If you haven’t done so already, mark your calendars. Small Business Saturday is November 28th this year. And while your community may not consider your optometric practice as a small business, there isn’t much of a difference between your locally owned optometric practice and the restaurant that has become a cornerstone of your community.
In order for you to take advantage of Small Business Saturday, you need to start early with your optical marketing strategies. Below are a few tips to help you get the most out of your Small Business Saturday marketing tactics to bring in more patients and boost frame sales.
3 Optical Marketing Tips for Small Business Saturday
Prepare Your Website
Your website creates one of the first impressions your potential patients will have of you and your practice. Even if they are referred to you by a trusted friend, if your website isn’t modernized and optimized for your patients, then it reflects poorly on you. Before you do anything else, review your website, see if there’s anything that your site is missing, and add special messaging about your promotion for Small Business Saturday.
Promote Your Specials
If you have a promotion that you plan to use to bring in sales, it’s important that you start promoting it. Whether you’re running a buy one/get one promotion or offering a discount, focus on promoting the benefit your patients will receive and communicate these promotions through:
- Email: Use email service solutions to reach out to your patients that you haven’t seen in a while and entice them to come back with your special Small Business Saturday promotion.
--Tip: Don’t forget your patients who are returning home from college for the holidays. - Social Media: Brush up on social media best practices and regularly promote your practice to community groups.
--TIP: For Twitter, use the hashtag #shopsmall to expand your reach. - Blog: If your optometric practice has a blog use it to tell your audience about your participation in Small Business Saturday and let them know how they can support your efforts by shopping local.
Host an Event
Maybe you have added new styles to your frame board, or you want to highlight some of the most popular trends. This is a great time to host an event, like a trunk show, to try and draw in some frame sales. Try teaming up with other local business to host a joint event to reduce the overhead and increase the marketing effort and reach. For example, many trunk shows are geared towards women, so reach out to other local businesses that offer products geared towards women.
Our ebook on running a small business for ODs has even more useful information.
