What sets us apart is our unparalleled understanding of every facet of specialty eye care, gained from running 5 specialty practices, implementing marketing for over 100 specialty practices, and leading marketing efforts for top specialty groups. Advocate was born from a deep belief that marketing has the potential to fix the lack of awareness from patients and referral sources, connecting the incredible impact of specialty care with the patients who need it most.
Over the course of 1 year you will have had 7,800 meaningful interactions across your 600 potential referral leads.
We deliver an unprecedented referral marketing program that will transform your practice.
Over the course of one year, 400 videos are created and posted on YouTube, TikTok, Google My Business, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter.
Every week we have a virtual video recording session for one hour, turning that into a content empire.
Advocate turns you into an unstoppable force for community education, every week we create and post:
Over the course of one year, you will have 200 custom SEO optimized blog posts
Advocate ensures that you are getting max visibility for your practice through SEO and unique content.
Every week we create and post:
To fully maximize your reach we allocate $600 to maximize the reach of our marketing efforts.
We custom tailor the advertising strategy to each practice, which may include display ads, facebook and Instagram ads, print ads, and direct mail campaigns.
Gain visibility with a premium listing on Specialty.Vision, a leading specialty eye care website. Increase your practice’s visibility when people search for various specialty care services, facilitating easier referrals and appointments.
We created an easy to use hub for you and your staff to fully leverage all the interactions, resources, and tools provided to support your practice’s growth.
(includes a $600 advertising budget)
by paying annually
While the average optometry practice allocates just 1-2% of revenue to marketing, this approach leaves significant growth opportunities on the table. Consider this: retail businesses invest 14.52% of their revenue in marketing, while consumer services dedicate 11.74%. For a practice generating $1.2 million annually, this would translate to $11,000-$15,000 per month in marketing spend – a stark contrast to the typical $1,000-$2,000 budget for optometry.
This disparity is particularly crucial in specialty eye care, where patient awareness remains low, and the potential for growth is immense. With Advocate, you're not just increasing your marketing budget; you're investing in a comprehensive growth strategy tailored to specialty practices. Our approach, which includes robust referral marketing, content creation, and targeted advertising, is designed to bridge the awareness gap and connect your life-changing services with the patients who need them most. Don't let outdated budgeting norms hold your practice back – embrace the power of strategic marketing to unlock unprecedented growth and transform more lives through exceptional eye care.
Practices that are scheduled out months in advance or do not want to see more patients are not the right practice for this program (unless they are looking to free up time by dropping VCP's or hiring another OD. The ideal practice should be passionate about what expanding their impact with specialty care, and will engage with our team and service to really do amazing things. Advocate is all about specialty eyecare, so practices that are looking for a company to market designer frames would not be a good fit for Advocate.
We have worked with many specialty doctors that said the same thing, and after their first 10 or 20 videos, with the right coaching, had a totally different perspective. Many times the hesitancy is due to having a misconception about the goal of your video. You speak to your patients every day, you answer their questions and explain to them about the services you provide. We record every video with you, and treat it like a conversation. These videos are not about you giving a comprehensive scientific lecture or being a captivating youtuber, it is about answering questions that people have, building trust that you care about your patients and can help them. During the first few video sessions we will focus on helping you become comfortable doing videos.
I recommend that you give it a chance, we are really good at getting even the most hesitant doctors comfortable on video.
We meet every week for at least an hour with a focus on recording videos and discussing strategy. But we want you to view us an extension of your team, available to meet whenever the need is there. Aside from the weekly meetings, we try and do as much of the work as possible without taking your team's time, however sometimes there are things that can only be done on site or by the doctor, such as hosting an event, speaking to the staff at a local pediatrician's office, or having a short call with referral leads. We will work with you and your teams availability to ensure maximum success while respecting your availability.
This program was created to help specialty optometry practices ramp up growth for; vision therapy, neuro, low vision, dry eye, specialty contacts, myopia management and ophthalmology specialties. If you have other specialties we recommend speaking with us about your practice to better determine if this program is right for you.
Great question! While our team has helped hundreds of specialty practices with their websites and generated millions of visitors to specialty content, we chose to specialize our marketing to focus on the most important specialty marketing initiatives. While having a nice website with information is definitely important, we don’t believe that websites drive major specialty patient growth. Our focus is on the unique growth strategies that no one else can provide and that have a much more significant impact on new patients and referral acquisition. Every practice should have a good website, and we recommend that you keep your website (with your current provider or speak with us to get advice tailored to your specific practice).
And the same applies for Google PPC (pay per click advertising), while great for getting routine patients, it doesn’t even make it on our top ten list for specialty patient marketing strategies.
While some may think that our service and a company doing websites or PPC is the same thing, we disagree. Websites and PPC are about capturing demand, and since so few people know about specialties, they have limited potential for specialty growth. On the other hand, we focus on creating demand by building awareness, education, and trust with potential patients and referral sources. So while you may have been told that marketing for optometry is all about a website and PPC ads, that is true for routine care, but any mention of marketing for specialty care that doesn't focus on referrals, is clearly not an expert in specialty marketing.
Finally, we believe that for a specialty practice to have a great website they need to show up for informational searches, such as “why do my eyes hurt after reading” or “double vision after a stroke”, however a practices website is mostly able to generate traffic from searches with localized intent such as “vision therapy doctor near me” or “glasses for macular in New York”. Since most searches for specialty care are not localized, a specialty practice is best served by listing on directory websites that invests heavily in creating both volume and quality that competes for non-localized searches.
No
We will use the ad budget for a variety of paid advertising initiatives from print materials to online display ads and social media ads. No two advertising budgets or practices are the same, for one doctor ensuring that their videos are seen may have a bigger impact while another practice may have better results from printing up a low vision resource guide for local retina specialists to give to their patients. We have full accountability with you on where the budget was spent.
