Is your optometry new or ten years old? It does not matter new or old your optometry practice or how good your approach is; you must have a marketing plan to get new patients.
Optometry Advertising is all about showing your practice in the right place and giving them a reason to book an appointment with your practice. Considering how everything in our life is getting more digitized with every passing day, online advertising is the best form of advertising you can leverage to benefit your optometry.
Optometry practices have many options to advertise online and increase their bookings, and here we have listed down the top 10 for you:
1.An Optometry Website
You need a website that is built for optometry practices. Times are changing, so is the competition; having just a static website with no good image or engaging text is as good as not having a website.
A website is your digital address where people can come and learn about your practice, and a good website runs a long way in gaining people’s trust in your practice. It is not just about having the most wow-looking website.A high-performing optometry website must maintain a few mandatorily, such as fast speed, mobile-friendly, and CTA.
People are busy nowadays, and there are too many. So, having a slow website is just giving up on your practice’s growth, nothing else. You have at most 3 seconds to hold your potential patients; if your website loads slower than that, then it’s bad news for your practice. Also, keep in mind animation and other such things might seem attractive to the eyes, but if it slows down your website, you better get rid of it.
Being mobile-friendly is a must if you want to advertise to a maximum number of patients as most people are switching their smartphone to online activity nowadays. So, ensure your website looks great and loads fast on mobile as well and not just on your desktop.
Easy call to action button is extremely important to increase a website’s conversion rate. So try to put one call to action button, ideally a book appointment button, on every page of your website, so at no point do your potential clients have to waste time looking for it. Also, make the action easy, like a call to book appointments or a form with a minimal form to fill out to book an appointment, etc.
If you are looking for a new optometry website or looking to replace your old website with a new CRO optimized website, contact us or check our website design service.
2.Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Search Engine Optimization is the second step to complete once you have a website because unless your website is not optimized for search engines, people will not find you as search engines will not show your website on the first page.
Days of going through phone books to find a doctor are gone. Now whether people need a potato or optometrist, the first thing they do is Google. So, make sure your website is completely optimized so when people ask for an optometry service or optometrist your website shows up on the first page of the search engine.
Search engine optimization is a long process and usually takes time to show results. While you take care of all the technical aspects of SEO, make sure to put a thorough description of your practice and its services because search engines love information. However, keep in mind the information needs to be engaging, not just words put together with no coherence.
3.Register Into Local Business Listings
If you want to show up for all the local searches, then you must get your practice registered into the local business listings. Enlisting into local business is a simple process of signing up with your practice information, and then the search engine will verify your existence, and you are good to go. So, do not waste time and get your practice enlisted on all the major search engines like the major search engines Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.
Being on Google My Business helps you get highlighted on the Google map with its pinpoint option that will highlight your practice with your logo and show the path to your physical location. Besides, you can also add real pictures and have good reviews from your customers to increase positivity and enhance your online presence.
4. PPC search Ads
PPC ads are highly effective in getting more traffic to your website because Search Engine’s first few spots are paid. And people usually click on the first few links and almost never go to the second page.
The best thing about PPC is you get to put up ads for free and only pay when someone clicks on your ads, just like the name suggests pay per click. And how much you have to pay depends on how much you and your competitors bid, along with your website and ad’s quality score.
Do not worry; you will not lose unnecessary money, and search ads give you total control over who you want to target and which keywords you want to target. So, if you want to show ads to people from your local area when they search for “optometry service,” then you will not show up for “optometry service in Australia”. So, use these effective mediums of advertising to the fullest to get more patients appointments.
However, you would need to spend a lot of time researching and optimizing to ensure the best results and least loss with your PPC ads, and if you are looking for professional help, contact us for free consultancy.
5. Social Media Ads
Almost ⅓ of the world’s population is on social media, and that tells you the power of social media, so why not use these platforms to promote your optometry? No reason. Advertising on social media like Facebook, Instagram, etc., can increase your practice popularity at the light’s speed.
But just organic social media might not be that great option for your optometry because social media has become a profitable marketing platform, and organic results are close to none. So, we suggest you use optometry PPC ads on social media to increase your brand awareness and website traffic.
Social media gives you a chance to micro-target an audience based on education, interest. Life events and so on. So, leverage this powerful platform to boost your patient’s appointments today.
One thing you need to keep in mind is that social media is a visual platform, so you need to be very careful with your creative ads so you attract the audience and send them your practice message in an aesthetic way. You need to find the right balance of text and image to highlight your practice benefits in an effective way.
If you need help with your paid Facebook and Instagram ads, you can check out our services.
6. Optometry content marketing
Relevant content is a great way to engage with your potential audience and advertise your practice. Content can be anything: blog, video, infographics, etc. However, keep in mind, your content needs to be original and has relevant information.
A simple start can be blogging; try putting out regular blogs on your specialty and eye care, so people are interested in those blogs and thus spend more time on your website. Helpful, informative blogs can also gain people’s trust in your brand and push them close to appointments.
Moreover, blogs are also easily shareable on social media, so post informative blogs on your website and share them on your social media pages to attract more attention and lead to your websites.
We provide regular blogs as part of our SEO services; if you want, you can check out.
7.Email Marketing
Email marketing is an effective medium of advertising to connect with your patients and remind them about revisiting your practice.
Collect patients’ email addresses when they first register for your practice and then remind them how important their next visit is for sound eye health..
Email marketing can be used to build a strong relationship with your patients that’s based on trust. So, do not just send them emails to come to visit you; try emailing tips on eye care that may be helpful to them. And another great way to build a strong relationship is to send your patient a birthday wish email on their birthday, a birthday email will not only make their day but will also earn their loyalty and trust for your practice.
8. Manage Online Reputation
Marketing may have taken a new form with digital marketing, but people’s word of mouth still is extremely powerful. ANd you must use people’s positive reviews to maintain a great online reputation for your practice.
Use platforms like Google My Business, Yelp, and more to create a strong positive reputation for your optometry practice. Everyone will go for a practice that has 5/5 over a practice with 2/5 and bad feedback. So, collecting positive feedback from real customers will boost your website traffic and increase patients appointments.
9.Ask for referrals
Ask your happy customers for a referral. And offer a discount on their next visit or one-time free eye checks up to ten referrals. You can also ask your patients to share your positive experiences not only on YELP and Google but also on their personal social media profiles, so people gain more trust in your practice.
10. Remarketing
Last but not at all least is remarketing. Remarketing is readvertising to your website visitors about the benefits of your practice’s service. Just because someone left your website without booking an appointment does not mean that person did not like your service; it can be that they were busy or is not just procrastinating on eye care appointments.
Both paid search and social ads have the option to retarget your website visitor. So, use this powerful tool to bring back your website visitor to complete the bookings. Remarketing also helps you increase brand awareness about your practice by highlighting the benefits to people who are interested in eye care and the similar services that you offer.
Conclusion
Digital Marketing for optometry can be tricky as some strategies may someone and not for you. So, if you feel like you can handle all digital marketing for your practice, it’s great. But we recommend, you seek a professional digital marketer to help you gain sustainable growth.
