Are You A Conscientious Objector In the LASIK Price Wars?

Many doctors refuse on principle to engage in the destructive price wars waged by the large LASIK chains. $499/$699-per-eye offers are notoriously misleading and have gone a long way towards poisoning the LASIK well for everyone – while sending several of those corporations bankrupt.

And by statistical evidence, as far as the public are concerned, these outrageous discounts are as welcome as a dead fish at a wedding. The collateral damage of this misguided marketing offensive has been to redefine LASIK in the consumers’ mind as a commodity at worst and a gimmick at best – in either case, requiring dishonest marketing to attract any customers at all.

What happened to the vision correction miracle of the new millennium? As a consequence, it’s being shunned by 90% of the eligible population.

‘As The Twig Is Bent…’

According to market research, 8-10% of the potential prospect pool for LASIK will respond to price-oriented advertising at any given time.

Those consumers have been indoctrinated into the idea of buying on price and can be coaxed to respond to discounted or price-reduced offers. Unfortunately, ‘as the twig is bent, so grows the tree’, which means, in the LASIK marketplace, that 100% of current marketing expenditure is devoted to ads attracting this 8-10%, regardless of whether the center is a chain or an independently owned practice.

The favored media for these ads are TV and radio – the two most expensive forms of advertising. This is the main reason you watch your marketing expenses eat up your profits – or why you may not be marketing at all.

Damned if You Do – Damned If You Don’t

If you refuse to play this pricing game you miss out on even this 10%, but if you buckle under you feel like you’re selling out your skill and expertise.

Quite a dilemma.

But that’s not all there is to this situation. While soaring marketing costs can be a very vexing issue, they’re really only the tip of the iceberg. What you DON’T say in your marketing is far less important than what you DO say.

Here’s the real problem: the average LASIK candidate – and we are talking about the 90% of the 120 million lens-wearing population who are not responding to price offers – have real, pressing concerns about the procedure, concerns that are ignored again and again. You can refuse to compromise your integrity by engaging in the price wars, but if you’re not answering those concerns in your marketing you’re just becoming a martyr to the cause.

No Instant Cures

We can show you proven systems for addressing those concerns and capturing the lion’s share of your immediate market, while reducing your marketing expenses.

But here’s a caution: while you can expect to see rapid improvement in your influx of patients, we are not offering a quick fix or an instant cure.  It takes intelligent and on-going implementation of all our systems to perform miracles.

What would this cost you? Here’s the good news: we don’t start getting paid until you’re making better profits than before we took you on board.

Interested? Email us now and set up a confidential analysis of your sales and marketing.

Not sure if you need us? Take our FREE 4-Minute Refractive Marketing Self-Evaluation for an overview of your current marketing, to help you decide.