Posted on December 16, 2024

Your Roadmap to 2025 Success: Build a Digital Marketing Strategy That Delivers Results

Planning for marketing and business development in 2025 requires a strategic approach that anticipates evolving industry trends, technologies, and market demands. Medical practices today are dealing with massive changes in procedure volume, technology upkeep, staff shortages, ever-evolving competition, and economic disruption.

The pressure on physicians, administrators and marketing directors to enhance return on investment has never been higher. How do we accomplish this with young people hampered by economic frustration and declining refractive surgery volumes?

While there’s no one-size-fits-all solution, there are several promising approaches to help optimize your practice for the year ahead. Keep reading to learn five key areas that can strengthen your strategic planning for 2025!

1. Leverage Refractive Lens Exchange 

Focus on leveraging RLE as a vision correction procedure that is ideally suited for GenX and has massive potential for growth in 2025. Are you participating?

This is a vastly important generation with purchasing power. Their focus on flexibility with healthcare payments is important, and their choice of quality healthcare is evident.

The lens implant options for RLE have evolved, making many people happy to be able to reduce their dependence on glasses and contacts. RLE marketing can be challenging but can be approached from a variety of angles.

Here is what some other industry people have to say about RLE, implant options, and creating better consumer awareness.

Market data indicates that Refractive Lens Exchange (RLE) presents a strong opportunity for both patient satisfaction and practice growth. In a 2024 Glacial Multimedia, Inc. case study, the average cost per lead for Google Ads paid search was $187.00, and the cost per lead for social media ads was $25.00. Although this data shows costs per lead are higher than what you would see with LASIK and cataract ad groups, the costs are well within the range of acceptability.

There is still a gray area around the awareness of the procedure and what terms should be used to describe it. The main descriptions should include not just Refractive Lens Exchange (RLE) but also Custom Lens Replacement (CLR). Unfortunately, there is no magic word that has evolved yet that is like LASIK so creating awareness will prove more difficult.

Let’s hear what people are saying about Refractive Lens Exchange:

“If you are seeing a refractive surgery candidate older than 40 years of age, take the time and explain the concept of presbyopia. The best solution for presbyopia is Refractive Lens Exchange with a trifocal lens. Assuring the eyes are very healthy and discussing the potential drawbacks of the IOL is paramount.”

-Rob Melendez, MD, MBA
Juliette Eye Institute, CEO/Founder

“Today’s patient has more options than ever to achieve excellent post operative vision.  The variety of IOLs can be confusing and patient education is critical to meet expectations.  Having an educational program is extremely valuable and can reduce the surgeon’s chair time as well as improve patient satisfaction.”

– Edward J. Holland, MD
Director of Cornea, Cincinnati Eye Institute
Professor of Ophthalmology, University of Cincinnati

“As an Ophthalmic Consultant and CEO, metrics on patients and planning are key to future financial success and growth of a practice. To be more progressive in 2025, take an example from your own playbook and understand the road map of the premium patient. Not all patients need hand holding, rather the patients that are paying out of pocket and choosing the refractive elective services are your savvier patients that are looking at your social media presence, looking at how well your website presents the technology of your providers. You have one chance to sell yourself, making sure that your practice, your providers, and your technology will live up to the expectations of the patient. You need the tools and information to set the patient’s expectations so that when they finally arrive at your practice – closing is so much sweeter!”

– Tracy J. Kenniff, MBA, OCS
Practice Administrator
The Eye Center, Greenfield MA

“Clinics that focus on educating patients and putting their needs first in marketing Refractive Lens Exchange (RLE) are likely to see strong growth in the coming years. Although RLE as a procedure is still not widely known, many people over 50 are frustrated with using glasses, contacts, and readers. These potential patients know they have a problem but are not yet aware of the solution. To grow RLE procedures consistently, clinics should adopt a modern vision correction approach and invest in effective traditional and digital media campaigns that deliver a positive return on investment.”

– Mike King
Clinic Marketing System

2. Identify Your Online Persona and Embrace a Patient-First Value Proposition

Making patients feel empowered with vision correction goes a very long way. Each patient is unique, and they all have a story to share. At its core, patients simply seek better vision. True emotional intelligence in healthcare means shifting our focus from professional achievements to what matters most: our patients’ quality of life and their journey to improved sight. 

Many eye care practitioners were first made aware of this concept in a book by Donald Miller, where he aims to help businesses tell meaningful stories to dramatically improve their business. Creating an online persona is crucial for practices aiming to connect deeply with their target audience. An effective persona helps you understand your patient’s needs and visual goals, driving a more personalized approach to patient care and marketing.

We have seen the emergence of three general types of practice/provider personas. Some practices may fall outside these categories, but these are the main common personas. Consider whether or not your practice falls in any of these categories:

1. The Self-Focused Practice

In this scenario, the practice website talks a lot about the physicians successes. Although it’s great to put forth the extensive experience that your physicians have, its also important to make sure its not overboard. Experience matters significantly, but be careful to make sure it does not outweigh the message of delivering quality vision care for your patients. Many people would argue that it’s the doctors who show empathy that patients remember so vividly.

