Marketing for Optometrists: Strategies, Tips, and Best Practices
Posted: August 11, 2022 - By Health DevAs an optometrist, you probably want to focus on what you do best: offering your patients primary care for vision health. But the truth is, optometry is still a business. In order to find patients in the first place, you need quality advertising and a great marketing strategy. Marketing in the optometry business is far different from marketing, say, a restaurant, but there are plenty of effective ways to draw in prospective patients and boost your online reputation.
Marketing for Optometrists: 5 Digital Marketing Strategies to Attract Potential Clients
Time to start crafting strategic marketing plans to draw potential customers to your optometry business. An online and social media presence, careful advertising, and boosting reviews all play a part. The important thing is not just patient acquisition but maintaining patient relationships so that the patients you bring in stick with you. To do that, you need to stay on their mind even when they’re not in the office. Here are some of the top strategies for successful marketing for optometrists.
1. Use Email Marketing Tools and Campaigns to Build Relationships With Patients
One way to stay on the minds of your patients is through email marketing campaigns. Consider sending out a newsletter. You can tell patients what your optometry business has been up to lately, as well as offering helpful vision health tips. You can also use email marketing campaigns to promote new products or special offers and services. Any new advances in the field of optometry? You can let your patients know through email. All of this helps boost your visibility.
Not every email marketing campaign will be right for all of your patients. For instance, some issues will be more common in senior patients as opposed to college students. It’s a good idea to have a few different email lists based on demographics. That way, you’ll make sure to send relevant information to the right patients and get the best returns on your email marketing campaigns.
2. Run Social Media Ads and Social Media Campaigns to Target People in Your Area
In 2021, 7 out of 10 Americans used social media on one of the many platforms available. Chances are, most of your prospective patients are on social media. They may check Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn more often than they check their email. Social media ads are key to any successful marketing strategy.
You don’t have to be on every social media platform, but you should do some market research to determine where most of your patients are likely to be and set up accounts there. From there, you can set up social media campaigns. That might be imagery with statistics about optometry, introductions to your staff, or a campaign to promote a special offer or new products. You can also pay to have ads on social media that will come up on users’ feeds based on their data and algorithm.
3. Send Out Patient Surveys to Monitor Patient Satisfaction
Patient acquisition is one thing. But to keep those patients and continue to acquire more prospective patients, you need to know what you’re doing right — and what you’re doing wrong. One way to do so is with patient satisfaction surveys. After their appointment, you can send patients a secure link to complete a short survey about their satisfaction with your care. The results of this survey offer a patient view of your practice’s strengths and weaknesses. You can push those strengths in your marketing strategy while working to improve your weak spots.
4. Optimize Your Website and Content for the Major Search Engines
The best online home for your business is a website that clearly lays out your team, your services, and how patients can contact you. When you have a website and begin looking into digital marketing campaigns, one thing that will likely come up is search engine optimization (SEO). SEO is about marketing strategies that will help you get recognized by search engine algorithms so that you can work your way onto the first page of your prospective patients’ search.
Search for keywords relevant to your business — that is, keywords your prospective patients are likely to use when searching for an optometrist. Sprinkle these naturally throughout your website. Beautiful imagery will also help boost SEO, as will engaging content like blogs, articles, and whitepapers. Additionally, the clearer and more user-friendly your website is, the longer people are likely to stay on your website. This will also help boost your search engine rankings.
Tips and Best Practices for Optometry Marketing
The above tools are a great way to launch successful marketing for optometrists. But many optometrists are not born marketers and may wonder what the unwritten rules are. What is a faux pas when it comes to marketing, and what should you keep in mind? Here are some of the best practices for optometry marketing.
1. Keep Your Google My Business Profile Updated and Current
When patients search for your optometry business, your Google My Business profile will likely be one of the first things to come up. This lists basic business information like hours, addresses, pictures, and contact information. Needless to say, if this profile isn’t kept current, you may end up misleading potential patients. Check your Google My Business profile regularly to make sure any information is current. If your address, website, hours, or contact info change, update your profile immediately.
2. Create Your Optometry Marketing Plan and Set SMART Marketing Goals
When creating your marketing strategy, just think of SMART: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Your marketing should always be timely and relevant to your prospective clients. Likewise, the goals you set when it comes to marketing should be specific, concrete goals that you can measure and realistically achieve. If you aim too high, you set your entire marketing strategy up for failure. If your goals are too vague, you may aim too low. Keep SMART in mind, and you’ll have a clear marketing plan bound for success.
3. Identify Which Social Platforms Your Target Audience Is On
Are you trying to bring in more senior patients? You may want to go with Facebook, where seniors often keep in touch with long-distance family. YouTube also has high numbers when it comes to senior users. If you hope to draw in a younger audience, Twitter and Instagram — maybe even TikTok — might be the way to go. LinkedIn is great for professionals.
The important thing is to know your target audience for a particular marketing campaign. That way, instead of spreading your social media presence too thin, you can concentrate on a couple of platforms that will offer the best returns. It will also save you the headache and wasted energy of trying to promote your optometry business on less effective social media platforms.
4. Keep the Mobile Experience at Top of Mind When Building Your Website
A beautiful website on desktop is one thing, and not an unimportant thing. But most of your prospective patients are likely to access your website on their mobile device as well as desktop, if not exclusively on their mobile device. Often, a website that looks stunning on a computer is clunky and impossible to use on mobile.
Before launching your website to the general public, test it out on mobile. Try using multiple browsers on both Android and iPhone. Is your website just as user-friendly and stunning on mobile as it is on desktop? If not, you need to keep tweaking until any mobile bugs are fixed.
Build Up Your Optometry Practice Using Online Marketing
Digital marketing campaigns are the best way to reach potential clients in 2022, whether that’s boosting your website, pushing for online reviews, or creating social media campaigns. Online marketing for optometrists is a must and, with the right resources, easy to achieve.
