The Future of Veterinary Marketing: How Independent Practices Can Build a Predictable New-Client Engine and Compete Against Corporate Groups

[00:00:00.080 –> 00:01:55.080] Angie:

What happens when a great veterinary practice is excellent at patient care, but invisible to the pet owners searching online?

For many independent practices, that is becoming a major challenge. Independent clinics are competing not only with the practice down the street, but also with larger corporate groups that often have deeper marketing budgets, stronger systems, and more digital visibility.

On today’s episode of The Veterinary Business Podcast, we’re talking about how veterinary practices can compete smarter, build trust faster, and create a more predictable flow of new clients in a marketplace that is changing quickly.

Our guest is Cebron Walker, CEO of Walker Creative, a St. Petersburg, Florida-based marketing and creative agency.

Cebron brings more than 30 years of experience in marketing, public relations, branding, video, and growth strategy, with work spanning healthcare, education, publishing, film, and corporate communications.

He is also the author of the upcoming book Veterinary Marketing. It is a handbook focused on helping veterinary practices build a predictable new client engine, use AI-driven marketing strategies, improve digital presence, and grow sustainably in the AI era.

Today, we’ll explore the future of veterinary marketing, how independent practices can stand out against corporate competitors, and what practice owners should be doing now to turn visibility into measurable growth.

Cebron, welcome to The Veterinary Business Podcast. I’m really excited to dive into the conversation because I think a lot of practice owners are feeling this shift right now.

[00:01:55.900 –> 00:01:59.980] Cebron Walker:

It’s fantastic, and thank you very much. What a wonderful introduction. That was beautiful.

[00:02:00.200 –> 00:02:11.380] Angie:

Your new book talks a lot about helping veterinary practices build a predictable new client engine. What does that actually look like in practice today?

[00:02:12.300 –> 00:05:26.080] Cebron Walker:

Today, we have, as you pointed out, incredible competition and noise in the marketplace. As business owners of any type of business, and specifically veterinary practice owners who are independent, the question is: how do they compete?

They don’t necessarily have the budgets. How do they stand out in their market when maybe there are a few other veterinary practices of choice, plus corporate offices?

My book, Veterinary Marketing, is for them. I’ve been doing marketing and PR for over 30 years, and I’ve been working with veterinary clinics for about 10 years now through my agency, Walker Creative.

After getting the chance to help individuals who own veterinary practices for so long, and many of my clients have been with me for many years, I thought, “I’m only going to be able to reach so many independent practice owners in my lifetime if I’m lucky. Maybe I can directly help 100 independent practice owners myself.”

So I needed to do something to talk to them and share the successful steps to do this. A book was the right answer.

I wrote the book, and it includes the seven principles, the seven factors, that if you follow this pattern, it works. I’m not saying it’s the only pattern, certainly. There are people who get lucky. They explode on social media because their YouTube channel is huge, and they happen to be really good on camera. That ability becomes why they grew.

There are outliers who have something that made them grow big, and that’s wonderful. But for everybody in a general sense, we have found a pattern at Walker Creative from working directly with practices. If we follow this pattern, it works. We know it works.

It may not be the only thing that works, but this does work, and it makes you stand out as an independent practice owner.

By the end of the book, I explain a flywheel effect. Think of a pottery wheel. If you spin the wheel, it has this concrete wheel at the bottom. Once you get it moving, it tends to keep moving on its own.

I use that concept by the end of the book: once you’ve gotten all seven of these factors really in place for your practice, you have that flywheel effect going, and then the momentum is a lot easier to keep going through the years.

That’s what is so exciting about releasing this book. The book will be published by the end of July, so we’ll have a release in July, and I’ll make sure everybody knows about it.

[00:05:27.160 –> 00:05:42.720] Angie:

Absolutely. We’re seeing more corporate groups buying veterinary practices, and they often have bigger budgets and stronger visibility. Where do independent practices still have an advantage?

[00:05:43.900 –> 00:09:09.332] Cebron Walker:

They have an advantage through being more human.

Because corporate practices, and I know this from my own experience with, let’s say, a corporate dental practice I may take my family to, tend to treat their patients, whether human or animal, as a number. I have quickly left those environments because of that.

