There are many companies offering online advertising options to the Optometric Community. Unless you have a background in the Ad market, it is actually very difficult to understand one option from another. Also, the sales people from these ad firms are very good sales people (Of Course they are, We all watch Mad Men!!!). So what is an Optometric Practice to do? I'm very humbled when my clients call me with questions regarding the Ad options in the market. I very much appreciate their partnership and their trust in my experience and advice.

Below is a brief overview of the Online Ad market and my perceptions of the benefits for an Optometric Practice. Two key terms to remember are the following:

Cost Per Mille (CPM): This is the cost per 1,000 impressions of Display Ad campaign. Sometimes this is also referred to as Cost per Impression. CPM is usually used by advertisers to build brand awareness.

Cost Per Click (CPC): This is the ad format used on Google's Adwords model. In this model, there is an ongoing bid process for keywords in a Google Search. The advertiser bids on keywords, and pays when a user clicks on their ad after completing the search. CPC is most useful if you want to drive an action. For example, if you want new customers to call your office or book an online appointment, CPC is a great way to go.

When evalutating advertisment options, it's importnant to understand CPM and CPC, as they are the basis for most pricing.

Measuring Success:

When evaulating onine ad campaigns it is important to understand the following key terms:

Click Thru Rate(CTR)  This is the measure of clicks your ad receives divided by the total number of people that viewed your ad.  For example, if 100 people clicked on your ad after 1000 saw the ad as part of their search results, your click thru rate is 10%.  10% is a very high Click thru Rate and would indicate that your ad is well targeted.  CTR helps you refine your ads to see if they are attracting traffic to your site as part of your CPC or CPM campaign.  CTR should really be above .2% as a guideline.

Conversion Rate: For most Optometric Practices, this is the most importnant number.  This is the measure of goal achievements divided by the number of visits.  For an optometric practice, this would be the number of people who visited your website and booked an online appointment divided by the number of total people who visited your websites.  Conversion rates really help you determine your true ROI on your advertising spend.  In order to have a true conversion rate, you must first determine your call to action or goal for an online visitor. At UpTempo Group we are realizing that not all web traffic is created equal.  For some websites, their Facebook page provides a great referral and conversion rate.  For other websites, Yelp is a great source of both traffic and conversions.  Finally, Google Organic and Paid Search may also be a great source.

The Value of your goal or conversion is very importnant to understanding the value of the Ad Platform to your business.  For example, if the lifetime value of a new patient is worth $500 to an Optometric Practice, then this is the number that should be used to evuate the ad platfroms.

Below is a real world Example:

Google Adwords Campaign: $150 per month, 21 Clicks, CPC = $7 per Click, Conversion rate of 3/21 visits = 14.3%

The Million Dollar question, or more accurately in this case, the $150 question is "Was this campaign worth it?

The practice in this example spent $150 on Google Adwords to generate 3 new patients.  If the lifetime value of a new patient is $500 each, then the ads generated $1500 in new revenue on $150 in ad spend.  This is almost a 10X return on investment.

How can an Optometric Practice get started in Online Advertising?

1.  First declare the goal of your website, or the desired action – If the goal is an increase in online appointments, optimize your website and mobile website to make it easy for visitors to complete this goal.

2.  Get a good feel for the analytics of your website:  Google Analytics is a great tool for tracking visits to your site, referrals, search words used, and conversions.  Without a solid analytics structure, your may be spending your money blindly on an online ad platfrom.

3.  Be prepared to Optimize and tinker with your ad model.  Different keywords attract different people, different ad formats have better click thru rates and/or conversion rates.  You may want to combine your ad with an offer to get a higher click thru. Or you may want to increase conversions by offering a special within a specific timeframe.  Creating an ad is the first step, tinkering with the ad to optimize the results is where you get your true value in an Ad campaign.

One of the benefits we provide to our clients at Uptempo Group is the management and analysis of online ad campaigns.  We are a Google Engage agency with a direct line to the Google Adwords experts.  We also have extensive experience in managing Facebook Ads as well.  Whether you use UpTempo Group or another agency, it is important to enter the online Ad world with an expectation of Optimizing the Ad Platform and continually measuring your results.

In my next Blog, I'll evaluate the Ad Options for an Optometric Practice such as Google Adwords, Facebook, Yelp, and Online Display ads.

1.     Your website isn’t yours

What do you mean my website isn’t mine?  Websites can be built using a variety of programming languages, HTML, Java, Flash, and newer languages such as Ruby on Rails and HTML5.  Frequently, programmers use code and a combination of editing tools such as Dreamweaver to create these websites.  However, the majority of websites today are created on Content Management Systems.  These are systems that don’t require programming skills as the website can be designed on the software’s platform.  These CMS tools usually include the use of predesigned templates and a user simply needs to fill in the content.  Many SEO firms have your website sitting on their own CMS tool.  Why is this a bad thing? If you decide to leave them, you have no website.  You will need to create a website from scratch.  All that you have is content that will need to be manually transferred from your old website to a new platform.  So what should you do? Get your website on an open CMS such as WordPress or Joomla.  Even if you are not hosting your website yourself, if you ever want to transfer the website to another hosting company, any web developer can move the files over very easily.  Why aren’t SEO firms using WordPress for your site? Because they want to make it hard for you to leave them.

