Why Social Media Marketing is Essential for Your Optometry Practice
With internet access more widely available than ever, your potential eye care patients spend more time on social media, online review sites, and many other digital platforms. This means it’s a missed opportunity not to use social media platforms to promote your optometry practice. Platforms like Facebook, Google My Business, and Instagram provide plenty of opportunities to increase your exposure and engagement with followers.
We understand that starting with digital marketing can be overwhelming due to the many options and information available. However, many tools and educational resources can help you learn the basics and eventually use social media as an effective marketing tool for your practice.
In this blog post, we will go over the top 8 reasons why your practice should be active on social media and make stellar optometry social media posts. Let’s get started.
1. Tell Your Brand’s Story to Followers & Build Your Practice’s Credibility
Telling your practice’s story is critical because it helps humanize your brand and gives followers a better idea about who you are, your values, and how you can help them solve a problem they have—in this case, improving their vision. Your story sets you apart from your local eye care competitors because it’s unique and unlike any other.
For example, what inspired you to become an optometrist? What drove you to focus on eye health? If you have a good and genuine story to tell about your brand, it will help your current and potential patients form a connection with it. Be authentic with your storytelling and build trust among your audience.
Learn More: Eye Care Social Media Ideas to Boost Engagement
2. Target Local Eye Care Patients
While your social media assets are initially built for awareness and engagement, they can also be a lead-generating platform for your business. Social media sites like Facebook and Instagram are constantly developing business tools that optometry practices can leverage to achieve sales goals through advertising and targeting solutions.
You can even identify filters and modify your target audience’s settings to ensure your content reaches the right people. Focusing on your local community can help you raise awareness of your business.
So on Facebook, you can identify a “Core Audience,” which you can customize for your page based on age, interests, geography, and more. Through these settings, you can ensure that your posts will be visible to prospects in your local area and those looking for eye care services, increasing your chance for conversion and lead generation.
3. Drive More Traffic To Your Website
Being active on social media encourages your followers to go through the lead funnel and land on your optometry website, which leads to more bookings or purchasing eye care products you have for sale, like contact lenses, frames, and many others.
While the direct way would be to add your site’s URL to all your social media profiles, more creative ways can drive your audience to click and visit your website. Have a creative thumb-stopping visual or caption on your post that teases content on your eye care website. You can explore posting educational videos, funny GIFs, user testimonials, and other engaging materials that can capture your target audience’s interest and lead them to check out your site for more information.
Read on: 10 Tactics to Drive Traffic to Your Eye Care Website
4. Advertise Your Services and Products
Social media is a great way to engage and connect with your patients through fun and engaging content (optometry social content does not have to be boring!). Still, since you are running a business, you can use this opportunity to promote your practice and products and attract new patients consistently.
Here are some ideas to inspire your next social media post:
- Data-driven posts show the most common services that patients are interested in. You can make them more engaging by asking your social media followers to comment and add their own experiences.
- Educational Posts that explain the details of each service you offer and what needs they are addressing.
- Monthly or Weekly Discounts, Promos, and Contests to promote an annual eye exam and increase brand loyalty
- New Product Updates that consumers should know about, like eye drops, eyeglasses, contact lenses, add-ons, and accessories.
- New services or equipment may increase your credibility and differentiate your practice from competitors.
5. Use Social Media as Another Way to Provide Customer Service
The essence of social media is to make and maintain connections for personal and business purposes. Each communication channel offers a different kind of engagement. For example, email outreach gives off a less personal vibe, while a phone call may convey the need to discuss an urgent matter. The same goes for social media. As an optometrist, you must have an accessible line where your clients can reach you.
Your phone isn’t enough because there might be instances where you cannot be reached; thus, an alternative is needed. We have social media as an alternative option. Connecting with your patients on social networks differs from connecting with them through email or phone.
Connecting via social media is a more informal way to communicate, but you can quickly answer their questions or concerns. There are many platforms to choose from, but it would be more efficient if it were all in one platform, like Facebook or Instagram.
