Overview
In 2015, VetPartners was a small family of three practices. Now, at the end of 2021, VetPartners has 160 veterinary practices in the UK, with 6,000 employees working in more than 500 sites across the UK and Europe
As the VetPartner family of businesses grew, so did their online presence — both at the national and local level. While most locations had Google and Facebook profiles, the majority were not optimised online at the local level to get found, be chosen and drive loyalty through reviews.
With the local vet practices being the heart and soul of this people- and animal-first brand, we sat down with Carinne Saulet, Chief Marketing Officer, at VetPartners to learn more about how the Uberall platform makes it easier to make sure more than 500 locations get found, be chosen and drive loyalty through reviews and recommendations.
The Core Problem: An Inconsistent Online Experience
The Central Marketing team's role at VetPartners is to support practices with their local marketing — allowing them to focus their precious time and resources on the animals and their owners who need their care and undivided attention.
To do that, the team manages the online presence for more than 500 veterinarian practices and businesses such as laboratories and nursery schools across the UK and Europe.
Before Uberall, there was no way to quickly manage the accuracy or consistency of all their listings and reviews across hundreds of locations.
“Uberall helped us make sure that the online information for each location was complete and fully consistent, in a very easy way, ensuring the highest degrees of completeness. So when clients are searching for practices online, they can find them and the most important information, such as location and reviews right away.”
Creating a Local Customer Experience for Each Location
All the digital marketing tactics are done at the hyperlocal level. “There’s no one size fits all — we just make sure they are found easily online and have the local social proof they need with up-to-date and personal review responses,” she explains.
For brands with hundreds of locations, creating a local experience at scale is challenging without the right listings and review management tools.
With each of the more than 500 locations running as individual, local businesses, VetPartners tapped into the centralised management capabilities with listings and review management. This meant the team could automatically update critical information from a single source of truth, and positively impact the online customer experience at the local level.
“CoreX ensures that when customers find one of our practices near them, they know instantly where they are located, how to contact them, see reviews and access their website. The platform makes our jobs easier because we can centrally manage the online presence and reviews for more than 500 locations from one place.”
The Results
By adding and specifying all the available information on categories, services, keywords, attributes and images related to the individual practices, the local ranking improved. The number of customers that found the online profiles of the practices has increased every year.
Most notably, in customers who searched for services related to the practices rather than the business name has generated more views and clicks on these profiles.
Comparing the insights for 2021 with 2020, the listings have shown an increase of 60% for Google Maps impressions and more direction clicks (+35%), phone calls (+27%) and website conversions (+17%).
* YoY 2021 vs 2020
