Want to Reach More Elective Patients
Does this sound familiar: you’ve been working so hard finding and nurturing relationships with co-management partners, that you haven’t spent as much time focusing on capturing elective patients. We don’t blame you—you’re an MD, not a Marketing guru.
In today's digital age, effective digital marketing is essential for Ophthalmologists looking to promote their elective surgeries. With the rise of hyper-local marketing techniques, it’s even more crucial to leverage the power of online platforms to reach potential patients in your immediate vicinity (and a strategic radius around your practice).
The Importance of Hyper-Local Marketing:
Hyper-local marketing involves targeting a strategic geographic area and focusing on potential patients within a close proximity to your practice. Determining your marketing radius takes some work. Are there other practices in your county (or even a few counties over) also treating your ideal elective patients? If not, you can broaden your circle. This approach enables MDs like you to focus your efforts on the local communities that need your services the most. Ultimately, that means a better ROI from your marketing spend, and more visibility among locals actively seeking elective eye care surgeries.
Want to Reach More Elective Patients
Optimizing Your Online Presence:
Traditional marketing like newspaper ads, billboards, and TV & radio ads are also hyperlocal—do they count? Absolutely! But these methods don’t reach prospective patients when they’re actually searching for an MD. Local SEO (Search Engine Optimization) does. SEO enhances your website's visibility in local search results by optimizing relevant keywords, meta tags, and local business listings. And by incorporating location-specific keywords in your site content, you’ll be more likely to be found in the search engine results for users searching for surgeries like LASIK or Oculoplastics.
Traditional marketing like newspaper ads, billboards, and TV & radio ads are also hyperlocal—do they count? Absolutely! But these methods don’t reach prospective patients when they’re actually searching for an MD. Local SEO (Search Engine Optimization) does. SEO enhances your website's visibility in local search results by optimizing relevant keywords, meta tags, and local business listings. And by incorporating location-specific keywords in your site content, you’ll be more likely to be found in the search engine results for users searching for surgeries like LASIK or Oculoplastics.
A big part of SEO optimization is staying on top of your Google Business Profile. Google users can now filter out practices based on their hours open, Google reviews scores and insurance carriers. Ensuring that your profile (and all other listings) are accurate and up-to-date helps improve your Google ranking and get your site the clicks you need to capture elective patients.
And if you want elective patients NOW, Google Ads are the best way to get to the top of their search results. Statistics show that users who click on Google Ads are 50% more likely to convert. The best part? Google ads are some of the most cost-effective advertising around.
Engage Site Visitors
Once you’ve gotten prospective elective patients to your website, the work is done, right? Not if your site content doesn’t speak to your unique values AND the needs of your ideal patients. Your website has to answer their questions about your practice and services if you want to earn their trust. Offering valuable resources such as blog articles, videos, and infographics helps address common concerns and questions, positioning your practice as trusted experts in your field.
Personality goes a long way. Does your brand reflect the amazing patient care offered in practice? Does your brand highlight your core values and practice’s story? The more site visitors know about you and what drives your practice, the more likely you’ll be to engage them and secure their business. Sharing success stories and testimonials from satisfied patients who have undergone elective surgeries at your practice also goes a long way. Personal testimonials help potential patients envision their life with better vision and encourage them to choose you.
Harnessing the Power of Digital Campaigns
What happens if you don’t secure an appointment from prospective patients through your website? You can win them over with digital campaigns that shows them the benefits and value of your services. Utilizing campaigns with unique landing pages, emails and social media posts is a great way to capture their appointment down the line—and stay top-of-mind with current patients.
Campaigns are so effective because they give your audience “touch points,” which is marketing-speak for strategic communications that your audience will see. Research shows it can take 7 touch points or more before a prospect will book…are you giving your prospects the communications they need?
After running a campaign, you can use tools such as Google Analytics and social media insights to track and measure the results. EyeMDPro can help you monitor your website traffic, conversion rates, and engagement metrics so that you’ll always know the results and ROI from your marketing efforts.
With digital technologies changing by the minute, Ophthalmologists can no longer rely solely on traditional marketing methods. If you want to market hyper-locally but don’t know where to start, EyeMDPro can do the work for you. By embracing hyper-local marketing techniques, EyeMDPro's contract-free solutions can effectively promote your elective surgeries to a local audience, boosting your visibility—and booked appointments.