EYECARE BY THE NUMBERS

Taking Control of Your Brand

It’s you and your practice, not just your product, that will draw and keep patients

nearly 25 years ago, I was attending a contact lens seminar and at the end of the program, during the Q&A session, a doctor stood up and loudly voiced in a frustrated tone to the speaker:

“How is it that I’m supposed to compete when the guy down the street is selling contacts for $39.95?”

The speaker attempted to allay this doctor’s frustrations with some tactical suggestions. I felt compelled to add to the conversation.

“Doctors,” I said. “Your challenge is not the guy down the street selling contacts for less than you can buy them. Your challenge is deciding what you sell. You don’t sell contacts. You sell YOU. And I can’t get YOU down the street.”

THE YOU BRAND

My message about branding is quite simple. First, one must understand the meaning of “brand” and your role as a brand leader. I’m a firm believer that having and maintaining a brand is a key component of the success of any business, whether optometry practice or coffee shop. I also believe that you, as the practice leader, are the “keeper of the brand.”

EVERYTHING MATTERS

Before you can understand your role as “keeper of the brand,” you must have a clear understanding of the definition of “brand” for an optometry practice. It’s experience.

Experience. Your practice brand is defined by the experience that your patients have with your practice. Everything matters. How you and your staff walk, talk, and present are significant elements of your brand. Your physical space impacts your brand. Your stained ceiling tiles and photocopied forms impact your brand. Everything!

Product. Consider that your competition, whether chain, fellow independent, vision plan, Internet purveyor, or big-box retailer, largely sells the same “stuff” as you. Everyone has frames, lenses, and contacts, and the consumer has little understanding of the difference in products.

Differentiate and Educate. Yes, you may package your “product” in a unique way, or sell some product lines that others don’t. You may even provide some specialized services like low vision, dry eye, or vision development. But those are only tools in the game of competition, and unless you promote in such a way that your desired consumer clearly understands the difference, you’re thrown into the same pot as all other competitors.

YOUR SPECIALTY

You do have secret brand weapons…tools that no one else has.

Most marketers, when asked to assist you with your practice, will focus on developing a physical image (such as a logo) or some cute and perceived memorable message (“Eyecare Because We Care”). This approach might have worked in the mass-media era. But I think this kind of approach is largely a waste of energy in today’s world unless you build your brand image first on the proper platform.

In today’s wired world, where consumers communicate with thousands of other consumers directly through such social media platforms as Facebook and Yelp, a cute logo isn’t going to cut it.

USE YOUR ‘WHY’

People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. You have a unique brand story which should be based upon why you became an optometrist. Though some readers will confess that they became an O.D. because they didn’t want to go to school for eight more years to become an M.D. or because they didn’t want to be on 24-hour call, the majority of you have a real and often heartfelt reason for joining the profession. Dig for it and share it. Work with a marketing professional to identify your unique story and communicate it. Develop your “elevator speech” so that you can impart your brand story in 30 seconds. Then, eat, sleep, breath, walk, and talk your brand.

— Alan Cleinman

Alan Cleinman is owner of Cleinman Performance Partners, a business consultancy specializing in the development of high-performing optometry practices. © 2015 Cleinman Performance Partners. The above was excerpted from his soon-to-be-released book, “A Different Perspective…Observations on Optometry, Business, and Life.”