The Do’s and Don’ts of Eye Care Marketing

10/28/20 | by Terrnekia Collier | Marketing

Reaching the target audience and converting them into customers that receive a service or purchase a product is the main objective for most businesses and the same goes for eye care practices as well.

We understand that life as a practice owner can be hectic with juggling patients, maintaining operational initiatives, and an office full of employees, but eye care marketing is an important investment to make in order to assure your success.

Your marketing strategy should be carefully crafted to attract as many potential patients to your practice, while also catering to existing ones. Staying on top of current and fundamental marketing trends is a lot of work, but that is why we’re here. You can effectively create buzz around your eye care office by following the 3 most important do’s and don’ts of eye care marketing.

Do: Focus on Your Target Audience

When you say your “ideal patient,” do you know exactly who that is and what they need? Instead of thinking of them as just someone that you’re trying to get through your front door, think of what problem they are trying to solve and how you, an eye care professional, can help them find a solution.

Making your audience the focus in all of your marketing efforts can change how you promote your practice and what marketing materials you decide to create in order to attract patients. Depending on your expertise and what specific services you focus on, that can alter the trajectory of your marketing strategy.

For example:

Optometrists: Content, Google ads, email campaigns, and social media posts focused on the importance of eye health and receiving comprehensive eye exams.

Opticians: Content, Google ads, email campaigns, and social media posts focused on corrective lenses.

Ophthalmologists: Content, Google ads, email campaigns, and social media posts focused on higher revenue services like the importance of eye health and receiving comprehensive eye exams.

Don’t: Forget about Your Potential Patients’ Needs

Online users who are looking for the services you provide are most likely having problems with their vision, need an eye exam, require some form of vision correction, or other eye-related needs.

You should never forget the needs of your audience and how your products and services will resolve their issue. Defining your audience by building a buyer persona, a term used to describe a fictional representation of a member of your target customer base, can help you outline what you need to do to reach those users to fit into the demographics you’re looking for.

Do: Keep Your Website Updated

Think of your website as your handshake with a potential patient. People view handshakes as much more than two strangers embracing, rather, it gives someone an idea of someone’s confidence and intention. Your website gives visitors an idea of who you are and what your practice offers. A quick look at your site can tell someone if you:

Value web design or not
Have a clear and concise vision for your business
Provide services they’re searching for
Are better than your local competitors
Value mobile users
Consider website speed

Creating a checklist with these categories can help to make sure that you have a critical understanding of what your website is missing and what you can do to revamp it and improve website performance.

Don’t: Neglect and Ignore the Importance of User Navigation

While the look and feel of your website are important, so is user-navigation! Ultimately you want your visitors to land on the ‘book appointment’ page to schedule a visit to come to your office, and it should be as easy as pie. Having dedicated pages makes it simple for visitors to find what they’re looking for without having to sift through pages and pages of content.

If they cannot easily find what they are looking for, such as contact information or hours of operation, they are more likely to leave your website in a hurry.

Learn More: 7 Ways to Improve Your Website’s User Experience

Do: Create a High-Quality Content Strategy

Focusing on your content strategy is just as relevant as updating your website. Outside of what is included on your site, what are you doing to reach out to potential and existing patients?

In order to craft a comprehensive content marketing strategy, you have to think of what your objective is when creating a piece of content. Everything should have a purpose if you want the right users to see your content.

Some examples of content that you can produce include:

A tip sheet on how to care for your contact lens and glasses
An ebook on different eye conditions and their related symptoms
Surveys asking patients how they think you’re doing as a business
A video on the best ways to maintain optimal eye health
An infographic on foods that are good for your eyes
A blog post on things to avoid that cause harm to your eyes
Monthly newsletters
Emails for any current promotions, rewards,
Patient testimonials

These are only a few options of the endless possibilities of content that you and your staff can brainstorm and provide to patients who want to learn more.

Don’t: Underestimate the Power of Content Marketing

Content is an essential part of educating, entertaining your audience with useful information, or opening up space to talk about their current experiences with your practice. Your content communicates a specific message to your audience and can generate interest in your services.

Strong pieces of content can also increase your web presence by getting you noticed by even more people and in turn show search engines like Google that you are an authority figure. Quality content is also more likely to be shared on social media. More shares equate to better engagement and that engagement can translate to traffic for your website as well.

Do: Optimize for Search Engines

You may or may not have heard of the term ‘search engine optimization’ or SEO but to put it as simple as possible, it is the practice of improving the quality and quantity of organic traffic that is directed to your website. Organic traffic is traffic that you didn’t pay for (Google ads) to get someone to your site.

You don’t just want a lot of people clicking through to your website, you want a lot of the RIGHT people doing so. There are a few things you can do to improve your SEO. they are as followed:

Produce useful content – creating content that people actually read or watch increases your traffic, which can push your site higher up on the search engine result pages.

Choose your keywords wisely – keywords are one of the most important aspects of SEO. Words that are relevant to your industry should be included in the content and metadata throughout your entire website. Words like optometrist, eye care, eye health, eyeglasses, contact lenses, and eye exams are just some examples of words that may be featured in the text of your website. Add them where they naturally fit in and avoid oversaturating your site with keywords because Google can pick up on that and may penalize you for it.

Brainstorm titles and descriptions that people will click – the fastest way to draw someone’s attention to a blog post or other forms of content is to have an engaging title or description. The more interesting someone finds the title, the more likely they are to click it.

Backlinks, backlinks, and more backlinks – a backlink is when someone references your website on their own and in turn, directs some of their traffic to you. When you make your business more visible online by creating useful content for people to consume, others will begin referencing your content on their site.

Claim your practice on Google My Business – GMB is one of Google’s handy free marketing tools that allows you to claim your business listing online. Your GMB profile includes the name of your business, address, phone number, website link, and hours of operation. It also displays ratings and reviews from patients who have visited your office. The benefits of verifying your GMB profile are that it allows potential patients to learn about your business, hear from others about their experience, lists your business on Google maps, and increases the flow of traffic to your site.

Don’t: Abandon SEO

You can’t forget to focus on SEO and expect to reach the top spot on Google. Choosing targeted keywords that are specific to the eye care industry and what the patients in your local area are searching for can push your website further up the results page and numerous patients to your office.

Do the Do’s and Avoid the Don’ts!

Marketing isn’t something that you just do once and never think about it again. It’s something that requires your constant focus as it is ever-changing and always introducing new trends.

Understanding marketing is pivotal in any industry, but especially for small to medium-sized businesses. Eye care marketing can be a little overwhelming while also trying to focus your attention on the efficiency of your practice.

But marketing is our expertise and we’re here to help guide you in your journey to success when it comes to using the right marketing strategies to generate more patients for you.

If you’re ready to start producing the results you want to see, give us a call at 800.792.8384 or click here to learn about our eye care digital marketing solutions.