The Official VisionWeb Blog

Based on the needs of our readers, we're starting a new series here on the VisionWeb blog called The Financial Guide. We'll explore your most pressing questions about money, profit, and billing in your practice. Feel free to submit questions via email or commenting below!

Many ODs hesitate to launch marketing campaigns because they believe them to be expensive. Of course, this is the case if you're thinking about putting on an event, doing a rebrand of your practice, paying for billboards, or creating other tangible advertising.

However, if you're focusing on a segment of your local population, running a limited-time discount, or conducting another short-term campaign for a small practice, expenses can be as low as $100. 

Let's break down the expenses of a marketing campaign to help you know what you can afford for your practice this quarter.

In the eyecare industry, especially when you only see many of your patients once or twice a year, staying relevant and memorable is important to maintain your patient count, increase new patient acquisition, and assist with frame sales.

And, in order to stay top of mind, your practice needs to increase communication and visibility within your community. This is where a strong optical marketing strategy comes in. Continue reading to see our expert opinion on marketing your practice in 2020.

When is the last time you physically looked something up in the yellow pages? Most searches for local businesses today happen through Google search or Google maps. If your practice's online presence isn't optimized for local search, you could be costing your practice tons of new patients.

Local search is when a consumer seeks information online in a specific geographic area with the intention of making a transaction offline. Today we want to share with you not only why local search is important, but also what you can do to make sure your practice is better represented.

Just about every business is going to receive at least a few negative online reviews. Usually the customer truly had an unfavorable experience, but what about those Yelp reviews that are unfair and portray an inaccurate or exaggerated explanation of the situation? If your business doesn't have a lot of reviews in the first place, one negative review blown out of proportion can hurt your overall rating and may cause hesitation from new patients.

If you notice an offensive or incorrect review, there are steps you can take to try and get help from Yelp to remove reviews that violate their content guidelines. In case your request for removal is denied by Yelp, we have some advice for taking your own stance against these types of reviews.