Independent practices have a huge advantage, and it’s a much more fun and fulfilling advantage. By being more human, more connected with the community, and more family-oriented, and by portraying that, they can stand out.

It’s one thing to be that way, and it does tend to come through your whole practice if you are that way. If your front office treats every new person who walks in that way, and if the doctor or doctors of the clinic approach and interact with people that way, that matters.

From a marketing perspective, there are things you can do to brand yourself that way. It starts with knowing your target audience, developing the right messaging, and putting that out through social media, your website, emails you may send at certain times without over-emailing people, your Google Business Profile, and other online listing spaces where you need to be.

Today, with AI, people are using ChatGPT primarily, but also Claude, Perplexity, Google Gemini, Grok, and other AI chatbot tools. They have their phones in their pockets, and they’re talking with them.

Older millennials, Gen X, and seniors may tend to search on Google, often using a computer or desktop. But younger audiences who have pets and are starting families are talking to their phones and asking for recommendations from ChatGPT, Claude, or whichever tool they choose.

We need to build our websites to have information written properly so that your veterinary practice becomes the recommended practice. Not only the recommended practice as a website, but also the authority on questions like: “What do I do if my dog is throwing up?” “What do I do if my dog is limping?” “What if my cat ate something and I’m not sure what to do during the holidays?”

If you are an equine practice handling horses or farm animals, people will ask for recommendations when things are happening with their animals. You want to be the source of those recommendations, where your tips, tricks, and information are provided. Then people see, “This doctor is serving people at this clinic, and they’re 10 miles away.”

We’re finding that the numbers are increasing every single week on the use of AI for those recommendations. So we’re building websites specifically to serve those AI tools.

[00:09:11.152 –> 00:09:33.812] Angie:

Veterinary medicine is still such a relationship-driven industry. AI and automation are obviously changing marketing really fast right now. How do practices use those tools well without losing the personal connection pet owners still expect?

[00:09:34.692 –> 00:13:35.176] Cebron Walker:

That’s a great question. I will say that humanization is a word you’ll hear from Walker Creative a lot.

Touching back to the first question, the way we stand out is by humanizing ourselves. We do that inside the practice through our interactions, but the way we show our practice through our website and social media is with real pictures, real photos, and real communication.

When we land on a website, especially if it’s a corporate website, you will tend to see stock photos of a perfect-looking family with perfect kittens, perfect pets, or perfect dogs playing in the grass.

As a consumer, you know that’s false. The trust signals tend to get lost. There are fewer trust signals, and people may think, “They’re not being honest about what this clinic really looks like inside, who the doctors are, or what the practice is.”

Even subconsciously, a consumer may look for something else because it doesn’t feel right.

Then they land on a community clinic that is a private clinic, and they see real video and pictures of the doctor or doctors interacting with real clients and real pets throughout the homepage.

Or they go to a dog dental services page and see a one-minute video from the doctor explaining, “When you come in for dental, we’re not only going to do this and this; we’re also addressing the different things that can happen with a pet that doesn’t get their dental care. It’s not only bad breath that’s the problem.”

When they really explain it, I have trust. I now know that doctor knows what they’re talking about, and it’s a real person.

That is how we stand out. It is much more of a factor than we may think.

If you do the comparison and take off your doctor hat, clinic hat, or office manager hat, and act like a member of the public looking for a veterinarian, look at those corporate sites, then look at your site, and then find a great website that you really connect with. You’ll find that it’s humanized, and you’ll find the corporate sites are not, because they can’t do it. Their marketing machines are not built to do it.

We have had a couple of veterinarians who retired out of their practices. They were clients for five or six years, and they said, “Cebron, we’re retiring. We’d love to keep you on as the marketing team, but I got an offer I can’t refuse. It’s eight figures. It’s an amazing buyout, and I know I shouldn’t do it, but this corporate company offered me something I can’t refuse.”

They said, “We’re going to try to keep you on as the marketing company because you’ve done so well for us.” They went through that process and did keep us on for a year, but eventually the corporate office had all the power. They said, “Walker Creative, we’re going to let you go. We’re going to bring in our marketing company that does all of our websites.”

I always go back and check a month or two later, and it is every time the same. They’ve made everything look like the corporate office. It’s all blue on the outlines, with fake puppies and kittens. It just doesn’t feel the same at all.

