How to Market LASIK Surgery: A Definitive Guide

Since the first LASIK surgery in 1999, ophthalmologists have performed 20-25 million LASIK procedures in the United States. LASIK surgery is popular, and the market is experiencing significant global growth, likely to continue well into the future.

This growth gives providers unprecedented opportunities to boost revenue, provided you can motivate patients to use your services. Knowing how to market LASIK is becoming increasingly important.

Everyone is looking to capture consumer attention, and creating creative LASIK marketing ideas in an ever-changing digital space can make your practice a critical element of the overall market growth.

Why Is LASIK Marketing Important?

The LASIK market is expected to be worth $3.4 billion by 2030. It’s competitive, and the right LASIK promotion strategies can help you stand out from the competition and corner the local market. Once you get patients in the door, the surgery speaks for itself — a mere 1.2% of patients are dissatisfied with the results of their procedure. The trick is to get them to come to you in the first place.

Consumer demands change quickly. Every year, expectations about the consumer experience change, and a robust marketing strategy is essential to turn leads into conversions. Your physical office is no longer the beginning of the patient journey. Instead, their connection with you begins online, and their digital experience of your brand is as important as in-person visits.

How Do You Promote LASIK?

LASIK surgery is life-changing. When patients embark on their LASIK journey, they conduct significant research before they decide on a provider. In the digital age, research starts with search engines, which means your online presence must be eye-catching yet easy to navigate.

As patients progress through the research phase from the top of the funnel down, your practice can build trust with referrals, recommendations and personalized communication. You need to remove friction from the patient experience, using different platforms to reach potential patients where they’re most comfortable. The following LASIK marketing strategies can help you transform your practice into a bustling hive of activity.

1. Create an Engaging LASIK Landing Page

Regardless of how brilliant your advertising efforts are, they all lead to your landing page. If this page fails to meet user expectations, is challenging to navigate or feels overcrowded, people will leave almost immediately, which means you miss out on a potential patient.

An attractive and engaging landing page gives potential patients confidence in your ability to perform the surgery. It encourages them to conduct their research on your site — a significant factor in building trust. Users form an impression of a website in 0.05 seconds, so put yourself in your potential patient’s shoes and ask what you want to see when researching LASIK surgery.

Your landing page also facilitates effective search engine optimization. Your site will rank better with search engines if it has useful content, interesting graphics and a seamless user experience. Elements like concise headlines, attention-grabbing language, and correct keyword usage can boost your landing page, making it accessible to users who search for LASIK surgery providers in a search engine.

Some tips for creating an engaging landing page include:

• Answer FAQs: Patients researching LASIK surgery all have similar questions, and 61% of users say they’ll go to another site if they don’t find the information they want in the first five seconds. You’re already gaining trust if you can provide better answers than your competitors and provide thorough information.
• Make it accessible: Consider all the channels patients might use to reach your site, like cell phones, tablets or desktop computers. Your site should fulfill all accessibility requirements, so potential patients can access it anywhere.
• Be sparing with keywords: Stuffing your page with keywords might seem like a good strategy, but in practice, it breaks the page flow and can make you rank lower in searches due to keyword stuffing. Aim to connect with your readers instead of appealing to search engines.
• Showcase your brand: Readers should understand your values and associate your brand with quality and reliability when they land on your page.
• Ensure your website loads quickly: Speed is critical to a positive user experience. As many as 40% of users will leave a website when it takes longer than three seconds to load. Prioritize your web page performance and consider the impact of videos and graphics on your overall website performance.
• Use different media: Give your page visitors information in a way that appeals to them with a combination of interesting graphics, easy-to-understand copy and videos.
• Make conversions simple: Your landing page exists to turn leads into patients, so make it as easy as possible for them to contact you. Include strong and identifiable call-to-action statements so your visitors know where to click, and give them multiple options for converting, like contact forms, email inquiries, chatbots and calendar booking links.

2. Upgrade Your LASIK Content Marketing

Content marketing is a powerful tool for connecting with potential patients and gaining their trust, provided you create and communicate a well-defined strategy. A well-researched blog with useful and informative content can improve your search engine rankings and boost your online visibility. In short, providing LASIK-focused content in a blog format is a fantastic approach to increasing the keywords on your website and establishing your practice as an expert in LASIK surgeries.

If a patient finds your content, they’re already looking for a specific procedure — the perfect opportunity to share information about LASIK surgery. You can create posts about preparing for the procedure and what to expect afterward. You can also share stories about your successes and highlight awards and achievements.

Some tips for creating engaging content include:

• Encourage patients to connect with you: Your blog posts can showcase your staff and their expertise. Creating a human connection builds trust and bonds your practice and potential patients.
• Be entertaining: Although you want to provide potential patients with useful information, your content can also be entertaining. Making patients laugh puts them at ease, especially if they’re nervous about the procedure. Include some fun facts and anecdotes to remind readers there are human beings behind the content.
• Write for the audience: Prioritize people over search engines and ensure your content resonates with your target audience. Write to them using easily accessible language and present the information so it’s easy to scan.
• Showcase your experience: Show off your firsthand knowledge with factual information and answer readers’ most relevant questions.
• Go beyond blog posts: A blog is only one element of content marketing. Generate more leads by including YouTube tutorials, guest blogging, animations and infographics.

3. Collect and Share Testimonials

Word of mouth is still one of the most effective forms of marketing. Although the format has changed and people recommend services online and in conversation, 92% of consumers believe recommendations from friends and family over all forms of advertising. Reviews go a long way, especially with medical procedures, and your online presence is the perfect platform to highlight positive reviews.

Encourage your past and current patients and referring physicians to give reviews and ask permission to share them online. Many people are nervous about choosing a surgeon to perform a specialized medical procedure, and satisfied customers can put their minds at ease. Post these reviews on your website and share them on social media for maximum reach.

