Marketing strategies for growing ophthalmology organizations

Congratulations on your growing ophthalmology practice! Since we’re celebrating Healthy Vision Month in July, now is the perfect opportunity to make sure you have the right marketing strategies in place to ensure your brand continues to grow. We’ve worked with numerous ophthalmology practices, helping them scale and accelerate their marketing results. We’re sharing a few of those strategies here so you can skip some of the trial and error when trying new things and continue on your growth trajectory. 

 

Start with the typical marketing activities (they are vital to your success in the future!)

While it’s slightly less glamorous than innovative marketing tactics, building a strong marketing foundation is the key to being able to innovate and try new things without jeopardizing your initial success. For instance, if you try to partner with eye care influencers on TikTok before you have a way for patients to schedule appointments on your website, you may lose clients because they can’t make appointments conveniently. So, before you wade into the world of advertising and social media influencers, make sure you have the following marketing foundations in place.  

• Website – Your website is how most patients are going to learn about your providers, services, and schedule appointments. It should be optimized for mobile as most patients, especially your younger patients, are going to be looking at it on their phone. Consider having contact information and an online scheduling tool that makes it easy for anyone to make an appointment with your providers. Finally, you’ll want to have plenty of call to actions and make sure it’s engaging and modern. 
• SEO (Local) – SEO is directly tied to your website and your digital presence in general. As an ophthalmology practice, you’ll be able to take advantage of local SEO to drive new patient traffic. Essentially, this means that your website and online profiles should include reference to your location and plenty of service-focused keywords. If you haven’t optimized your website for SEO, which includes reviewing titles, headings, meta descriptions, alt text for images, and more, consider hiring an expert to help. You’ll start seeing results quickly, and your practice will be more likely to turn up at the top of the search results.
• Social media presence – Social media profiles are a vital component of any modern-day marketing strategy. Social media gives you access to an engaged audience, advertising opportunities, and the ability to partner with other brands, influencers, or providers. On most social media platforms, you can stay true to your brand while engaging with your audience in unique and impactful ways. It is also a great way to bring in new clients and share valuable, relevant information with your audience. 

 

Get creative and build an exciting brand that people love

Now for the fun stuff! Once you have a solid marketing foundation and processes in place, you can start to innovate and try new things. As an ophthalmology organization, you know all too well that many people neglect their eye health until they have problems. By employing unique marketing approaches, you can continue to grow your organization and help patients pay attention to preventative care before it’s too late! 

• Be an engaging trailblazer in the ophthalmology space! Most likely you have incredibly talented providers and staff at your organization that have lots of great insights into eye health. Use your platforms to share that information in concise and easy-to-digest formats, like videos, AMAs (Ask Me Anything), infographics, social video trends, and more. It’s a great opportunity to introduce your organization and its providers to potential patients, share relevant information, and build up your reputation as a knowledgeable, experienced ophthalmology organization.   
• Build partnerships with influencers or complimentary brands – To get in front of new audiences and build mutually beneficial partnerships, consider partnering with influencers or complimentary brands to offer specialty services, events, exchange or referral programs, discounts, and much more. You can attract new patients while building out a strong alliance with your local community. Influencers will get you in front of a large, engaged audience which can be helpful for fast patient acquisition.  
• Start a referral or loyalty program – You might be surprised to hear that not many providers in healthcare have loyalty programs. You’d be remiss not to implement a loyalty program as it can provide numerous benefits, including better patient outcomes, increased revenue, and improved patient retention. There are many ways to add a loyalty program to your organization that don’t require extensive amounts of work. In fact, we wrote a whole article on loyalty programs, so be sure to check it out!   
• Invest in telemedicine or virtual appointment opportunities – Nowadays it would be strange if you didn’t have a telehealth option for your patients. While not every interaction is right for a telehealth appointment, there are certainly ways for you to integrate the service into your practice. Telehealth can ensure older patients don’t have to leave their home unless necessary and it can reduce the burden on office staff and providers if they don’t have to see every patient at the office. Plus, younger patients or those far away will appreciate being able to connect virtually. 
• Send personalized communications and emails – Email is still top of the game when it comes to staying in contact with your patients and acquiring new patients! As a growing ophthalmology practice, you most likely have a robust patient list that would love to hear from you about new promotions, loyalty programs, and informational content. Consider sending out personalized communications on a regular basis to keep your audience engaged and informed. 

More generally, when you’re implementing different marketing strategies, keep your audience in mind and make them the center of attention. After all, marketing isn’t really about your brand, it’s about showing and proving to your patients how you can impact their lives for the better. 

 

Bonus strategy: Always, always measure your marketing campaigns!

Anytime you start a new marketing initiative or campaign, be sure to measure its impact so you can recreate it if it’s successful or make adjustments if it doesn’t work. We find that OKRs or objectives and key results are a great tool for setting realistic goals that align with your team’s capacity. There are also numerous marketing tools available that will do the work for you when it comes to tracking and measuring. 

As a growing ophthalmology practice with some success under your belt, be bold in what you want to accomplish! As long as you keep in mind your capacity and budget, you should be able to achieve some pretty ambitious goals. Best of all, ENJOY the ride and have fun with it. The more fun you have, the more your patients will enjoy interacting with your brand and coming to your office.