[00:13:36.116 –> 00:13:52.656] Angie:

That is so true. When a practice feels like they’re losing momentum, how can they tell what the actual problem is? Whether it’s visibility, trust, follow-up, positioning, or just not knowing where new clients are coming from?

[00:13:53.896 –> 00:18:39.024] Cebron Walker:

It’s a great question, and it’s hard to say there is one thing. That’s why I wrote the book.

A veterinary owner, or maybe a practice manager trying to solve that problem, can use the book to evaluate what the issue is for their practice, do a good evaluation, and then fix the broken part.

Let’s take an example. Maybe you’re investing a lot of money because an ad agency says, “We have to do Facebook ads. If you don’t spend $2,000 or $3,000 a month on Facebook ads, your competition is going to win, and that’s what you have to do.”

So the practice is paying the ad agency a management fee, plus $2,000 or $3,000 a month in ad cost. They’re getting a ton of clicks and views, but it’s not resulting in the new clients they’re looking for.

They’re putting all their investment into this. They’re stressed and anxious because they need new clients, and they’re spending all this money on advertising, and it’s not working. After two or three months, they’re freaking out because they’re thinking, “The ad agency said it was going to work, but it’s not working. What do I do?”

The truth is that the ad agency sold what they think is the solution from their perspective. But what they may have missed is that those ads are going to drive people to a website.

Does the page they land on work well to convert them from leads into someone who scheduled an appointment?

If you haven’t humanized your website, and not only humanized it but built it to be welcoming and to make a human connection so people want to click the right button, schedule, or call in, then the ads may not work.

A lot of people today, especially millennials and younger people with new families and new pets in the house, are going to check your socials. They’re not necessarily going to just believe an ad.

They may see an ad and think, “Actually, my dog is doing this,” or, “I have a new puppy or kitten, and I should take them to a vet to get checked out because they’re new.”

They’ve seen an ad, but they’re not just going to click the ad and come right in. They’re going to check your socials. They’re going to see whether this is a great clinic that shares videos and pictures on Facebook, Instagram, maybe TikTok.

I would say Facebook and Instagram are the foundation for everybody. Meta owns both Facebook and Instagram, and most people probably know you can post to one and have it post to the other. That’s fine, and it’s the simplest approach to social media.

Let’s say you’re posting well to Instagram, and you have good photos and good videos. A millennial consumer sees an ad and thinks, “That’s right, I need to do that.” Now they check your socials to see about that trust factor, because it is something they do. Most people will check other places before they decide.

If the ad agency is only doing ads and didn’t address your social presence, that pet owner may go to the social feed and find nothing there. Or maybe there is one post a week from Canva, using a fake picture or a generic graphic about a pet tip. It’s not human, and it’s not interesting. In today’s social world, they scroll right past it because there is nothing to engage with.

You have to see what is broken in the system, in the flywheel. You find the broken piece and fix that aspect.

Maybe the ads would work if the website were fixed properly and the social media were fixed properly. None of this is super hard to do. It’s almost more of a coaching point to help you get these things in place. Then the ads will work. The investment in the ads will work. But until these other things are fixed, you could be wasting a lot of money.

That’s just one example of what you might find as you read through the book and think, “That’s something I need to address.”

[00:18:40.284 –> 00:18:52.573] Angie:

When you talk about humanizing your website and humanizing your social media, would you be able to give one or two tips on how veterinary practices can do exactly that?

[00:18:53.304 –> 00:23:04.024] Cebron Walker:

Totally. First of all, we all have these devices in our phones, and the newer ones have great cameras.

For no investment at all, except maybe some staff time, you can assign somebody to take photos around the practice of people doing things.

If you wanted to take it one step up from that, you could look on social media and get ideas from videos other veterinary practices are making. Look for fun videos or cute things happening in a veterinary practice, and take a little video of that.

Start posting those to your social feed every other day. Two or three times a week is fine. You don’t need to be crazy. You don’t need to do it every day, and certainly not two or three times a day.

Then go to your Google Business Profile and make sure it is fully filled out. That is really important. Your Google Business Profile is sort of the second main location for your business online, with your website being your main business location online.

