In a society where economics continue to slope downward, there is an opportunity to stay ahead of the curve. In the past, budgets may have allowed for trial and error marketing efforts. Today, it’s more important than ever to focus on proven growth strategies. This includes defining your practice’s target demographic. Marketing to the masses is no longer enough. Selecting your practice’s most profitable target is the first step to your marketing success.

When selecting your practice’s target market, it’s important to consider the community demographics surrounding your office. This may include their demographics, psychographics, location, lifestyle needs, buying motivation and sense of entitlement. Of these important considerations, the most often overlooked is the gender of the target market for the optical industry.

Women currently offer the largest opportunity in the marketplace. Responsible for over 80% of all healthcare spending, women are earning more now than ever before. In addition, women are accepting higher paying occupations and bring in half or more of the combined household income in the majority of U.S. households. Choosing to modify your practice’s marketing to appeal more to women can lead to a significant increase in your response rate.

Mice and human beings share 95% of the same DNA. It’s amazing what a big difference that five percent makes! Thinking from the same perspective, how different are men and women really? How different do the marketing materials really need to be? Women come equipped with their own perceptions, preferences, aptitudes, behaviors and communication patterns. All of these affect their purchasing process.

When women enter the market for eye care, they start with an idea of the practices, or “brands,” they plan to check out during their search. They are fine without knowing everything when they start their search by investigating practices by scanning ads, reading articles, visiting websites, going to the store and handling merchandise. While men are more interested in facts and features, and often prefer impersonal sources and research before leaving the house, women prefer to talk to the staff of a practice and ask friends for their opinions. In many cases, this involves what can be called a spiral decision-making process. Men look to eliminate options, not add them. Women seek more information and investigate more options. This can sometimes move them back to a previous stage in the purchasing process. To arrive at a decision, women have to be sure they have gathered enough information and have considered all of their options.

As an eye care professional it’s important to align your practice’s internal marketing to create an atmosphere conducive to this target market. Be sure to provide your patients with plenty of information about your services, as well as the products you offer. This may include printed information, a practice website, demonstration tools and a highly trained, friendly staff that understands and respects that women are information gatherers and the decision making process may take a little longer. While it’s important not to rush your patients, it is beneficial to teach your staff tactics to overcome decision reluctance if a patient seems to be struggling with finding the “perfect answer.” Once you fully understand the patient’s needs, it may be helpful to provide a couple comparison shopping examples that outline the pros and cons of each. Emphasize the benefits of making a decision now.

Once a decision is made, women’s influence on your practice’s success doesn’t end with their purchase. Because women spend more time upfront, before the sale, they more often have a greater sense of loyalty and are a great referral source. In addition to returning to your office for subsequent purchases, a happy female patient will also recommend you to everyone she knows. For this reason, it’s also important to leverage word-of-mouth marketing techniques.

To successfully market to women, it’s essential to utilize a marketing strategy plan. A marketing strategy plan uses diversified mediums to help eye care professionals create and maintain connections with consumers in the market for eye care. In addition to making marketing cost-effective, strategy plans also ensure your practice’s brand is on the short list of purchase candidates which helps you generate a higher return from every patient.

To effectively connect with women in your marketing strategy plan, your practice must develop a unique selling position, or USP, that appeals to women and helps them view your practice relative to your competition. This includes making your practice relevant to them by speaking to their wants and needs. More importantly, you need to appeal to a woman’s emotions and make her care about your practice’s brand. Your marketing materials should not be expected to sell your products and services, but instead create curiosity, generate a conversation, or prompt a question.

If your marketing communications can’t sell, how do you know they’re working? Generating a response to your materials in the form of phone calls, foot traffic, requests for information, website visits and more, requires more than simply reaching your target audience. Before you can convince someone your practice is the right choice, you have to connect to something they care about. An easy to follow, three-step process will help your practice to do this.

1. Begin by brainstorming to determine what about your products and services are truly important to women.

2. Narrow down what the “attraction factors” people will like about your products and services.

3. Define the benefits, not features, of those attraction factors.

It’s tempting to focus your marketing on the benefits of your products and services and call it customer focused and targeted to women. However, that’s not enough. You have to take the final step in the process and ask yourself, “Why that benefit is important, or meaningful to a woman?”

A firm understanding of a woman’s decision making process, and the willingness to target your marketing at this untapped opportunity, is sure to bring success to your practice. To begin refining your target market, by more than women, start from within. A practice commonly wants to reach prospects with the same profile and demographics as their existing patient base. Resist the temptation to be all things to all people. It’s expensive enough to advertise in one market, let alone two or three. Find your niche and build on it…and make sure it includes women!

Samantha Toth is a marketing consultant and President of Innereactive Media, located in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She has 12 years of experience in the optical industry, including eight years of dispensing experience as an ABO certified optician and BA degree from Michigan State University. For more information, please email Samantha at stoth@innereactive.com