With all the bad news about the economy lately, it’s hard for those of us in the eye care profession not to be discouraged when it comes to business. What we have to focus on is that these attitudes do a disservice to our patients, our staff members, and ultimately to ourselves.

Here are some areas of focus I suggest to clients during difficult economic times:

1. Use the Internet for Inexpensive Online Marketing

Traditional marketing campaigns are expensive with generally low rates of return. It’s also very hard for private practices to compete with national chains in this arena. For these reasons many private practices are turning to the internet for their marketing campaigns. I recommend two simple, inexpensive, and effective tools:

Practice Newsletters

Newsletters are a great way to stay in touch with your patients year-round. Keep them short and informative. Here are some of the subjects I touch on when writing newsletters for clients:

• timely eye health articles

• new lens/frame technology

• vision screenings

• trunk shows

• dr. & staff news & notes, photos

• practice community involvement

In short, give your patients reasons to come in before their yearly eye exam. Ideally your newsletter can be emailed to your patient base. If for some reason you have not been collecting emails addresses from your patients, start today! In the meantime, you can place the newsletter on your website for easy viewing. If you want to market your practice to new patients in your area, there are companies which can sell you email lists. It’s still far less expensive than printing and mailing

Online Patient Surveys

Exactly how do your patients feel about your practice? One way is to ask them! An online patient survey can be placed on your web site or emailed to patients after their appointments. The key point to remember is to structure your questions carefully; what you get out of the survey will reflect how well thought out your questions are. Try to address each area of your practice from calling for an appointment to checkout and follow up. If there are certain areas you wish to concentrate on, be sure to ask questions that ask for something more than a “yes” or “no” answer. In a few months you will have a representative cross-section of your patient base providing you with valuable feedback you would not normally have.

2. Practice Management

Have you ever watched a baseball team win a 10-0 game and thought how easy it must be to manage that team? Anyone who has coached or owned a business will tell you that it is much easier to manage during good times than bad. Yet creative and innovative doctors and business owners find ways to thrive during hard times.

I tell my consulting clients not to focus on what they can’t control (the economy) and to focus on what they can control (what happens in their practice). As a reminder, let’s take a look at what the final result is in a typical eye care office visit:

• Duties Goal Treatment

• Assistants

• Doctors Better Vision Optical Products

• Opticians

That’s right. The logical outcome of most office visits end with the patient in the dispensary, and your attitude goes a long way in determining what gets sold in that visit. Remember, how you and your staff feel about your practice is how your patients will eventually feel about your practice. If you are generally upbeat and positive during their visits, then that is the feeling your patients will leave with. If you or your staff has low expectations of your patients, they will invariably live up to them.

One of the traps many staff members fall into in tough economic times is to subconsciously judge patients as to what they can or cannot afford in the dispensary. Considering one of the best qualities of a good staff member is the ability to care about their patients, this is not a surprise. What we have to remember though is that we are doing our patients a disservice by this behavior. It’s our job to recommend products to people which will optimize their vision. Your patients are adults. They can manage their own money without our help.

Never forget one thing: cost is directly related to perceived value. If patients truly feel a product, say polarized sun lenses, will make a difference in their quality of life, then they will purchase it.

One of my favorite quotes goes as follows: “People will forget what you say and forget what you do; but they will always remember how you make them feel”.

3. Products

How well do you maximize some of the niche areas in your optical? I stress two areas with clients, sunwear and sports eyewear.

Sunwear

Most practices have an assortment of sunwear on their frame boards, but how often do we talk about it? The fact is that nothing increases bottom-line profits more than the routine dispensing on second pairs. Here are a couple of tips I suggest for improving your sunwear sales:

Second pair vouchers

Many insurance plans already mandate that you give a 20% discount to their patients for second pair sales. What percentage of your patients is actually offered this discount, both in the exam room and the dispensary? Of those patients, how many of them remember their discount by the time they get home?

Many of my clients have found it profitable to give a 20% off second pair voucher to all patients who purchase primary eyewear. First, it forces the dispenser to always bring up the subject of second pairs, no matter how busy they are. Secondly, it gives the patient something to hold on to as a reminder. I recommend having an expiration date of 90 days and having the dispenser sign it; this gives it more perceived value. The vouchers can be redeemed for sunwear, sports eyewear, or computer eyewear.

Plano sunwear

All of us have heard of the study which found that 80% of new contact lens wearers purchase plano sunwear in the first 48 hours…but how many of us have really tried to make plano sunwear a profit center? Keep a wide variety of price points in your practice; low to mid range in the contact lens room and higher priced ones in your dispensary. Both the doctor and the contact lens tech should talk about plano sunwear with every contact lens patient.

Sports Eyewear: The Game Plan

No other segment of your optical shop offers as much room for creative outside marketing. The benefits can be substantial in terms of optical shop profits, adding new patients, and preventing eye injuries in your community. Get in touch with your state Society to Prevent Blindness; they will provide you with some sobering statistics on the number of sport-related youth eye injuries every year.

Visibility

Both sports eyewear and sunwear displays are eye-catching, and should be placed near the front of the dispensary. They are also easily changed from season to season. You do not need an extensive amount of frames and goggles; just enough of the most popular styles for the primary recreational and sports activities in your area.

Network In Your Community

Work with other retailers to provide referrals for each other: sporting goods stores, scuba shops, surf shops, cycling shops, and skateboard shops are possibilities if they are not already selling sports eyewear. You will be amazed at how quickly word spreads…one golfer, fisherman, tennis player, etc. telling his or her friends how much their new lenses help them will result in their friends wanting the same lenses. Consider other professional services that active consumers often seek out: nutritionists, health clubs, personal trainers, massage therapists, chiropractors, physical therapists, and orthopedic surgeons are all good sources. Discounts can be offered on sports eyewear for their clients who are not existing patients of yours.

Youth Sports Teams: Give A Little To Get A Lot

More and more emphasis is being placed on eye safety at all levels; interscholastic, intramural, and municipal. Work with the school districts and league officials to make sports eyewear affordable for all participants in youth sports. You will be surprised how much community goodwill this creates, and you will often end up with entire families as your patients as a result. I know one doctor who provided free sport goggles to all the members of his child’s little league team. It cost him close to a thousand dollars…and he gained six new families in his practice.

Get Off The Bench and Get Moving

Too many private practice owners feel that a combination sun/sports eyewear program entails too much work. Initially, it does require extra work both inside and outside the practice. However, the program is generally self-supporting once the referral systems, the relationships with youth sports leagues, and the vendor relationships are established. In addition, it provides tremendous community exposure.