Author: Bill Ross | Published: June 3, 2026 | Updated: June 3, 2026 Key takeaways from this report: The money behind pet care is steady and rising. U.S. veterinary services revenue is projected to grow from about $38 billion in 2025 to nearly $48 billion by 2028, an annual rate near 7.6%. Owners now treat pets as family, which keeps demand resilient even when household budgets tighten. That resilience has limits, though. Veterinary prices rose 7.6% between 2023 and 2025, faster than general inflation, and price-sensitive owners are starting to comparison-shop before they commit. The risk for any single practice is assuming a rising market lifts everyone equally. It does not. As prices climb, owners spend more time choosing where to go, which means growth flows toward clinics that are easy to find, easy to trust, and easy to book. A practice that ignores its digital presence can watch the category expand while its own new-client count flattens. Where the next three years of growth concentrate:
A growing market hides weak practices for a while. When prices rise and owners slow down to choose, the gap between visible clinics and invisible ones turns into a revenue gap almost overnight. – Emulent Strategy Team
The clearest leak in veterinary revenue is not at the front door. It is inside the relationship. About 83% of pet owners say they have a regular veterinarian, but only 69% visited one in the past year, and roughly half skipped or declined recommended care. The drop-off compounds at every step, and most of it traces back to one cause. Cost drives the decision: 71% of owners who declined care said price was the reason. That makes the care gap a marketing and communication problem as much as a clinical one. When owners do not understand the value of a recommendation or cannot see a path to afford it, they defer, and deferred care often becomes lost care. Practices that treat price as a conversation rather than a surprise recover a meaningful share of those visits. How to close the care gap without discounting your way to it: Closing the gap depends on owners choosing your practice in the first place, and that choice now happens almost entirely on a screen. The decision runs in a predictable order: search, find a listing, read reviews, then call. Reviews sit at the top of nearly every step. 97% of consumers read reviews before choosing a local business, 72% use Google for local information, and 42% click the map pack before any other result. A complete Google Business Profile makes a practice 2.7 times more likely to be seen as credible. This is where strong local SEO earns its keep. A practice with a thin or stale review profile loses the owner before the phone rings, no matter how good the medicine inside the building is. The same applies to listing accuracy: 62% of consumers avoid a business when they find wrong information online, and a single incorrect set of holiday hours can send a dozen new clients to the clinic down the road. The signals that move the map pack, your primary category, proximity, and review strength, are spelled out in the local SEO ranking factors that Google weighs most heavily. The local visibility checklist every practice owner should pressure-test:
Owners do not grade your reviews against perfection. They grade them against the practice two miles away. Twenty fresh reviews beats two hundred from three years ago. – Emulent Strategy Team
The biggest shift in local discovery happened in twelve months. The share of consumers using AI tools to find local services rose from 6% to 45%, and AI is now the third most-used discovery channel after Google and Facebook. Pet owners are asking ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity questions like “what is the best vet near me,” and they are acting on the answers. We do not expect the 39-point jump to repeat. The leap carried AI past the early-adopter chasm into the early majority, where growth stays strong but slows, and a ceiling forms because most people still fact-check what AI tells them. Even so, the strategic problem is urgent: appearing in AI recommendations is about 30 times harder than ranking in Google’s local pack, and only 68% of the business details AI tools surface match what is on Google. A wrong phone number in an AI answer costs you the call without you ever knowing. The good news is that AI SEO, sometimes called generative engine optimization, rests on the same foundation as traditional search. Practices that win citations in Google AI Overviews tend to have deep website content, accurate listings, and a strong review profile already. Building once for both Google and AI is the core idea behind search everywhere optimization. What AI readiness actually requires:
AI does not reject the practices it leaves out. It simply does not know they exist. The clinics building authority now are quietly claiming shelf space that latecomers will not be able to buy back. – Emulent Strategy Team
Convenience is becoming a competitive line, and telehealth is where it shows up first. The U.S. veterinary telehealth market is growing from about $111 million in 2025 toward nearly $195 million by 2028, an annual rate above 20%. Walmart and Amazon have both entered pet telehealth, a clear sign that owners expect remote options for routine questions and follow-ups. We hold the growth rate steady rather than projecting it higher, because state veterinarian-client-patient-relationship rules still limit what a clinic can diagnose remotely, and many owners prefer in-person care for anything serious. Telehealth is not a replacement for the exam room. It is a way to capture visits that would otherwise be skipped and to serve owners who value speed. A practice that markets a telehealth option, even a simple one, signals that it meets owners where they are. Where telehealth fits inside a practice plan: New service models pay off only when they sit inside a plan rather than beside it, which is the real divide between practices that grow and practices that stall. The difference is not budget size. It is whether a practice runs marketing as a coordinated system. Among high-performing local brands, 94% have a dedicated marketing strategy, against just 60% of average performers. That 34-point gap is the clearest predictor of which practices win their market. The gap matters more every year because veterinary markets are consolidating. Corporate groups buy clinics and bring full marketing teams with them, so an independent practice running scattered, occasional tasks falls behind on every front at once: reviews, local search, AI visibility, and brand. The practices that hold their ground treat these as one connected effort, which is the heart of standing out through differentiation in a saturated market. For most independent clinics, the answer is a steady plan run with senior-level focus, the same model behind effective small business marketing and grounded in clear brand strategy. The traits of strategy-led veterinary practices:
Independent practices do not lose to corporate groups because the medicine is worse. They lose because the marketing is occasional. A plain, consistent plan closes most of that gap. – Emulent Strategy Team
The pattern across every number in this report is the same: the practices that grow through 2028 are the ones owners can find, trust, and book without friction, whether the search starts on Google, in the map pack, or inside an AI answer. At Emulent, we help veterinary practices build that system, from Google Business Profile and review strategy to website content, AI readiness, and measurement that connects each channel to real new-client revenue. If you want help putting these veterinary marketing trends to work for your practice, contact the Emulent team for a straightforward conversation about where your next clients will come from.
Veterinary Practice Marketing Trends and 2026-2028 Projections
Veterinary practice marketing has moved from a nice-to-have to the factor that decides which clinics fill their appointment books through 2028. Pet owners research, compare, and judge a practice online long before they call, and a fast-growing share now ask an AI tool to build the shortlist for them. This report gathers the numbers that matter for the next three years, covering market size, the pet-owner care gap, reviews, local search, AI discovery, and telehealth, and turns each one into a decision you can act on this quarter.
How big is the opportunity, and who captures the growth?
Why do pet owners with a vet still skip the visit?
Where do pet owners actually decide which practice to call?
How is AI rewriting the way pet owners find a clinic?
Which new service models deserve a place in the plan?
What separates practices that grow from those that stall?
Turning these trends into new clients
