Using AI to market a veterinary practice

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The practical applications of artificial intelligence (AI) for marketing a veterinary practice was presented by Caitlin DeWilde, DVM, founder of The Social DVM, during her session at the Fetch dvm360 Conference in Kansas City, Missouri.1 Specifically, she reviewed ChatGPT, the AI-powered chatbot and assistant developed by OpenAI and discussed her personal go-to methods when using this technology, recommendations for best practices, and the importance of understanding the limitations of AI.

“[The] No. 1 benefit is that it’s going to save you time,” DeWilde said to her audience of veterinary professionals. “How many of you feel like you get your marketing done and get all of it done in the best way possible… [but] you can’t do it all, because we’ve got 90 million other things going on.”

Practical uses for AI

Throughout her presentation, DeWilde emphasized that the use of AI is, perhaps above all else, a surefire way to increase user efficiency when marketing a veterinary clinic. Providing the audience with a screen-recorded video of herself feeding prompts to ChatGPT, she demonstrated the speed at which the AI can generate ideas, producing lists, paragraphs, and entire blog posts from scratch, in a matter of seconds. She went on to highlight the creativity of AI, showing the way ChatGPT generated clever social media captions, and summarized longer passages of text, guided by parameters that she had set. DeWilde provided a specific example wherein she asked the AI to generate a caption for a “Halloween Safety” post for her veterinary clinic’s social media. Instead of sending back a generic holiday greeting, the chatbot responded with specific and relevant safety tips, in the form of a social media caption.

“Honestly, those are some good tips, I’m going to keep those in there” DeWilde said, admitting that she wouldn’t have considered some of the tips herself, even after 15 years in the field. “It generated this [caption] in just a split second, and now I’ve got a good, informative, educational caption, as opposed to the ‘Happy Halloween’ post that does nothing… if you’re only going to use it for 1 thing, that’s what I’d tell you to use it for: social media captions.”

DeWilde’s next recommended use for AI was for dealing with online reviews. She shared that, because there are a finite number of creative ways to thank clients for positive reviews, and it can be difficult to formulate replies to negative ones, she oftentimes turns to ChatGPT, pasting the review into the chatbot and asking for a short response. Sometimes she asks for a list of responses that she can then choose from. The AI tends to reference key points of the review in its reply, making the response appear genuine. It can also be used to evaluate collective reviews, and note what clients tend to like, and what they’re often more critical of. She recommended taking this a step further and asking for advice to improve the practice based off of the online feedback.

Another recommendation was to use AI to assist with content strategy. DeWilde advised that users formulate a content plan with ChatGPT, providing the AI with information about their practice, including their specific goals for social media, allowing it to generate a custom content calendar. From there, users can adjust, tweaking the plan however they see fit. The same is possible for a general marketing plan, with ChatGPT generating a multi-channel plan, within the given parameters.

ChatGPT is receptive to feedback, and as long as users are signed-in to the same account, it will remember their established preferences. DeWilde also noted the importance of clarity when using ChatGPT. For example, if a user wants a short paragraph, that must be specified, or else the AI will return something far too lengthy. This can be helpful when fine-tuning prompts or changing the tone of a generated response.

AI considerations

“It can’t replace us, and it cannot be totally trusted,” DeWilde said, discussing the hesitancies she has regarding AI. “Especially [not] with stats, and sources, and things like that.” DeWilde also expressed concern regarding the privacy of ChatGPT. She specifically named ChatGPT’s parent company, OpenAI, when cautioning audience members. “Do you want to be feeding this personal, private data into it? No, because everyone, in theory, could have access to it.”

DeWilde’s other concerns with AI had more to do with technical limitations. Namely, the fact that ChatGPT still requires significant human input, and it cannot be seamlessly implemented into an autonomous marketing plan where it can post on social media. Instead, users are left doing a lot of copying and pasting between programs. Although, she did clarify that she expects this to change in the near future.

Takeaways

Concluding her presentation, DeWilde encouraged attendees to use AI-powered tools in their marketing when they need them. If a practice has a significant weakness, for example struggling to reply to online reviews, or spending too much time trying to think of social media captions, AI can be a useful tool. It can help veterinary professionals spend less time staring at a flashing cursor under a social media post, and more time helping patients in the clinic.

Reference

DeWilde C. AI’s Role in Vet Med Marketing. Presented at: Fetch dvm360 Conference; August 23-25, 2024; Kansas City, MO.