When you’re a small ophthalmic practice, it isn’t always easy to attract new patients. You might feel overwhelmed by the competition in your area, or it might seem like potential patients are always traveling to the nearest city instead of staying local.
How can you stay competitive without breaking the bank?
Strategic marketing is one way to bring more patients to your practice. Whereas most people think about marketing as billboards, newspaper ads and television commercials, a good marketing strategy encompasses far more than that. Instead of throwing advertisements into the void, successful ophthalmic practices find their niche and gear their marketing towards a specific demographic.
For instance, a practice might choose to cater towards millennials by gifting procedures through Facebook contests, or they may focus on serving high income patients by partnering with optometrist practices in more expensive neighborhoods.
Before you start marketing, think critically about the people you want to serve.
- Who would be a good candidate for your services? What are their lives like? Keep in mind age, gender, race, income, diagnosis, etc.
- How many potential candidates are in your area?
- Which general or local trends are currently affecting these people’s lives?
- What is your competition? What does their demographic look like?
Ideally, however, you should do more than ask yourself these questions – you should perform a thorough professional marketing analysis. Once you understand your market, you can focus on reaching it.
Some marketing suggestions include:
- Digital advertisements on websites your demographic is known to frequent
- Advertisements targeted towards nearby neighborhoods and cities
- Partnerships with local optometrists
- Facebook contests
- Participation in local events, e.g. fairs, festivals
- A website that accurately reflects your services
In the end, how you go about expanding your market depends on the demographics of your patient population. By performing thoughtful, comprehensive evaluations of your market, you will undoubtedly find your niche – and expand your market.
Contact us today for more information on our comprehensive marketing solutions including a market analysis of your area. Sightpath Creative can help create interactions and energize a referral network to drive procedures, with ongoing practice development support on a variety of levels. Sightpath Creative would be glad to help assess, create and deploy messages for you all year long. Learn more about Sightpath Creative.