Using your website to expand your client base

Optometric websites need to be accessible and professional to get the results you want—in other words, to reach out to, inform, educate, and generally make life easier for current and potential customers. While a simple website is better than no website at all, a dynamic, visually enticing, and user-friendly website can significantly increase your customer base. Here are some tips I’ve gleaned from optometric websites that do it right:

Usability is key. How user-friendly is your website? This should be at the front of your mind, especially given your profession. As an optometrist, a significant number of your patients likely have some kind of vision impairment. Is the “look” of your site helping them? Make sure that the appearance of your site won’t alienate current and potential customers.

Think like a patient. Include everything you’d expect to find if you were a patient. Amazingly enough, some websites leave out crucial information such as hours, directions, and services offered. Don’t be one of these websites. Go the extra mile by soliciting feedback prior to your website going “live.” This way, you can make sure you’re not missing anything.

Give some history. This is a great way to build trust with your patients. Include some general information about your practice, like how it started. Biographies of key staff are also a nice touch.

Make it public. Do people know about you? If not, you can use the internet to resolve this issue. Get your name out there through savvy search engine optimization—in other words, build your site so that you have a chance of appearing when someone searches for “YourTown Optometrist” in Google or Yahoo. If you don’t know how to do this, Google “search engine optimization” for a start. You should also consider buying some pay-per-click advertising to drive other traffic to your site. In a short time, you’ll be able to tell which ads are most cost-effective.

Offer incentives to visit. Your patients should know about your website and have reasons to check it out. Including special offers, an opt-in newsletter, and other services will go a long way to making this happen. If you offer coupons on your website, for instance, they can’t get lost like their paper counterparts. This is a cost-effective way to reach out to your customers.

Push the envelope. Offering “extras” through special features on your website is a definite plus. Think about what your client base would benefit from, and make it happen on your website. Perhaps it’s an interactive feature like a glasses suggestion tool, or real-time online appointment scheduling. Your patients will greatly appreciate such creative—and helpful—flourishes.

Optometric websites can be many things. At their best, they can help you build your client base and secure a vibrant future for your practice. Take a look at your website today and ask yourself: Am I giving my customers what they want?

Realizing Your Marketing Plan through Online Advertising

Q: How can I use online advertising to expand my practice?

A: It’s easier than you think.

Marketing is a crucial part of any optical practice management plan, and with the Internet we have one of the most powerful tools ever created for putting our plans into action. More than with radio, television, and newspapers, you can use the Internet to harness broad-based yet extremely efficient advertising methods that will significantly enhance your practice. If you haven’t tried it yet, you should.

When optical practice management teams use traditional marketing methods—radio, television, and newspapers, as mentioned above—they miss out on a world of potential contacts. And that’s to say nothing of the cost of traditional advertising. Radio, television, and newspaper are simply more expensive. While these methods do reach customers, you can reach just as many people for a fraction of the cost with Internet advertising. That’s an opportunity to jump at.

No tool is better-suited than the Internet for reaching existing clients, past clients, and potential future clients. Online advertising is a 21st-century way of tackling a 20th-century issue—namely: I have a business, and I want clients for my business. How will I attract clients to my business?

The best way to advertise your practice on the Internet is through your own website. Make sure your patients know your URL and that your site is attractive and easily navigable. Collect patients’ e-mail addresses so you can send them updates that link back to your site, and watch as your number of daily visits increases.

Putting your marketing plan into action has never been easier. By spicing up your website, using business cards effectively, and getting patients’ e-mail contacts and communicating with them electronically, you will be well on your way to modernizing your practice and attracting new customers in the process. Who said optical management practice had to be difficult?

Using E-mail to Enhance Eye Care Marketing

To say that e-mail has revolutionized the way we communicate would be saying far too little. Professionals use e-mail every day to exchange information with colleagues, contemporaries, and customers. As an eye care professional, it’s important that you think about how e-mail impacts your eye care marketing.

Improving your eye care marketing is easy, and it makes life easier on you and your patients. I recommend using e-mail in the following ways:

As a scheduling tool. Your website should offer patients the opportunity to schedule appointments instantly, 24 hours a day. After the patient has scheduled an appointment, an auto-confirmation should be sent to his or her e-mail address.

