Clinician’s Brief, the #1 most essential publication* by small animal veterinarians for 9 years, guides the most critical decisions in veterinary medicine, from the trenches of the practices to the halls of policy. The pet market is a booming industry: 70% of US households have a pet, and most of us care deeply about them, in some cases prioritizing their healthcare ahead of our own.
Clinician’s Brief serves the people who care for our pets, a community that has undergone significant volatility in the past few years. Veterinarians are in demand and in deep distress; a CDC report estimates 1 in 6 have seriously contemplated suicide (and that was before the pandemic upended their lives and sent the number of pets soaring).
In 2022, we set out to play a different role for vets. Combining our unique clinical content with professional and personal support from experts, we aimed to serve the “whole vet” at a time of unprecedented growth and crisis for our audience. From a business standpoint, we mapped this vision to three goals:
Increase engagement among current audience; build habitual use
Acquire new audiences through digital channels to fuel top-of-funnel growth
Drive conversions toward Clinician’s Brief registration and Brief Media premium products
*2007-2017 PERQ and Essential Media Studies
For decades, Clinician’s Brief has served veterinarians with clinical information, guiding them toward making the right decisions for their patients. But it was clear that diagnostic and treatment information for pets wasn’t going far enough to help the veterinarians themselves.
In 2022, we expanded our existing clinical content strategy to serve veterinarians based on audience analysis of:
Media habits: What they were engaging with, at work and personally
Professional routines: What they did every day, week, month
Pain points: What they hated about their jobs, or what cost them time
Influencers: What mattered to them when they were making decisions
Loyalty and defections: When they were going to competitors and why
We found that most professionals were struggling under the weight of their jobs: Suffering from time famine, unrealistic work demands, raising children amid punishing schedules, and profound moral distress that amounted to a mental health crisis.
Our expanded strategy sought to meet our audience where they are by offering connections to other vets, research and practical solutions to manage the demands of their profession. Formats supplementing our clinical coverage include:
VetReal: Community podcast and opinion platform for vets to share how they’ve coped with a challenge
Second Opinion: A vet-to-vet advice series addressing issues beyond the clinical
Power List: Profiles of vets doing extraordinary things for their communities
Content built under our new strategy is averaging 23% higher engagement, and we’re just getting started.
