Advertising

[k12311997]

The doctor I work for views advertising as being not "Professional" and relies on bussiness driven by insurance he also views sales the same way. which would be fine if his chair was never empty. I keep telling him that even if we made only the same profit from a cash sale as insurance and advertised sales there is no paperwork and the payment is immediate and maybe he wouldn't have time to read the paper at work..

so my questions are.

1. Do you advertise?
a. What do you advertise, sales and promotions? product? services?

2. What forms of advertising do you find to be most effective and the best returns for you dollar?

[Ladyoptician]

The doctor I work for views advertising as being not "Professional" and relies on bussiness driven by insurance he also views sales the same way. which would be fine if his chair was never empty. I keep telling him that even if we made only the same profit from a cash sale as insurance and advertised sales there is no paperwork and the payment is immediate and maybe he wouldn't have time to read the paper at work..

so my questions are.

1. Do you advertise?
a. What do you advertise, sales and promotions? product? services?

2. What forms of advertising do you find to be most effective and the best returns for you dollar?

We only advertise when something big is going on like when we have a frame show or when we moved into our new office building. I would have to say the frame show has brought in the most business without a doubt. We have gotten eye exams from patient's spouses while they were here, the sign we put out has brought in patients on other days because it reminded them they needed an exam, it has increased 2nd pair sales, if a patient shown any doubt about a purchase I refer them to the show and have had 2nd pair sales come from it, I could go on and on, but in a nutshell even though we run a discount, we still show the most growth on months we have had shows. We only advertise in our small local newspaper.

[For-Life]

I got the company to adapt a solid, regular promotional strategy. Our strategy is not aimed at getting people in the store after they see it. Instead it is to increase our awareness and make our business one of the first thought of when they think glasses. It is amazing how many people out there have no clue of anything when they think glasses and do not even know where to start, so that is partially who we are capturing.

I do not run sales promotions, because that cheapens my image. I run advertisement that gives consumers insights about our business. I want them to know about our warranties, our service, our frame selection, our location and anything else that we hold a competitive advantage on (too many stores in all industries advertise the same thing).

I split up the advertising in two ways. First off I have a 52 week campaign with television advertising. Yes, I know television advertising is expensive, but radio does not work, and newspaper is not much less expensive. We do 52 weeks for consistency. You have to have a consistent advertisement or you will lose the repeation affect.

The second form of advertisement we do is newspaper. I am a huge fan of magazine ads because they become apart of the magazine. However, I do not have the money for Time Magazine, so newspaper is the next big thing. For newspaper you go big or you go home. There is too much junk being advertised that you have to do something different to stand out. Also, newspaper gives you the benefit of more in depth advertisement, so we take the time to relay our message about new products and our skills in that. We run that periodically.

[HarryChiling]

Your most effective advertising is going to be your client list. If you have a EMR you are one step ahead of the game. Print labels for people who have not had an exam in the past year or two and send out postcards. Make a list of clients throughout the year that you felt you went above and beyond for and they felt the same, send them special promotions periodically and ask them for refferals (word of mouth business is the best and most effective business). When someone mentions another clients name note that in the clients chart so when they come in next you can do something special for them (a card thanking them personally or a small gift goes a long way) include in the card or gift a few business cards and if this client brings in more than 10 clients offer them a sunglass SV only on the house and invite them to all your special events. Building relationships is where the advertising dollars should go, people appreciate that, and we have made tremendous strides this way. Hope this helps.

PS - don't forget to utilize your co-op dollars, it benifits you and your frame vendors. Call and ask them how much co-op dollars you have acrued (probably not much in the beginning of the year). A well placed Logo can cut your advertising costs in half.

[For-Life]

Good point. Keeping your current clientele is more important than getting new clients. I wrote mainly on extra stuff we are doing to increase our practice, but that is only a small fraction of what we do.

[k12311997]

Good point. Keeping your current clientele is more important than getting new clients. I wrote mainly on extra stuff we are doing to increase our practice, but that is only a small fraction of what we do.

Harry, For Life

we already do a good job of keeping clients recall at 1, 2,and 3 years, birthday postcards and thank you cards to new pt's after visit and refferal thank you cards.

The problem as I see it is patients are very fickel. have had many patients tell me after their insurance changed that they really liked us but "have" to go where their insurance would allow or after coming back after a long break glad they could come back to use but had to change because of insurance. by relying strictly on ins your pt base is those that go where the ins will "let" them building a cash pt base would get people who could go anywhere choose your office. We have the inventory, personality, and skills to be bigger than we are (modesty never being a strong suite of mine) we just need more patients. we are in a professional building so there is little to now foot traffic.

[LKahn]

Professionals advertise. Do it with dignity. Do not sell based on price. Market fashion and style. Do direct mail to your existing customer base to remind them of there need to have a recent exam and current glasses.

[k12311997]

any thoughts on
coupon mailers such as Val Pak?
Church bulletin advertising?
Giving Sunglasses or services to charity auctions?

What is wrong with advertising price if it gets them in the door a certain percentage will go with the better than advertised product and even if they go for cheap I'm not going to advertise a loss leader.

