exactly. Our frontline caregivers are amazing. Just like every business, I wish I could say we were perfect. We’re not. In those moments, I had a colleague tell me once, “The true character of an organization may not always appear in the good times. It comes in those bad times.” How do we recover, if you will, in those situations and learn from the experience and continuously get better and better and better so that we can mitigate errors, so we can mitigate those experiences? We want people to come in and feel our compassion from the moment. Sometimes people have bad days. We want to push on that, learn from that, and just keep getting better and better.

Alex: How do you get the feedback? Let’s talk about it. Is it just a bad Google review or you get some silent NPS thing sent out?

Sarah: We’re a strong NPS organization. I’m sorry I talked over you there. I get so excited about this stuff, but MedVet does. It has a robust client experience survey process. We survey thousands of our clients every year. Currently, our organization-wide NPS is– I think the last call is 74 overall, which on that scale of negative a hundred to a hundred, that’s best in class, best in profession from a veterinary standpoint. We’re real proud of that. Along with that, we also get a lot of feedback person to person as we visit our referral partners. How are we doing with your clients? What are your clients telling you about the service that we’re getting? It’s direct from the clients. It is the reviews. Then it’s also what we’re hearing on the street through their providers.

Alex: Two things there. On the NPS, is it sent out? It’s not just a 0 to 10 number that you’re sending out, but there must be a fill in box. They’re like, “Yes, something happened.” What tech do you use if you’re comfortable saying it? When does it go out? What are some nuances there?

Sarah: We have surveys going on every day to clients, and they answer a robust list of questions on all aspects of their experience. From the time they walked in the door to use your word, Alex, and what you picked up earlier, that entire patient journey matters to us. We ask them about how they were greeted. We ask them about the quality of care they provided. We ask them what was their discharge process and how did they feel during that.

They do give us a rating, and we do follow the classic NPS. Your promoters are going to be above. Then threes and belows, I believe, are your negatives. It’s very closely correlated actually to our Google ratings. We’re looking for a 4.4 or higher is our goal. Roughly, 70% of our Google ratings across the organization are in that mark and would be considered promoters. You see that tie, which is nice.

Alex: Do you solicit actively for reviews on Google as well?

Sarah: We solicit only through the client experience survey. If you talk about how we’ve connected things, our healthcare team will not ask you to survey. Our doctors will not ask you to survey. That’s not their job, but their job is to deliver expert care. It’s really, if you’ll do our client experience survey, we do have an integrated process for reviews.

Alex: I love it. Then soliciting feedback from the liaisons in the field, and Dr. Smith says, “Hey, listen, man, I heard something weird happened when they sent this patient over.” There must be a feedback loop. Where does that person go? Are they going to their head of comms or is there someone dedicated liaisons, the head of the liaisons? [unintelligible 00:09:30].

Sarah: We’re highly local and we believe strongly in that doctor to doctor or medical caregiver to caregiver feedback. That referral partner, if they have a comment, it might start maybe with a referral liaison or a member of the marketing team, but it’s going to ultimately, they’re going to have that conversation with the medical director or hospital director of the location. They’re going to talk through that. They’ll talk to the doctor directly. We’re more of a conduit, if you will, for that information to get back. We’ll share the information. We’ll share the feedback, and then we’ll facilitate to make sure that the loops are closed. At the end of the day, it’s caregiver, caregiver, doctor, doctor. That matters most to us.

Alex: It sounds like y’all have probably been very meticulous in your growth because it’s still very care centric and some of that I’ve seen get lost. It’s [unintelligible 00:10:13].

Sarah: That’s intentional. It’s also attributed because we’re actually the largest network of veterinarians founded, owned, and led hospital. You mentioned like a BluePearl or VCA. These are what you’d call more corporate or private equity-owned practices, and that’s not who we are. Our doctors and retired doctors, founders own us, and that does allow us to be so care-centric.

Alex: You’ve got to be one of the biggest specialty groups in our country that’s not [unintelligible 00:10:43]. Kudos to you guys.

Sarah: We’re the largest, yes.

Alex: Awesome.

Sarah: We absolutely, yes.

Alex: Very cool. Man, that’s cool. Just listening to you, I know where the focus is. The reputation matters, the care delivery matters, reputation of market matters. That tells me that you guys are not hopping on the latest marketing trends and stuff like this. This is like, do the right things, serve on the right platforms. Is that generally accurate? You guys on TikTok? [unintelligible 00:11:10].

