Eyeworld

12 Ophthalmology Business • September 2016 How potential patient research improves your LASIK marketing by William B. Rabourn Jr. Part one: The benefits of multi-market surveys E very ophthalmic practice looking to market LASIK faces the same problem: how to choose the right LASIK message and medium to connect with potential patients and get the most out of their marketing dollars. The drop in the prevalence of refractive surgery procedures such as LASIK has many providers scram- bling to find the cause in order to ad- dress it with their marketing message. Some experts point to the economy, which has very likely played a role. However, several additional factors that may have had a hand in the issue include the changing LASIK market and providers' unchanging marketing tactics. For example, in the early 2000s, many practices favored a message that touted the efficiency and effec- tiveness of modern LASIK technology and felt their target audience was between 25 and 54 years of age. Ad- ditionally, the average age of myopia patients was considered to be around 40, while hyperopia patients were es- timated to be about 50. Practices also tended to feel that their patients were turning to friends and family for vision correction recommendations. Unfortunately, these same mes- sages, targeted age ranges, and ideas about how people are learning about LASIK are still trending today, despite the change in influential economic conditions and the increased use of information technology to connect with health care professionals more conveniently. The world is always progressing, creating new factors that influence patients. Today's patients have different concerns, interests, characteristics, and resources than those in the late 90s and early 2000s. They have adapted to current condi- tions. It is time for practices' market- ing tactics to do the same—and do it right with the assistance of market research. By devoting the necessary time to researching and understand- ing the current LASIK market and its potential patients, a practice is better equipped to form and release a mes- sage that reaches the right audience in the right way. This first installment in what will be a two-part series will illustrate the unique benefits of using multi-mar- ket surveys to illuminate the needs and motivations of potential LASIK patients, based on the demographic and socioeconomic data collected from a 2015 eight-market LASIK online survey. The survey, funded by CareCredit and performed by Medical Consulting Group (MCG), revealed some of the main factors influencing patients' decisions to have and pay for LASIK and demonstrated just how crucial a multi-market survey can be to LASIK marketing efforts. Summary of MCG's eight-market LASIK survey background Eight custom quantitative LASIK sur- vey markets were completed with the input of MCG for CareCredit. The call-to-action offering par- ticipants the chance to win a prepaid gift card was recommended to stimu- late survey responses. These unaided, unbranded sur- veys were posted both on a highly visited site and throughout the ac- tively engaged Facebook community in each market as follows: • Atlanta • Austin, Texas • Dallas • Denver • Los Angeles • Minneapolis • New York • Orlando, Florida For consistency, each market received the same survey distributed through similar channels using the same call-to-action. The data was extracted from 1,300 total surveys. Survey questions were multiple choice for ease-of-use. The benefits of a multi-market survey A multi-market survey is beneficial for marketers who: • are looking to target and bring in patients from additional markets • have not had the opportunity to survey their own local market Targeting new markets (per- forming your own survey): By per- forming a multi-market survey, mar- keters looking to expand their LASIK advertising can identify differences in potential patient demographics and concerns between their local mar- ket and those that they are looking to target. This allows marketers to customize by location their LASIK marketing messages and determine the best medium through which to communicate those messages. Learning from the majority (relying on other surveys): When a marketer lacks the time or resources to perform a survey to define his or

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