Tools of the Trade: How to Leverage New Patients By Marketing Your Equipment
Whether it’s a baseball bat, a tennis racket or football pads, equipment is a huge part of the sports world. Likewise, the equipment your sports vision practice uses makes all the difference. But to the uninitiated, strobe goggles and Senaptec tablets can seem strange or even intimidating. That’s why highlighting your equipment is so crucial to marketing your practice.
The First Pitch: Planning Your Content Strategy
Just like any game, your opening move can determine how well your practice performs. Consistency and quality of content is key here. That’s why before doing anything else, you need to sit down and create a content calendar. Calendars offer a roadmap you can follow to know when, where and how to feature your equipment. This is especially helpful when your practice gets busy and you don’t have as much time to brainstorm new ideas to stay current on social media.
Your calendar will guide your content initiatives for the rest of the year, so careful planning is crucial.
Here are four great ways to start work on your content calendar.
Want to Score More Sports Vision Patients? Talk to an EyeCarePro Marketing Coach!
1. Pick Your Gear
Before you do anything else, you need to choose which pieces of equipment you want to feature. Take inventory of the kind of equipment your practice has, which pieces are the most beneficial to the patients you serve and what sorts of gains they can expect from using said equipment. Picking more popular or more beneficial equipment is the best strategy because it’s more likely potential patients will see themselves using your services and consider booking an appointment.
2. Play the Field
Look ahead a bit in the year to see if there are any upcoming events or seasonal trends you can take advantage of when releasing your content. For instance, the Super Bowl is something you know will take place every year. If you have any equipment that can particularly benefit some of the skills football players need to be successful, start showcasing them a few weeks before the big game.
When Spring time rolls around, break out the strobe goggles in preparation for the start of baseball season. Coinciding your content releases with anticipated events is a great way to get attention when everyone has sports on the brain.
3. Don’t Forget the Home Games
Planning content for massive sporting events is great, but don’t forget to bring awareness to special events closer to home. Is your local high school’s homecoming game coming up? Sounds like the perfect opportunity to discuss Senaptec Tablets and how to improve multiple object tracking. Also, if you know your practice is planning on hosting a trunk show or you have an annual special you run, you can take those opportunities to explain your equipment and services alongside your campaigns.
4. Plug Those Gaps!
By this point, your content calendar should have started to take shape. You may be noticing there are a few holes here and there that need to be filled. This is perfectly normal for all practices to have. The great thing about advertising your sports equipment, is you can do it whenever you want. Fill in the last blank spaces in your content calendar with showcases for some of your more unusual equipment. The more interesting you can make it, the better. Not only does this advertise your equipment, it’s a great way to get more traffic to your website while things are slow!
Swinging for the Fences: Talking About Your Sports Vision Equipment
Now that you have your equipment selected and your content calendar filled, it’s time to get down to business.
The goal of marketing your sports vision equipment is to both build awareness of its functions and its benefits at the same time. Break it down for your patients. Give them a step by step walkthrough of how the equipment works, what it’s typically used for and the kinds of improvements a patient can expect. You can go even further by linking each piece of equipment to a specific role in sports.
There are many formats for your sports vision equipment content. As we mentioned in our previous sports vision article, videos are a fun and engaging way to connect everything your sports vision practice has to offer with your patients’ goals. Videos get the most engagement by far, and are perfect for sharing across different platforms to get the best reach. If you decide to feature your equipment in videos, make sure you personally demonstrate how each piece of equipment works. As your practice’s team captain, seeing your face in the content you produce builds trust between you and your patients, and gets people to recognize you as a sports vision authority.
For a fantastic example of an equipment walkthrough video, check out Collierville Vision Center’s explanation of the Senaptec tablet.
You can also create specialty web pages that discuss the uses and benefits of your equipment. While these aren’t as engaging as videos, they are excellent resources for anyone wanting to learn more about your services. It helps with your SEO too, so you appear higher up in Google search.
Keeping the Bases Loaded: Post EVERYWHERE
Once you have your content ready to go, schedule them out according to your content calendar and post them to as many of your channels as possible. The more places your patients can find your content, the more likely they are to view it.
Keep in mind that different groups use different platforms. For instance, Facebook is a great way to reach older audiences while platforms like Instagram are great for reaching younger individuals like high school athletes.
And there you have it! Now you have all the latest tips and tricks to steal the show by showcasing your sports vision equipment. All that’s left to do is get out there and start posting like a pro!
Next On Deck
Looking for more great strategies to lead your sports vision practice to victory?
Check out the other three parts of our sports vision educational series!
Part 1: How to Start Growing Your Sports Vision Practice (Feat. Dr. Jennifer Stewart)
Part 2: How to Score New Patients for Your Sports Vision Practice
Part 3: Networking Your Sports Vision Practice (Feat. Dr. Jennifer Stewart)
