Most business owners want to grow their businesses, and optometry practice owners are no exception. However, growing the bottom line in today’s economic climate is tough. Many optometrists are forced to sign with insurance companies that have negotiated rates that are 60 percent less than usual and customary fees, which means the reimbursement for that $100 exam will only be $40. Other optometrists feel pressured to offer discounts on glasses and contact lenses to keep up with online competitors. The optometrist who is also a savvy investor will look for ways to minimize marketing dollars spent while maximizing their return. However growing the business for medical facilities usually means attracting more patients, and today optometrists need to see twice as many patients than they did ten years ago to make the same amount. But how do you get more patients through the door?
Wisely investing in online real estate is the number one way to increase your production this year. This does not mean haphazardly throwing money at just any company promising to take your optometry practice to the top of search engines while dominating your presence in social media. This means researching the companies who have proven to be successful in the optometry market. A successful website should be run by a company that knows optometry and is currently putting optometry businesses at the top of the search engines.
In 2013, we made an investment in a little company by the name of iMatrix. They specialize in optometry websites and allow a practice to be as involved in the process as they want. They posted to Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ for our office and managed the website, changing content as frequently was we wanted. Check out our site Wichita Optometry. Through 2013 we watched as 6 new patients a week walked through our doors stating they found our office at the top of Google search.
I personally would not choose my eye care provider solely from a Google search, and you might not either. However, hundreds of thousands of patients throughout the country are doing just that. Most importantly, most of them are paying cash.
It is difficult and often risky to invest in online real estate. But seeing that we can measure the number of new patients (in our case, over 250 last year) times the average new patient visit (about $300), we now have an investment that returns much more than the principal (an $80,000 increase in our case). And most importantly we can track our return on investment.
