Marketing remains an important part of running your optometrist firm. It doesn’t matter whether you’re just starting out or you’ve spent over a decade running your optometry firm. To remain relevant and command authority in your industry, you must be willing to adapt to eye care advertising trends and remain on track with your optometrist advertising efforts.
In this optometrist marketing guide, we will unveil to you a foolproof strategy that when carried out properly yields skyrocketing results.
Why is marketing important for optometrists?
Marketing is important for optometrists for the same reason it is in any other business. Without marketing, potential patients are likely not to know that your optometrist practice exists.
The main purpose of marketing for optometrists is to put your optometry services in the spotlight, in front of a whole new set of patient bases, making them aware of your offerings, engaging them, and taking them through a seamless purchase system. Overall, marketing drives profit and growth as well as helps you acquire new customers and retain old ones.
If you’d like to know exactly how to go about this process, stick around for our tips and tricks specifically designed for optometrists, and let’s get you some new clients!
Marketing Tips for Optometrists
Here are some marketing tips that we recommend for your optometrist advertising. Our tips and suggestions will help you create an online presence, reach local audiences, and develop an SEO and content strategy for your website and social media.
Optometrist Website Design
Optometrist advertising in today’s day and age would be incomplete without an optometrist website. As a matter of fact, it is the starting point for your eye care advertising campaigns.
A website is an online representative of your physical optometrist services, and it is a big part of your online presence. It is a powerful optometrist advertising tool that serves as the first impression potential clients will get. That means your website should be clean, easy to navigate, fast to load, and up to par with modern design. It should also contain useful information and features that your current patients as well as potential patients are searching for.
Features like online booking, free and instant online consultation, and strong calls to action are some basic elements you can add. In terms of services, advertising affordable eye exam services can go a long way.
Your optometrist website can also be integrated with an eCommerce store where visitors can make instant purchases directly on your website. This can boost sales, letting you maximize both the medical and the retail side of optometry at the same time. Adding this feature would help you become a one-stop destination that your patients can trust.
From workshops to memberships, the possibilities that a professional optometrist website offers are endless. However, knowing the exact development and design elements that will take your website from ordinary to outstanding might take some time and expertise. If you’d like to get some help in the matter, hiring experts could help you save time.
Optometrist Listings
Advertising is spreading the word about your business. This makes optometrist listing a pivotal part of the process. Online listing helps patients in your localized area search for an optometrist to find you quickly and easily. Online listing can also help with your local SEO efforts.
As a business that mostly requires physical contact with clients, placing your business in local business listings will boost your accessibility by putting you in front of potential customers in your service area.
Local listing lets you appear on several different places on the internet with your business information like phone, address, and opening hours. It can also result in your optometrist business populating Google’s SERP during a localized search by a potential customer. A top online listing for your eye care advertising is Google’s own Google My Business.
A Google My Business listing profile offers powerful insights that create a better understanding of your audience and can be used to target them more directly. From increased visibility to the ability to receive reviews, Google My Business should top your register of online listings for your optometrist advertising.
In addition to a Google My Business profile and local online listings, your eye care advertising will also benefit from creating a profile on sites like Healthgrades, Zocdoc, RateMDs, and Optometry-specific directories like Optometrists Network.
Take advantage of Optometrist reviews
Your eye doctor advertising efforts can thrive through word-of-mouth marketing, and online reviews are the word of mouth on the internet. Your online optometrist review can be positive and negative. It could be happy customers promoting and recommending your optometry service, and it could also be a slightly dissatisfied client sending out a warning. Consumers today depend largely on reviews to help them make the buying decision you desire. In essence, it is important to use the power of your optometrist review in favor of your eye doctor advertising efforts.
There are several ways reviews can be collected from customers including through forms on your website, social media, or your local online listing profile. What’s vital is how you respond, handle, and use them for your optometrist advertising campaign.
To maintain a good public image for your optometrist practice, we believe it is important that some time is taken to respond to all reviews whether positive or negative. We also suggest that the best of your reviews should be displayed on your optometrist website.
Negative reviews should be given a prompt response. Do not take the review personally. Instead, maintain a calm, professional, and courteous tone. We also suggest you fully understand the complaint before giving a response. Be genuine, apologize where needed, and make it clear that you are willing to correct the dissatisfaction immediately to prevent future occurrences.
Whether you are responding to a positive or negative review, we believe it is important to show appreciation to the reviewer in your response.
Optometrist SEO
An effective technique to drive organic traffic that could lead to conversion to your optometrist website is through SEO.
SEO, short for Search Engine Optimization, is simply the process of optimizing a website so that it appears when your potential customers search for related queries on a search engine, like Google.
An optometrist SEO strategy would begin with thorough keyword research on what potential patients are searching in regard to the services you offer. It will provide you with valuable information about the terms they are using, common language, etc., when approaching your industry.
For example, effective keyword research will let you know if people are saying “red eye” or “bloodshot eyes” when talking about certain eye problems they might be facing. The results will become the keyword you’ll want to put in a service page or blog targeting the different reasons why people’s eyes might be irritated. This is how you will reach your target audience based on what they are typing into Google.
Keyword research also comes in handy when creating blogs and articles optimized for search engines. Performing keyword research before creating content for your optometrist blog gives you an insight into what your audience needs and wants to read at that period of time. This can help you build credibility and thus conversion if you keep providing your readers with just what they are searching for.
Now, SEO isn’t just about relevant keywords. Several things go into an effective SEO strategy. The aim of SEO is to make the search engine trust your website and believe it is capable of solving searchers’ problems. A responsive and secure website with a mobile-first design also goes a long way.