Alex: We’re not on TikTok, and hey, they just had a ban. Who knows what’s on TikTok? Who knows what’s going to happen. I think trends come and go, and it’s important that you execute it lately on the basics. Just last week, I received a email from– It was an unsolicited email, and the first line said, “Hey, George, how you doing?” The trend is personalization. When you get it wrong, it’s really wrong. For us, we’re focusing on, do we try to personalize? Can we personalize? Yes. Would we rather be a little less personal and get it 100% right and make sure that George is George and Sarah is Sarah? We want to be accurate, we want to do the right thing.

That said, we do have to keep an eye on what’s going on. We have been incorporating AI into our marketing, into our comms efforts. It’s been great for content generation. It definitely has allowed us to operationalize our style guide a little bit more. We have a very robust style guide, lots of designations and credentials for our doctors. AI has been helpful with that. If you call AI trendy, then in that respect, we’re on trend.

We also do keep an eye on what are the tools that can make us better if it’s not AI? What platforms are enabling us to get into more homes, into new homes and give it a shot. We run a lot of pilots. Sometimes it turns into something new and sometimes it doesn’t. The other thing is we still fax. Fax I would not say is a trendy communication tool, but guess what? Our private family veterinarians, they still fax, and so we fax to them.

Alex: Whatever works. We have a client in Chattanooga, sorry Chattanoogans, but they say that the yellow pages and stuff like that– It was working a few years ago. They’re like, “It works better than PPC.” Whatever works. That’s cool, guys.

Sarah: Whatever works. Where are the people who need you?

Alex: You got to know your demographic. Columbus can be different than Atlanta and Miami and stuff.

Sarah: For sure.

Alex: It could be different. I do wonder MedVet TikTok, that kind of stuff, if it works better for the general that type stuff, that specialty. I guess awareness works no matter what. Even within Google, it’s not just search anymore. You have PMax, LSAs And stuff that’s running all over YouTube and Display. A lot of good avenues there. Do you guys track all the way through? They land appointment schedule, I know is the main one probably. Then is that tracked from campaign all the way to if Cindy came in and ended up being a client?

Sarah: We are actually working on that now. I would say our ecosystem and all of that data connection points is an area for us to do better in. Some of that’s still manual, just by nature of the tech. I think that’s going to get better over time.

Alex: Do you have it a little easier because you guys are not house of brands looking at your website. That everybody is MedVet.

Sarah: Everybody is MetVet.

Alex: Everyone [unintelligible 00:13:55] one website, one booking tool, one CRM, one ER, EHR, et cetera. Vets have EHRs? Is that a thing? Is it like a patient management or PMS? What do they call it?

Sarah: Yes, we have a hospital management system or HMS. That’s actually, again, a project we’re working on. There’s a huge opportunity, I think, in veterinary. I think with marketing, it’s still not quite as closely connected into the health and the HMS as it can be. That’s not just for MedVet. I think that’s across the board. There’s opportunities there where you really see a veterinary businesses, hospitals, practices doing well as they’re starting to integrate that more to gain those client insights and draw the connections. There are some great tools out there. Placer.ai is a great data tool. I’ll look at it and it can give you a lot of insights. That’s been neat. Ultimately, you do want to make those connections in your mass distribution tools, et cetera.

Alex: HMS, I learned something new. Talk to us about the B2B side. Is there any ways that digital marketing supports the referral partners, the liaisons, anything? Do you guys run ads targeting the DVMs or referring partners? Is it just during mail? Is it just, “Hey, just walk in and go say hi.” [unintelligible 00:15:07].

Sarah: We have a mix. I think digital is a little bit less right now. That could change. We’re always looking at it. Right now, we see a lot of benefits from email, fax, face-to-face visits. Then we have a very robust continued education program. The veterinary profession, our docs and credential techs are required to keep up their CE hours like accountants and other professions. We provide more than 100, 120 hours of e-credit each year. Through those events, we get-

Alex: The nurturing, yes.