Your Google Business Profile should have tons of photos about the practice. Have a photo of the outside of the building as the main photo, your logo, and lots of photos of things happening in your practice: people helping animals and doing the work of the veterinary clinic.

So many clinics I’ve started working with had not really set up their Google Business Profile with all the information that’s allowed there.

You can also do updates on your Google Business Profile, which are sort of like Facebook posts. You can put a picture and information there, so it’s almost like another social platform.

Do your Instagram and Facebook, do your Google Business Profile, and then put updates on Google. That also signals to Google that you’re an active business and helps your SEO, your search engine optimization, so you show up in searches.

Don’t mistake the fact that AI is becoming more and more of a tool for people. That doesn’t mean SEO is not still vital. The majority of people are still searching on Google for businesses, so SEO and Google are still very important. Do that work. AI is just moving up as it is used more and more.

Take those photos, put them on social, put them on Google, and then take some of those pictures for your website. For social media, your photos may be vertical using your phone. But for a photograph of the full staff as a team, individual staff photos, or staff holding animals for the homepage, take those photos horizontally so you can crop them in a good way.

Always take your photos with the camera facing outward, not in selfie mode. The selfie-side camera is far less powerful. You get a better camera using the other side, so have someone take the photos that way.

Get those photos on your socials. Get those photos and videos on your website. That will be a huge step up.

Of course, you can take it to the next level and hire a company to come in and do a video shoot and a photo shoot. We do that all the time with our clients when we’re building a website. It’s a cost, certainly, but it’s well worth it to have that foundational piece of really good quality video and photos for your website and YouTube channel.

Then in the future, you can update things and take more pictures with your phone. You don’t need to have a company like Walker Creative come every six months. That’s not necessary once you’ve built that great foundation.

[00:23:05.144 –> 00:24:23.200] Angie:

That’s really interesting. So far, we’ve spoken about how a lot of practice owners feel but can’t always see clearly. They know they need more new clients, but they may not know where the gap is in their website, their Google presence, their reviews, their local rankings, their messaging, or how they compare against the bigger groups showing up around them.

We are also talking about why Ekwa Marketing, our platinum sponsor, is offering veterinary practices a complimentary marketing strategy meeting.

It’s not just a general marketing conversation. It’s designed to help a practice owner look at the online health of their practice: where they show up, where competitors show up, what pet owners are likely seeing in search, how their reputation looks, and what opportunities may exist to create more predictable new client growth.

For a veterinary owner listening and thinking, “I don’t know where we’re losing visibility or how we compare locally,” this is a practical next step.

You can book your marketing strategy meeting at veterinarybusinessinstitute.com/msm.

[00:24:23.720 –> 00:25:01.420] Cebron Walker:

I highly recommend it, by the way, to all veterinary practice owners. Even if you’re not completely freaking out and thinking, “I need to solve my new leads coming in the door right now,” but you just want a fresh perspective on how you’re doing, I recommend getting a free marketing consult.

It is so valuable to get that feedback and see how you’re doing. A lot of it maybe you can implement yourself, or maybe you do need a marketing team like Ekwa to come in and support you. Either way, it’s a great thing to do.

[00:25:02.480 –> 00:25:21.700] Angie:

That is so true. Once again, you can book your marketing strategy meeting at veterinarybusinessinstitute.com/msm.

Once a practice owner has that clarity, what should they focus on first over the next 90 days?

[00:25:22.940 –> 00:29:28.520] Cebron Walker:

Once you’ve got that clarity and the foundation in place, you should have good social posts getting done every two or three days in a week. You should have your website humanized, and you should ensure that you have landing pages on services like dental and laser therapy.

If you happen to do acupuncture and that’s a big part of your practice, you should have a good landing page for that. If you’re an equine practice and you do on-site visits at a farm for horses, or whatever main services you want to market and get leads for, those landing pages need to be well set up. They should give the information people are looking for when they come from an ad to that page, and they should have a good call to action.

If these foundational points are in place, then the next step is to run some Facebook ads and Google ads so you are driving that traffic. Most of these are pay-per-click, so you only pay when someone clicks on your ad to go to your website, but you don’t want to lose them.

You want to watch those numbers. The book covers this and gives examples of good numbers to hit, like conversion numbers. It’s not just the number of people who saw the ad. Those vanity metrics may feel nice, but they are not going to create the bottom line, profitability, and revenue you want.

