When it comes to external marketing, start your focus on generating brand awareness. Brand awareness in simple terms is: when someone thinks about an eye care professional, they think about you! Remain consistent and polished with your marketing materials and the message you offer. You want to create awareness around qualities that make your practice stand out from your competition. Be sure you are telling your story. Why do you do what you do?
Once you’ve began to create a level of consumer consciousness for your practice, you can begin marketing to increase your leads. Most people will not make a phone call, let alone a purchase, the first time they hear about a brand. With a consistent marketing message, you’ll nurture your potential patients into your brands story. They will learn how you do things. This is the stage in brand awareness that will create an emotional connection. By creating that emotional connection, patients will be more likely to interact with you. This could be following your Facebook page, heading to your website to learn more about you, or looking at your Google reviews. This part of the process starts increasing your leads. Leads are potential patients; your target audience. They are learning more about your business, but have not yet made a purchase with you.
By continuing to nurture those leads, they will turn into sales. It takes a strong marketing strategy to stay in front of your potential patients, but it pays off in the end. After they’ve created that emotional connection with your practice, they are more likely to make a purchase with you. In turn, this will increase your patient base, production, and profitability.