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?

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.

Optometric Websites – Time For Enhancement

There is an art to designing optometric websites—if you do it right, you’ll see an instant boost to your practice. And while a basic website is better than no website at all, going the extra mile can really expand your patient base. This is one case where attention to detail really pays off.

Here are a few tips culled from successful optometric websites that will have your own site getting all kinds of buzz:

Keep it User-Friendly. Given that many of your visitors might have varying degrees of vision impairment, this is a given. Providing a user-friendly environment gives your patients confidence in what you do and the services you provide.

Address the Basics. It may be hard to believe, but new websites often leave out important information like hours, directions, and services. Think about what you’d definitely want to see if you were a patient, and make sure it’s included on your website. Go a step further, even, and solicit feedback before going live—just to make sure you didn’t miss anything important.

Talk about Yourself. People want to know about you, so include some general “about” information, like the history of your practice, and short, individualized biographies of key staff. This will build trust and familiarity among your patients, a key step in actually retaining them.
Make Your Site Known. If people in your area don’t know about your site, they should. Get the word out through search engine optimization so your site will appear in local searches on Google, Yahoo, and other popular search engines. Sign up with Yahoo Local and Google Maps, too, so that patients know exactly where to find you.

Give Patients a Reason to Visit. Incentives, incentives, incentives! Including special offers, coupons, an opt-in newsletter, and other services that people will find useful will be a big plus for your website.

Go the Extra Mile. What can you put on your website that will benefit your patients the most? Interactive features like a glasses suggestion tool or real-time online scheduling rank high on this list. Including features like these will help your site stand out and will ensure return visits from your patients.
Optometric websites that focus on what patients want and need are generally successful. By following the tips above, you’ll be well on your way to establishing your presence on the Internet and using it to build your patient base.

Increasing Revenue With A Modern Optometric Marketing Plan

You want to increase revenue, but how? The answer is simple, really: enhance your optometric marketing plan. Okay, but how do you do that?

A clue lies in the habits of today’s young people. They spend more time surfing the Internet than they do reading magazines, watching TV, or readings newspapers. But what does this mean for your practice, and your optometric marketing in general?

Simply put, the traditional marketing strategies employed by optometrists—reaching patients through the yellow pages and radio and television advertisements—are on their way out. If you want to reach customers in today’s day and age, you have to use the Internet. You can still use those traditional methods to connect with patients—in fact, some of them might still expect it, to some degree—but no contemporary optometric marketing plan is complete without using the Internet.

Your first stop should be Google. It’s the most popular search engine, and it’s how people will find you. Your website needs to be one of the first a prospective patient sees when he or she is looking for an optometrist in your area. Additionally, you should make sure that your website is listed in dmoz.org and Yahoo directories. Bottom line: if your patients can find you, they’re more likely to call you and make an appointment.

As far as your website goes, put up some interesting optometry-related articles that you think your patients would like to read. Send out an e-newsletter with coupons and an interesting article or two. You can then increase traffic to your website by taking your newsletters and placing them on article database sites like e-zinearticles.com.

Strategies like these are easy to implement and will make a big difference. The sooner you’re up on the web in a noticeable way, the quicker your optometric marketing plan will take flight.

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