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friends and family and are motivated by shopping ease. They prefer experiences over things, so engaging them in hands‐on pet care while in the exam room is critical. They are not as loyal to brands as older generations, so it can be tricky to obtain long‐term buy‐in.
In order to fully engage Millennials, your practice needs to have a robust online presence with blogs, use hashtags, social media posts (Instagram and Snapchat), and lots of video, but avoid email. Apps that support pet photo contests and other activities are very desirable. Discuss the experience of pet ownership and support hands‐on pet care activities, rather than just “selling.”
Millennials love the next big thing, such as each new technology release. They also like to do what their friends are doing which is why they decide where to eat based on Instagram pictures. A great way to market to this generation is to make sure your online reviews and customer service experiences are up to par! As difficult as it is to obtain loyalty, once you have it, they tend to stick with you, so make sure your practice app supports your loyalty program.
2.6.7 Generation Z
The youngest generation that is beginning to develop its buying power is Generation Z, the iGeneration, or Gen Z. To get their attention, your practice needs to have a website that looks great on their phones and a significant social media presence. Be socially conscious and have clients (peers) share authentic success stories. What we know about this generation will continue to grow and evolve as they age.
At ABC Animal Hospital, there was a need for a client education handout and the two doctors there, instead of working together, each created their own handout. The Boomer doctor created a handout that touted the hospital's experience and extensive research into the subject and made one very detailed and specific recommendation to the client. The handout prepared by the Gen X doctor referenced recent research that supported a change in how this condition was treated and listed several potential treatment options. It provided links to numerous resources and supplied a list of questions you should ask your veterinarian or consider while researching the option that you felt would be best for your pet. Each doctor had created a handout that reflected their generation. Consider what it would take to make such a resource multigenerational.
While generations may engage in the world differently, they all possess a common desire to be informed pet owners. It is important for us to communicate with our clients in a manner that allows them to easily absorb the information we are providing them.
We must be accessible to our clients. When they reach out, we need to be able to respond back to them in a timely and effective manner. Many practices now have a “electronic” or “media” receptionist who is dedicated to monitoring all types of client communication whether it be via Facebook or email.
Be authentic by thinking about what you'd want to know about if you were in their shoes. Be as open as you can, as in these times people crave transparency.
Engage your audience and show them that you care about their opinion and feedback. Listen to their thoughts on making the pet ownership experience better and respond to them when they talk to you.
Make sure that you have a plan in place to get important information in front of members of each generation. One topic may have a handout, a web page, and a blog post and remember to update them frequently. Not everyone responds to the same marketing approach so you must be age appropriate.
Recommended Reading
1 Fromm, J. and Garton, C. (2013). Marketing to Millennials. New York: American Management Association.
2 Marston, C. (2010). Generational Insights. Mobile, AL: Generational Insights.
3 Marston, C. (2011). Generational Selling Tactics that Work. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.
2.7 Risk Assessment
Nan Boss, DVM
Best Friends Veterinary Center, Grafton, WI, USA
2.7.1 Summary
None of us has unlimited time and money to discuss or investigate every possible disease for every patient. When making a personalized care plan for any dog or cat, you will need to prioritize. When educating a client or screening for diseases, spend more time and effort on those problems that are most likely to be found and/or that have the highest risk for harm. When diagnosing and treating diseases, the same holds true – rule in or out what is common first. Assessing risk accurately and using that assessment to inform medical care for your patients is a skill that can be developed and improved.
2.7.2 Terms Defined
Risk: An exposure to danger, harm or loss.
Risk Assessment: A process for evaluating potential risk.
Wellness care is all about reducing risk. We vaccinate to reduce the risk for contagious diseases, we prescribe heartworm preventives to reduce the risk for parasites, and so on.
Some health risks are nearly universal, such as exposure to contagious diseases and parasites. Others are specific to a pet's species, sex, age, location (city versus rural as well as region of the country), lifestyle or breed. All of these factors must be taken into account when developing a healthcare plan for a particular patient, whether in sickness or in health.
In ill patients, our risk analysis helps to guide us toward the most likely diagnoses so that we can diagnose and treat the pet appropriately. For example, if a Boston terrier is presented for vomiting, you might consider the usual rule‐outs such as foreign body, infectious or metabolic causes, or garbage ingestion. In this scenario, you would also want to consider pyloric stenosis, a reported genetic problem in the Boston terrier breed.
Risk assessment also guides our client education efforts. You wouldn't spend much time educating clients about a disease you only see a few times a year, or one a particular patient is unlikely to ever encounter. You'd spend those valuable few minutes you have with clients at wellness visits to talk about common things. You would want to incorporate the most common topics into a broad educational plan.
A simple way to do this is to choose one or two topics to focus on per visit, so you can educate every client about them. Examples would be dental care or obesity. Once that broader, more general topic has been covered, you can choose a risk or two to go over that is specific for the individual client or pet. What is likely to harm the patient and how might we prevent or treat the problem?
2.7.3 Determining Risk
There are many factors that can be used to determine and prioritize risk, so that you can offer specific laboratory tests or discuss the most important topics with your client.