Optometric Marketing through Online Advertising

If you’re an optometrist using 21st-century methods of online advertising, you’re already attracting potential new customers each and every day. Optometric marketing is venturing into exciting new realms that reach out to—and draw in—new customers in unprecedented numbers. If you’re ready to grow your patient base and have more control over the type of patients you attract, this new form of optometric marketing is for you.

Like all forms of marketing, optometric marketing is an evolving process. Traditional methods—newspaper ads, flyers, newsletters, radio and TV ads—are becoming increasingly less effective. Not only that, they cost a lot. By themselves, they aren’t enough for a solid optometric marketing program.

Thinking differently is the key here, and with the technology at our disposal, we have the answer. The Internet has grown and matured into an indispensable asset for any business, including your practice.

Do you have to be highly Internet-savvy to attract potential patients? Of course not. But following the advice listed below will definitely attract patients to your website:

• Provide clear information about your business: phone numbers and working hours should be visible on every page and also included in the meta-tags for search engine optimization purposes.

• Register multiple domain names, including potentially common misspellings of your site name.

• Understand the concept of keywords and how using them can increase your traffic.

• Create a blog in which you write about topics relevant to your practice that will also be of interest to clients.

Optometric marketing doesn’t have to be difficult. With the advent of online advertising, your reach can be as broad, if not broader, than traditional print media—and at a fraction of the cost.

Using E-Mail for Effective Eyecare Marketing

If you’re using e-mail to connect with your patients and grow your optometry practice, congratulations! E-mail is an essential piece of contemporary eyecare marketing, and using it effectively can help you maintain the patients you’ve had for years and also acquire new ones.

Remember, though, that some uses of e-mail are better than others. Read the following examples, and, in each case, consider whether e-mail is being utilized properly.

• One optometry practice uses e-mail to send regular reminders for annual exams. These e-mails include links back to the practice’s main website for real-time scheduling.

• Another optometry practice uses e-mail to send a weekly newsletter to patients.

• This optometry practice uses e-mail to track clicks over to its website from e-mails that offer special deals on products and services.

• Our final optometry practice uses e-mail to solicit potential new customers, sending communication to a large number of unfamiliar addresses.

Can you tell which practices are using e-mail effectively? How about which ones aren’t? Of the four examples shown above, the first and third represent intelligent eyecare marketing. The second and fourth, conversely, represent approaches that should be avoided.

As with all business endeavors, eyecare marketing clearly has its own list of do’s and don’ts. If you use e-mail judiciously, though, you’ll build trust and loyalty among your patients, and greatly increase the chances of return visits.