Many optometrists understand that they need to up their marketing game with the help of software solutions. Software and automation can help optometrists stay on top of important marketing goals, which helps you grow your business and find more patients. However, with so many different types of automation solutions out there, optometrists are left wondering what way to turn.
An all-in-one platform for optometry marketing is often the best approach for optometrists and business owners. But what makes an all-in-one solution better than duct-taping various solutions together to build out your marketing infrastructure? What are the specific benefits that an all-in-one platform can bring to your business? In this article we’ll answer those questions and help you understand why Surefire Local is the best solution for your optometry marketing needs.
How to Approach Marketing Software
There are two main approaches to marketing software: an all-in-one platform or duct-tape solutions, which leverages individual, siloed platforms together.
As the name might suggest, a duct-tape solution isn’t an all-encompassing software that brings together all parts of your business. Instead, it’s a piecemeal solution that starts in one area then moves to another. For example, a duct-tape solution might be to first get a marketing platform that helps you with your social media efforts, then find another solution that helps you with email, then another one that can help you create marketing campaigns, and so on.
Some optometrists are drawn to a duct-tape solution because they falsely believe that it’s a low-cost option. After all, doesn’t it save money to get smaller, non-integrated solutions that help with a specific area rather than an all-inclusive platform? The truth is that it doesn’t—not in the long run.
A duct-tape solution won’t cover all areas of your business’s marketing initiatives. That means that, as you grow and need more automation and marketing software, you’ll have to find other solutions to cover the gaps. That means more licensing fees, more monthly or yearly costs, and more difficulty keeping things organized and running smoothly when you’re spread across different solutions. Rather than saving you time and money, duct-tape solutions end up costing you in the long run.
An all-in-one solution might seem like a bigger investment at first, but over time you’ll see that it’s not just a money-saving solution with one price tag to pay, but a time saver as well. Rather than logging onto different platforms and trying to coordinate data and information in different databases, all of your relevant information is in one location on a single platform. You can easily navigate and connect different parts of your marketing and avoid falling short of your optometry marketing goals.
An all-in-one platform for optometry marketing helps you create a cohesive, connected marketing strategy that targets all key areas of concern. You can avoid the headache that comes from a less-effective duct-tape marketing approach that creates more hurdles to improve your ability to grow the business effectively.
Benefits of Using an All-in-One Platform
There’s no question about it: an all-in-one platform is a better option for optometrists than a duct-tape solution that will need constant updating and technical-fixing when integrations between the platforms break down. But what are the specific benefits of an all-in-one platform? We’ll go over some of the top reasons that a complete solution like Surefire Local can help you save money, get better results, and give you a better platform to perform your critical marketing tasks on.
Benefit #1: Reduce Marketing Expenses
When you go with a duct-tape solution for your marketing needs, you are basically guaranteeing that you will need to manage multiple programs and subscriptions from the different platforms and services it will take to run your online marketing activities. When you consolidate all of those costs into a single platform, you reduce the amount of fees you would otherwise be paying for across your different duct-tape solutions.
Many small businesses or local optometry offices are working on limited marketing budgets. That’s why the perceived low cost of duct-tape options can seem appealing. But when you actually sit down and look at the numbers, you’ll discover that you save much more by picking a single platform that runs all aspects of your marketing initiatives rather than spreading them out over different solutions.
Benefit #2: Measure Performance & ROI
When you have different duct-tape platforms, it’s hard to gather an accurate picture of your performances, wins, and ROI for various marketing initiatives. After all, when your data and metrics are spread across different platforms, there’s no single location where reports and information can be pulled from. That can leave you frustrated and uncertain of whether your marketing campaigns are even working for your optometry business.
An all-in-one platform tracks all of your relevant metrics and data in a single place, meaning that you can eliminate the guesswork and uncertainty that comes from a duct-tape solution. Rather than manually trying to compile data in Excel or paying for yet another platform to do it for you, you can instead generate reports as needed and view real-time data on your dashboard.
A platform like Surefire Local even goes a step further to help you monitor your competitors and base your performance and ROI off of success in your local market.
Benefit #3: Improve Your Marketing
When you have an all-in-one platform for optometry marketing, you can drive more high-value patients to your business. By diverting your budget into the right channels, be it advertising, content creation, social media management, or other avenues, you can build your online presence and consolidate all of your marketing in one place. That saves you time, which saves you money.
Rather than jumping from platform to platform, you can organize all of your marketing data into a single solution. That helps you get big-picture views of how your campaigns are running and what areas you aren’t seeing success in yet. That can help you know how to divide your time and budget to find the right activities that work for your business.
Benefit #4: Maintain an Active Online Presence
By creating and publishing all of your content from a single place, you can maintain your online presence and ensure that there aren’t any channels that get outdated. That can help your online presence remain active, which not only helps you get more customers but shows search engines that your brand is one that should be put at the top of search results pages.
A platform like Surefire Local allows you to create your content directly on the platform and then publish that content directly to your channels, including your blog, social media, business directories, email programs, and Google Business Profile. Rather than spending the time logging onto each platform and individually publishing content to all of your channels and risking forgetting a location, an all-in-one solution takes out the extra time and does the work for you.
Benefit #5: Streamline Communications
Communication is key when running a local business like an optometry office. You need to stay in contact with your current patients, previous patients, and your potential patients in order to get that valuable return business and loyal customer base. However, when you are struggling to stay on top of your marketing efforts, it’s easy to let that communication fall to the bottom of your daily task list.
Surefire Local allows you to streamline your communications through the platform without any additional tools. You can manage your email campaigns, chatbots and website chat messages, and your text message marketing all from one centralized inbox for your company to work out of. That allows you to set up workflows to keep up communication, like sending out appointment reminders, letting new customers know about your business, and giving out important office information like new hours or closed days.
Request a Demo of the Surefire Local Marketing Platform
An all-in-one platform for optometry marketing is clearly the best solution for optometrists who want to be found locally, grow their business, and manage their marketing tasks with ease. The right platform can go a long way in ensuring that you don’t blow your marketing budget while still managing to organize and run marketing activities. However, there is still the best option out of the all-in-one solutions that can help you the most.
Surefire Local is designed with local businesses like your optometric company in mind. Our platform is easy-to-navigate, intuitive, and user-friendly, so anyone can get the benefits. We excel in local marketing, making sure that you are found by the people who will become your customers and clients. Surefire Local can be accessed from any device from any location, with all of your marketing in one convenient place.
Whether you want to coordinate your SEO efforts, manage your reviews, develop referrals, control your social media, post new content, or leverage your analytics, the Surefire Local platform is there for you. To learn more about all the features that are included in our all-in-one platform for optometry marketing, request a demo and learn about all the specifics of Surefire Local and how it can help your business grow today.