We need to know all the numbers: how the ads are working, how they get people to your site, and how they convert into scheduled appointments. The book gives examples of what those numbers should be.

Also realize this: once you’ve got that foundation in place, the word of mouth you generate in the community and the organic factors for growth will already be contributing to your improvement. You are already going to do much better organically, with no expense except the expense of setting it up and educating your staff on the things they should be doing.

With that organic level, you are going to be doing much better. Then, if you want to do advertising to add another extra five or 10 new patients or clients coming in the door every month, you could do Facebook ads.

Let’s say you spend $1,000 a month on Facebook ads through Meta. That will also put ads out on Instagram because those are sister companies. Maybe you add Google ads. We often have clients doing $1,000 on Meta and $500 or $1,000 on Google, depending on how aggressive they want to be with their advertising.

But we only want to do that once the organic foundation is built. That is covered in the book.

That would be the next step to push up your new client numbers every month.

When that starts to really happen, it is so great because that’s the flywheel effect. You have loyalty because your medicine is good. Then your long-term growth is very sustainable and trackable, and the stress factor comes off.

Those people are not all coming in for one service or one pet appointment. They’re going to come back every six months or every year. They are going to spend more money with you over the lifetime of that pet, and then certainly they may get a new pet and bring that pet in.

Then it’s up to you to deliver great service, and that flywheel effect really goes into motion. It’s hard to slow down.

[00:29:29.620 –> 00:29:42.100] Angie:

That is absolutely right. There were so many practical takeaways in this conversation. Cebron, before we end this podcast, would you tell us more about your book?

[00:29:42.220 –> 00:32:02.396] Cebron Walker:

The book is Veterinary Marketing. It is written, and it is actually going through the publishing phase. It’s being typeset and readied for release. I’m so excited about it, and I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to talk about it.

It’s called Build a Predictable New Client Engine: Veterinary Marketing. Once it’s on Amazon, it will be very easy to find. You can search for Veterinary Marketing book from Cebron Walker.

The subtitle is Handbook for Practice Growth in an AI Era.

It lays out, first, a great overview of the situation we’re all in as veterinary practices in an era of AI, in this modern, very noisy marketplace, and with large corporate groups buying up practices.

It lays out where we stand, and then it gets into the seven factors of growth in sequence so you really understand it.

I’ve laid it out in language that I hope makes total clear sense to veterinary owners, veterinary students, practice managers, and people an owner wants to read the book and implement it. They can hand it to others.

I think a practice owner could have several copies to give to the key people in their practice so everyone is on the same page about how you build a great practice.

It is certainly not about how to do advertising on Meta. It’s not that. It’s about the things you need to do in the practice.

And it is not only theoretical. Every chapter has practical exercises to implement, to take immediate steps to improve where you are in that phase of your growth.

It is everything I’ve seen that we’ve done successfully, and it needed to go to every veterinary clinic in the world. It’s in English, and I can’t wait to try to translate it into other languages. I’ll probably need people to tell me where they need it translated first.

It is exciting to be able to help as many veterinary clinics as I possibly can that I’m not able to reach myself.

[00:32:04.276 –> 00:33:37.556] Angie:

That’s true. Absolutely. That’s amazing.

Cebron, thank you so much for joining us on The Veterinary Business Podcast. This was such a timely and valuable conversation for veterinary practice owners who are trying to understand how marketing is changing, how AI is influencing client acquisition, and how independent practices can compete in a marketplace where corporate groups are gaining ground.

I really appreciated your perspective on how independent veterinary practices can stay competitive by understanding where they stand online, adapting to how pet owners search today, and making smarter marketing decisions for the future.

For our listeners, once again, Cebron’s new book, Veterinary Marketing, is a helpful resource for practices looking to strengthen their digital presence, improve client acquisition, and grow in the AI era.

Also, as a quick reminder, if today’s conversation made you wonder how your own practice is showing up online, especially compared to local competitors, our platinum sponsor, Ekwa Marketing, is offering a complimentary marketing strategy meeting.

Book your meeting at veterinarybusinessinstitute.com/msm.

Cebron, thank you again for being here, and thank you to everyone listening to The Veterinary Business Podcast.