Optometry link building is one way a search engine can guarantee your credibility, authenticity, and authority. Link building is the process of having other websites around the web link back to yours. These links are known as backlinks and are important to your optometrist advertising efforts. On-page SEO like proper title tag, meta description, URL, page speed, and site performance also play a role in your search ranking.
Overall, SEO is a tool that can help your optometrist website rank better on SERPs. With this, prospective patients can find your optometry practice. Search engine optimization is long-term marketing that results in more leads and sales but it’s time-consuming and definitely requires prior experience to get the desired results. However, the result is well worth it.
Nomadic Advertising offers an SEO service that helps you gain visibility on the first page of Google organically. With our SEO service, you get a content strategy, backlinks, call tracking, web analytics, keyword research, a Dedicated Project Manager, and more. Get in touch for a free consultation and have us execute a structured plan that takes your business to the next level.
Optometrist Content Strategy
A content strategy is the part of your eye doctor advertising that entails the planning, creation, publication, and maintenance of your optometrist content. Your optometrist content strategy should combine both SEO and content marketing, thus bringing you the best value for your optometrist advertising effort.
A content strategy could entail the following steps:
1) Have a clear goal in mind. What aims do you intend to achieve with your optometrist advertising? Do you intend to create brand awareness, or boost sales of a particular product or service?
2) After having a well-defined goal in place, try to understand your target audience. Understanding the behavior of your buyer persona can help you formulate a successful plan.
3) Then, we suggest that you run a content audit to determine your best and worst-performing content types. Do blogs and infographics do better than videos and pictures? These are the kinds of questions you should aim to answer.
With each piece put in place, think of content that would be most appealing to your eye care audience. You can search for this during your keyword research and that way you’ll ensure your topics will be of interest to your audience.
4) Lastly, develop a content calendar with the most appealing ideas. A content calendar is simply a schedule of where and when you plan to publish future content.
5) With all content and dates in place, we suggest you implement automatic publishing by scheduling when content should go online.
Optometry Ads
Optometry PPC (pay-per-click) ads are worth having alongside your SEO efforts in an optometrist advertising campaign. Consider running a Facebook PPC ad campaign to create awareness and a Google PPC ad campaign to reach individuals actively searching for your product. With paid ads like Google Ads, you can also reach different types of segmented audiences based on certain data.
As with content and SEO, your PPC campaign begins with defining the best keyword you want to bid for. Incentives like promoting a discount, a referral program, or free consultation can be added to your ad copy to encourage your audience to click on your ad.
A perfect example is the “buy one get one free 4 kids” as seen in the third ad below.
When creating your PPC ad copy, we believe keeping it customer-focused can help your audience resonate with your product and the solution it offers.
Here’s an example: Save 20%, improve your vision. Ensure your copy is simple, concise, and features an attention-grabbing headline, picture, and an actionable call to action like “Sign up for free today” or “Claim 50% off your contact lenses now!”.
Optometry Social Media Posts
In today’s digital age, social media has become a powerful tool that we recommend you use in your eye doctor advertising. You can use your social media presence to reach new prospects, build social engagement, and voice the message of your optometrist brand.
Social media, when done right, can help scale your business. You may choose to audit content across several platforms to find the best one for your optometrist advertising. Nevertheless, we strongly recommend a Facebook and Twitter Business Account.
According to a survey by Statista (with results from marketers worldwide) Facebook is the social media platform with the largest return on Investment (ROI) [1]. In another survey, it is the most popular social network with over three billion monthly users. This data proves that Facebook, when used properly, could be a pivotal part of your eye care advertising.
An Instagram Business Account could also be an added advantage for socializing with your audience with reels, stories, highlights, and more.
Once you have selected the right social media platforms for your business, think what type of posts you want to share.
At Nomadic Advertising, we believe in adding value and as such we recommend adding several “How-to” posts to your social media content strategy. For example, “How To Know your Eyeglasses Prescription” is something individuals interested in eye care would want to read. Sharing a patient success story is another kind of engaging content you should consider. Success stories provide your audience with an interesting piece while at the same time convincing them your services will work for them as they did others.
Final Optometry Marketing Ideas
The list of ideas for an effective optometrist advertising strategy is endless. Here are a few extra tips and suggestions that can set your eye care advertising for success and improve your patient experience:
Email Marketing
Email marketing isn’t a marketing strategy that has proven to be an effective way of keeping in touch with current and prospective patients. You can use it to promote your products and services.
Start a Referral Program
A referral program with an amazing reward that doesn’t break the bank can be an effective way to acquire new patients. Patient testimonials can grow your optometry practice quickly. A happy patient would be willing to tell others about your optometry practice. Now with a reward attached, you can turn existing customers into trusted sources for getting new leads. Try giving vouchers for services or discounts on purchases per person referred.
Looking for marketing services?
There is no hiding it. Marketing can be hard. Especially when it isn’t your field of specialty. We at Nomadic Advertising understand this firsthand. If you need help, we can plan, launch, and manage a full-blown optometrist advertising campaign for you.
Our team of experts is here to help you along the marketing way and allow you focus on what you are actually good at: the eye care of your patients.
Book a free consultation with us today to develop a marketing plan for your optometrist practice and kickstart that eye care advertising that lands you more patients. We are your one-stop destination for all your eye doctor advertising solutions.
Sources
1) https://www.statista.com/statistics/1284484/social-media-platforms-highest-return-on-investment/
2) https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/
