Marketing your practice is crucial for getting people through the door, and showing them how credible, trustworthy and genuine you are. It helps build confidence and trust in your ability as a professional practice and the service you provide. With so much information around, it can be hard to know where to start. Online marketing tactics are a great starting point, with 57.1 million users on some form of social media in the UK, and an estimated 4.4 billion people using email globally as their primary method of communication. In fact, 37% of brands are increasing their email budget for 2024, it’s that effective!
If you are looking for different ways to promote your practice, read our brilliant blog What Veterinary Marketing Is Really All About but today, I wanted to reassure you that you don’t have to be a creative mastermind to create fun, compelling content to promote your practice and get ahead of the Marketing game. In this top-level blog, we say hello to my little friend… AI.
Let’s go back to basics
If we think about the components that make up a piece of content, it’s essentially three things; words, images/graphics and layout. now think about what attracts you to something you see online. Is it funny? Do you think it looks cute? Do you like the colours? Is it obvious? Now think about how you want to be seen by others and what you want to say. Are you communicating new opening times? Promoting offers or events? Or sending a 2024 welcome message? By thinking about these aspects you can start to picture what your ideal content will shape into. If you’re ever stuck, you can always read out to our amazing Covetrus Rapport team, I’ll talk more about them later on.
Fit for purpose copy
The most common AI tool that is used to create content is Chat GPT by Open AI. GPT1 was released in 2018 as a first demonstration of ‘unsupervised learning’, and subsequent models were released as the technology developed into what we know of it today. The latest version was released as an early demo in November 2022, the tool very quickly went viral for its ability to learn human languages and interactions. Today, the tool has over 180 million users worldwide.
You can use ChatGPT for all types of content, for example, emails, social media posts and blogs. Simply log on and ask it! It acts as an excellent first draft for content, saving you time particularly if you’re feeling stuck and end up procrastinating; we’ve all been there! I write down the bulk of what I want to say, whether this be in bullet points, as a paragraph or notes, and then as the tool to transform this into content. You know the way your practice talks to your customers better than anyone else so there will be some editing required. One thing to consider especially for social media is the word count. There is a great guide on this here.
Getting the best out of your designs
In the same way as you can create compelling copy, you can create design and imagery with AI. We just spoke about ChatGPT and there have been some very imaginative images generated by the tool. Darth Vader on holiday in the Alps was one in particular which went viral last year. Tools like ChatGPT are great for creating individual images to reinforce your messaging by typing commands such as ‘show me a Dalmatian looking happy celebrating it’s birthday’ and ‘show me a rabbit in the garden eating a carrot’.
People recognising your look and feel is key to marketing your practice and as fun as images can be, falling back in line with your visual identity will retain the integrity of your brand. Consistency is key.
The most simple tool for generating layouts, specific for your marketing collateral would be via a platform like adcreative.ai.
Before you start, you need to have solid design references. These can be examples of your colour palette, graphics that you use and your logo. You then pick your creative format, whether this be various banner sizes or half page ads. Add in your text and images and the results will provide you with a range of layouts to chose from, all with strong call to actions and easy-to-read text accompanied by your image. There are loads of tutorials that give you more details on how to use this.
A few considerations
Before you commit to your images, have a think about what you will be doing with the images you create using AI. AI images do not have copyright, so images created end up being in the public domain, meaning your tool will put the image back in the database for others to use. Midjourney is a very popular and well known tool which generates AI images, and includes features like a ‘blend’ functionality that merges parts of images together; great tool to use if you’re happy for your image to be manipulated by others.
Shutterstock however, have very clear parameters on their AI tool ensuring artists are compensated and your AI created image is your based on their licensing agreements before publishing.
We’ve got the resources to help
As I mentioned earlier, that was a basic overview of using AI to enhance marketing your practice and there is loads more we can talk about, from creating videos using AI, using AI for voiceovers to delving deeper into the legalities and discussing more tools.
I also mentioned our Covetrus Rapport team. Do you ever feel like you don’t have the time to send communications? Or you’re still unsure about what to say and how? Maybe you need a real-life person to help you?
Rapport will send automated, multimedia messages to enhance communications. We also have a bespoke marketing communication service where our in-house team can create beautifully designed campaigns for you, freeing up your time to focus on taking care of your customers and their pets. Collaborating with you on your design and content requirements, out team can ensure messages are on point and well executed along with keeping in line with your brand for consistency and credibility. Have you ever gotten pre-campaign nerves just before you’re about to push something live? Our team will take care of all of that for you. Rapport is for Covetrus RoboVet customers, however if you are looking for more information on this or any of our services, visit our website here.
Written by Nimita Smyth – Digital Content Marketing Manager