What Is a B2B Veterinary Marketing Agency? And When Do You Actually Need One?
There are loads of marketing agencies, and marketing is a huge field with many different specialties, which can make selecting a partner tricky. There’s likely a sea of questions floating through your head.
Marketing Agency FAQs
Question: Should I prioritize working with someone local?
Answer: If you’re big on face-to-face communication, this might be more important to you. If you’re just looking for the right group to get your work done, then this shouldn’t be a top decision-making criterion. Instead, focus on establishing what communication cadences look like to make sure you’re getting the level of communication you need to feel comfortable. We’ve all learned to work really well in remote situations, so don’t let location be a make-or-break criterion.
Question: Do I need a generalist or a specialized partner (like an SEO agency, or someone who just does social media)?
Answer: That depends. If all you want is a single service, then going with a specialist is advisable. If you have diverse needs, you may be happier with marketing generalists who can support you across a wide range of needs. Especially if you are a small or resource-restricted team, it’s easier to manage a single agency than multiple specialized groups.
Question: How much should they know about my industry?
Answer: This depends on your industry. If you sell a transactional product like socks or yo-yos (yeah, remember when people played with those? Before the advent of the Nintendo™ Switch.), then you’re probably safe with a general agency that works across multiple industries. If you sell specialized equipment, software, or services in an industry like animal health, then you’ll want to partner with a specialized agency. They know what does and doesn’t fly with the industry and can accelerate the time to results. If you choose to work with an agency outside of your target industry, they may need more ramp-up time as they learn the nuances of working with veterinary professionals (there are MANY).
In this article, we’ll focus specifically on what to look for in a B2B veterinary marketing agency. In animal health, KOLs include affiliation disclosures in their presentations (see, look, you’re already getting pro tips), so we’ll give you the same respect here.
Article Disclosures:
Red Brick Partners is a B2B veterinary marketing agency. We help businesses connect with veterinary professionals. Obviously, we’d love to work with you if it’s a good fit, but our goal here is not to sell you. If your needs go beyond what we can do, we’ll help you find a home with an industry-specific agency better equipped to achieve your goals.
Red Brick Partners is a small boutique agency. Also, we hate the word agency. We’re a partner, but the AEO told us we need to talk about agency life since that’s what people search for. We don’t identify as an “agency”; we identify as a “partner”.
Red Brick Partners “eats its own dog food”. If you choose to work together, we’ll probably tell you that you need to do content marketing, optimize for AEO, provide value, and build meaningful relationships with your prospects. So we do the same things for our brand that we recommend you do for yours. Why? Because we test tactics with our own money, we’re not asking you to spend on something we ourselves wouldn’t.
Red Brick Partners values a scrappy, data-driven approach. If you want banner ads, impressions, and general awareness that isn’t connected to performance data, we probably aren’t the right fit.
Red Brick Partners is a HubSpot Implementation partner. If you need HubSpot help, especially B2B veterinary marketing HubSpot help, you probably won’t find anyone more specialized in that than us. If you already have a CRM/automation solution, we love that we’ll work with anything. We’re not in the business of forcing tech stack changes.
Now, onward!
What does a B2B veterinary marketing agency do?
B2B veterinary marketing agencies (*cough* partners *cough) offer a variety of services, including positioning and messaging, lead-generation, sales enablement, paid media strategies, email nurture campaigns, CRM optimization, SEO/AEO/GEO/ whatever “OE” is next, paid search, live event strategies, graphic design, copy writing, web design, and the list goes on.
The service offerings look no different from those of other generalist agencies. That’s why this can be so tricky. Here’s what B2B veterinary marketing agencies offer that is different:
They know who the decision-makers are at the veterinary clinic based on your product.
They know which social media channels your people are hanging out on (pssssst…it’s not LinkedIn)
They know which media partners to work with, which spots perform the best, and what you can skip. This is important because without this tribal knowledge, you can WASTE A TON OF MONEY.
They know what language lands well.
They can provide a tactical plan to achieve your KPIs.
They’ve already got the industry connections you need to hit the ground running.
They can make paid social work for you (yeaaaaas, it works like a dream in animal health).
They know which photos are a huge turn-off to veterinarians. Did you know that using a stock photo of a Frenchie can actually turn an innocent post into a huge digital controversy? Big facts. If you want to talk more about this, just for funsies, feel free to reach out.
They know how long sales cycles take, percentages of inquiries that stick and turn into demos, how many touches it takes to get a response after an inbound inquiry (you’ll be shocked), and on and on. If they’ve been doing this for as long as we have (15+ years), you learn a few things along the way.
They know what topics are hot and which ones are yesterday’s news.
They know how to make your content work harder for you.
How is a B2B veterinary marketing agency different from a veterinary clinic marketing agency?
The key difference between a B2B veterinary marketing agency and a veterinary clinic marketing agency lies in their target audiences. A B2B veterinary marketing agency focuses on selling to veterinary professionals, while a veterinary clinic marketing agency aims to attract pet owners to individual veterinary practices.
Sometimes, B2B veterinary marketing agencies will create pet-owner-facing materials. Still, these are typically implemented as toolkits to support your technology or as nicy-niceys to provide value to your customer clinics during key observance months like Pain Awareness Month in September. B2B veterinary marketing agencies are focused on filling your pipeline with clinic leads, not on driving visits to clinics from pet owners.
Audience
B2B Veterinary Marketing
Veterinarians
Technicians
Practice owners
Hospital groups
Distributors
B2B Veterinary Clinic Marketing
Pet Owners
Customers
B2B Veterinary Marketing: Animal health companies: software, diagnostics, equipment, service providers, etc.
