07 Jan Improve Your Optometry Marketing Visibility with These 12 Apps
Modern businesses know that marketing is the key to successful growth and profits. Research shows that marketing tactics, such as blogging, social media, video marketing, email campaigns, and newsletters show tremendous rates of engagement—assuming efforts are consistent and quality-driven. Any eye care practice can benefit from learning more ways to engage their patients. Enter, marketing.
Nearly 50% of internet users search for video related content when investigating a product or brand. It’s also estimated that Facebook acquires roughly 79% of all online users through profile management, article browsing, or photos.
Creating content and distributing it through the right channels will help boost your optometry marketing in a major way. Knowing where to start is even more important than knowing what to create.
Running an eye care practice can certainly get busy with patient care. Don’t let that routine get in the way of gaining new patients. These 12 apps will make a huge difference with growing your eye care practice this year.
The 12 Best Apps for Optometry Marketing
1. Instagram
According to Statista.com, Instagram is one of the most popular social media apps available today. As of June 2018, the platform hit over 1 billion monthly active users across the globe. Your eye care practice should take advantage of the bustling market.
By creating a profile and posting engaging photos or ads, you can connect with a variety of demographics and build a trustworthy following.
2. Facebook Page
Unlike a personal profile, a Facebook page allows eye care practices to have their own platform on Facebook that’s geared toward creating campaigns, driving advertisements, and amassing followers.
With more than 2.2 billion active users on Facebook, interacting with existing or future patients is a surefire way to enhance your presence and show the personality of your practice.
3. LinkedIn Page
Although it’s geared toward business professionals, creating a LinkedIn page for your eye care practice can be a great way to deliver engaging content and secure new audiences. In 2017, LinkedIn became the best social media platform to connect with new users.
Why? Because LinkedIn’s focused approach and user-base allow for purpose-driven content, creating an opportunity for optometrists to connect with a hyper-specific audience.
4. WordPress or Squarespace
Blogs are an excellent marketing strategy that builds credibility and drives customer engagement. Studies compiled by Hubspot found that 55% of marketers claim that blog posts are their top inbound marketing priority. One in ten blog posts are compounding, meaning organic search increases their traffic over time. Compounding blog posts make up 10% of all blog posts and generate 38% of overall traffic.
Publishing useful and educational content consistently can really help boost traffic and awareness for your eye care practice. WordPress and Squarespace have plenty of templates to make it easy for you to get started with blog content.
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5. Grammarly
Once you have your blog up and running, your next step is to create strong written content. Try using Grammarly to check for any misspellings or inconsistencies in the language. The platform basically serves as your personal proofreader, ensuring that everything you publish is well-written. Check out Grammarly’s free grammar-checking tool to see how it works.
6. Thesaurus.com
Another way to amp up your writing skills is to use Thesaurus.com to find alternate words. Especially as you write more blog and social media content, you’ll find that variety is necessary to keep readers engaged. Finding the right words quickly will help you achieve that mission.
7. Canva
Not only are the words important, but graphics and images are just as vital to your optometry marketing efforts. Visual content is perhaps the most influential component of a marketing strategy, and Canva is an excellent tool for creating stunning visual assets with ease.
Their free tool gives you access to different templates designed for all types of content platforms. They also offer thousands of royalty-free photos, fonts, and icons that can give your practice a little flair.
8. Hootsuite, Buffer or Sprout Social
Hootsuite, Buffer, and Sprout Social are popular tools for managing social media content. Scheduling social media ahead of time is a must for busy eye care professionals. You can pick a day each week to schedule a week ahead. These social media scheduling tools will help you stay consistent so you can engage your audience daily.
8. Crowdfire
Finding the time to run all of these accounts and create content is definitely a challenge, but Crowdfire makes the process easier. They have scheduling and content curation perks, but the main feature Crowdfire is known for…follower management. This tool is a lifesaver for anyone who uses Twitter as you can unfollow inactive accounts or people who stop following you.
10. Google Analytics
How do you know if your optometry marketing efforts are working? By analyzing those efforts. Google Analytics™ runs a full checkup across your website and traffic related to other sites that drive engagement your way.
For example, if many of your users are being directed to your site from an article on LinkedIn, Google will present those stats to you, giving you the opportunity to put more effort into content creation for that channel. If you have a website, you should have Google Analytics installed to capture the data and continually learn from those insights.
11. MailChimp
Even with the popularity of social media over the past decade, newsletters are still a tried and true method for reaching your patients. There are many email marketing solutions to choose from, but MailChimp is one of the most user-friendly options for small businesses.
MailChimp will compile all of your subscribers into one database, allowing you to create messages with unique templates, images, social icons, and call-to-action buttons. After you’re finished, you can save your creations for later or schedule them to go out at certain times. Best of all, MailChimp offers a free basic service.
12. Slack
Although email is effective in marketing, it’s not always effective with your staff who is constantly dealing with cluttered inboxes. As you’re working on marketing campaigns together, a communication solution like Slack makes projects run more smoothly by minimizing back-and-forth conversations via email.
Modern Eye Care Professionals Use Cutting-Edge EHR Systems
Growing your patient base and driving revenue is a necessary part of running a successful eye care practice. Your practice doesn’t have to be rooted in outdated systems and management styles. You should continually look for new ways to innovate.
MaximEyes EHR and practice management software streamlines your practice to help your staff be more productive. You can also use the system for EHR data mining to make your marketing campaigns more effective.
Are you still dealing with paperwork and inefficiency? When it comes to marketing campaigns, how do you figure out the best strategy? Along with implementing marketing apps into your current strategy, take a moment to consider your overall approach to EHR systems and practice management processes this year.
Start the year off on the right path. Request a demo to see how other eye care professionals are succeeding with MaximEyes.
