1. Digital Ads 4. Digital Signage
Digital advertising on Google with
Google AdWords, Google My Business
and Google Display are becoming the
only way to truly compete online against
your competitor down the street. If
you want to show up when an eye care
consumer is searching for a provider,
you need to be in the ads and Google
maps. SEO, while still important, is
not the only factor in showing up for
vision-related searches. Over 75 per
cent of searches are done on Google.
The second-largest search engine is
YouTube. Bill Gerber, a good friend who owns
Contentlinq, says “merchandising
is the most underutilized marketing
tool.” If you look at all the big retail
stores, you will see a lot of digital
signage from digital window displays
to interactive digital media on racks
and shelves. This is the way of the future
in optical as well. Take your merchan-
dising digital and new wave with some
of these new technologies like
Contentlinq & Vue Care Media.
2. Social Advertising
You noticed I didn’t say social media
as social has become a pay-to-play
model. Facebook changed its business
pages to primarily display boosted
posts. So, unless you’re investing in
boosting posts, you can be posting all
the time and no one is seeing them
even if they are following your page.
Therefore, don’t post just to post…
post relevant content and put a few
dollars behind it (even $10 a day) will
at least get you some exposure. Then,
there are Facebook ads which work like
posting except more advanced options
and also post automatically to Instagram.
The good news both can be geo-targeted
to your location and demographics
getting you qualified traffic.
3. SMS Marketing
Thanks to millions of consumers using
their smartphones, SMS (short messag-
ing service) marketing has grown
exponentially over the last few years.
There are over 3.2 million vision-related
searches every month and over 56 per
cent are done on a smartphone. There
are a few great technology-related
companies that assist in making text-
based marketing easy to set up and
simple to send. A few to check out are
Solution Reach, Weave & Eyeconx.
5. E-commerce
E-commerce is alive and growing. Every
eye care business will eventually need
to consider if they jump into the online
game or not. It started as online contact
lenses, but now there are thousands
of sites selling eyewear, sunglasses
and nutraceuticals. Online eye exams
are a real thing now and will be a dis-
ruption for sure. Some companies to
check out if you’re ready to get online:
Fitting Box, Purple Go, Frames Data,
Opternative & DigitalOptimetrics.
6. Lead Generation
This type of marketing is the process
of attracting your ideal customer and
getting them to give you their contact
information. Sounds easy, but it’s any-
thing but simple. It is a science of
building the right incentive that would
make me give up my email address, so
you can market again to me. There are
a lot of businesses out there doing this
as their only source of marketing.
e-mail campaigns. You can build surveys
that help determine someone’s severity
of dry eye, landing pages that have
case studies to offering a contest as a
way of getting people to submit their
info. Some technology that can help with
this: Unbounce, Hubspot & Typeform.
Last note…as we wrap up this article,
I want to leave you with one last mar-
keting thought or suggestion. Think
of marketing as an investment, not
an expense. Eye care businesses use
to pay up to $30,000 a year for listings
and ads in Yellow Pages, but have not
taken that money and reinvested in
the new way to search, which is online.
People are looking for your services,
but you’re not showing up.
Don’t let this happen anymore by
taking the initiative and starting to
advertise in new ways. Wishing you
all the best in 2019.
Bonus…want some extra tips on
marketing? Go to OpticalPrism.ca
and download the “40 Top Marketing
Strategies to Grow Your Eye
Care Business.”
Trudi Charest is the co-Founder of
Marketing4ECPs, a digital market-
ing agency focused on helping eye
care professionals dominate online.
Trudi is a well-known speaker,
author, influencer and marketer. She
can be reached at [email protected]
or www.marketing4ecps.com
They build their own funnel of potential
clients and then keep reminding them
of their services through automated
OPTICAL PRISM | January 2019 31