These action steps can educate patients and drive referrals
When patients walk in to most optometric practices, they already know the business sells glasses. But, does the patient know from looking around what other services that practice offers? Dry eye treatments, myopia management, specialty contact lenses and emergent eye care, among other optometric areas, should be represented throughout an office. To accomplish this, we should utilize posters, table signs, electronic signage, etc. This internal marketing can be implemented with a few action steps.
GATHER IDEAS
Whenever I visit another doctor’s office, I take notes and pick up on new ideas on the items around the office and, specifically, how the messaging is displayed: Is it printed? Is it on a device hanging on the wall or on a computer screen?
In-house marketing pieces that draw my attention are educational. However, I’ve observed that optometrists should be careful in choosing which educational pieces to display, as a little goes a long way, and we don’t want to end up with a cluttered office.
DETERMINE LOCATION
I have found that multiple spaces throughout an office, such as the front-desk check in, the waiting room and the pretesting area, are effective in displaying educational pieces, as these are the areas patients tend to spend the most time and are a captive audience.
ANSWER QUESTIONS
Marketing can help lead patients to start asking the questions we want them to ask. For instance, if we have a poster on the back of an exam door about the damages blue light causes, what do we think our patients are going to ask about? The resulting discussions can help our practice to aid patients, while increasing capture rate for our targeted services.
TARGET GOALS
According to several sources, the average optometric practice spends 3% or less of its gross practice revenues on marketing. In so doing, let’s use our practices, and our marketing dollars, to educate our current patient base and drive referrals, as this is way more cost effective than drumming up new business. OM
Internal Marketing Worksheet
→ LET’S UTILIZE MARKETING pieces for our benefit. Pieces should provoke a thought or many thoughts. So, before creating this type of marketing content, or hanging posters on the wall, we must figure out the message to convey, be clear about it and keep it all cohesive. We can do so by listening to ourselves over the next week and taking notes of the diseases we discuss the most. Then, we can create pamphlets and posters, among other materials, around what is discussed the most. Next, we can watch our bottom-line revenue increase and our referrals go up.
Here are some areas to display internal marketing materials and ideas of what to display in those areas to help patients, while driving more revenue.
FRONT-DESK CHECK IN.
- Poster/countertop display. We can display a digital retinal image of a healthy retina vs. a patient who has disease pathology. Another option: We can educate on contact lens buying options, such as annual supplies and direct shipping to patients’ homes. Let’s start the optimum checkout outcome from the beginning.
WAITING ROOM.
- Rack cards about the doctor(s). We can help patients get to know us before they see us. Also, this is a great way to introduce a new associate to the practice.
- Install a TV and play eye-related content. We can utilize this technology to display specials we are running, such as buy-one, get one half-off on eye care-related products, or talk about areas of focus, such as myopia control, in our practice. Multiple companies can create this type of marketing for a nominal fee each month.
PRETESTING AREAS.
- Wall space. At my practice, we have a “Welcome to a no puff zone” sign. This is our No. 1 practice builder, as almost every patient who sits for pretesting says something positive about it, often expressing relief. (See photo.) Another option: We can display a poster about a dedicated area, such as dry eye, myopia management and specialty contact lenses, that we want to focus on with an interesting and short statistic.
EXAM ROOM.
- Computer screen. We can use screensavers to display items about our practice. (Also, we shouldn’t forget our toolbar to save websites we visit frequently for education. As the old adage goes, a picture is worth 1,000 words and can easily drive home our patient education.)
- Pamphlets. We can focus on three areas of practice we want to grow and display educational, practice-branded pamphlets.
- Back-of-the-door posters. We could stay laser focused on one area of practice and utilize this poster space as an area to reiterate something the patient may have seen at the front desk, in the waiting room or in pretesting.
CONTACT LENS ROOM.
- Table mats. I have found that new contact lens technology featured on table mats can educate returning patients who have to put in or take out their lenses.
- Brochures. In my experience, FAQs, or how-to brochures, on insertion and removal techniques make a positive marketing impression on patients. The more branding, the better.
DISPENSARY.
- Rearrange frame walls/displays. Let’s think about what lines we want to sell, and let’s lead patients to these lines with focused pieces. We can spruce up walls of frames by taking out pegs and inserting shelves to display objects or content.
- Tables. What types of coatings are we focused on? Let’s help our optician(s) sell what we want patients to utilize with educational pieces here.
- Table mats. Let’s focus on lens technology and help our optician(s) keep their sales patient-focused.
RESTROOM.
- Back of door/stall. We can get creative in this spot. If we don’t have a hook for items, perhaps now is a good time to install one! OM
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