6 Optometry Marketing Tools for Your Practice
(That even you can use!)
So you’ve decided to do online marketing for your optometry practice, here’s a few tools to help get started and stay consistent.
In this article, we’ll provide 6 optometry marketing tools we use for online marketing and digital strategy. We use these every day, and they aren’t too complicated! Most optometrists who own their practice wear many hats (perhaps you can relate?). These tools can make your life MUCH easier and give you back your weekend–you know, those two days between Friday and Monday?
For the one-stop shop on everything you need to know about online marketing as an optometrist, check out our Ultimate Guide .
Even the best tools are useless without knowing how to use them. That’s what we do. If you’re stuck, reach out! We’re more than happy to help get your digital strategy on track.
Get Your Optometry Practice Website’s SEO On Track
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the cornerstone of durable digital marketing that pays off in the long run.
Just like marathon training takes a long time to pay off, SEO efforts involve long-term goal setting. But just like marathon training allows you to run a freaking marathon, good SEO benefits your practice much longer than other strategies (plus, it’s scalable so it can grow as you do).
1. Use MOZ to Get a Grip On SEO
There are a number of tools developed by SEO-ers to make sense of search engine optimization, including ahrefs, SEMrush, and MOZ. We’ve got some experience with each, but like MOZ for people new to digital marketing. MOZ has a pretty straightforward interface and doesn’t give you too much to deal with at a time.
The focus is on keywords, which you can work with, and doesn’t pull you too deep into technical SEO. Of course, you can delve into technical SEO on your own, but we imagine your time might be better spent on your patients!
Curious about technical SEO? Check out our Ultimate Guide!
MOZ Local and MOZ Pro for Online Marketing
Alright, here’s one of our best-used secrets. MOZ Local.
We love the tools MOZ Local gives us for getting specific data on how our clients are doing in a given region. That’s really what matters, right? You’re wasting your time if you have solid SEO for a global search but can’t outrank your local competitors.
Patients aren’t about to drive across state lines for your eye services, no matter how good you are (unless you’re like, really really good).
MOZ Local is only $15 a month, but it works best joined with MOZ Pro, their full SEO tool. It’s $100 a month, but offers your a lot more features–all of which can be better-optimized using MOZ Local.
Can you do search engine optimization on your own?
Sure, you can. But getting real, lasting results from SEO takes a lot of time.
So, the better answer is, “Yes, but maybe you shouldn’t?” We know, personally, how important it is to embrace and protect your time out of the office. We think it’s best in the short and long-term to hire an SEO team that knows your industry and has proven success.
Oh, hello, that’s us.
Schedule a strategy session now if you’re interested in boosting your patient volume without overloading your weekend.
2. Social Media Tools for Optometry Marketing (Buffer and Hootsuite)
Like eating your vegetables or washing your eyes twice a day (what?), most people don’t like social media marketing (unless you’re us!). Sure it seems fun at first, then you’re bombarded by different types of professional accounts, stories vs reels vs posts, and eventually throwing in the towel sounds pretty nice.
The problem is that social media is SO helpful for marketing efforts. The good news is there are tools (like Hootsuite and Buffer) that can bring the many facets of marketing together and simplify your process.
Facebook and Instagram Marketing Tips
These are the primary platforms we recommend including in your optometry marketing strategy. It’s helpful to consider them as “tools” when you’re using them for marketing.
The best advice we can give is to make a social media posting plan (check out our Kit to save yourself some serious time!) and follow it. Making a plan takes a lot more time than following it. When it comes to social media, consistency is key.
Social media allows you to connect with patients where they spend much of their free time. If you provide valuable content and information that engages them, your followers are more likely to become patients.
If you really want to avoid touching social media, that’s okay. You can actually do your social media marketing by following our tips with the use of these tools.
Using Buffer for Social Media
Buffer is great for smaller businesses and content creators. They’ve designed a very easy to use dashboard interface with capabilities to create, schedule, and plan campaigns and posts. If you only use the primary social media platforms and have a small team of marketing pro’s, Buffer would be a great option for simplifying your social media efforts.
Social Media Marketing with Hootsuite
Hootsuite can perform the same actions as Buffer, but is a little bit convoluted from an interface perspective. That said, they offer integrations for a greater range of social media platforms and have more tools. Hootsuite also works better for larger marketing teams, though their content creation platform isn’t as good as Buffer’s.
Which social media tool should you use?
Deciding on a social media marketing tool can be the step that gets you in the game. Both platforms take the guesswork and time-sucking busywork out of using multiple social media accounts for marketing.
Which is best for your practice ultimately comes down to your budget, your unique needs, the size of your team managing social media, and how you want to use social media. For a team with many users and a hefty budget, Hootsuite provides the most tools and integrations.
For a smaller-scale team (or one person wearing many hats–that should sound familiar!), Buffer might be the better choice as it’s easier to use and helps you narrow-in on the important parts, saving you time and getting content out FASTER.
Should you use Instagram and Facebook Ads?
If you have been consistently engaging your current audience on social media for a while, social media ads are a fantastic way to get more new patients. Ads allow you to take your target audience and expand to similar users.
Example of an Instagram ad (labeled)
Basically, using social media ads can be like telling Instagram to find users similar to your current audience, pay it to put your content in their feed, and get them to follow you. If your content is really good, you may be able to get users to schedule an appointment right from the ad!
Want to learn more about how to market with social media as an optometrist? Our Social Media Marketing Guide has more info on leveraging social media to get you more patients.
3. Use Weave to Optimize Your Patient Communications
Weave is a communication platform that empowers you to engage with your customers and your team is an organized way. It integrates smoothly with your current EHR systems to simplify daily tasks like taking payments, calling on missed appointments, and sending appointment reminders.
Weave does it all: patient scheduling, referral management, communications, and has integrations for maximizing your time in and out of the office to improve your experience and your patients’ experience.
The other reason we love Weave is they’ve developed specific routes for you to follow if you’re an optometrist. They have HIPAA-compliant team chat, review management, and email marketing tools at your disposal.
4. Use Grammarly When You Can’t Afford A Bad Impression
Health professionals are held to a higher standard when it comes to grammar. If you have a typo in your communication, someone will catch it and it may seriously damage their impression of you and your practice.
Grammarly is free and a great way to give yourself an extra dose of security that your marketing materials won’t be misinterpreted.
5. Get Help Creating Content With Fiverr
Fiverr is an online community of freelancers ready to tackle whatever task fits their skills. While you shouldn’t build a team around Fiverr users, they can accelerate your timeline on getting content, design, or coding done.
The faster you get these kinds of tasks completed, the better your chance of getting in front of prospective patients before your competitors.
6. Make Sense of Your Data with Google Data Studio
Google Data Studio lets you pull information from a variety of sources including Google/social media ads, Google Search Console, and other places prospective customers can find you online. This data can be converted into easily understood, automatically updating dashboards.
We use these Google Data Studio dashboards ALL THE TIME to help make sense of and track website and ads metrics over time. Google Data Studio is a great tool for viewing metrics on your optometry marketing efforts in one place simultaneously.
Need more help marketing your optometry practice?
As we stated in the beginning of this article, all the best tools are useless without knowledge of how to use them. Learning to use these tools takes time, which we know most of you don’t have in excess.
So, need help? That’s what we do! We take your awesome, in-person skills and translate them into an online strategy that gets you more leads and grows as you grow. We can help with optometry marketing ideas, completely manage ads, and (especially) develop or repair your SEO practice.
It’s as easy as signing up for a free strategy session. Let’s accelerate your marketing and get you more patients by helping you be as good online as you are in-person!