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Marketing that attracts new patients & brings inactive patients back for care.
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By Margery Weinstein
Editor-in-Chief
Review of Optometric Business
Jan. 10, 2024
Effective marketing is hard to pull off on your own if you’re a busy practice owner. Even when you think you know what to do, where will you find the time to execute all your great ideas?
There is a practice partner, ADO Practice Solutions, and its DONE4YOU® Marketing service, that has changed how four practices reach out to their communities. The owners of those practices shared with Review of Optometric Business what this marketing help has meant to their ability to grow their patient base and profitability.
Kinsey Honeyman, OD, and her husband and practice partner, Dustin Honeyman, OD
Growing Optical Revenue More Than 30%
For Kinsey Honeyman, OD, co-owner, along with her husband, Dustin Honeyman, OD, of Highpoint Family Vision, invaluable resources came in the form of becoming an ADO ACCELERATE member, which is the growth-focused member level at ADO Practice Solutions.
“Being an ADO ACCELERATE member means you have access to resources and a dedicated team beyond the doors of your practice across multiple areas. I view my ADO team as an extension of our practice staff, but for a fraction of the price of keeping those responsibilities in-house,” says Dr. Honeyman.
Dr. Honeyman says ADO Practice Solutions and the DONE4YOU® Marketing team helped the practice immensely with branding, marketing content, recall systems, as well as industry discounts and consolidated billing. She says they joined ADO Practice Solutions, ADO ACCELERATE membership level, because it offered a streamlined, efficient and affordable way to improve and grow the practice.
Highpoint Family Vision were able to increase online reviews by over 75 percent with review cards and recommended changes to its use of Solutionreach.
Dr. Honeyman reports that the practice had 19.6 percent growth in average overall revenue with its biggest growth coming from optical revenue increases (30.25 percent optical growth). “We saw an increase in both second-pair sales and sales of sunglasses, which were targeted in our quarterly promotions,” she says.
The impressive impact ADO Practice Solutions and DONE4YOU Marketing has had on the practice is accompanied by a huge amount of time Dr. Honeyman has reclaimed.
“ADO Practice Solutions and my DONE4YOU Marketing manager, Daryn save me practice management time. I estimate I save 4-5 hours per week, thanks to their help. I am a busy mom and practice owner. I used to spend time with my kids and stress about what I should be doing for the practice and vice versa,” she says. “I wasn’t able to give 100 percent to everything all the time. DONE4YOU Marketing took a lot off my plate, so I could confidently spend my time elsewhere without feeling like I was coming up short.”
ADO Practice Solutions and DONE4YOU Marketing give Dr. Honeyman the power to grow her practice’s reach and profitability while preserving her time and energy as practice owner. These are game-changing resources for the practice.
Michelle May, OD, FCOVD, the owner of Advanced Family Vision Care
Increasing Capture Rate & Optical Revenue 20%+
Michelle May, OD, FCOVD, owner of Advanced Family Vision Care in Gambrills, Md., initially thought she just needed help with basics like billing, but then found, when the opportunity presented itself through ADO Practice Solutions, that she could use a boost in other areas of practice management too.
“I initially joined ADO Practice Solutions at their CORE level to take advantage of vendor discounts and consolidated billing, both of which simplified practice management while helping me save money. Having most of my bills consolidated into one billing statement makes keeping track of my practice expenses much easier, she says.
“In 2020, I upgraded to ADO ACCELERATE to incorporate DONE4YOU® Marketing after learning about their REBOUND program. DONE4YOU and the REBOUND program assisted with reopening my office after being closed due to COVID. Since then, I have been working with my marketing manager, Jackie, on setting up and implementing optical promotions, as well as patient engagement and recall campaigns throughout the year.”
The support the practice received from DONE4YOU Marketing has done wonders for eyewear sales, says Dr. May. “Since coming onboard with DONE4YOU Marketing, our capture rate has increased by almost 20 percent, which far and away exceeded the goal we had set for ourselves. This, in turn, has contributed to an almost 25 percent increase in optical revenue for the practice,” she points out. “Increasing the capture rate was our No.1 goal – the combination of DONE4YOU helping develop and market optical campaigns, along with staffing changes that increased implementation of the promotions, got us there very quickly!”