Sarah: -the nurturing and awareness, “Hey, how you doing?” Sort of thing. Then there’s also, in most states and even in different regional geographic areas, there’s a strong veterinary medical association, a national, the AVMA as well as locally. Those opportunities for networking keeps us close. Again, for us, it is really relationship-driven. Our doctors went to school with a lot of doctors that they work with. It is all about that reputation. Were they a great resident mate? Were they a great classmate? Then chances are they’re going to get the referral. It’s making sure that people know where our docs are and that they’re around and that when we do have capacity, that we can fill that capacity.

Alex: To our five listeners, if one of you is in college, just know your roommates might be looking at you if you’re going to be a future DVM and judging whether they’re going to send you business. Be nice to everybody.

Sarah: Yes, but that happens everywhere. I think what you said, you want to be kind. Be a good person and do what’s right. Once you get that reputation and then when you really hone your craft. We have doctors that are maybe some of the first and some of the only that can do the procedures that they can do and they continue to reinvest and share their expertise.

You want those people around you, just like us in marketing and in communications. Once you meet the people you vibe with and respect their expertise, you want to keep them in your network. It’s really no different than other professions. With the, like you just said, the veterinarians on the front lines, they do have life in their hands. My little marketing ad or comm isn’t really going to change the world [unintelligible 00:17:09].

Alex: I like to think of this, because, Sarah, if we don’t run that BBC ad and instead they either find no one or they find the wrong vet, you could.

Sarah: That’s true.

Alex: I’ve actually seen that personally in my own family. It goes the wrong way. We get to use our marketing superpowers for good and save some lives, pet or human. I like it. It helps me sleep at night knowing that we’re doing something useful. Yes, that’s cool. Let’s talk comms now a little bit. Comms, I’m not as familiar with. Comms, what is the intention? Is it internal to have everybody on the same page? Is it external to get more PR? Walk us through.

Sarah: All of the above in my world.

Alex: Is it?

Sarah: Internally, I think communications plays a tremendous role in what is the culture of your organization? How are you maintaining alignment? How are you moving forward? Can your colleagues connect to the purpose? Do they understand? Why they’re doing what they’re doing. If they’re having a bad day, can they link on to something? Maybe in comms and say, “You know what, today might not be such a bad day because I got this going on.” How do we help recognize? How do we help celebrate? How do we show gratitude?

For us at MedVet, those are hallmarks to what we talk about all the time. Then externally, I think the important piece is making sure there’s alignment and connectivity so that we’re all talking consistently. If our marketing colleagues, our experienced colleagues start saying something else, we start to potentially lose credibility or authenticity. You really want to have your comms internally dovetailing into your external comms, and then be supportive to your marketing messages at the end of the day. We all are consistent, look our best, and that ultimately builds the brand because you’re consistent in and out.

Alex: I love it. Let’s talk about the internal part first. Is your BFF the chief people officer or whoever? Because it’s like, “I need you to tell me the good stuff that happened with the people in the vets and then you take that message to our colleagues.”

Sarah: It’s guiding the narrative. Then I also have the pleasure of working with the executives. I do a lot of communications working alongside our CEO and our leadership team. Making sure that her narrative and her authenticity can be shared to the masses. She’s one person. She can’t get everywhere.

Alex: Are you doing the PR outreach?

Sarah: I do some of her outreach. I help her with town halls.

Alex: I want a Sarah. That’s smart.

Sarah: It’s actually fun. I’m the person behind the scenes. Then part of communications is events. It may not seem intuitive, but an event is a way to communicate. I also have the pleasure of being involved in our annual leadership summit, looking for who are the keynotes we’re bringing in, what are the developments that we’re going to share, the learnings, how are we networking, what fun activities are you doing? That is part of how we communicate. We’re communicating through our body language, through how we show up, how we come together and how we even just facilitate communication. I don’t think people think about events in that way very often, but it’s definitely part of us here.

Alex: I guess you have to reach a certain point, because something that you sometimes you’re a firm manager, you’re chief of staff. I’ve seen that thrown around the person organizing the leadership team, the event. You have a lot of hats. This is cool. I’m learning about comms and how many hats you guys wear. The marketing side, I understand pretty well. That’s fun. You’re like the head of talents most useful– How do I say this? The head of talent. If I was the head of talent and I didn’t come with the head of comms, I’d be very nervous. It’s like, cool, I’ll talk to people individually, but there’s no one spreading the message and the goodwill around to the rest of the team.

