25 Jan 31 Valuable Eye Care Marketing and Business Tools
2020 brought a multitude of changes, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. Across the board, businesses have made substantial adjustments to continue running operations and meet the needs of the people they serve.
Digital transformation isn’t just a buzzword anymore—it’s a necessity where every business must modify and modernize existing processes to continue delivering value.
To reach your optometry business goals this year, you’ll need to make adjustments of your own. Start using advanced technology (like optometry software) and available tools to help increase productivity and have a successful year.
This list of optometry marketing and business apps will help you know which technology solutions you need to grow your eye care practice effectively.
Optometry Marketing Tools
1. Hootsuite
Hootsuite is a popular social media planning tool that allows you to schedule social media content ahead of time. Choose how you schedule content and enjoy the ease of consistently engaging your audience on social.
2. Planoly
Planoly is the first visual planning tool for Instagram. It also allows you to schedule content and post directly to Instagram, as well as track analytics to help you better understand your audience.
3. Canva
Graphics and images are vital to your optometry marketing efforts. Canva is an excellent tool for creating stunning visual assets. Choose from professionally designed templates for a variety of content platforms, as well as thousands of royalty-free icons, photos, and fonts.
Paid subscribers enjoy features like content scheduling (using a content calendar), brand kits, built-in workflows, and more.
Video content is a must for optometry practices this year—Canva is also great for creating video content.
4. Over
Over helps you create visual content that’s beautifully eye-catching and on-brand. With Over, you’ll have access to a team of experts that help you select the best premium templates and offer design hacks, tips, and tricks so you stand out from the crowd.
5. Bitly
Long, non-branded links mean people are less likely to click through to see your message. With Bitly, get more people clicking on your content with branded, recognizable—and best of all—short and attractive links.
6. Moz (SEO) or Clearscope
Ever wondered how well your content is performing? Moz gives you complete link metrics for any website. It also measures Page Authority and Domain Authority, so you see how your pages and website rank.
If you’ve got the budget, Clearscope provides a unique list of keywords you can use to increase visibility and engagement. It’s easy to use and allows you to provide high-quality, informative content.
7. Constant Contact
Optometry marketing is easier when you have tools like Constant Contact to help automate emails. Constant Contact helps you create and send emails that quickly track your success using real-time reporting and comprehensive analytics.
8. Google Search Console
Google Search Console™ helps you determine your most popular web pages. You can also see how people find a business on Google—this tool lets you see the exact keywords used to search. Google Search Console allows you to check backlinks, track clicks, and submit sitemaps.
9. Agorapulse
Agorapulse helps you manage your social media community and all of your social network profiles. It brings together all of your messages from each site you use, allows you to manage publishing as well as monitors your ranking.
10. Buffer
Buffer allows you to schedule content in advance across multiple social media channels at once. This optometry marketing tool helps you stay on brand and grow your social media following by planning and publishing consistent content. Buffer also provides you with a list of the best image sizes for all major social channels.
11. Revive
Revive helps you refresh stale content on your blog—something every optometry marketing team can benefit from. It works by identifying content that might be outdated or flat on your blog, helping you transform them into traffic-driving posts, which is even more important now that people are doing everything from home.
12. CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer
The headline is the first thing people read before they decide to click and read. CoSchedule’s Headline Analyzer tool helps you write engaging headlines. Just type your headline and let it analyze your content for structure, word use, readability, and other engagement factors.
13. Morningfa.me
If your eye care marketing involves video marketing, you’ll love Morningfa.me. It’s an exclusive YouTube Analytics platform that allows you to see which videos are working or need improvement. Its recommendations are data-driven.
14. HotJar
Want to understand exactly what website users want? HotJar can help by visualizing user behavior and helping enhance their experience on your website. It works by identifying the areas of your site that need improvement so you make the right changes instead of playing a guessing game. It also comes with features like surveys and on-site polls.
15. Zapier
Ever wanted to connect all your apps and make marketing automation even easier. Zapier can do that without needing to know a thing about coding. Zapier can help you save time on repetitive tasks and can connect to over 15,000 apps, including QuickBooks, Slack, Google™ Docs, Facebook Lead Ads, and more.
16. Mailchimp
Another email marketing giant, Mailchimp, helps you get your email list in order. But more than that, Mailchimp has new features that help you manage your marketing even more effectively, such as intelligence-backed creative tools, more e-commerce functionality, a visual automation builder, and a creative assistant.
Now you can import your brand style and imagery directly from your website, build your customer journey, and know exactly when to send your emails. You’ll also get data-driven recommendations on how to boost campaign performance and subject line helpers to increase open rates.
17. Zoho
Zoho allows you to manage your email list with ease and from various sources, including Eventbrite and Google Workspace™ (formerly Google G Suite™). You’ll also get A/B testing, pre-designed templates, a drag-and-drop editor, and automation that makes it easier to run your practice, whether you’re sending onboarding emails, customer-engagement series, or lead-nurturing newsletters.
