The medical field is experiencing unprecedented growth, with a 97% increase in doctor spending globally forecasted for 2025.
While this is good news for the medical industry, it presents a massive opportunity for optometry, which is the eye care profession. Optical shops have existed for centuries, and have provided patients with excellent and affordable eye exams and prescriptions, but advancements in technology have led to a digital transformation of eye care and increased the need for online marketing strategies.
Since its inception in the United States in 1881, optometry has evolved to become a specialty that only a few decades ago was performed only in doctors’ offices. Thanks to advancements in technology, such as computers and the internet, there are now several online marketplaces where optometrists can sell their products and services, including Luminous Eyez, EyeEm, and EyeLove.
Why Online Marketing?
The most effective and efficient way to market your practice online is by using digital marketing. This includes things such as SEO, PPC, and content creation. Since most people now consume most of their daily information online, search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of getting your practice or product to show up when someone searches for key words or phrases related to your business. To illustrate, if you are an optometrist in Nashville, Tennessee, and you use “Nashville eye doctors” as a key word in your search engine, you will see that several local optometrists’ practices show up in the search results, including yours.
Paid search advertising, or pay-per-click advertising (PPC), is when you pay for each click on your advertisement, as opposed to paying per impression (CPI), where you pay for each time your advertisement is shown, regardless of whether or not the viewer chooses to click on it. Because PPC offers the potential for higher conversion rates than CPI, it is a more effective long-term strategy for digital marketers than cost-per-impression (CPM) advertising.
How To Market Your Optometrist Practice In 3 Steps
With digital marketing, your target audience is able to find you, regardless of what platform they use. This might be a challenge if they do not know where to look. To make sure that everyone can easily find your optometry practice, whether you are a new customer or an existing one, you should implement a marketing plan that involves the following steps:
Step one: Find the right keywords
To find the right keywords, perform a keyword research analysis of your website to find the terms that people use when searching for your products or services. If you want to rank highly in search engines, use terms that are relevant to your target audience’s needs and interests. For example, if you specialize in treating eye injuries, you might choose to target keywords such as “eye injury lawyer,” “eye injury law firm,” and “eye injury trial lawyers”.
Step two: Create content to attract high-quality leads
Once you have a list of keywords, you can begin to create content that is optimized for search engines. A well-written, informative article that uses the appropriate keywords will almost certainly improve your SEO.
You should also take the time to read some of the articles that are ranked highly in your targeted searches. From there, you will be able to identify the type of content that your target audience finds most useful. You might notice that many of the top articles are long-form content pieces, such as an extensive how-to guide or a detailed analysis of a specific topic. Long-form content is ideal for drawing in potential customers, since it provides them with more value than a short article.
Step three: Use your preferred marketing toolkit
After you have spent the least amount of time necessary to gather all the necessary information, it’s time to put it to use. Once you have a clear understanding of what keywords you should be targeting and how to find the best content to create, it is time to use your preferred marketing toolkit. The key to successful digital marketing is to use the right tools and the right strategies. To that end, you should look into the following tools:
- An SEO tool kit
- A PPC tool kit
- A content creation tool kit
- And a social media tool kit
- Whatever you might need to effectively market your optometry practice.
- Page rankings in search engines
- Traffic to your website
- Conversions, i.e. the number of leads that have signed up for a consultation or purchased a product from you
- The amount of sales from lead generation vs. traditional advertising
- The types of sales that you are making (i.e. product purchases or signups for a consultation)
With these tools, you will be able to rank your site highly in search engines, drive traffic to your site, and convert that traffic into paying customers.
The Final Step: Measure the Results of Your Marketing Efforts
Once you have implemented a solid SEO strategy, measured the results of your PPC campaign, and started to generate content, it is time to take a step back and evaluate your progress. You should look at the following metrics to determine the success of your marketing efforts:
The sooner you begin to measure the results of your marketing efforts, the sooner you will be able to determine whether or not your efforts were successful. In this way, you will be able to set the right marketing strategy for the future.
By following these simple steps, you will be able to effectively market your optometrist practice online. Just remember that every situation is different and there is no one-size-fits-all approach when it comes to marketing. To that end, you might want to consider speaking with an experienced digital marketer in your area to get advice on how you can best put these tips into practice.