Amanda Weiss, OD, owner of SeaView Eyecare
Increasing Optical Sales 40%
For Amanda Weiss, OD, the help provided by ADO Practice Solutions and DONE4YOU® Marketing was game-changing.
Dr. Weiss’s practice, SeaView Eyecare in Wellington, Fla., became an ADO Practice Solutions ADO ACCELERATE member in December of 2020. At the time, Dr. Weiss and her team were seeking help with social media posts and wanted membership to a buying group/doctor alliance that would provide savings to the practice, in time and in cost of goods.
“But what we got was an identity for our brand, cost and time savings in operations, and the ability to track our progress down to the last dollar with detailed metrics,” she says of the decision to join ADO. “Being an ADO Practice Solutions member means having access to experts in the field of optical and eyecare that can help grow the practice, far beyond what we might have accomplished on our own.”
One of the metrics Dr. Weiss and her team aimed to improve was optical capture rate, which they felt had significant growth potential. “We knew the exceptional care we provided had earned the loyalty of our patients over the last 10 years, but the rising cost of optical goods and the growth of online optical retailers had resulted in a higher number of patients opting to fill their eyeglass and contact-lens prescriptions outside of our optical,” she said.
The practice’s capture rate became especially important when the team made the decision to end their contract with a large vision plan in 2022. “Our hope was to keep 50 percent of those patients in the practice, and to encourage them to utilize other medical insurance plan benefits or self-pay options for care,” says Dr. Weiss.
“We also hoped to encourage them to fill their prescriptions in our optical. As we planned for the departure from the vision plan, our DONE4YOU Marketing manager Emma helped us draft communications to patients, informing them of our decision and our desire to keep them as patients in our office. More important, however, was her suggestion to create Eyecare Recommendation Cards, specifically designed to travel with the patient from the exam chair to the optical, and to convey all of the doctor’s recommendations for care and eyewear”
The proof is in the profitability: “Our optical sales increased by 40 percent over the year prior.”
Julie Phan, OD, and Toan Nguyen, OD, owners of San Marino Optometry.
Transformative Specialty Service Marketing Help
When Julie Phan, OD, realized she needed outside help with marketing, she found that DONE4YOU Marketing provided the kind of promotional content that turns patients’ minds around. The materials created showed patients why they should receive the services Dr. Phan and her husband and practice partner, Toan Nguyen, OD, had prescribed for them.
“Our DONE4YOU Marketing manager Daryn created our Instagram and social media branding, which I really love. Our branding is very specific. I don’t want cookie cutter images representing our practice. I want our online presence to be high end, appealing, simple, classic. Everything the DONE4YOU team sent me made me say, ‘Wow, you really got my branding down!'”
Dr. Phan emphasizes that she didn’t want her online marketing to look like advertising. “They create foundational pieces, which I have the option to then take over and finalize,” she says.
Dr. Phan’s practice recently invested in intense pulsed light (IPL) equipment to take their dry eye services to the next level. DONE4YOU did e-mail campaigns for the practice letting their patients know they added this advanced technology to one of their offices. “These campaigns had a lot of patients reaching out to us about receiving dry eye care from us. I would have done it myself, but having the DONE4YOU Marketing team doing it, it came out so much nicer than it would have if I had done it myself. They even found patients through my EHR to send the e-mails to,” Dr. Phan says.
In addition, DONE4YOU created dry eye posters to educate patients. Dr. Phan says these posters tee up the conversation between patients and doctors in the exam room. The patient is primed to ask about the practice’s dry eye services. One poster focuses on IPL, and how patients can benefit from procedures using this technology.
DONE4YOU also created dry eye brochures to hand to patients. That means patients can take the education they receive in Dr. Phan’s office home with them to think further about the practice’s services, often setting them up to call back and say yes.
Margery Weinstein is editor-in-chief of Review of Optometric Business. You can contact her at: mweinstein@jobson.com