New features include the ability to add special and foreign characters in email addresses of CRM records and create deeper relationships with contacts and content in your database.
Optometry Business Tools
HIPAA Compliance Tip: HIPAA compliance should be a top priority anytime you bring new business apps into your practice. If you intend to store, receive, or transmit patient protected health information (PHI) using an app, always verify that the app is HIPAA-compliant first.
18. Grammarly
Grammarly checks any content for misspellings or inconsistencies. This tool acts as your personal proofreader to ensure everything you publish is well-written. Download the Chrome extension or just use the online app.
New features include a tone detector, mobile synonyms, the Grammarly Editor, and the service now helps you restructure sentences for clarity. Grammarly is also rolling out a new floating sidebar that lets you see all of the service’s suggestions in an easier-to-read format.
19. Basecamp
If project management seems to be a disorganized mess at your practice, Basecamp keeps everything in one place. This software improves project workflow tremendously so you have less to worry about and keep track of. And that’ll come in handy if you have any staff members working from home.
20. Hubspot Blog Ideas Generator
Is your eye care marketing team struggling to come up with new blog ideas? Then you’ll love the HubSpot Blog Ideas Generator. Simply type a few nouns related to your business into the search bar and HubSpot will generate several ideas for you.
21. Adobe Photoshop Express
Adobe Photoshop Express is a lifesaver when it comes time to edit, combine, and assemble photos when you’re not in the office. Getting creative, and sharing photos so they stand out on social media, can be done from the palm of your hand.
22. iMovie
Making eye care marketing videos is painless with iMovie. With this software, you create studio-quality titles, create extra-special effects, and even use green screen effects. Transform boring videos into amazing Hollywood-worth productions with stunning 4K resolution.
23. Pexels
Creating marketing materials for your optometry practice means finding high-quality images. Pexels is a great source for finding free images and videos with crystal clear quality of just about anything you can think of.
24. Unsplash
Similar to Pexels, Unsplash has high-quality images for your eye care marketing materials. The site has over one million free high-resolution searchable images taken by a large community of photographers.
25. Pixabay
Another source for free stock photos, Pixabay, is a great option when you want to create eye-catching visuals that really make your marketing materials look professional. With more than 1.9 million images to choose from, you’ll have no trouble finding what you need. And you can use them anywhere.
26. PicMonkey
PicMonkey is a photo editing tool that allows you to layer photos, use filters, add and modify the text, and more. Use it to design business cards, logos, ads, and announcements—and choose from over 2,400 customizable templates and more than 70 pre-set blank canvases.
27. Google Workspace
Google Workspace™ (formerly Google G Suite™) is essentially Gmail™ for businesses. You swap your @gmail.com address with your own domain to create professional email addresses for your staff. Google Workspace gives you the power to collaborate on files in real-time and take meetings from anywhere. Google Workspace comes with security built-in so your data, devices, and files are protected and backed up in the cloud so anyone can access them from remote locations.
HIPAA Compliance Tip: Google Workspace supports HIPAA compliance; however, you have to sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with Google. Also, Google’s BAA doesn’t pertain to emails sent or received in transit.
28. Google Hangouts
Have multiple office locations or just need to get everyone in your eye care practice on the same page? Google Hangouts™ is a great messaging app. You can also use it to make voice and video calls and sync it across all of your devices. This makes communicating with remote staff a breeze.
HIPAA ComplianceTip: Some features in Google Hangouts (with a Google Workspace Business or Enterprise account) are HIPAA compliant. You must configure Google Hangouts security control features to enable or disable who you want to authorize before using Google Hangouts for PHI. However, if you use Google Hangouts on a mobile device, this could violate HIPAA regulations. Refer to Google’s User Guide.
29. Google Translate
Need a translator for patients who speak another language? Google Translate™ translates 102 other languages to English so you can provide prompt service.
30. LinkedIn Recruiter
LinkedIn Recruiter helps companies and recruiters find the best talent on LinkedIn. At an optometry practice, you’ll be able to contact eligible candidates from a qualified pool. All you need is a personal LinkedIn account to use LinkedIn Recruiter, which will give you access to LinkedIn’s entire network of candidates.
31. Vimeo
Vimeo now has video storage and creation. If you weren’t using it before, you might have more use for it now that communication is so digital and video is becoming increasingly important for eye care practices.
Other new features and updates include improvements to the priority plan list, a new procedure for registering maintenance orders, and a new way to store default values. With Vimeo, you can enjoy high-quality live streaming, post-production collaboration, and marketing and monetization options.
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Getting your practice back on track in 2021 is a top priority for eye care professionals—it means being flexible and adapting to the times so you can meet patient needs in this changing world. These marketing and business tools, along with practice management and EHR optometry software like MaximEyes, will help you and your staff find success together this year.
Let’s get your practice back on track in 2021. Request a demo to see how MaximEyes optometry EHR and practice management software delivers value to your practice.
