At Vetcelerator, we understand that veterinary services—from boarding and grooming to daycare and medical care—are inherently hyper-local. This means they primarily generate revenue within a consistent, local area during similar business hours. These services are the backbone of local employment and community involvement, and like many small businesses, they require effective marketing strategies to increase their impact. Traditionally, marketing frameworks such as the Seven Ms have been used to guide decision-making:
- Markets: who should I try to reach?
- Mission: what is my goal / what am I trying to achieve?
- Message Content: what should I try to tell them?
- Media Strategy: how do I reach them?
- Message Design: what should the message look like?
- Money: how much should I spend to accomplish the mission?
- Measurement: how will I measure success, or were steps 1-6 worth it?
Focusing on ‘Mission’ helps clarify whether the goal is to boost brand awareness or persuasion.
Defining the Mission in Hyper-Local Marketing
The mission in hyper-local marketing is typically twofold—either to increase awareness or to drive persuasion:
- Awareness: This is about making your target audience aware of your services, sparking interest, and leading them toward action, such as visiting your clinic.
- Persuasion: This aims at shifting perceptions and motivating specific actions, like choosing your service over competitors.
Take, for example, McDonald’s marketing strategies:
Awareness in action
Persuasion in action
- Awareness in Action: The billboard on the left does a great job of not persuading you about anything. However, it clearly and urgently lets you know that there’s a McDonald’s restaurant at the next exit. You should go if you’re hungry, thirsty, or need anything else. McDonald’s has the advantage of being recognized by anyone who sees a red backdrop with curved yellow lines. They don’t even need to tell you their name in the design and content, which is quite impressive.
- Persuasion in Action: The billboard on the right is trying to convince you of something. It’s hot, you should be thirsty, and thirsty people drink Coca-Cola. There are two huge differences between this approach and the awareness campaign. Notice that this billboard tells you it’s McDonald’s, and it doesn’t tell you where to go. It doesn’t have the urgency of the awareness campaign; it just wants to convince you that a McDonald’s soda is thirst-quenching on a hot day.
Extra credit: is this ad awareness or persuasion?
When applying these concepts to pet services, it’s crucial to assess whether your marketing efforts are intended to inform potential clients of your presence (awareness) or convince them of your services’ superiority (persuasion). This strategic foundation profoundly influences the subsequent choices of what, how, and where to communicate your message.
At Vetcelerator, we tackle marketing challenges with optimism. We believe in generating tangible outcomes and improvements so that our communication informs or persuades our audience. By focusing on driving brand awareness and persuasion in hyper-local contexts that matter most to our clients, we help them achieve their marketing goals.
