social

May 17

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Design Plays a Part in Marketing Efforts

By social | Graphic Design, Marketing | No Comments

It is easy to observe that graphic design plays a large role in a practice’s marketing efforts. Strong design is pivotal in gaining traction with any campaign, and should not be overlooked. A strong marketing campaign can easily fall flat with poor or confusing design, so it is important to understand how design contributes to your marketing efforts.

Marketing campaigns are about raising awareness of a brand, product, or service. Campaigns are set up to move consumers to purchase. Consumers buy based on the trust they have with a business, and if a business demonstrates poor design it can compromise that trust. Every piece of creative material a practice releases contributes to its overall brand. A strongly designed campaign can alter a practice’s market position, and help them move beyond competitors.

Great design leads to recognition; it increases visibility and stands apart from the rest. A campaign will only get traction if it is unique, inspired and centered to appeal to it’s target market. It is important to align your campaign with its intended audience; and design is the main vehicle to do so. Don’t fall into the idea that campaigns should be designed to resemble what other practices are doing. The most successful design work creates trends rather then following them.

Design plays an important part in messaging. Great design reinforces a central message for a campaign. A message can be portrayed with carefully selected photography or visual representations. Visual representations can play a major part in emotional reaction. Design elements read much faster to instill a message than reading ever will.

Strong design delivers conversions. A strong marketing campaign should never overlook the call to action technique. Call to actions are simple ways to convert strangers to leads, and can work wonders in measuring a practice’s ROI, while collecting useful consumer information.

There are many ways that design contributes to your marketing efforts. The main point a practice should remember is, all marketing efforts should set their business apart and instill trust in a potential patient.

May 16

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Minutes to Make an Impact: How to Maximize Patient Interaction with a Surgeon to See Improved Conversions

By social | Consulting | No Comments

It goes without saying that our surgeon’s time is valuable. Use this time wisely and a brief, meaningful interaction between the patient and your M.D. will help your conversion rates grow. A streamlined consultation process, combined with collaborative communication, will allow these precious minutes to be used prudently for a real and lasting impact.

Minimize chair time, maximize impact– A surgeon’s time with a patient should be brief but engaging. That means minimizing the education process of a procedure during this meeting, and accentuating it before the exam and during the work-up. Instead, focus on hearing the individual needs of the patient, reaffirming these needs, and then moving on to a recommendation.

Instill confidence, reconfirm candidacy, provide psychological reassurance– A firm handshake and a few sentences can make all the difference for a patient, and remove any doubt or uneasiness about moving forward.

During a LASIK consult that might mean congratulating them on being a candidate, and the excitement of moving forward. For a cataract patient, this might mean clearly defining the recommendation of a lens or surgery option that will yield them their best visual outcomes. Patients are uncomfortable making such big medical decisions without the advisement of a surgeon. This is the time to make a surgeon’s recommendation clear, concise and powerful.

Create lasting personal bond in seconds with the help of collaborative efforts and communication with the Team– Gathering crucial pieces of information like lifestyle choices, hobbies, activities, motivations and fears, can shape the outcome of a visit. Make sure your team is gathering this information throughout the appointment, so that a surgeon can highlight on these points during the exam. This acknowledgement lets your patient know your practice was listening, which may mean it’s worth listening to you.

May 09

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Collaboration = Success

By social | Consulting, Graphic Design, Marketing, Web Design | No Comments

Why is collaboration important to a practice?
We are sure you want to feel like you make meaningful contributions to your practice. At some point we have all had the experience in our career of receiving a sketch/outline/”napkin” and asked to make it look good. It’s important for a practice to collaborate so that a project, whether internal or external will be the best solution.

“Napkins, by my definition, are prototypes in themselves: a skipping to the end that leaves us out, the end of the conversation.” – Aubrey Crane, Partner at Design Map

There are several ways to approach how to handle a response to a napkin as well as how to allow more contributions from your colleagues. All very different techniques, but all reaching for the same thing… better solutions. A team will always create top-quality work, when all members feel equally important.

For Eyemax, design is much more than just putting a nice photo into a brochure or crafting content for a website. Our design process includes everything from defining patient/practice needs, concepting to prototyping and testing to implementing. As a company Eyemax upholds the idea of “collaboration is key for success,” which allows us to create better solutions for our clients.

