THERE IS NO better place for a new patient to learn about you than your practice’s website. What does it say about you, your team, your specialty, and the new things being done to innovate?

After visiting several websites, there are several common problems that emerge—and certain things become clear.

WHAT WAS LEARNED?

1. You haven’t updated your website in at least five years. You don’t look like that picture anymore.
2. You tried the “Blog” feature when the website first went live, but dropped that ball quickly. Your last post was dated February 2019.
3. When searching “eye care” in your city, your website is not live and active. The site is showing up on the second page of the search. This is akin to a kiss of death, as 71% to 92% of users stay on the first page of Google (McCormick, 2022). Additionally, the top three search results get 54% of all traffic (Dean, 2022).
4. Your website is not mobile-responsive. It doesn’t load quickly and calls to action (call or book appointment buttons) are not front and center. Nearly 60% of searches come from mobile devices (Griffin, 2023) and Google uses Mobile Indexing first to crawl and recommend websites to users. Having a website that is not mobile friendly will affect a practice.
5. There are no dedicated pages for individual services. You need to create pages for each service available so that Google can crawl the page and recommend it to users.

WHY IS THIS BOTHERSOME?

If you are reading this, you are likely at the top of your clinical game. Therefore, it is imperative to show up like the specialist you are. When someone initiates a search, they need to be able to find you, and the search engines are not going to make that easy unless you engage back. Patients who have problems need to find providers who can help.

Make it easy. Show up where the patients are and engage with them on their questions. Don’t rely on word-of-mouth marketing to grow a specialty lens practice.

FIVE MARKETING TIPS

Here are a few things that specialty practices should do.

1. Update and build a new website every two to three years. This fresh perspective catches the attention of search engines and patients. While a patient may not notice that the website is new, they will notice if it’s old
2. Engage in blogs that answer questions that patients might have. Ideally this would be based on commonly searched terms and is called search engine optimization. By having content that is relevant and recent, a site will place higher. There are even tools that can report ranks in your area for certain terms. Being in the top five or 10 for many terms will make a website look like a shiny coin to the search engines.
3. Have enticing calls to action on the site. Examples of this include “Order Contact Lenses,” “Call Us,” and/or “Dry Eye Quiz.”
4. Send out invites to your site. Use email marketing to connect with patients on a monthly basis. This will not only drive traffic back to the site, but businesses who engage in email marketing see a return on investment of 38:1 (Litmus, 2018).
5. Build your brand through Facebook/Instagram/Google ads that drive traffic back to the site. The average person is exposed to 5,000 to 10,000 ads per day (Nadia, 2022). They need to be exposed to a brand at least seven times before they remember it (Katz, 2022). This is an opportunity to tell users what makes you different, what services you offer, and highlights your competitive advantages. This will raise brand awareness and drive direct traffic to the site.

You may be amazing at your specialty, but if patients needing your specialty cannot find you, they may end up in a practice that is less capable of solving their problems. You owe them the ability to find you. CLS

References

1. McCormick K. 10+ Free Ways to Get on the First Page of Google. 2022. Available at wordstream.com/blog/ws/2020/08/19/get-on-first-page-google . Accessed Jan. 6, 2023.
2. Dean B. We Analyzed 4 Million Google Search Results: Here’s What We Learned About Organic Click Through Rate. 2022 Oct 14. Available at backlinko.com/google-ctr-stats . Accessed Jan. 6, 2023.
3. Griffin J. What Percentage of Searches Are Performed on Mobile Devices? 2023 Jan 4. Available at thewebmaster.com/what-percentage-of-search-are-mobile/ . Accessed Jan. 10, 2023.
4. Litmus. Litmus Research Finds that Email Marketing’s ROI Is 38-to-1. 2018 Oct 11. Available at markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/litmus-research-finds-that-email-marketing-s-roi-is-38-to-1-1027609929 . Accessed Jan. 6, 2023.
5. Nadia. How Many Ads Do We See a Day? 2022 May 13. Available at siteefy.com/how-many-ads-do-we-see-a-day . Accessed Jan. 6, 2023.
6. Katz J. Marketing Rules of 7’s. Available atmarketingillumination.com/single-post/marketing-rule-of-7s . Accessed Jan. 6, 2023.