B2B Veterinary Clinic Marketing: Individual veterinary hospitals
Goals
B2B Veterinary Marketing
Generate qualified leads
Launch products
Support sales
Build industry authority
B2B Veterinary Clinic Marketing
Book appointments
Attract new clients
Improve local visibility
Pet owner retention
Communication Channels
B2B Veterinary Marketing
Large-scale national email
Education, such as webinars and guides
Paid social media
Trade shows and national conferences
Media companies
Distributors and partners
B2B Veterinary Clinic Marketing
Local SEO
Google Business Profile
Social Media
Reviews
Local ads
Agencies that excel in direct-to-pet-owner marketing often don’t have the chops to market to veterinary hospitals since the stakeholders are different and the buying process is super different.
Who hires a B2B veterinary marketing agency?
B2B veterinary marketing agencies are typically engaged by companies that sell products, services, technology, or education to veterinary professionals and animal health organizations.
Partnering with a B2B veterinary marketing agency allows businesses to leverage tailored strategies to enhance visibility, improve lead generation, and ultimately drive growth in the competitive animal health market. If your buyer is a veterinarian, technician, practice manager, hospital owner, or corporate veterinary decision-maker, you need marketing built for that audience.
No two B2B veterinary businesses are the same. Believe us, if we could standardize services and approaches, we would, but veterinarians are a unique breed. They are discerning buyers, and every product needs a customized approach to excel. If you see a cookie-cutter package of tactical approaches…beware. Your brand is a snowflake, and you need a partner who will treat it as such: as something special, unique, and in need of careful care and attention.
When do you need a B2B veterinary marketing agency?
When’s the right time to call in the cavalry and hire a B2B veterinary marketing agency? Well, if your marketing strategy has more generic "meh" than a head-turning "meow," it might be time to enlist some expert help.
Here are some common signs that it’s time to turn up the heat with a solid marketing campaign:
You are launching a new veterinary product or service.
Your sales team needs tools.
You’ve got a big, bad (expensive) conference coming up, and you want to get the most out of it. We’re talking VMX or WVC. Those misses can be costly.
You’ve got a CRM or automation system like HubSpot, but you’re not getting enough utility from it.
You know your product but not your buyer.
You’re relying on ChatGPT to have all the answers, but you can’t tell if it’s right on or hallucinating.
What questions should you ask when hiring a B2B veterinary marketing agency?
When it comes to choosing a B2B veterinary marketing agency, you want to make sure you're picking one of those “eat their own dog food” types. Not the type that are all bark and no substance. Here are some questions to ask:
Can you show us some case studies that demonstrate results for a business like ours in this industry?
Have you won any VETTY awards? If they don’t know what a VETTY is…they definitely don’t know animal health.
How long have you been working in animal health?
What percentage of your client work is in the animal health industry?
Based on my product, who do you think my buyer is?
Can you audit my existing strategy and give me pointers? No better way to see what they can do than let them get a look behind the curtain, after signing an NDA, of course, to make sure you are extra comfy.
Do you have any references in my industry that I can talk to?
Share your expectations and ask whether they’re realistic and whether they’ve achieved something similar for a client in this space. They can’t share their clients, of course, but they can tell stories.
Ask how they use AI to make sure you are comfortable. Cookie-cutter doesn’t work in this space; they need more than a Claude subscription to cut it.
When should you hire in-house instead?
Ah, yes, the elephant in the room. If you need daily marketing mojo and have enough work to keep someone busy, go for it! You may find a rock star who’s got animal health experience (they are unicorns, though, so if you find them, snap them up quick!!). You may also find an awesome marketer from outside the industry who you know has what it takes to execute with an industry-specific partner. In that case, you may still bring on a B2B animal health marketing agency in a smaller capacity to support your new-to-industry powerhouse marketer.
But if you crave specialized skills or flexible support, a B2B animal health marketing agency might be your best bet. Make sure you pick an agency that integrates well with your in-house marketer; you want one that supports your in-house team, not one that competes with them.
Is it too soon to hire a B2B veterinary marketing agency?
Hmmmm, good question, right? Sometimes it is actually too soon to involve an agency. When in doubt, call one, see what they think. If they’re any good, they’ll be honest about what they can do for you based on where your company is at.
You may not be ready if:
Your product is in development, with go-to-market timelines that are very up in the air. Nothing kicks a relationship off on the wrong foot like a client paying for a service and an agency unable to deliver results because product availability is too far off.
You cannot support sales follow-up. We make it rain leads, then they sit. Frustrating all around.
You are not ready to consistently market. Marketing isn’t something you just turn in Q4 to get a quick hit of sales. Trust doesn’t work like that in this market.
You're in major organizational flux and don’t have the attention to dedicate to marketing efforts, or you don’t have a dedicated champion to work with the agency.
You don’t believe in marketing. It’s true, this happens. We’ve been on more than one call (a call not initiated by us) where people are like, “Yeah, we don’t think marketing is going to work.” Cool. Call me when you’re ready to put our heads together to make it work, and we’ll be here to kick tail for you!
You’re looking for a set-it-and-forget-it campaign. This industry moves fast; you always have to be evolving to keep up.
You like to operate on gut feel vs KPIs. We need goals to hit so we can all celebrate victories together.
You have no idea what your marketing budget is. You don’t need a huge budget; you just need a defined budget so the agency can tell you how to squeeze the most utility out of it.
Start your exploration of B2B veterinary marketing agencies.
Shameless pitch time. We’re here if you need help. Maybe you’re not sure if you are ready for a B2B veterinary marketing agency; maybe you just want to bounce some ideas off folks who have done it for a long time; maybe this fancy little blog convinced you that we are your kinda people. Whatever the case, we’d love to meet you. If we’re not the right fit (and we will absolutely tell you if we’re not because we value your success above all), we’ll help you find someone who is.