After 18 months honing its abilities in Australia, practice marketing company Optom Edge is poised to introduce New Zealand optometry practices to its dedicated, optometry marketing-focused capabilities.
The still relatively new company has just been named as a preferred partner of the Kiwi independent optometry group Eyepro (see story p4), which is planning some education evenings later this year to both promote Optom Edge and upskill its members’ social marketing abilities.
Optom Edge was founded by Robert Springer, formerly a marketing manager for both Essilor and Zeiss, and now employs four people. It helps practices define themselves and market themselves better online through, among other things, building better patient recall templates and websites; helping with Facebook business page setups and management; establishing patient feedback mechanisms; connecting to online reviews; and advising on online advertising, via Google and Facebook, and custom-built marketing campaigns.
Eyepro is already putting Optom Edge’s abilities to the test having engaged Springer to write its new website and help with its own online marketing abilities. Optom Edge works with most Australasian practice management software systems, allowing it to take data from the systems and send it to automatic marketing programmes. This data can be personalised and targeted quite easily by the practice’s dedicated marketing person, says Springer. “The idea is to make it easy for the practices. We’re not an outsource solution, we provide the tools and the training so the practices can do this themselves, or we can provide a managed service if that’s what they prefer.”
Springer says he’s excited to finally be launching in New Zealand as Kiwis are known to be early technology adopters and aren’t afraid of trying new things. The problem, however, is many still see digital marketing as simply putting a regular post up on Facebook. “They are putting content out there, but they are not connecting it to an actual purpose. There’s no real measure or expectation of that patient or even who that patient is. But these platforms can help you be really efficient in reaching your audience.”