As a forum for frequently asked questions—including answers—on your website. This saves you and your patients the hassle of rehashing concepts, questions, or ideas you’ve already discussed. Your patients will be glad to know there’s a place where their most basic questions can be answered, and where they can return with other inquiries.

To offer special discounts and deals. After all, who doesn’t like a deal? A discount for friends and family or a set of coupons offering discounts on glasses or contact lenses could increase your patient base considerably.

To educate patients. E-mail is basically an expeditious way of sharing information. As a professional who works closely with people who don’t share your level of expertise, you’re in the unique position of being able to share vital information with people who want to hear it. Maintaining healthy vision is important to your patients, and you can use e-mail to guide them along that path.

E-mail has changed the way communicate and business with one another. It allows you to accomplish so much more at a fraction of the cost. That’s a marketing advantage you can’t afford to ignore. Why not take advantage of it?

Eye Care Marketing and E-Newsletters: Does Frequency Really Matter?

Many of us who commit to email marketing as part of our overall eye care marketing strategy get hung up on which matters more:  Frequency or Content?

Well, it depends…But first,

Content Is King

Okay, so you’ve figured out that email is an extremely cost-effective way of getting your message out to the patient base.

Your email systems set up and ready to go and you even have a few emails collected.

So what are you going to talk about? The answer is easier than you think.

The key to is to give patients what they want – useful information about their eyes.

Yup. That leaves it wide open.

Whatever topic you focus on, it must be about them – for them – with them in mind.

But of course, written by you, from you, and with some semblance of your voice included.

Great content delivers value in style. The style is you, the practice, the doctor, or the eye care owner. The value is whatever topic promises to help people.

So you create an email broadcast and you send it. To your surprise it gets lots of opens. A few patients even write back to you. And if you are truly on the ball, more than a few decided it was time to see you…

So they clicked your online appointment link and now you’ve paid for the hosting, email service, and time it took you to put the email together.

Now you are ready to send the next one?

How about next week?

What Will Patients Think About Another One So Soon?

The answer again, depends.

And this time, its about your track record.

Or, to follow along with our discussion, how you put together that first message together.

Another thing about great content is that it always takes people on a bit of a journey. Everyone likes a story so its natural to cover a topic and mention that in the future there will be more about this.

For example, the topic of this discussion is one part of a much longer story that I’ll covering in great detail as we go on. Indeed, I’ve been putting this stuff together for you for quite some time, but I have my own practice to run.

In fact, I’m in the process of getting my next series of emails out to my patients about our upcoming Trunk Show. So I better keep this short.

The point is this:  If you are delivering good content – or information that does not sound corporate or smell of sales and marketing or looks like the last three messages in their inbox, then you can send them out as much as you want – especially if you told them  -as part of you story.

Maybe your not convinced and worried about turning patients by sending to many marketing messages. Most eye care professionals tend to discount the power of email in their overall eye care marketing strategy.

Eye Care Marketing For The Internet Age: How To Use Your Blog

So you’ve got your website set up and humming in the eye care marketing backgroud – pre-selling qualified patients by offering information and answers that they are looking for.

And your email system is steadily growing, maintaining a healthy list of actively engaged patients who can’t to see what you’ll send them next.

So now it’s time to test things out with an  eye care marketing event or a promotion.

You set up an announcement on your home page and start talking about this in your email broadcast.

Obviously, not everyone will be interested, and the last thing you want is to turn off your loyal followers with an intense marketing campaign.

So what do you do?

Take the group that wants to know more to your blog. As you know, blogs are incredibly simple to set-up.

A Wordpress blog is free and you can have someone set one up for your for the cost of a pizza.

Once you have a simple, clean looking template set up, you’re ready to start posting.

Okay. Back to your promotional campaign.

Here’s how to use your blog for a profitable event:

Somewhere in your email broadcast, let people know about the upcoming event.

This could work for trunk shows, special promotions, community events, and many other eye care marketing strategies.

And tell them that they can learn more about it by visiting your blog.

The click the click the link that takes them to the blog post.

Of course, the best part is that your blog post will encourage comments and questions that the other folks can see and be a part of

And we all know the power social proof. Of course, this is merely one use of a blog.

I plan to cover others in future approach – especially with regard to how your blog can build traffic to your main website.

Finally, eye care professionals tend to discount the power of email in their overall eye care marketing strategy.  Again,

We’ll be covering more of this as well.

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