Marketing

Make Your Practice a Fixture in Your Community

By Justin Bazan, OD

Participate in local community activities, and communicate that involvement through online social networks to create a strong foothold in your community.

Make Your Office
an Event Space

Your office can be an ideal place for community groups to meet.

Several keypurchases made my space morehospitable to these groups:

50 steel chairs = $600

1 projector = $550

2 wireless speakers = $100

I typically gainone new patient per event plus access to each of their networks of family and friends.

>>Park Slope EyeSlideshow>>

Make Your Office Available to the Community
Independent ODs with their own office space have a ready-made tool for community outreach. Offer up your office space at night or on non-working weekend daysas a free meeting space for local groups. The community my practice is based in, Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY, is family-oriented, with parades of strollers on the main thoroughfares a common sight. Through conversations with patients and other people at community events, I learned that groups for mothers and their babies and other parenting groups were in need of a local meeting spot, so I offered my office.

We now give several of these groups access to our office for meetings so that every month at least one of them has an event in our space. Recent events that took place under our roof include a meeting for parents of twins and a program on successful parenting for mothers who also work full-time outside the house. Parenting groups are a great way to get the whole family into your practice. If you get a young mother as a patient, chances are you also will soon have the children and spouse as patients, as well.

We gain at least one patient following each event that takes place in our office. Each of these new patients will likely result in additional new patients, as they each expose me to their families and social networks.

Get Involved in
Your Local Community

Use your genuine interests and relationships with your patients to spark community involvement.

*Donate free eye exams to charity auctions.

*Offer free promotion of local charities and community events on your Facebook page if you are not able to donate money.

*Take the time to chat with patients. Some are likely leaders of localcommunity groups. Ask them howyour practice can help.

*Participate in activities in your local community that genuinely interest you, such as a wine tasting if you’re a wine aficionado, or a softball game if you’re more into athletics.

*Check out Yelp.com’s event calendar for your city to pick the next (or first) community event you would like toparticipate in.

Sponsor Programs
About twice a quarter, I sponsor my own program in my office at night oron non-working weekend days. For example, we have art shows featuring the work of local artists who also display their paintings in my office. Along with those events, I lecture other small businesses on marketing via social networking. In addition, I sponsor events in which I am not the presenter, such as local parenting group meetings and seminars on financial planning for parents.

Donate Your Expertise
You can use your technical know-how as an optometrist to get involved in acommunity activity. I conducted a dissection ofa cow eyeballfree of charge for a Brooklyn public school that went so well that I soon will be doing the same thing at a local children’s science fair. My involvement with the school dissection presentation established a link between me and the school event coordinator. In addition to facilitating future programs, I now have an advocate for my practice inside the school, who probably will refer parents looking for a local eye doctor to my practice.

Publicize Activities Online
The biggest myth about social media is that you just need to do it and things will happen. It simply does not work that way. Establishing your practicein your community begins offline. Social networks like Facebook merely give you a platform to broadcast and extend that community involvement.For each event that takes place in your practice, your practice sponsors, and for events outside your office that you participate in, take photos and shoot videos that you can post as soon as possible to your practice’s Facebook page. It also helps if you establish a YouTube page for your practice to host your videos. I own ahigh-definition handheld camera, whichI sometimes use totapeevents I sponsor, but Imorefrequently usethe camera and video-recording function available on myiPhone. It doesn’t take a fancy camera to show smiling people and happy children at an event you sponsored or participated in.

Dr. Bazan’s Digital Presence

My practice Facebook page

Practice Yelp.com page

Practice YouTube channel

Related ROB articles

Social Media and the Optometric Practice: Why You Need to Get Started

Justin Bazan, OD, Park Slope Eye, Brooklyn, NY, started his own practice cold three years ago. He speaks regularly on strategies for marketing your practice via social networks. Contact: dr.bazan@parkslopeeye.com

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