7 Ophthalmology Marketing Tips To Grow Your Practice
Let your ophthalmology practice grow online with some simple and easy marketing tips to try. It can be challenging to stand out among your competition nowadays, especially online. To make this process easier, we’ve listed the absolute essentials to digital marketing that your practice should be using.
These seven strategies are meant to help you increase your patient leads by improving your online presence. Through a solid marketing plan, your ophthalmology practice can get a steady stream of new clients, and encourage existing clients to come back to your practice.
Going Beyond Traditional Marketing
While engaging in traditional marketing tactics has its strengths, they also have limitations. If you give away fliers to people out on the street, you’re limited to the people you see face to face. When you rely solely on your existing patients’ recommendations for referrals, you will find that it doesn’t work as well as it used to.
Today, to get new patients through your door, they need to find you where they spend most of their downtime – online. Widen your practice’s reach by engaging in digital marketing efforts so you can appear at the top of a Google search and become more visible online.
Here are seven tips you can use to refresh your online marketing grow your practice online:
1. Get The Latest Trending Ophthalmology Website Designs
Give your ophthalmology practice’s website appealing visuals to catch patient’s attention. You want to have that mesmerizing pop of color. The imagery of eyes or even eye care infographics can be put in your website.
Your web design should be equipped with all the latest essential elements and widgets. You want to have an easy-to-use online booking feature for your patients. Design your landing page with your target audience in mind – pay attention to the visibility of fonts and color schemes you use. You can use a color wheel and let your imagination run wild.
You need to have a website design that is mobile-friendly as well. It’s important for your patients to be able to see the different services your ophthalmology practice provides.
Save time answering common questions before patients even come in for their visit. You can include information on your services pages for eye conditions you provide treatment for. Corneal disorders, retinal tears, diabetic eye disease, and macular degeneration to name a few. Make sure you remind patients to book an appointment with a call-to-action .
All information about your ophthalmology practice should be up-to-date as well. Mainly your office address and operating hours. This means you should include all your services and products, including LASIK surgery or refractive surgery, if applicable, to your web design.
Learn More: The Best Ophthalmology Website Designs For 2021
2. Create Eye Care Social Media Posts
You definitely want to use social media as part of your ophthalmology marketing efforts. Here’s why – by using social media regularly, your practice can reach more followers in your area and spread awareness about your services.
To get started, set up a business page on various platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. Like on your website, you should make sure that your social media pages are updated with all relevant details, such as your practice address, operating hours, and website link.
What’s great about social media is that there are many ways for you to promote your ophthalmology practice there. For example, you can highlight a more direct marketing campaign and experiment with marketing strategy tactics to reach a wider audience.
One popular way for online marketing on social media is to use fun and appealing, informative social media posts to start educating and opening up conversations with your patients.
As a growing practice, you should make sure that you post quality content regularly. In addition to posting regularly, you should interact with your patients and respond to any questions they may have. Being proactive on social media will reinforce your excellent service and authority.
Social media can be a total game-changer when it comes to building a solid online presence and that’s why you should use it to your advantage.
3. Get To The Top Of Google Using Pay-Per-Click Advertising
If you’re looking to highlight a certain service, you should consider investing in search engine marketing. Also known as pay-per-click (PPC). It’s an effective way to give your online presence a boost. This is what you need to do if you want to get your ophthalmology practice straight to the top of Google search.
What’s great about this method, is you get what you pay for. In short, advertisers or businesses bid for their ads to be placed at the top of search engines page results. Essentially, advertisers or businesses bid for their ads to be placed in search engine sponsor links, where their ads can appear if someone searches a related keyword. It’s a great way to complement your search engine optimization or SEO efforts.
While you can organically reach the first pages of search engine results, you can buy your way into the coveted top spot through PPC advertising. Ophthalmology practices pay each time a user clicks on their ads. This means you only pay every time new patients visit your website through the ad.
One good way for ophthalmology practices to get into PPC ads is by advertising their unique specialties that other eye care industry professionals can’t offer. For example, if you provide special services that cater to motor-impaired persons, you should use PPC ads to reach your target audience.
4. Discuss Common Eye Care Problems Using Video
Try creating educational videos either for your social media pages or website. Your videos can cover common eye care misconceptions. Other content ideas can be discussing symptoms for various eye care conditions that you provide services for.
Videos are an effective way to communicate with your audience. Viewers can remember the information your providing much more easily. By implementing this idea you’re helping your audience process what they need to know in an entertaining way.