2.     They May Be Hurting your Facebook Page with Their Posts

So you’re paying money to have someone share content on your Facebook page and their posts are actually hurting your Facebook page.  How could this be? Two words: Hootsuite and RSS. 

Hootsuite is a tool that can allows a user to post to many Social Media profiles with the press of a button.  Therefore, an SEO company can find one eyecare article a day, share this to hundreds of Facebook sites simultaneously, and be finished for the day. Wow, what a job!

But there is a downside to using Hootsuite—-Facebook doesn't’t like it.  Actually Facebook let’s users know that an article is shared via Hootsuite by including this in the post.  Facebook also will reduce the reach of your posts when Hootsuite is used.  Facebook sees tools like Hootsuite as possible vehicles for spam, and punishes Facebook pages that rely on these tools for the majority of their postings.  This may be viewed by looking at the reach of your posts that are sent through Hootsuite versus posts you make directly using the Facebook tool.  Hootsuite is the SEO company’s best friend—just not your best friend.

RSS Feeds: An RSS Feed or Really Simple Syndication is a system which allows a user to subscribe to changes from a website or blog.  Typically, users will use Readers such as Google Reader to monitor articles from multiple websites and aggregate these feeds on their Reader Page.  Facebook also has a few RSS apps that will automatically post content from an RSS Feed.  RSS Graffiti is one of the more popular feeds.  So this team, the SEO company doesn't't’t even need to press a button to post content to your Facebook page.  They simply install the RSS app, and let the content providers do all the work when they post new content on their websites or blogs. 

So why is this a bad thing?

Facebook doesn't’t like this too much either.  Facebook wants users to share engaging content.  Facebook was not set up as an RSS Reader, it was established as a communication vehicle for sharing and engaging.  As a result, Facebook limits the reach of your RSS Feeds. 

When your SEO company posts the same content to hundreds of pages, relies on RSS feeds to push content to your readers, and rarely posts any content that engages your users, your EdgeRank falls.  EdgeRank is Facebook’s rating of the content on your site.  If your site has high EdgeRank with users, there is a high probability that they will see your content in their newsfeeds.  You achieve high EdgeRank with a user if they Like your content, share, or comment on your posts.

Theoretically, you could have a website with thousands of followers, and if they never interact with your content, your posts could have a reach of 0!

3.     Their SEO Business Model May be Hurting Your Optometric Business

How could this be? How can an SEO company’s services actually hurt my business?  Two words, Panda and Penguin.  These are the names of Google’s recent updates to their search engine algorithms.  These updates have sent ripples through the SEO world recently.  Why? Because the updates struck a blow to the SEO model.  SEO companies would spend money to get content that was rich in key words, and load this content on many of their clients’ websites.  This model worked well for the SEO company as they were able to easily scale their businesses and make money from redundant content on the web.  It did help their clients to some extent as this content was keyword rich and supported the old school Google SEO algorithm.

However, Google’s recent updates changed all of this.  Google has been punishing the search rank of websites that use redundant content.  Therefore, if your SEO company has stocked your site with the same content that they use on all of their other clients’ websites, Google’s update may be a reason for your declining search ranking.

How can you fix this?  Delete the redundant content and post original blogs that are relevant to the your local community and vision care.  Share this content on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Pinterest.

Ask these questions of your SEO provider.  If you don’t like the answer, it’s time to find someone else—-

Our phones are open at UpTempo Group – 415-425-3467 or drop me an email brian@uptempogroup.com

Recently the UptempoGroup members conducted anonymous surveys of their patients to determine what was driving new patients to their practice.  This survey was conducted via a Text Message survey, similar to voting for an American Idol participant.  The sample size of the survey is over 90 patients and all of them were located within an Optometric Practice at the time of the survey(since that's where the Survey instructions were advertised).

All of their participants contributed via their mobile phones. A smartphone was not necessary to complete the survey.

So what did the survey tell us…

(Text Message Survey, conducted 7/12-10/12, 93 participants in office)

It's still all about Old Fashioned "Word of Mouth"

Well that naysayers at my recent talk on social media was right.  It's still all about old-fashioned word of mouth.  Over 50% of the patients surveyed stated that a referral from their friend was the reason for their visit to the office.  So all this talk about Social Media and new technology must be a bunch of hype then…

Not so fast…Google Search, Facebook, and Twitter represented about 30% of all new patients to a practice.  That means that direct patient referrals, and online media account for nearly 80% of these practices' new patients.  The other large variable was Other, which probably represented the office location, corporate marketing, signage, etc, as these locations were all within very nice malls in LensCrafters offices.