[Johns]

any thoughts on
coupon mailers such as Val Pak?
Church bulletin advertising?
Giving Sunglasses or services to charity auctions?

What is wrong with advertising price if it gets them in the door a certain percentage will go with the better than advertised product and even if they go for cheap I'm not going to advertise a loss leader.

Val Pak - "Cheap" Image (Sharing space w/ pizza shops & window companies)
Church Bulletin - We've had good results, but not w/ all churches
Giving Sunglasses - Give gift certificates, that way they have to come to your office and spend $$ (plus see your place and get the whole experience.)

I do a type of "Welcome Wagon" that gets awesome results in one of my markets, but did zilch in the other 4. It's all a "throw it against the wall and see what sticks" game.

[victor]

The doctor I work for views advertising as being not "Professional" and relies on bussiness driven by insurance he also views sales the same way.

I love these types of "professionals". They send me a whole lot of business. Believe it or not, you can be a professional, be inexpensive, put out the best product in town, and run second pairs at half off, all at the same time.

Don't whine at Lenscrafters and Wal-Mart if you are unwilling to advertise your product and compete.

[Jubilee]

We recently got a great deal on advertising on a local grocery store pharmacy bag.

For only $200 we were able to place a small ad on 24thousand pharmacy bags. Each one is handed personally to potential patient, and the pharmacy agrees to recommend our location as the place to get their eyewear needs taken care of. The demographics were for primarily patients 60+, with medium incomes, and majority are homeowners. The pharmacy is not even a mile from our place, and 80% of their clients live in a 5 mile radius of the store.

We are curious how well this will work for us. But for the price, it seemed worth a shot!

Cassandra

[Johns]

My critera for advertising: "When was the last time I went somewhere to make a purchase because I saw their ad on_________________?"

[For-Life]

My critera for advertising: "When was the last time I went somewhere to make a purchase because I saw their ad on_________________?"

Maybe not that day, but if I asked you about why you make certain purchases, I bet there are several places or things that you bought because it was the first that you thought of.

[Johns]

Maybe not that day, but if I asked you about why you make certain purchases, I bet there are several places or things that you bought because it was the first that you thought of.

Yeah...I'll give you that.

[MedicLINK]

Being computerized and having all your clients at your digital fingertips is certainly a key to effective marketing.

Recalls would certainly be the most common way to get your current clients back into your business. But there are many other things you can do with an effective software solution.
You may want to search for a particular group of clients that made a particular purchase, received a specific service or even have a particular prescription. So being able to do Target Marketing to effectively reach a certain group can be more useful as well.
The more you know about your clients, the better retention level you will have. You should be able to break your client list down to males/females or an age breakdown or even demographics to help in the development and focus of your marketing campaigns.

Of course the above is great for existing clients, but what about getting new ones? It might be more effective to target a smaller group of people instead of targeting to everyone and anyone. That smaller group could possibly be determined by looking at your current clients. If you have 75% female clients and the majority of your high-value purchases are from the age group od 25-34, maybe focus your ad and advertise directly to 25-34 year old females.

Lastly, if you do advertise, it is critical to track how effective that marketing is. There's no point spending $1000's on an ad that you do not know how many people it is attracting. Your software should be able to track why people are coming into the store. That will tell you what ads are working, and what ones aren't.

This is just my 2 cents of some knowledge I was able to pick up from listening to our customers and how they are advertising.

[MarcE]

Here are some things I have heard, or things we are thinking about or things we have done.

If the Dr is concerned about a "professional" image and advertising, you could break out the optical under a different name, and just have the optical advertise or run specials.

When you have a patient in the office, put a sticky note on the outside of the chart and write down the name and/or relationship of any family members as it comes up. When they check out, ask if they would like to schedule an exam for husband Bud, son Jim, etc. If they were impressed, they will book a family exam and they will not see it as a sale technique. They will be grateful that you reminded them of their insurance benefits for the family.

Anytime a patient compliments the exam or products or service or anything else, ask them to tell their family and friends.
Some of our best "advertising": school vision screenings, Presentation at the diabetes support group, joining civic organizations.

If there is no Rx change, the Dr should ask the patient, "Where you thinging about new glasses today?" The answer might be yes. But if the Dr wasn't going to write an Rx because their wasn't a change, you might have missed out on a sale.

There is a quite a bit of internal marketing you can do that costs less thatn external marketing. However I had a patient tell me today that when he sold furniture, a few advertising spots increased his sales 20% in one week. People have to know about you somehow.

[LKahn]

VCA has a dignified program for marketing for the small optical shop

"Check yearly See Clearly"

The program is no charge and has a number of free components.

[Chris Ryser]

One of the best advertisings I have seen towards existing customers is the sending of Birthday cards from your optician.

We used to get thank you phone calls and cards for just having thought about them at their birthday.

[LKahn]

Chris

This a great idea. It tells your customer they are being paid attention to. Customers love attention.

One of the best advertisings I have seen towards existing customers is the sending of Birthday cards from your optician.

We used to get thank you phone calls and cards for just having thought about them at their birthday.