Your also creating an opportunity to introduce yourself and get patient’s engaged so they will book their next appointment. Break down eye care issues and treatments that you want your patients to know, there are so many topics for your practice to cover. Best of all chances are it’s information that so many people in your local area will really benefit from knowing.
You can use the videos you make for various ophthalmology marketing platforms as well. You can show them to your current patients by displaying them on your practice’s television. You can also upload them on your website and various social media platforms. You can even use them for your email marketing efforts.
This digital marketing strategy is so efficient that you don’t need fancy equipment to get started. Any smartphone in this day and age can take a video and assist you in these efforts.
Learn More: The Do’s and Don’ts of Eye Care Marketing
5. Attend Ophthamology Conferences
While we do live in a digital age, meeting with your peers in the healthcare industry face-to-face is still a great way to get the word out about your practice. Stay on your toes by attending eye care conference events. Learn about the latest trends within the healthcare industry and jump on them when you can.
Network with other eye care practice professionals. You may find inspiration here for how to take your practice to new heights. Take advantage of opportunities to grow your knowledge and ask questions.
Don’t forget to do demonstrations and seminars at your own practice’s booth. Participate in any extra activities and inspire those around you as well. Remember the goal here is to find partners you can work with in the future or gain referrals from.
With the number of ophthalmology practices participating in the event, you can get ideas on how to market your ophthalmology practice better. Marketing is always changing so staying up to date with what works and doesn’t work will always be valuable for you. These face-to-face efforts can have surprising payoffs down the line.
6. Start An Ophthalmology Blog to Educate Your Patients
In your years of experience, you’ve encountered a lot of eye care-related problems and issues. To improve your search engine optimization (SEO) ranking and reinforce your expertise in the industry, you should consider starting a blog for your practice.
Write compelling content that centers around the common questions and concerns your patients ask you. By talking about them via blog posts, you can demonstrate how well-versed you are in the subject matter.
When writing blog posts, you must use the right keywords to boost your online presence. This way, when possible new patients research the topic online, your ophthalmology practice’s website pops up. This marketing effort takes time, but it can help you reach a more targeted audience.
Aside from using the right keywords, you must write blog posts in simple terms. You have to take note that not everyone will understand complicated ophthalmology terms. You should write as if you’re talking to someone who knows little to nothing about eye care. The key is to keep it simple.
Even if you’re not a confident writer, you can enlist the help of freelance writers to help articulate your thoughts for you. Of course, you need to ensure all the information they detail is correct. In addition, it would help if you supervised their writing style, so it remains authentic to your voice.
It’s not enough to churn out regular content. You should use your other digital marketing tools at hand to give your blog a boost. You can share the articles on your practice’s social media pages and even your profile as well. You can include them in your regular email newsletters, too.
Aside from using your digital marketing platforms, you can promote your blog by word-of-mouth as well. For example, when a patient asks about a concern you’ve discussed on your blog, you can inform that person you’ve written about the topic on your website. This way, they can refer to other people who might be encountering the same eye care-related challenges.
Learn More: Why Your Practice’s Website Needs an Ophthalmology Blog
7. Partner with Qualified Eye Care Marketing Consultants
When it comes to digital marketing, there will be hits and misses. Mistakes are inevitable in your marketing journey. With everything you have on your plate, you should consider enlisting the services of a qualified marketing consultant.
A good marketing partner can help you identify what your practice needs to boost your online presence. They can also uncover potential areas of opportunity. For example, if you’re encountering website accessibility challenges, they can help you develop a profile that reduces distractions. In addition, if you’re challenged in managing inbound leads, they can help you with accessibility adjustments on your website.
Thrive to find Google-certified consultants that can give you the best options when it comes to marketing your practice online. A good marketing ally can help you maximize your budget and achieve your goals more efficiently and cost-effectively.
While digital marketing partners can also make mistakes, they’re trained to look for solutions and help you come up with better strategies moving forward.
Of course, there’s no perfect way to market ophthalmology practices, but with the right partner, you have a better chance of getting ahead of the competition.
Make iMatrix Your Ally in Digital Marketing
Navigating through the world of ophthalmology marketing can be challenging, but with the help of tried and tested marketing partners, you can overcome the obstacles thrown your way. You can attract new patients and increase patient retention at the same time by working with experts that can walk the talk.
For more information on digital marketing packages that include ophthalmology marketing strategies, call 888.792.8384 or click here.