May 04

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Why You Need a Social Media Calendar

By social | Marketing, Social Media | No Comments

If you think that you don’t need a social media calendar for your online marketing strategy, you are missing out big time. Why should you even bother? A social media calendar along with a social media scheduling tool, can streamline the posting process & save you tons of time. There are many different scheduling softwares to choose from: Hootsuite, Buffer, Edgar, Sprout Social to name a few. Combine these forces & keep your social media on track and working for your business. Here are six reasons why you should add a social media calendar to your online marketing plan:

Get organized now, avoid chaos later.

Deadlines, marketing campaigns, personal post, charity, local events…these post can be overwhelming. Sit down and map out your anticipated posts on a calendar template. Take the time to enter each post into your scheduling tool. If you can preschedule your entire month, you will be set up for success. You never know when something is going to come up, but you will know that your content is ready to go and your campaigns are on track. Your schedule will help you contribute more to more social media platforms, without the stress.

Collaborate with your team without confusion.

Do you need your copywriter or administrator to double check a post? They can easily refer to the social media calendar & edit posts set up in your scheduling tool. Find a cool meme that would complement your post for next Friday? It’s easy to add additional graphics, hashtags, links and even videos to your pre-scheduled posts. These are the details that will take your social media to the next level. You will have a central location for all of your social media channels, that is organized and easy to reference back to.

Maintain brand consistency.

Keep your message clear and concise over all your different social media platforms. Your calendar serves as a template of what kind of posts your brand wants to maintain. After the posts are set up in your scheduler, most tools allow you to set up feeds, where you can quickly review your latest posts. This also allows you to keep up with the quota you set for your weekly social media posts, and keep track of where you are lacking or running behind.

Map out where you should fill in the blanks.

Social media content should not just be marketing campaigns. Rotate what kind of content you are serving to the public: promotions, campaigns, blog posts, social commentary, or goings about in your office. This is also your chance to show the personality of your brand. Look at your calendar thoughtfully, find the blank spots in your schedule and fill them with interesting content from reputable brands. Show your audience where your interests lie and what influencers are important to your brand. This also gives you the time to add in last minute articles of hot topics or current events.

Serves as a database for your content.

Your calendar is a map of your future posts, as well as a record of your previous content. Most schedulers allow you to look into past scheduled posts. This is great when you decide to create new social media accounts & want access to your previous content, without having to scroll through Facebook or Twitter. This will also help to keep you from posting the same articles, graphics or other content more than once.

Measure your success.

Use your calendar and your social media analytics to make educated decisions about future posting. Some schedulers provide basic analytics and some advanced versions can create social media reports for you. Even Twitter & Facebook provide you with their own analytic reports. Check your results, see what’s working and what needs to be improved on.

Make a social media calendar for your business & stick to it! Get it done ahead of time and you will be posting like the pros.

Apr 22

0

Discovering your Market Position

By social | Consulting, Marketing | No Comments

Have a lot of competition?

Most of us do, which is why positioning is so important. Your market position is the perceptual location where you fit in the marketplace amid your competitors, and in the minds of consumers. You NEED this, without it you risk getting left behind. Determine your market position with these 3 steps:

1. Self-discovery

Use a third party and ask your patients why they choose you. Also ask those who go elsewhere and why they didn’t choose you. This will take time. You won’t receive an abundance of responses at once, but slowly but surely you can craft this information into a list of top criteria that patients use to select a practice. Find out what it is that your patients are truly buying from you.

2. Competitive analysis

Do you have a close eye on your competition? Make a list of who’s ‘top’ in the market and study their positions. Secret shop their practices and discover what they are offering and what makes them stand out. Can you identity why patients would choose their practice over yours? Be objective, so you can truly see where they stand on the criteria from the first step.

3. Market analysis

Now that you have identified your competitor’s position, map it out. Take a look at the market as a whole, and reveal potential market opportunities and gaps. Use the information discovered in step one to visually see the differentiation among products in the patient’s mind.

Examples of Patient Criteria

Price
Value
Quality
Customer Service
Convenience
Results
Expertise
Experience
Reputation
Technology
Forefront of Advancements

Things to remember

Don’t try to be all things to all people or you won’t be anything to anyone. Have a true identity and avoid making your practice something that it’s not. For the most convincing position is the one you deliver on.