New Patient Leads up 800% while Advertising Costs Decrease by 50% in the First 6 Months

We have been performing LASIK surgery since 1998 and, like most of the LASIK industry, had never recovered our patient volume since 9-11. LASIK is an extremely competitive industry and the greater Denver metro area is considered by most to be the most competitive in the country so it has been difficult to keep our business growing.

We hired Fast Track Marketing to implement the Monopolize Your Marketplace system and reverse the trend of declining revenues and rising expenses. 

After doing the appropriate amount of research on both the target market and the competition, Fast Track Marketing put together a strategy that would not only increase the number of inquiries but also eliminate the media that were ineffective in this marketplace.

When researching the LASIK marketplace, Fast Track made one point clear about prospective patients. Everyone has heard of LASIK and, everyone who wears glasses and contacts would love to get rid of them. It was discovered that there are basically two reasons why people haven’t had this procedure. Almost half the population wears some type of corrective lenses but less than 10% have had LASIK. Why is this? FEAR! The interesting thing about this is that, once a prospective LASIK patient gets educated about what the procedure actually consists of, most of their fears vanish and the possibility of not having to deal with contact lenses, cleaning solutions or glasses becomes a highly motivating force.

The standard practice in the industry is to offer a free consultation to get the patient to respond to an ad and come to the office. Most practices consider this to be a generous offer and find it hard to understand why more people won’t take them up on it. Fast Track's research showed that even a free consultation is too large of a risk for most people who have not yet overcome their basic fears. The thought of spending a couple of hours to find out if they are a candidate or not when they haven’t decided they would do the procedure even if they are a candidate, is too much to get them to come in.

Fast Track overcame this obstacle by creating an educational DVD that actually shows a live LASIK procedure being done and interviewed a dozen or so patients who describe what their experiences were like before, during and after their LASIK procedure. This DVD let’s the prospective patient meet me, the doctor, view the facilities, meet the staff and learn all about the technologies being used. Now, prospective patients can simply call for their free DVD to learn about the procedure, the risks and get the answers to almost every question they could ask. This DVD is then followed up with a series of oversized postcards that are sent every two weeks providing further information and education about this life changing procedure. These postcards encourage the prospective patient to come in for a consultation which is now the next logical step.

The second consideration for some prospects, once they’ve overcome their fears, is cost. It is however interesting to note that cost is not one of the top two factors people use when selecting where to have their LASIK procedure performed. There are a certain percentage of people who are attracted to the discount LASIK centers but most people are more concerned about the experience and reputation of the doctor than they are the price they’re going to pay.

Knowing this, we knew they’d be interested in selecting my practice based on qualifications and credentials. We just had to provide a compelling reason for them to choose our practice over the other 55 LASIK surgeons in his marketplace. To do this we created a 100% money back guarantee if they didn’t achieve 20/20 or better vision.  This was a very bold guarantee but the we knew, from our previous experience, that virtually everyone we approved for the procedure would achieve at least 20/20 vision so the risk was quite low.  Since we had a database of current prospects, we had Fast Track simply send a mailer every two weeks to the database providing additional educational information and our 20/20 or your money back guarantee.

Within the first four months our database of prospective patients had increased from less than 200 to over 800 and the number of consultations and surgeries was increasing every month. The advertising budget was paired back by eliminating some inefficient media and more money was focused on results producing media. We felt so confident in the effectiveness of the marketing campaign that we increased our prices by 20% which caused our profitability to skyrocket in the first year we worked with Fast Track Marketing.

Working with Fast Track has truly been a rewarding experience and I look forward to many years of expansion and success because of having them on my team.

Dr. Craig Beyer

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