The business of eyecare is a competitive field and marketing your optometry practice effectively on a limited budget can be quite a challenge for the smaller or start up practice. So what is the best way to attract new patients without breaking the bank?

Traditional advertising such as the local Yellow Pages, or radio and television, however small the station, are just too far out of the advertising budget that many smaller or start up optometry practices have to work with. In addition, how well this kind of investment works is almost impossible to track. You may indeed be gaining a new patient as a result of a commercial they have seen or heard, but the chances are you will forget to ask, and they will be too busy discovering all about your beneficial treatments, services and products to remember to mention how they heard about your practice in the first place. However, in order to survive and prosper, marketing your optometry practice successfully is crucial.

There is another, very effective and economical method of marketing your optometry practice that you may have never considered, or even heard much about. In today’s economic climate, the savvy medical professional should consider the great power of online advertising. Thanks to the great spread of everyday Internet use by exactly the people you need to target and the power of major search engines like Google, you can target specific geographical areas for people searching basic keywords, in this case things like “eye care” “vision correction” or simply “contact lenses” or “glasses”. Even better, online advertising lets you target the specific demographic you are seeking. By searching for such specific keywords, the user is already showing an interest in eye care, and the specific services and treatments you have to offer.

But how does this kind of marketing really convert into great optometry practice advertising? To be most effective you need to direct the person who clicked on your brief little online ad to a more expansive “landing page”. On this page you need to create a great and compelling reason for this potential customer, or visitor (they are “visiting” your page now) to share their basic contact information with you. Several informative articles on eye care and vision correction should pique the visitor’s interest in your practice and its staff, and if you were to combine that with a printable coupon for a free or discounted treatment or product that visitors can download by inputting their contact information into a short online form, you should be onto a winning strategy. This contact data is emailed to you immediately, so you can follow up on these hot leads right away, while caring for their eyes is still fresh in their minds.

The true beauty of using the Internet and this kind of optometry practice advertising is how little it costs. You will only be charged for potential customers who take the time to “click” on your ad specifically, those people who are demonstrating a real interest in your services and treatments. Online advertising like this really is the best and economically sensible way to make the best of your optometry practice marketing dollar.