12 Reasons Why Your Optical Practice Needs a Marketing Plan
As technology continues to grow and evolve, so should your optical practice and the way you market it. Keeping your marketing strategy tailored to the current trends is the best way to maximize your profit and grow your business.
In the eye care industry, effective marketing is crucial. Gaining potential patients for a business that is as specific as an optical practice requires marketing ideas that are unique and up to date with the technological trends of the time.
Digital marketing sounds like a huge, multi-layered process at first glance. But we’re here to explain to you what a strategic online marketing plan should entail for a business in the optical sector.
1. Appear on Google Multiple Times for Your Top Eye Care Services
Google is the single most popular search engine, available across several digital platforms, and is the most user-friendly for business owners going into their first foray into online marketing. If your practice’s website isn’t on the first page of Google, you could be losing new patients. The top 3 spots on Google get the most clicks, so you’ll want to make sure that your practice appears in these spots.
A digital marketing plan can help you increase your rankings on Google and target specific services like contact lenses, prescription glasses, eye exams, designer frames, and other services you provide. There are many ways to achieve this. Your digital marketing consultant can create a plan that meets your budget. Some options include paid ads and an SEO strategy.
Watch Free Webinar: The Ultimate Guide to Get Your Eye Care Practice to the Top of Google
2. Drive Organic Traffic & Improve Your SEO Rankings
One of the best ways to boost your Google rankings and reach the top of search engines is by implementing an SEO strategy. With a search engine optimization plan in place, you’ll be able to get your website to rank organically for eye care-specific symptoms, conditions, and services.
Your optical marketing plan would include educational content that specifically targets your specialties and includes keywords that potential and current patients search for like:
- How to safely clean contacts?
- What to expect during an eye exam
- How tinted glasses help my light sensitivity
- How to adjust your eyeglasses
- What to expect: Putting your lenses in new glasses
- What does it mean to be nearsighted
- Tips for tired eyes
- Do blue-light-blocking glasses actually work?
By having optical content that is relevant and educational, you will be able to convert more website visitors into patients and improve your search engine rankings. Instead of paid advertisements, which drive traffic only when active, optimized content earns traffic and leads throughout the year, even after the content is published. So it’s good to post blogs and update your service pages with topics and keywords that are trending and valuable.
Learn More: 9 Strategies to Dominate Your Optical Marketing
3. Have a Fully Optimized Optical Website With Quality Content
Optimizing your optical website means making your content informative and compelling. Users will only stick around for your content if it catches their eye, and remember that this engagement helps drive new patients to your site too. Shareable content from users knowing good content when they browse it: Quality content can help boost your site’s reputation and create word of mouth buzz around your business.
Here are some optical ideas to include:
- Eye Makeup and Your Vision
- How to Choose the Best Sunglasses
- Indoor Tanning and Your Eyes
- How Nutrition Can Be Beneficial to Your Vision
- How Your Tears Work and Their Importance for Vision
4. Generate More Appointments From Your Optical Website
Keep your text easy to read and easy to follow. Stay away from fonts that are difficult to read, colors that contrast poorly against your site, avoid poorly created written content. Make sure to include a schedule an appointment button on every page of your website.
Here are some examples of CTA’s you can include on your website to increase conversions:
- Shop now – online store
- Book Appointment – on every page
- Schedule Eye exam – service pages
- Get a Free Contact Lens Fitting – service pages
It’s also important to check all your site’s internal links are functional and easy to navigate: no one likes a broken or hard-to-follow site. See how well your website performs with a free website audit from us.
5. Patients Can Easily Access Your Website On All Devices
Your optical website must work on mobile browsers and not just desktops. Most of your potential patients are using mobile browsers these days, and it’s a huge oversight to miss out on potential patients by limiting your online visibility. There are many online site builders now that allow you to create a desktop site and a mobile site to mirror your content on mobile browsers. Remember to keep your content functional on all platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Google My Business.
