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What 5 Minutes of Video a Month Is Doing for Veterinary Practices
- Jonathan Boden
- Feb 18
- 5 min read
Something interesting is happening at veterinary practices that have started putting video content online. Their waiting rooms are getting busier.
Not because of a viral moment or a massive ad budget. Because potential clients saw a thirty-second video of a vet tech calming a nervous golden retriever during a dental cleaning — and it felt like a practice they could trust.
That kind of content is outperforming almost everything else practices are spending money on. And most practices aren't doing it because they think they can't afford to.
They're wrong. But not for the reason you'd expect.
The numbers are hard to ignore
Visits were down 3.1% per practice last year. Wellness visits dropped nearly 4%. Clients are stretching the time between appointments, and if they don't feel connected to a practice, they'll stretch it even further — or just find someone closer.
Meanwhile, 84% of pet owners are active on Facebook, and nearly half follow their vet there. They're already looking. The question is whether they're finding your practice or the one down the road.
Video content gets two to three times the engagement of photos. Not because the algorithm loves video — though it does — but because people stop scrolling when they see something that feels real. And nothing feels more real than a vet who clearly loves what they do, talking about something they know inside and out.
Why most practices never got into video
It's not that practice owners didn't want video. It's that everything about traditional production was designed to make it impossible for them.
The cost, obviously. Thousands for a single shoot. But that wasn't even the worst part.
The worst part was the animals. Your subjects don't follow direction. The dog that was calm in the lobby is terrified under the production lights. The cat won't come out of the carrier. You've got a crew standing around billing by the hour while a 90-pound lab decides he's done.
Then there's the compliance. Filming live animals comes with real regulatory considerations — welfare guidelines, owner consent, making sure nothing you produce draws scrutiny. It's one more thing nobody has time to navigate.
So most practices did nothing. Or someone tried shooting something on their phone between appointments, posted it, got 40 views, and everyone agreed it wasn't worth the hassle.
Fair enough. That was the only option available.
It's not anymore.
What results actually look like
Before we get into how — because the how is the interesting part — look at what's happening when practices get this right.
A vet explaining why annual bloodwork matters, produced with clean audio and captions, becomes a piece of content that drives appointment bookings for months. Not days. Months.
A recovery story with the right emotional arc gets shared in local Facebook groups and puts a practice in front of hundreds of pet owners who'd never heard of it. One story. Hundreds of new eyes.
Team spotlights — "This is Sarah, she's been with us for 6 years, she has a weird talent for calming down anxious cats" — turn staff into the reason someone picks your practice over the one with better parking.
Myth-busters — "No, your cat doesn't need to go outside to be happy. Here's why." — get saved, screenshotted, sent to friends. They position the practice as the authority in the area without feeling like an ad.
Facility tours let someone feel like they've already visited before they've ever walked through the door. That's trust before the first phone call.
This content works. Measurably. The practices running it are seeing it in their schedule.
The question every manager asks at this point is the right one: how are they making this content without all the problems we just talked about?
Here's what changed
New production methods have made it possible to create this kind of content without a film crew in your clinic. Without wrangling animals. Without navigating filming compliance. Without disrupting a single appointment.
A practice sends over some photos of their team and their space. Maybe a few short clips they already have on their phone. A ten-minute conversation about what makes their practice different. That's their side of it.
What comes back is a month's worth of polished, professional video content — branded, captioned, optimized for every platform, ready to post.
No shoot days. No lighting rigs. No stressed-out animals. No five-figure invoices.
The production techniques behind this are new. They've changed what's possible in terms of quality, speed, and cost. A few years ago, this wasn't an option. Now it's the reason some practices are growing while the ones next door are wondering what happened.
We could get into the specifics of how it works, but honestly, the practices using it don't care about the how. They care that the content looks great, their phones are ringing, and they didn't have to shut down a Tuesday to make it happen.
The objections we hear
"We can't afford professional video." That's the old math. The economics on this have changed completely. A month's worth of content now costs less than what most practices spend on a single print ad — and unlike print, video compounds. It keeps working months after it's posted.
"We don't have time." The entire process takes about ten minutes of your team's time. That's not an exaggeration. Photos, a quick conversation, and you're done. Everything else is handled.
"The animals make it impossible." They don't anymore. That's the whole point. These production methods don't put your patients through a photo shoot.
"Our clients aren't online." 84% of pet owners are on Facebook. And the next generation — millennials and Gen Z — choose their vet based on what they see online before they ever make a call. If a practice isn't showing up with real content, it's invisible to them.
The real cost of not doing this
Every month a practice isn't investing in content, it's not staying still. It's falling behind. The practice down the street that started six months ago? They're showing up when someone searches "vet near me." They're getting tagged in community Facebook groups. They're building the kind of trust that used to take years of word-of-mouth — and they're doing it in weeks.
The barriers that kept most practices out of video — the cost, the animals, the compliance, the disruption — aren't there anymore. Not like they were.
The practices that move on this now are going to look back in two years and wonder why they didn't start sooner.
The ones that don't are going to wonder where their clients went.
Bizarre Bunny helps veterinary practices create professional video content — without the traditional headaches. To see what this looks like for your practice, visit bizarrebunny.com.
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