refractive surgery social media marketing

Having refractive surgery or LASIK is no small decision, and potential patients need to feel comfortable and safe with the idea before they decide to book an appointment. The good news? You can help them do that while simultaneously improving the efficiency of your lead generation efforts.

Good marketing starts with understanding your audience. You know – as we know – that LASIK and refractive surgery is very safe. But it can still be a pretty frightening prospect for a person to voluntarily have a procedure done on their eyes. 

Recognizing that hesitation and helping remedy it with your online web presence can be a great way to educate and inform leads in such a way that removes their fears, helps them view you as an authoritative source, and makes them more likely to reach out to you when they’re ready to take the next step.

While there’s no doubting the importance of Internet marketing strategies like Local SEO, you still need to meet your customers where they are. And the truth of the matter is that they’re not always ready to jump right in. Sometimes they need a little convincing, a little reassurance, a little bit of help evaluating what they’re getting themselves into. That’s the importance of developing what we call Patient Pipelines. 

Here’s the gist: Instead of just ranking your site for important keywords and expecting leads to set up a call with you immediately, you provide them with some useful information – often in the form of blog posts, emails, quizzes, infographics, and much more – to help them become more comfortable with the idea of taking the next step and setting up an appointment. 

Let’s take a closer look at how this works in practice. 

1.  A lead starts to research LASIK refractive surgery. While they might search very general things like “Is LASIK safe?” or “Should I have refractive eye surgery?” which is pretty difficult to rank for, chances are that they’ll also start looking at their local providers, as well, to see if they seem trustworthy. (This also speaks to the importance of online reviews and reputation management.) 

2.  The lead finds your site (if you’re ranking well enough) and starts to poke around. Ideally, they don’t have to look very far for some interesting information that addresses their questions and concerns immediately. We like to use non-invasive popups to get their attention. 

3.  They see some interesting content and they give you their email address. Getting an email address is key. It signifies that they’re willing to give up their email address to get your information, and also indicates that they want to hear more from you. 

4.  You send them some further information. If they asked to download an e-book, checklist, or the results of a quiz, you’ll send this to them now. You can also start to ask them to get in touch with your practice if they have any questions. 

5.  They feel more comfortable with you and they schedule an appointment. Since you’ve already shown them that you understand their questions and concerns and that you want to – and have the expertise to – answer them, getting in touch becomes much easier from their perspective. 

6.  You landed a new patient! Enough said. 

7.  But that’s not the end. You can keep sending them some occasional information that will keep you in mind, improving your chance of receiving referrals from them. 

This is commonly referred to as a marketing funnel, wherein you move leads down the funnel to improve your chances of landing more patients. When optimized well, pipelines such as this can make the consistent generation of Internet leads near-effortless. 

The essence of the idea is that, instead of asking leads to take the first step and get in touch with you right out the gate, you take the first step by offering them some valuable information before they ever call your office or fill out your contact form.

This all sounds relatively straightforward, and in theory, it is. But when it comes to actually developing all of the content that you’ll need, along with choosing and integrating separate tools, monitoring and improving your efforts on a consistent basis, and everything else that entails – it’s actually quite a bit of work. 

That’s what we’re here for. We have a lot of experiencing helping LASIK and refractive surgery practices develop interesting, engaging pieces of content, tying them together, and ensuring that your business is obtaining a consistent flow of leads.

If all of this sounds great and exciting to you, or if you just have some questions, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us today. We’d love to hear from you, and we’d love to help you grow your LASIK and refractive surgery business through our marketing strategies for practices who offer LASIK and refractive surgery.

reach out below:

7109 Hickman Road

Urbandale, Iowa 50322

515.707.6593

caitlin@thepatientpipeline.com