The Official VisionWeb Blog

You can promote your eyecare practice all you want, but typically the strongest and most successful types of promotion will come from your current patients and their word of mouth recommendations to their friends and family. Without overtly asking for patients to post reviews or share stories on social media there are ways you can encourage your patients to do this on their own throughout your office.

Creating fun areas in your dispensary where patients can take selfies or have photos taken of them when trying on their new frames is a great way to beef up your marketing. Patients will be likely to share their photos on their own social media pages, and you will have pictures on hand of patients wearing your frames. Here are a few ideas for creating picture-worthy spaces in your optical shop.

It’s important to give back to your community, whether as an individual or as a practice. When you find and contribute to a charity that aligns with your values as an eyecare leader, it can reduce stress, increase happiness, and improve self-esteem for your entire staff and patient base.

Whether you donate your time, your money, or your support, finding a way for your practice to give back to a cause will also improve the way your community and peers look at you and your practice. The team at The Optical Journal listed out 97 vision charities for you to browse. When looking for a charity to support, we recommend first listing out your budget, the geographic area you'd like to help, and any particular values your team supports.

Eyecare practices invest a large chunk of money into their equipment, software, people, and education. Of course, we encourage that you weigh your options and comparison shop before making any big decision. Sometimes, you find the perfect solution or vendor for your practice, but you hesitate because they're expensive or highly specialized.

You might want to start with calculating which expenses can be consolidated to give you a bigger bang for your buck. We encourage you get creative, too. You could bundle deals for frames, product ordering, outsourcing, or hiring a recruiter. Let's take a deeper dive into how.

You'll reach a point in your marketing strategy planning where you feel zapped of creative ideas to get your practice on the map. Turning to industry blogs and researching competitor events is a good place to start. However, there are a few internal ways to boost innovation, too.

We suggest that you effectively gather ideas from everyone in your practice through an innovation program. These programs use strategic methods to bring out new, possibly out-of-the-box ideas to improve your day-to-day processes or keep up with the changing industry. Keep reading to see how this could apply to you.

Our last installment of the financial guide was on budgeting your marketing campaigns. Access it here if you missed it. This month we'll be thinking about the return of investment on conferences, tradeshows, and other industry events.

Not only do you have to consider the cost of attendance, but also factor in the flights, hotels, transportation, and loss of opportunity ODs incur taking time away from your practice. As an optometrist, you'll have to choose which conferences are convenient, which CE courses you need, calculate how many days you can afford to be away, and set up business meetings in advance. 

We'll help you break down if you can earn your expenditures back in the post below.