6. Maintain A Stellar Google My Business (GMB) Listing
Next, try to get the most out of Google My Business. Simply put, Google My Business is an online tool that will allow you to manage and optimize your business through Google. First, create a Business Profile to create an official business listing on Google. This is what appears in search results, including your location, business hours, and some reviews. A Google My Business profile allows you to access, manage, customize, engage with your patients, enhance your Business Profile, and all for free.
Learn More: How to Claim Your Google My Business Listing
7. Target Specific Type of Patients to Your Optical Practice
Your local potential patients are looking online for an optician, new frame styles, repair, and above all, reasonable optical service prices.
The internet is exactly where you and your optical practice will want to be seen: this is where your patient base is waiting to engage with you. Organic searches for optical and eye care will drive most of the traffic to your content, and even searches as innocuous as tips for eye care and frame maintenance might help lead new patients to your practice.
If you want faster results than targeted ads can do just that. You’ll be able to climb your way to the top of Google’s first page and attract more local patients.
Learn More: 7 Optometrist Ads Strategies to Generate More Patients
8. Improve The Loyalty Of Your Patients & Increase Your Retention Rate
Patients new and old will appreciate you taking the time and effort to keep their business. Users are more clever than most businesses will give them credit: they can spot a lazy, copy and pasted marketing strategy. Stand out with the help of email surveys, newsletters, referral programs, promoting special offers, streamlining your appointment scheduling, and making it easy for your patients to book appointments with your practice.
9. Always Stay Connected With Your Patients Using Email Marketing Tools
Send out ecards to your patients for special holidays and birthdays. You can remind them to schedule an appointment for National Eyewear day and other optical observances. Get more patient reviews by sending follow-up surveys and asking recent patients for feedback. Another way to stay connected and generate more patients is by rolling out a referral program.
10. Stay On Top of Mind with Patients Using Newsletters
Newsletters are a great way of sharing information with your market: you can include helpful health tips, eye care insight, maintenance tips, and interesting content related to the field of opticians, like videos or snippets of related articles.
You can also use emails to distribute surveys that can help you optimize your business by getting direct feedback from your patients. Hearing directly from your market about what you’re doing well, what’s not so great, and what can be improved is a good way to ensure that your business stays in the best shape it can be.
Marketing directly to your patients is a surefire way to keep their loyalty to your practice and even increase the retention rate for your business, so try to get the most out of these easy-to-grasp services.
11. Outrank Your Local Competition
One thing that should matter most to a business, even a small business like an optical practice, is staying ahead of the competition. If you keep your content consistent and communicate your business’ key messages in a clear, persistent manner, then your patients will keep engaging, and your practice comes out on top against your competition.
Creating and following an effective marketing plan will help you do this and more. A clear marketing strategy will help you determine who your competitors are and even what they are doing differently to adjust your marketing ideas accordingly.
Client Success Story: See How Dr. Cecilia Nguyen, O.D. at Today’s Vision Barker Cypress generate more patients
12. Establish Your Brand & Connect With More Patients
Digital marketing is much more than just promoting your business on social media or putting up a couple of web ads here and there. Most businesses, even small business services, now stay on top of digital marketing strategies to help their businesses get eyes on their product or service.
According to digital marketing statistics from WebStrategies Inc, online marketing spend alone will make up 46% of the total global ad spend in 2021. That spend makes sense, too: digital marketing can help improve your business’s visibility, and in turn, help you target ideal patients, book more appointments, outrank your competition, and drive up your revenue.
Creating an effective marketing plan and sticking to it can help build your optical practice’s credibility among your patient base. This plan can include social media marketing, search engine optimization, and email marketing to reach your patients in a more direct, personal manner. Engaging in these tactics will help you build your brand as a reliable, professional practice and help you increase your revenue by driving patients and online traffic to you.
Get a Personalized Optical Marketing Plan With Us
If you feel ready to start your online marketing strategy journey now, you’re probably wondering: who can help? That is where we at iMatrix come in.
We understand you’re busy running your optical company and taking care of your patients. Let us help you bring in your ideal patients, target specific conditions, symptoms, and services your offer. Increase your engagement with current patients, and grow your practice.
Give us a call today at 888.792.8384 or click here to get a free personalized consultation and learn more about our optical marketing services.