Some ideas for collecting and sharing testimonials include:

• Create patient experience surveys: Getting a favorable review means asking the right questions. Design a simple survey you can send across multiple channels. Remember, you want to take up as little of their time as possible, so keep it short.
• Dedicate a landing page: Create a page on your website dedicated to patient feedback and make it easy for patients to share their experiences. Consider adding a feedback option as a call to action for relevant pages.
• Ask on social media: Past patients are likely more active than on your website. Reach out on social media and ask them to leave feedback on the relevant platform.
• Email a questionnaire: Sending an email is another effective way to ask for feedback. Ensure you ask patients for permission to share their responses.

4. Leverage Social Media

Placing LASIK ads and informative content on social media boosts your brand awareness and gives you access to the 4.9 billion people who use social media worldwide. As 76% of people have purchased something they saw on social media and there are many platforms to choose from, having a social media presence is essential to marketing your LASIK surgery.

Diving into social media without a plan can be a waste of resources. Every platform offers slightly different advantages, and tailoring your posts to suit the relevant audiences builds trust and creates positive connections.

Some of the channels you can use to promote LASIK surgery include:

• Instagram: Instagram is fantastic for short, engaging videos and striking visuals. Create a unique look on your Instagram profile by focusing on a specific color palette and using the same font for all your posts. Again, your content must engage the right audience. Use this platform to tell stories, give useful tips related to LASIK preparation or recovery and ask interesting questions.
• Facebook: Facebook remains the most popular social media platform, with over 3 million monthly users. Create a business Facebook page to share infographics, photographs and links to your other social media accounts. You can also boost your posts and purchase paid ads to broaden your reach.
• YouTube: Video is one of the most popular forms of advertising across social media platforms. Unlike the other options, YouTube is the ideal platform for sharing longer, more detailed information, using visual examples to help readers understand their surgery.
• TikTok: This platform is ideal for entertaining your audience and making them laugh with short video content. It’s fantastic for generating excitement and sharing small snippets of information.

Social media allows you to inform, entertain and connect with patients while establishing yourself as a reputable expert. It may seem as simple as posting on various platforms, but effective social media marketing is more complex. The following tips and tricks can help you navigate the dynamic world of social media marketing:

• Post different things on each platform: Avoid recycling your content on every platform. Create a schedule and tailor your posts to specifically suit whichever ones you use.
• Schedule your posts: Create your posts in advance so you can ensure they’re relevant and professional. With a schedule in place, you can dedicate one block of time a week to create and edit them. Then, all you have to do is click a button to get them to your followers.
• Have a plan: If you post whatever you feel like, you’ll find your profiles are disorganized and full of repetitive or irrelevant information. Build a content calendar so you know what type of content to post and when.
• Be unique: What can you say that no one else has said? Think of ways to use your social media to stand out and give unique information to your patients.
• Stay consistent: Consistency is critical to social media marketing. How often you post depends on the platform, but stick to a regular schedule wherever possible.
• Analyze your metrics: Follow your engagement on each post to identify what works and where you can improve.
• Interact with your followers: Social media users enjoy interaction, and connecting with them makes them feel heard and understood. Set aside time to respond to your followers, even if it’s just thanking them for positive reviews.

5. Send LASIK-Focused Emails

Many people who would benefit from LASIK surgery have already considered the option. They may have researched it in the past and decided against it or forgotten it was an option altogether. This group of people is an excellent target for your marketing campaign. Sending them personalized, informative emails can give them confidence in the procedure, prompting them to make the decision to get the surgery.

These tips can help you launch an effective email campaign:

• Set up your audience: You can use several resources to create a list of potential patients. Add people who filled in a contact form on your website, engaged with your social media posts or made inquiries in the past. Think about people in your practice’s area, and look at your current list of clients with glasses to assist with their vision. This list is an excellent starting point as it contains the people most likely to benefit from LASIK surgery.
• Write an engaging headline: Your headline should be short and focus on the benefits, as that’s the first thing people see when it enters their inbox.
• Keep content factual and relevant: Email marketing is more personal than social media or your website. You’re coming into someone else’s digital space to deliver a message, so keep it factual and respectful, use a reassuring tone and focus on how the surgery can improve their quality of life.
• Get permission: Various laws and regulations dictate who you can target in an email marketing campaign. The most important thing to remember is you can only send emails to people once they’ve given you permission. For example, if they enter their email address in a contact form, they’ve given you permission to contact them on that platform.
• Remember the follow-up: Email marketing aims to encourage people to have LASIK surgery. If they read your email and decide it’s the right option, they should be able to make an appointment or request more information immediately. Include buttons throughout your email so readers can click through and make an appointment.

6. Work With a LASIK Marketing Agency

Almost all patients considering LASIK surgery will use the internet in their initial research. A digital LASIK marketing agency can take the guesswork out of your marketing and give you access to experts with a comprehensive understanding of the surgery and its benefits.

LASIK is a competitive field, and a marketing agency can distinguish your practice from the others, inform your patients and create valuable connections that turn into loyal customers.

Live up to Your Marketing Hype With the Best Tools From Jewel Precision

Effective digital marketing is critical to get patients through your doors. Once they arrive, you want to build on the confidence you created with your marketing strategy by having the highest quality tools at your disposal. Ophthalmologists require durable storage and proper sterilization of ophthalmic instruments to ensure your tools are in perfect condition for your next LASIK surgery.

Jewel Precision provides high-performance sterilization cases to ensure your microsurgical tools are protected. We can custom manufacture trays to your individual specifications in-house at our ultra-modern New Jersey production facility. Contact us to learn more, and a team member will be in touch to walk you through our processes.