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.

Using Optometric Websites to Expand Your Practice

Want to see an instant boost to your practice? Designing a dynamic, user-friendly website is just the ticket. You might have a basic website right now, and that’s fine—but it you want to attract more patients in today’s world, your website should mirror the content of the best optometric websites.

Here are a few tips based off of what other optometric websites have done well:

“User-Friendly” is the Key. Many of your visitors might have varying degrees of vision impairment, so this should be a given. A user-friendly environment is what your patients will expect—and what will keep them at your site.

Address the Basics. More than a few new websites (and some established ones) leave out critical basic information that you’ll definitely not want to miss. Your practice’s name, location, and hours of operation should be plainly visible on your homepage. Your patients will be expecting it, so definitely include it.

Talk Yourself Up. Include biographical information about you, the history of your practice, and other key staff. This will allow your patients to get a good feel for your practice in the comfort of their own home.

Advertise. Make your name known, especially in your area. People in your area who are looking for an optometrist should know about you. Increase your reach through search engine optimization so that your site will appear in local searches on Google, Yahoo, and other popular search engines. Signing up with Yahoo Local and Google Maps won’t hurt, either.

Give Patients an Incentive to Visit. Incentives are key. They often make the difference between the “on-the-fence” patient and the “newly acquired” patient. Including special offers, coupons, an opt-in newsletter, and other services that people will find useful will help your patient base expand.

Go the Extra Mile. There are many features you can add to your website that will be of use to your patients. Think about interactive features like a glasses suggestion tool or real-time online scheduling—both can be added fairly easily, and they’ll help your patients immeasurably. With extra touches like these, your website will truly stand out.

Successful optometric websites focus on the patient and provide him or her with needed services. If you follow the steps I’ve outlined above, you’ll have no problem establishing yourself as the go-to professional in your area.

Optometric Marketing on the Internet

What does your optometric marketing plan look like? A typical plan—successful, but typical—might rely on getting the word out to patients via the Yellow Pages and ads on radio and television. There’s nothing wrong with this approach in and of itself—except when you compare it with what you can do on the Internet.

If you want to increase revenue and see a steady stream of new patients, you need to be conversant with how the Internet and your optometric marketing plan can work together to produce results. The great thing about it all? It’s actually pretty easy!

First, consider the following: How do people—particularly young people—get their information today? Increasingly, it’s not from magazines, TV, or newspapers, but rather the World Wide Web. Your optometric marketing plan needs to take this into account. But how?

It’s one thing to be on the Internet, and another thing to be able to found there. Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Metacrawler are you friends in this case, as are directories like dmoz.org. Make sure your site is listed and available to the major search engines. For starters, you can submit your site to Google here.

When you consider content for your website and other Internet-related matters, the following tips will make a difference:

• Send out an e-newsletter to patients who opt to receive it. Your newsletter should contain coupons redeemable for things like eyewear and contact lenses, as well as interesting optometry-related articles for your patients to peruse.

• While you’re at it, put some of those articles—or others you or your staff write—on your website, too. It’s a professional touch.

• Submit your articles to article database sites like e-zinearticles.com. Use the articles to link back to your site. This is a simple way to increase traffic.

While this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of using the Internet to grow your practice, following the tips listed above will give you a great start. Your patients are moving forward—is your optometric marketing plan going with them?

Optometry Marketing and Email – How To Use Links

Using links in your optometry marketing email campaigns is an excellent way of demonstrating your good intentions and essential to getting the most out of this powerful and inexpensive marketing tool.
Your patients like to know what you recommend or find interesting.

Not only are giving them valuable information, but the link is also perceived as an added benefit and testament to your sincerity.
This fits with good optometry marketing ethics, plus you have the unique ability to test and measure the effectiveness of your broadcast(s) and links.

Here are a few guidelines on how to incorporate links into your weekly or monthly broadcasts:

• Plan to distribute the link once or twice in the body of the message.
• Only use trustworthy sources – especially when citing news content.
• The ‘PS’ should repeat the main link, but also include a link to your appointment scheduler, blog, and an email link to you or staff for questions.

For specials, have a link to a ‘landing page that goes into more detail’ and finally, make sure to describe the link or at least make it work with the rest of the email context.

Here’s an article you might find helpful for your optometry marketing email endeavors.

http://www.tlcpracticebuilder.com/archives/AnOptometristsGuidetoEmailMarketing.pdf

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