Beyond direct messages, you can showcase exemplary customer service by responding to comments and reviews. Make sure you leave comments on reviews, whether or not they’re positive or negative. Should you receive a negative comment or a complaint, try to resolve it immediately. Offer a solution to let your audience know you care about your patients and want to keep them happy and satisfied.
Learn More: 10 Eye Care Social Media Mistakes to Avoid
6. Share Eye Care Tips and Tricks that Your Followers Would Like
Differentiate yourself from your local eye care competitors by creating quality content that can be uniquely associated with your practice. Without content to interest your audience, you won’t receive any clicks. Without any clicks, there is no engagement, which means there is a lower chance of being discovered by new patients.
Apart from what was shared earlier (promoting services and products), there are so many ideas that you can turn into eye-catching, quality, relevant content.
- New scientific research about human vision may be formal and somewhat tedious to some, but one way to make it more appealing is to use infographics and creative visuals.
- Eye care topics, including tips and tricks for eye exercises, new treatments, types of eye exams, and trends—You can explore posting timely content such as the percentage of eye care problems caused by working from home and how to address them or the pros and cons of using contacts versus eyeglasses.
Post content with the right mix of photos and graphics to help drive your point and sustain the reader’s attention. Having clickable content is a plus because it can lead directly to your site, which increases engagement and website traffic!
Again, optometry social content does not have to be boring. Post content that followers can engage with, such as polls and surveys. You can also have referral programs and discounts to attract engagement and traffic to the site and clinic.
7. Share Your Patient Success Stories
Have you helped improve people’s eye health over the years? If so, you should share success stories of patients you’ve helped through your treatments and care. Patient spotlights allow your past clients to showcase the value of your expertise.
There are various ways to share success stories through social media posts. You can post before-and-after photos that show how much your patients’ eye health has improved. Video content can also be a dynamic way to show what you can do and allow you to explain what you’ve done to help a particular client. Plus, explaining complex procedures via video makes it easier for people to understand them.
8. Ask Questions and Create Polls
If you want your followers to be more active on social media platforms, your practice should be proactive, including asking for their participation. If you’re looking for a future topic for video content you’ll be using for different digital marketing channels, it’d be best to ask your followers what they’d like to see.
Creating polls is another stellar way to get your online community involved. You can create polls on what kind of eye health products they’d like to see more in your practice. You can also create topics based on their preference: contact lenses or glasses, the type of specs they’re looking for, or the type of topics they’d like to discuss in your next free webinar.
Using Social Media To Promote Your Optometry Practice
The above examples have illustrated how beneficial social media marketing is for your optometry practice. It’s not just about growing a social media presence for clout but ultimately getting leads to keep the business running. The social network also helps you stay updated with the industry’s happenings in real-time by connecting you with organizations and colleagues.
When creating optometry social media posts, you shouldn’t post the same content across all platforms. Different platforms call for different strategies and post formats. For example, Instagram focuses on visual content, so you should post more videos and photos on this platform. Twitter or X is a micro-blogging site, so you should keep your posts short and sweet. Regarding TikTok, you should focus on posting entertaining short videos.
Let Us Create An Optometry Marketing Plan to Grow Your Practice
The different ways to promote social media that we have listed above are some of the most basic ones, but social media management can be time-consuming in the long run. It needs patience and technical knowledge to optimize the different social media platform tools.
Give us a call at 800.792.8384 or click here, and we will show you how to attract more optometry patients using social media.
FAQs
What is the purpose of social media marketing?
Social media marketing allows your business to connect with your target audience to build your brand, increase sales, and boost website traffic.
Why communication is important for optometry students?
Good communication is part of the foundation of modern optometry practices. You need to be able to nurture good relationships with your patients.
How is social media important for marketing communication?
Social media is one of the most effective ways to increase brand awareness and reach a wider audience. You can potentially reach people who’ve never heard of your practice before.
How does social media marketing benefit customers?
Social media allows your customers to interact directly with brands, leave feedback, compare their options, and gain better access to information.
