When you’re busy running and managing your practice, it can be easy for marketing efforts to fall to the side or take a back burner. But a crucial step in continued growth is smart marketing. It’s important to round out your marketing plan with high-return activities.
If you’re in the beginning stages of marketing, finding the right partners is an essential step to long-term success. In the meantime, you can begin employing plenty of optometry marketing tips right away, including active social media presence, advertising, and search engine optimization (SEO) improvements.
Optometry Marketing Tips
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer for improving or developing a marketing plan for your optometry practice. Each business will vary slightly in its needs and strategies based on factors such as location, local demographic, and services offered.
Below you’ll find 10 practical optometry marking tips that most practices can benefit from using in their overall strategy.
Improving Local SEO Presence
The internet is an extremely busy place. The internet’s growth has been increasingly staggering every year since the early 90s. So, there are bound to be competitive offices out there with websites.
This is where search engine optimization, or SEO, comes into play. By employing specific strategies, such as an informative website, regular blog content, and targeting keywords, you can increase the chances of your website showing up more often or towards the top in search results.
Active Social Media Presence
Social media is becoming more and more important. What started as a way for friends and family to stay in touch has become an integral point of business growth. Your ultimate marketing goal typically determines which platforms you should focus on. Things like giveaways and entertaining or educational posts all have a place.
Google Ads
With the popularity of the Google search engine, it’s no wonder that Google ads are often a good choice. The nice thing about google advertising is that it’s not terribly complicated, and there are plenty of tutorials online. Having partners with systems in place for advertising can be extremely beneficial if online advertising is a new domain for you.
Offering Online Services
We live in a world where everyone seems to love convenience. And there are often legitimate reasons for this, like busy schedules or long work days. Offering convenient online services, such as the ability to request appointments online, can be why someone chooses your practice over your competition.
Boosting Presence
Being active on social media is great, and it’s important. But that’s not always enough to grow your audience. Many platforms like Facebook or LinkedIn offer the ability to “boost” posts. Essentially, you can pay a small fee in exchange for the platform to show your content to people who don’t necessarily follow you.
Google “My Business” Listing
Ensuring that your “My Business” profile on Google is claimed and filled out is a great step to solidifying yourself as a local business. Having this makes it easy for your local clients to find you and for you to manage your online presence.
Referral Incentives
Word-of-mouth is one of the most powerful advertising tools. Unfortunately, people don’t always tell their friends even if they were happy with the service and had a good experience. A referral incentive helps encourage people to share their positive experiences in your practice. One thing to remember with referrals is that they aren’t allowed in every state, so check your local advertising regulations first.
Traditional Advertising
Online presence is definitely a modern focus, but there are other ways to spread the word about your practice. Radio ads, local TV ads, and newspapers are still viable options. In some cases, with certain demographics, these may actually be more effective than a Facebook or Instagram ad.
Reviews
As mentioned, word-of-mouth is powerful. A great form of this type of advertising are reviews. The problem is that only some people think to leave an online review, even if their experience was great. So, ensuring you ask for your reviews is important. Doing a raffle with names of people who leave reviews is another way you can encourage patrons to leave them.
Follow-Ups After Visit
Like any other business, one-off customers are good, but developing lasting relationships with your practice’s patients is crucial. A great way of doing this is with post-visit follow-ups. This is also a great time to ask for a review or referral.
Chat More About Marketing with Us
Marketing can sometimes feel like banging your head against a wall because the results aren’t always immediately visible. If you’re getting started with a marketing plan and need help, or you’re wondering about partnerships, reach out to us. The professional team at Total Vision is happy to answer your questions or put you in touch with the person who can help you.