Sarah: [unintelligible 00:20:36] tell great stories to help form and shape the narrative. Again, sometimes things go bump in the night. How do we get through it together? How do we learn from it and navigate through whatever the situation is? Snow in New Orleans can be challenging. It threatens our ability to keep the hospitals open, or fires in LA.

Alex: What would you do about that? You’re communicating with those teams and saying, “Hey, what help do you need? If you can’t get in, okay, reroute.”

Sarah: It goes into how are we communicating, any sort of a continuity planning prep? Can we allay concerns? Yes, you’re going to get paid. Don’t worry about it. Making sure they understand that, “Hey, if you can’t get in, your safety is paramount.” Communications has a hand in all of those different processes, policies, procedures, intranet, et cetera.

Alex: Man. Awesome. So fun. I’m going to try to get more communications professionals on here. This is cool. I’m learning a lot. What should marketing know about where do you overlap? What makes a marketer a superpower if they know this about your job or how they could help better?

Sarah: That’s a good question, Alex.

Alex: Yes. Rarely do they happen.

Sarah: I think it’s important to lean on comms to really be able to talk through audience. What’s your key point? What’s the goal of the communication? What’s the goal of what you’re doing and what is the data telling you? I think communications working alongside marketers can just really bring a great story to life with all the pieces in a way that’s going to resonate the most.

Alex: Usually on the value props and the brand differentiators better than anybody and marketers, our favorite job is to take that to market. Oftentimes we skip over the, what are the differentiators and the value props and staying on brand?

Sarah: It looks so pretty. I’m like, “Yes, but it doesn’t sound great.” Now, with us and pets, cute puppies, cats, turtles, whatever, the birds, whatever they are, that makes it a little bit more discerning, but it is taking really looking at your audience and what is your goal and what are you trying to accomplish? I think the best marketers can communicate well, or they know and lean on someone and are willing to collaborate with those who can do even better than them and vice versa. I’m a better communicator because of the marketing aspects.

Alex: I will say you’re very deliberate. This was awesome because I got three hours of sleep and you answered most of my questions without me having to get to– I had to put [unintelligible 00:22:52] right before. This was good. Sarah, so deliberate. Last question, what are you most excited about in 2025? Where’s your focus going? The biggest opportunity. We know we don’t like trends. What are you excited about?

Sarah: The trends do come around. We’re all wearing neon again and hitting our grunge shirts again for a reason. No, I am super excited to be opening a new hospitals this year at MedVet. In fact, we’ll be in Atlanta for the first time [crosstalk] in the ATL. That’ll be great. We’ll also be in Phoenix and in Austin. Three communities that need our care. That’s cool. We opened some brand new hospitals for existing locations to give our caregivers more space, more equipment. New hospitals don’t just go to new places. They go to existing places, too.

At the end of the day, we want to serve more pets. Making sure we come top of mind. Personally, I have a special needs dog, so I want to make sure she continues to get the best care possible and have fun while we’re doing it. Keep perspective. I think my word of 2025 is perspective. How do you maintain your own perspective on whatever you’re working through and working towards and working on? How do you keep in mind other people’s perspectives and how the realities interconnect? Perspective is [unintelligible 00:24:07] ’25 for Sarah.

Alex: Perspective. I like that. I might steal it. It’s never as good or as bad as we think it is. Be kind, rewind, and it pays off later. Perspective matters a lot. I get personally hung up in the drama of the day and I’m like, “Oh my God, don’t forget how it’s like just doing what we’re doing. You’re going to have a lot of these days. Tomorrow will be a better day.” Thank you, Sarah. I didn’t know.

Sarah: She made me roll his eyes at you. It’s okay.

Alex: I’ve got one of those. I talked to his mama yesterday. I said, “Dude, this guy don’t like to work, and this is a working family. I don’t know what we’re going to do with him.” Then I’ve got the babies running around, “Why won’t Oliver pay attention to us?” He’s 15, so he’ll come around in 10 years. Sarah, I’ll send you my copay for the therapy sessions. Sarah, thank you for joining us on Ignite.

Sarah: Thank you. [unintelligible 00:24:49] like no time at all. I enjoyed just the chance to talk and write a little news about MedVet.

Alex: I love it. I love it. Now you’ll have two more friends. All two of our listeners are going to be tuning in.

Sarah: I’ll share it and then we’ll get three or four.

Alex: All right. We’ll get three or four. I love it. Thank you, Sarah.

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