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Low-Hanging Fruit: Growing Your Practice from the Inside Out

Your existing happy patients are the low-hanging fruit of your practice.

What do we mean by that?

These are individuals who have already researched your practice, met your team, had successful procedures and are truly happy with the outcome. All of the hard work in finding a trustworthy practice has been done. Therefore, they may only need a little bit of persuasion to have another type of procedure or treatment at your practice. They may also be vocal advocates of your services to their friends, family and co-workers.

Think about this situation: Mary is a 68-year-old active grandmother who recently had cataract surgery on both eyes at your practice. She now has clear vision at all distances because she opted for premium IOLs. Now she’s back to walking her dog around the neighborhood, hosting holiday parties and spending time with her grandchildren. But this clarity of vision also has her noticing the lines on her face just a little more – and she really wants to look as young on the outside as she feels on the inside. If Mary considers having BOTOX or fillers, she may not connect those services with her ophthalmologist’s office. Instead, she may start researching med spas or dermatologists. If this is a service you provide, Mary and others like her need to be made aware of these options to enhance their appearance.

Here’s a different situation to consider: Jake is a 32-year-old banker who had a successful LASIK procedure at your practice. Being young and healthy, he isn’t thinking about age-related vision problems that may occur in the future. However, if he hears about different conditions through your marketing efforts, he may be equipped to help his older co-workers identify symptoms of conditions such as AMD so early treatment could be started. Because he has this trusted connection with your practice, he will recommend your practice to that co-worker.

Ways to Promote Your Vast Array of Services

With a little bit of marketing effort, you can increase your revenue through cross-promotion and referrals. Here are 5 ways you can educate your patients on the vast array of services you provide.

  1. Newsletters: You don’t need to include a laundry list of services in your newsletters. Instead, your procedures can be subtly woven into articles that are informative and timely. For example, you could write an article about the importance of drinking water to promote eye health and improve your skin’s elasticity. Your dry eye treatments could be mentioned in this type of article. If you offer aesthetic treatments, this would be an excellent way to incorporate those services.
  2. Signage: Patients inside your office are a captive audience. Eye-catching posters and flyers in your waiting area, hallways and exam rooms can help to cross-promote your services. They may even spark a conversation with your technicians, so make sure your team is fully in-the-know about what your practice offers.
  3. Social posts: People of all ages use social media. If you aren’t regularly posting on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Tik Tok, Twitter, etc., you are missing a huge opportunity to share your practice’s story and grow your practice. We recommend posting something on your pages at least one time a week.
  4. On-hold messaging: While you want to make your phone tree on-hold time as short as possible, if patients have to wait, use that time to give them information about your practice. You can record short messages that promote all of your different services and even educate callers about common vision symptoms.
  5. Staff cross-selling: When appropriate, your staff can be excellent sales people to cross-promote your services. For example, if a patient is in your office for a routine eye exam, your staff could explain the benefits of vision correction procedures. This is a fine-line, however; you don’t want your staff to come off as pushy or aggressive. They can be trained to recognize when patients might be ready for these types of discussions.

All of this boils down to one word: communication. As you routinely communicate with your existing patients, your practice will stay top of mind. Your patients will be reminded about their awesome experience with your practice and they will already feel comfortable trusting you for other procedures or treatments. Follow-up calls to patients and reminder calls about exams will strengthen your relationship as well.

Putting these marketing strategies into place does take time. If your practice doesn’t have the staff to handle such undertakings, Fast Track Marketing is here to help. We produce monthly, bi-monthly and quarterly electronic newsletters for our clients. We design awesome posters and flyers. We create weekly social posts. We write on-hold messages. We even do staff training.

If you’re ready to harvest the low-hanging fruit from your database, give us a call. Contact Brandi Musgrave, our Director of Business Development, today to start the conversation.

Brandi Musgrave
Director of Business Development
22 Years of Ophthalmology Marketing & Consulting Experience

  • Call or text: 303-731-2634
  • Email: brandi@fast-trackmarketing.com