Yellow Pages received Zero Votes

None of the patients surveyed stated that the Yellow Pages was the reason for their visit.  Now this isn't hard to believe as we only surveyed patients with cell phones.  But data suggests that over 90% of patients in the U.S.. have cell phones.  In fact, more people have cell phones than land lines in their home.

What do these data tell us?

Your current patient base is extremely important to you.  Their referrals are the lifeline of your practice.  Also, social media is an evolution of "Word of Mouth" advertising.  Google Search is largely based on your Online Reviews, Google Plus/Places Page Optimization, and the quality of your website.  However, with Google's Panda update, there is a large component in Google's Search algorithm of social activity on your Website.  This means that Google +1's, interaction with your blog posts on Twitter and Facebook, and your social media reach all have a direct impact on your ability to rank high locally on Google Search.  

One other important stat is by 2013 there will be more searches done on Mobile Phones than on desktop computers.  This is a remarkable stat and one that should really have an impact on the future of your practice.  Your ability to create a Mobile Website, optimized for action, will be an important tool to capitalize on this changing world.

What About Social Media?

These survey data were actually very surprising to me.  The Facebook and Twitter accounts for these practices were still growing and their fan bases represented a small fraction of their entire practice.  However, Twitter and Facebook (mostly Facebook) represented about 20% of all new patient referrals!

This is extremely impressive and really speaks to the importance of overall reach of social media.  The importance of your social media profiles is not merely represented by the number of your fans..  When your social media graph interacts and shares your content to their fan base, you get exponential returns from this increased reach and "Virality."  The numbers from this survey really speak to this power.  Social Media referrals represented a significant source of new patient activity even though the number of fans was a very small fraction of the practices' patient base.

Takeaways for an Optometrist

1.  Your service to patients and relationship with them are still the greatest mechanisms for improving your business

2.  Online Search has a much more significant role than Yellow Pages Listings

3.  Prepare your practice for the Mobile Search Revolution  with a Mobile Optimized website

4.  Social Media has a direct impact on your Google Search results and also online "Word of Mouth" activity.  Your Fans' activity has an exponential effect on the number of people positively impacted by your social media presence.  Prioritize Facebook, and recognize that Twitter and other platforms may also help.

5.  Conduct a survey of your own.  Text message surveys are a great way to engage your patients via their mobile phones…and also a nice way to invite them to visit your mobile website.

Drs. Phillip and Lynne Roy have a very successful Optometric practice in Brookfield, WI.  They practice in LensCrafters and are board members of the ALLDOCs group.  This summer, they have become Social Media RockStars.  They created their Facebook Page only three months ago.  In fact, they still don't have a website…only a mobile website.  However, for now that is more than enough.  They have recently obtained a  Facebook reach of over 7000 people!!!! They also had over 500 people interacting with their content in Sepember.  Also, they have a large amount of people interacting with their Facebook Page multiple times within the week.  Their Facebook Page is a destination page on the web for many of their paitients.

They have one of the top 5 Optometrist Facebook Pages in the nation.  How did they do this?

1.  They are fun people!!!

Drs Phillip and Lynne Roy are very social people and they like to communicate with their patients and their community.  They have a great time working with their patients, partnering with other small businesses in town, and supporting the local schools.  It is posts such as these that engage their followers and make them want to interact by either liking, commenting, or sharing. Their Facebook Posts demonstrate their very friendly manner, and encourages others to visit their practice.

2.  They understand social media!!!

When someone Likes your Facebook Page, they are allowing you access to their online news feed. This is a big deal and Drs. Phillip and Lynne Roy take this very seriously.  They provide a great mixture of content on the local community, photos of their staff, fun happenings in the area, and support for their favorite team — The Packers.  Recently, they created a post that offered the replacement referees a free eye exam after a questionable call was made losing the game for the Packers. This post was well received, and was shared over 55 times! In fact, Huffington Post wrote an article about Wisconsin area Optometrists offering eye care to replacement referees.  They also utilize social sharing mechanism like Check in Deals and Offers.

3. They mix up their content! 

Fan pages can be overwhelming when most posts that have the same content. Drs. Phillip & Lynne Roy & Associates' posts include more than just eye care content so they can relate to all of their patients and followers. Some days they post about a fruit market,  another day they will post an exclusive Facebook offer. Not everyone enjoys the same things so it is important to "mix it up" and this is exactly what they do. 

4.  They Don't Use the Same Hootsuite Feed as hundreds of other Optometric Practices

Drs. Phillip and Lynne Roy are real people and it shows on Facebook.  Their content is unique to their Facebook Page and they make an effort to engage with their patients on Facebook.  Also, they avoid the same posts that numerous SEO companies use to fill their clients' Facebook Pages.  Therefore, their content is unique to their community—–which is exactly how Facebook Likes it.  Also, they don't rely on Hootsuite to mass post their content—They keep it real—-not automated!

It's a true honor for our team at Uptempo Group to support Drs. Phillip and Lynne Roy in their social media activities.  It is amazing to see one of our great customers drive to the top in the Optometrist Community on Facebook in such a short time.