June 17, 2015
You may have some work to do educating patients in their 20s and early 30s about the importance of sunwear, findings from The Vision Council’s 2015 UV Protection Report suggest. Millennials, born 1981-1996, are least likely to report wearing sunglasses always or often (43 percent), and those of this generation who do wear them, are more likely to say they are wearing them to look good, rather than to protect their eyes.
Let’s take this week to review the marketing your practice does to help patients choose quality sunglasses. Take a fresh look at your in-office sunglasses messaging, your online sunglasses messaging, and how your staff and doctors talk to patients about sunglasses. As you examine these three areas, there are three questions you should concentrate on for this analysis.
1. How well does your messaging present the case for the damage the harmful rays from the sun does to the eyes? Here are five web sites you can use to help create marketing information about the damage the sun can do to your eyes:
http://www.aoa.org/patients-and-public/caring-for-your-vision/uv-protection?sso=y
http://www.skincancer.org/prevention/sun-protection/for-your-eyes/how-sunlight-damages-the-eyes
http://www.geteyesmart.org/eyesmart/glasses-contacts-lasik/sunglasses.cfm
http://www.healthywomen.org/content/article/protecting-your-eyes-sun-damage
http://www.allaboutvision.com/sunglasses/spf.htm
2. How well does your messaging help your patients select the best sunglasses for their lifestyle? Is your practice effectively making the case that not all sunglasses are equal in the areas of protection, comfort, clarity and color shifting? Here are three web sites that provide information you can use in your marketing materials to help your patients pick the best sunglasses for their lifestyle:
http://www.essilor.com/en/BrandsAndProducts/Lenses/SolarAndTints/Pages/Xperio
http://www.oakley.com/en/technology/eyewear
http://www.mauijim.com/technology
3. How easy is it to buy sunglasses in your practice? The most effective way to answer this question is to look at your second-pair sales record. If you believe that every patient wearing dress glasses should also have outdoor, polarized sunglasses, then how well are you doing in your practice in achieving that goal? If you are at 90 percent, you are amazing. If you are at 10 percent, well, that’s not a very good number, is it?
Take this week to brainstorm with staff how you can make it easier for patients to purchase sunwear from you. If it is hard to do business with you, then patients will go elsewhere. Make it easy to do business with your practice, and watch your sunglass sales grow.
