12 Ophthalmology Business • July 2017
by Brendan Gallagher, Chase Rabourn, and Leah Taylor
Online and in sight:
Building a prominent online presence
I
n the past, patients primarily
sought out face-to-face in-
teractions with ophthalmic
businesses to purchase products
and services. These days, the
convenience of the digital world has
lured many of those same patients to
seek out customer service experiences
online. In fact, 86% of patients con-
duct a health-related search before
scheduling a doctor's appointment.
1
To keep themselves in the patients'
line of sight, ophthalmic businesses
need to develop and optimize their
online presence.
While having an online pres-
ence simply means that a business
may be found online via a search,
many businesses are unaware of how
complex it is to create and maintain
one in the digital coliseum. There
are thousands of other ophthalmic
competitors to consider, as well as
the patients' high expectations of the
online experience. It is not enough
to buy a URL, slap a summary of
services on a website homepage,
and never touch it again. An online
presence demands constant attention
combined with careful strategy, and
the strongest often include more
than a website.
At Medical Consulting Group
(MCG), our team of digital marketing
specialists has found the most prom-
inent online presences are developed
and sustained using four common
tactics: building a technically sound
website, composing content that pa-
tients will actually read, crafting an
engaging and aesthetically consistent
website design, and coordinating
interactive social media and online
marketing campaigns.
