Optometry Marketing through Customer Engagement
Engaging customers requires building their awareness of the product you are delivering and proving its significance to them. Customer satisfaction requires exceeding customer expectations by providing him with exceptional service. With customer satisfaction comes loyalty. The revenues from loyal customers eliminate the cost of acquiring new patients. Advertising and media costs are usually the most significant part of the expenditure. Firms that succeed in building a strong brand employ their most loyal customers as ambassadors and advocates for their products.
Optometrists are among professionals who mostly relied on word-of-mouth referrals. It consists of exceeding the customers’ expectations and incentivizing them to talk to their families and friends about their products and services. Word-of-mouth referral is a free and effective marketing tool that consists of customers communicating their pleasant customer experiences to their friends and influencing their shopping decisions.
Other than word-of-mouth referral, Optometrists employed traditional marketing activities that were divided into above-the-line media (that includes television, radio, cinema, billboards, newspapers, magazines,…) and below-the-line media (that includes direct mail, in-store promotional coupons,…). The main difference between the two distinctions is whether the campaign is targeting a large audience or a narrow and small audience. With the advancement of telecommunication through the internet, marketing activity has changed. Above the line marketing has slowly lost its mass effect and advertising through television for example has significantly decreased. Moreover, below-the-line and internet advertising became able to target a larger audience and enabled targeting individuals, and providing tools to measure effectiveness and improve customer relationship management.
Today’s marketing activity is divided into paid and earned media and not above the line and below the line media. Paid media includes all paid efforts by the company to promote its products (TV, radio, billboards, internet paid ads, social media boosts,…), and earned media includes the content that customers create and share on the internet and social media like reviews, blogs, videos, tags, posts, and hashtags. The large importance that has been long put on paid media is now largely put on the amount of earned media that satisfied customers generate through sharing their recommendations, endorsements, and positive reviews.
Customer engagement is directly affected by the impression of the brand that the actual experience of the service leaves in the customer’s mind. In order, for example, to get a positive review from a patient you need to provide him an experience that is exceptional and consistent time after time. An exceptional experience is an experience that the customer is often not willing to pay for this distinction. Ways to improve the customer’s experience include:
First, identify which marketing media and which experiences have an impact on specific segments of customers.
Second, design the phases involved in the best experience through matching the right product, understanding the customer behavior toward products, implementing the right channel of distribution and the right eco-system, and communicating it effectively.
Third, make sure that what it takes to make a good customer experience is feasible operationally and financially.
Fourth, fine-tune the process of providing the right experience every step of the way. You will discover through regular assessment that no customer experience is perfect, but every attempt provides valuable insights that you can analyze and implement improvements.
Fifth implement your strategy at wide and keep in mind that the concept of customer engagement differs from controlled marketing. The concept consists of influencing customers’ decisions, engaging them, and listening and learning from their feedback and reviews to build upon and improve your products and services.