On the one hand, the idea that an optometrist – a medical professional dedicated to eye care – needs to prioritize visual content in their marketing strategy seems obvious. There’s a natural thematic link between the two concepts that almost doesn’t exist in any other industry.
On the other hand, this is actually a far more important concept than most people realize. According to one recent study, about 65% of the population is made up of “visual learners.” Not only do people retain more of what they learn when it’s presented to them visually, but they also understand more complicated topics as well.
For the sake of example, say you wanted to explain to someone exactly how a complicated eye exam worked. You could present it via text alone with a level of detail that paints a vivid picture of what is going to happen and, most importantly, why. Or, you could present it mostly visually – conveying the same information in a slightly different way.
The vast majority of all people out there would respond better to the visual collateral – even if the text has the same information. There’s a reason why most instruction manuals that you see are filled with pictures. They’re just easier to follow, easier to engage with and offer a better overall experience.
What does this have to do with an optometrist’s marketing strategy for 2025? It’s simple – as a service-based organization, you need to strike a chord not with the biggest possible audience, but with the right one. You need to reach out to the people who live in the same area you work in and who are most likely to become your ideal patients in the first place.
There’s an old saying that reminds us how you can only make one first impression, so you’d better make it a good one. For many optometrists and similar organizations, visual content marketing will be a big part of how you accomplish precisely that.
A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words
According to another study that the Centers for Disease Control conducted, approximately 58.5% of all adults in the United States say they used the Internet to look for health or medical-related information at some point in 2022.
When people have questions about a complicated topic like their eye health, they turn to the Internet for answers. Even if they aren’t specifically looking for a new optometrist, they are looking for a source they know they can trust.
That’s why, as a big part of your visual content marketing strategy, you need to highlight your expertise and build authority with educational content. Focus less on selling yourself (that part will come later) and more on educating your patients about their eye health, common vision problems, the importance of regular eye exams, and more.
Take Infographics, for example. This is a great, easy-to-understand way to explain admittedly complicated topics like eye anatomy. You could even use them as a chance to dive deep into conditions like cataracts that people have a lot of questions about, but that are generally uneasy of.
Infographics and short videos are a perfect way to lean into visuals and take complicated topics and boil them down into their bare essentials. The added benefit is that Infographics are also far more likely to be shared on social media than any other type of content. So not only do you get a chance to provide legitimate value to a prospective patient without necessarily asking for anything in return, but you also might get them to share your content with all their friends and family members as well.
Visual guidelines are another great way to lean into the phenomenon of visual content marketing as an optometrist. Here, you could fill your website or social channels with charts that explain the different types of lenses that are available, or what separates one type of eyewear prescription from another. These visuals can be a great way to help patients understand their treatment options more clearly or to answer any other straightforward questions they might have.
The long-term benefit of this is that you’re not coming right out and “asking for the sale,” so to speak. You’re simply providing a person an answer to their important health-related questions. When people have questions about eye care – as they often will – they head to your website to get those answers because they know they can trust you. Slowly but surely, you establish yourself as a voice of authority.
Then, when the time comes that they do need a new optometrist in their area, yours is the first name they think of – and you have visual content to thank for it.
The Message at the Heart of Visual Content Marketing
As stated, visual content in general is a great way to increase engagement on social media, and social media is a great way to get your message in front of the right audience of prospective patients.
Many people think that creating the steady stream of content needed to thrive on social media takes an incredible amount of effort – and in some ways, they’re right. But especially when you’re running an organization like an optometry practice, and you’re relying on visual-heavy collateral in particular, you have more options when it comes to content than you likely realize.
Think about all the different types of posts you can make that tell a story using almost exclusively visuals:
- Eye health tips. You don’t have to use visual content to outline an entire treatment plan – just share bite-sized tips or short videos about how people can better care for their eyes. Explaining to someone how to reduce digital eye strain, for example, is something you can do with just an image or two.
- Behind-the-scenes content. If you want to separate your optometry practice from your competitors in the eyes of your prospective patients, start getting them to see you as real people. To do that, you can show behind-the-scenes images or videos of your office, your other team members, and even your equipment. All this goes a long way towards humanizing your practice as much as possible.
- Patient testimonials. Here, you’ll post the real testimonials from satisfied patients who have already been to your practice (with their permission, of course). Let them tell their story in their own words and describe what their life was like before their appointment versus after. It’s a great way to build credibility, lean into the modern-day need for social proof, and connect with prospective patients on a much deeper level.
- Seasonal or thematic posts. Finally, you can also tie your visual content directly into seasons or relevant days wherever possible. Your patients might not know about World Sight Day, for example – but on that day, you can post visual content that clues them in and also provides a tip or two about how to better take care of themselves.
Note that these are just a few of the many ways that you can lean into visual content as an optometrist to make a great impression on your audience. There are more – like using images/video to demonstrate your optometry procedures and services. Regardless of the specific type of content you use or even the intention, what you’re really doing is using visuals to build up your brand identity, which is always critical.
Overall, one of the most important things to understand about all this is that visual content marketing is not something that you “do once and forget about.” Yes, as an optometrist, marketing, in general, will never be the most important thing to focus on in any given day. You have patients coming through your door that need as much help as they can get. Marketing will tend to be an afterthought, and you cannot allow something as time-consuming and effort-intensive as visual content marketing to become your full-time job.
Having said that, your long-term success depends on a steady stream of new patients coming through your door, which means you need to continue to put as much high-quality visual content out into the world as you can. The Internet moves fast, and a viral post today may be totally forgotten tomorrow.
That’s why the old saying “consistency is king” very much applies in this situation. Get into the regular habit of creating as much relevant, compelling visual content as you can and continue to publish it on sites like Facebook and Pinterest on a regular basis.
That’s also why we developed Surefire Local as the all-in-one marketing platform an organization like yours needs. In addition to tools that help you create visual content, it also includes directory management, search engine optimization (SEO) tools, and more. The ultimate goal is to give you a single source of truth for all the marketing efforts of your optometry practice. That way, you can focus less time on marketing and more time on providing patients with the care they’ve come to expect of you, which in and of itself is the most important benefit of all.
If you’d like to find out more information about the importance of having high-quality visual content for optometrists, or if you have any other questions about what an all-in-one marketing platform can do to revolutionize your efforts, please don’t delay – contact the team at Surefire Local today. You can also click here to attend a Surefire Local demo to see what our platform can do personally.