By now, you should have a firm grasp of the goals and features of the Practice of Wellness. If you missed our previous posts on these subjects, catch up by beginning Here.
While the Practice of Wellness is one prong of an effective wellness plan program,the second prong, the Business of Wellness, is even more crucial. We’re here to explain how the Business of Wellness empowers your wellness program — and veterinary practice — to stand out in a crowded marketplace, among other benefits.
Let’s start with the five goals of the Business of Wellness. These goals span essential business elements of an effective practice, ranging from practice brand and culture, and extending to a more robust practice valuation.
Goal 1: Build a Practice Brand and Culture
Email. Social media. Push notifications. Pet owners today are flooded with marketing messages. The pet industry is growing more competitive, with new threats emerging every day. Reaching clients amid this clamor begins with building a brand — and team culture — to attract and retain pet owners’ business.
Your wellness program is a way to differentiate and build your relationship with clients. Your wellness solution should integrate into your practice and become part of your culture to build consistency in brand messaging and marketing.
Marketing and branding messages also must be clear, concise, and readily understood by both clients and staff. And, this messaging should echo throughout your practice, encompassing your doctor’s message, marketing kits, social media banner ads, on-hold messages, and much more. When done right, your wellness program not only delivers consistency of care, but builds consistency in message.
Goal 2: Create a Club/Membership Program Around Your Plans for Loyalty
Offering a club or membership program around wellness goes beyond bundling services. Instead, it’s a fundamental tool to build relationships with clients by providing them with added value. And with the right forethought, it incorporates other services areas and offerings to ensure your clients use your services as much as possible. Consistency builds relationships and loyalty.
Think of the multiple membership services available today. Costco adds value with discounted gas, tire services, vision care, and more. Netflix increases usage by developing original content, as well as suggesting shows subscribers might enjoy, based on their viewing habits.
Your wellness solution should enable your practice to do the same. Understanding and catering to the needs of your clients sets your practice apart from the competition. It cements your relationship with your clients — and promotes the health of pets.
Goal 3: Real-time Program Analytics and Insight
Without real-time data about your wellness plan program, how can you evaluate whether it’s increasing pet care or revenue? You can’t. At best, you’re making semi-informed guesses.
Ideally, select a solution that provides analytics and widgets to run real-time queries and analyze trends, such as:
- Per-pet spending (wellness pets and non-wellness pets)
- New enrollments
- Pending applications
- Cancellations
- Suspensions
- Rejected payments
- Consumption of services
- Renewal rates
- Abandoned cart (incomplete application)
- Revenue trends (your practice compared to the industry)
- Competitive analytics across multiple practices
Ideally, the solution should offer a dashboard that shows key program metrics and practice-specific thresholds to measure progress in a comprehensive report card. Armed with up-to-date practice metrics, your enterprise can take action to make program adjustments where necessary in a single practice or across multiple practices. And if possible, the solution should provide a way to compare your results to others so you’re not setting and measuring goals in a vacuum.
Goal 4: Incorporate Additional Practice Areas into the Membership
Instead of emphasizing discounts, the right wellness solution complements your entire range of service offerings. A comprehensive solution should extend throughout the practice, supplying built-in tools to promote additional service areas, such as kennel, grooming, spa, holistic medicine, nutrition programs, chronic illness plans, and more. Tailoring services to the pet in this fashion can boost contract values of your wellness plan by 20% or more.
What’s more, incorporating additional services into wellness plans differentiates your practice from large chains and local competitors, while providing quality care.
Goal 5: Increase Practice Valuation
Your wellness solution should not only cement your relationship with pet owners — but also should create a healthier bottom line. Well-implemented wellness plan programs can generate 10% overall revenue growth in the first year — and almost triple that in three years or less, VCP has found.
Well-run wellness plan programs also lift overall revenue by attracting new clients. VCP’s research shows that nearly 60% of wellness plan clients are net new to the practice. During slower months, payments for wellness plans help to even out cash flow. Demonstrating predictable monthly recurring revenue should lead to a higher practice valuation.
Now that we’ve covered the goals of the Business of Wellness, we’ll turn our attention next week to a key feature of the Business of Wellness: automated renewals. That post will give you a comprehensive checklist to compare the nuts and bolts of wellness solutions available in today’s marketplace.
