The Changing Face of Vision Marketing

Create a personalized experience to deliver what your target market desires.

BY KURT WANKIER

The vision market is changing and evolving. What are you doing to keep up? LASIK still holds the top spot as most popular elective procedure, but in today's market, it's not enough to sustain a thriving practice. Moving forward in this progressive world of vision care requires continued reinvention.

This article will share marketing trends and offer insights to help you get more patients in the door, create a more personalized patient experience and deliver what your target market desires.

The Importance of Diversity

It is becoming increasingly clear that practices that diversify tend to have more staying power than singular-focus centers. LASIK stole the show in the earlier part of the millennium, but patients today seem to be gravitating toward comprehensive vision centers as opposed to LASIK-only centers and shopping around for refractive options. LASEK, PRK, CK and Epi-LASIK are gaining market prevalence and catering to consumers who are much more procedure-savvy than early LASIK adopters. Vision consumers feel more assured when the doctor confidently recommends the ideal procedure. This helps your patients feel secure knowing that you have the ability to offer different options and to understand their needs.

Technology as a Marketing Tool

The refractive market is relatively young, but evolving technology can help vision practices find success even as the demand for LASIK drops. As the field of vision correction continues to advance, patients are given new opportunities to achieve better results while facing fewer risks. And although adoption of technology like IntraLase may increase procedure costs, you can position benefits in terms of safety and results to win patients. (In 2006, IntraLase held 23% of the procedure market, according to Marketscope.)

The new premium intraocular lens (IOL) is one stellar example of how marketing-savvy practices are making up for lost LASIK volume. By investing time and management into offering and promoting IOL upgrades, you can enhance vision quality for your cataract patients while dramatically increasing revenue simply by replacing a standard lens with an advanced one. Simultaneously marketing the same procedure (as refractive lens exchange) to your presbyopic patients with a youthful-image approach contributes the growth in patient volume and increase in procedure price.

Bring Back the "Wow" Factor

Another way to gain market share is by ensuring that your staff is prepared to personalize the patient experience to the greatest extent. Create a culture of quality by making sure each patient is catered to during all steps of the process. Instill enthusiasm for vision correction by emphasizing its life-changing qualities. Discuss how a particular refractive–procedure can enhance the patient's life in a variety of activities like sports, driving and reading. In short, amp up the Wow factor at your practice by rolling out the red carpet for all types of patients.

Cindy Haskell, COE, Gordon Binder & Weiss Vision Institute, San Diego, Calif., strongly believes that emphasizing sight as the most valued sense can position vision correction as one of the top five life moments. To create a positive patient experience, she recommends "practice branding for the senses," a method of image marketing that focuses on the importance of natural vision. She encourages staff members to communicate this feeling of celebration and anticipation to keep patients focused on the most important aspect — the amazing vision results.

"To put the ‘Wow’ factor in terms people can truly appreciate, we describe the overwhelming reaction our LASIK patients experience when they discover they can perform everyday activities without the aid of glasses or contact lenses," says Haskell. "We celebrate with each patient on a personal level."

Use this air of excitement at every consumer touch point — from print, radio and television advertising to your patient brochure, to the initial phone call, to your practice atmosphere and décor.

Patients today have different levels of understanding technology — some will ask for a laser or IOL by name, and others just want to know that you offer Custom LASIK. What seems consistent is that in the wake of patients' inundation with high-tech terms and deep discounting, the Wow factor loses some of its impact when it is described in terms of the technology alone. To bring back the excitement, don't focus strictly on a brand name or a technology's advanced design, but on how these features benefit the patient.

Paint a Realistic Picture

With the Wow factor approach, it is easy to get carried away and focus strictly on best-case-scenario results. But the centers that achieve and maintain success in their market practice what they preach and don't over-promise. Ensure your patients have realistic expectations by delivering accurate risk assessments and clearly communicating the full spectrum of post-operative scenarios. Let your low complication rates and satisfied patient feedback speak volumes. Discuss technology and physician experience as risk management tools and focus on gaining patient trust with an informative yet low-pressure approach.

Trust Marketing

Compared to other elective procedures, vision correction is arguably the most life-changing choice. Marketing procedural values and benefits gets you halfway with a prospective patient. Winning trust with a truly personalized experience, diversification, advanced technology and realistic expectations will help you close the gap and motivate your consult to schedule. In the marketing realm, creating a positive, comfortable and stress-free experience is priceless. OM

Kurt Wankier is executive director at Wellish Vision Institute in Las Vegas.