2. The Patient-First Practice

In the next scenario, the practice’s website is welcoming to the average person and addresses the symptoms, needs, and desires of patients. You will often see real patients and hear real patient stories on these websites. Creating a genuinely warm patient experience requires more than just clinical excellence—it demands emotional intelligence (EI). This cornerstone of a patient-first philosophy encompasses four key abilities: identifying emotions in ourselves and others, using emotions to guide reasoning, understanding emotional complexity, and managing emotional responses. When properly integrated into practice, these EI skills not only enhance patient care and satisfaction but also strengthen safety protocols and treatment outcomes

3. The Oblivious Practice

The last scenario involves practices that are oblivious to how a website should be used as an opportunity to introduce yourself to the community. In today’s healthcare world, where patients actively research and compare providers online, neglecting your digital presence can have profound consequences. A poorly designed website doesn’t just fail to attract new patients—it actively drives them toward more digitally savvy competitors. With countless options available, patients won’t hesitate to choose practices that demonstrate professionalism and attention to detail through their online presence.

Let’s hear what people are saying about embracing a patient-first value proposition:

“Remember that the patient is the hero of the story, not you. All marketing efforts should be geared toward elevating the hero, aka your patients!!”

– Dr. Brett Mueller
Mueller Vision

“Patients must feel connected, informed, and safe in their journey with us. This starts with interest and research online, extends through their experience in our practice with a great surgical outcome, and ends in success as a patient advocate spreading the word to everyone they know. It’s up to us to create these three feelings in every patient interaction – and be committed to constantly re-assessing and evolving everything we do.”
 
– Christine Scarlett & Lauren Weaver
The Patient Whisperers

3. Stay Up to Date 

In today’s ever-changing world, it’s essential to stay up to date on emerging trends, data trends, what media is working, how leads are generated and where you get the best bang for your buck for patient acquisition.

One strategy practices can put in place to stay up to date with the latest digital marketing trends and techniques is to regularly read industry news and publications. Many digital marketing blogs, magazines, and websites provide regular updates on the latest trends and techniques.

Several industry leaders offer valuable resources across different aspects of practice management:

On the administrative side, there is the AHA (Administrators Helping Administrators) webinar series run by James Dawes, Patti Barkey, and Janna Mullaney. This has proven to be very informative and unbiased.

Guido Piquet, CEO of Mann Eye Institute, hosts ‘The Ophthalmology Experience’ podcast produced by Boost Patients. Known for staying ahead of industry trends, Piquet regularly tests and implements innovative software solutions before they become widespread in the field, making his insights particularly valuable for forward-thinking practices.

On the marketing side our team at Glacial Multimedia holds regular webinars going over various trends. Additionally, we release various case studies on marketing cost per leads by media source.

Let’s hear what practices and industry professionals have to say about staying up on trends:

“Do Your Homework” or “Homework Never Ends…Even for Professionals.

Every single year I pit all of my media representatives (of which I have 35) up against each other. I begin to heavily assess market research data pertaining to SW Florida on how my target audience most commonly receives information. For example, in October, I asked Comcast (a partner who would know) – to compile the top OTT/Streaming platforms’ cumulative rankings and highest-rated ROI’s for a 12 month period. Comcast uses set top box data directly into their customers’ homes to “first-party” ascertain the viewing habits of all audiences.  I was able to quickly determine which OTT mediums were priority. THEN – I sent a “BCC” email to all of my reps and said…these platforms are my top priority. 1. Do you sell this? 2. Can you target it uniquely or are you just throwing money into the wind? 3. Who is going to give me the lowest CPM?”

– Bev Hollingshead
Marketing Director
Frantz EyeCare

“Many practices overlook the value of educating their existing patient databases on premium vision correction procedures. A practice should understand the opportunities to market and offer these services to their existing patients. Additionally, the practice should have a strategy to gauge their patients’ interest in these procedures and how to nurture them. Having an automated way to gather this information and put it into targeted drip campaigns and text blasts can be very powerful.”

– Guido Piquet, MBA, COE
Chief Operating Officer
Mann Eye Institute

“Consider the performance signals you are feeding your marketing engines and strategy.  Are these signals “proxy metrics” like clicks and inbound calls lasting more than 30 seconds or are they actual patient bookings. Adopt online booking as an option for your patients.  Simply put, your practice is behind if you don’t already have this in place.  I’m confident that there will be objections from colleagues in your practice, but patients expect to do business with you as easily as they can do business with everyone else.”

– Charlie Winn
Chief Revenue Officer
Liine

4. Make 2025 the Year to Audit and Edit Your Lead Follow Up Process

Even practices considered among the best in the country need to stay vigilant, as 2024 marked a sea change in understanding best practices and what it takes to engage potential patients to book consultations.

2024 began with groundbreaking insights from two major Carl Zeiss Meditec case studies. These case studies were tremendous at getting to the bottom of an issue that has plagued practices and marketing firms for years: the consistently inadequate follow-up process and lead response time in refractive surgery. 

This critical deficiency, which was clearly identified in both studies, had deeper roots than initially understood. The issue first surfaced around 2015 through MD Prospects and Michelle Pelletier’s work investigating the lead-to-consult bottleneck. 

A telling pattern emerged in MDprospects reports: hundreds of leads would appear in the system, yet very few converted to consultations. While this observation was a generality, it proved remarkably common across practices. The industry made attempts to improve, but didn’t have clear goals to aim for.

The breakthrough came with the first ZEISS case study, which established that seven return phone calls were the magic number for improving lead-to-consult conversions. By early 2024, this finding highlighted a stark reality: most practices weren’t just falling short of this standard—they lacked the internal capacity to achieve it. 

Significant progress was made with the analysis tool developed by Dan Haddad at the Laser Eye Institute in Troy, Michigan. This comprehensive tool, which became the industry standard for evaluating total response, examined calls, self-tests, contact forms, and scheduling capabilities. Dan’s work quickly demonstrated a clear correlation between improved response time and quality and increased surgical conversions. 

Now that the study has revealed the blueprint for proper response protocols, practices face a new challenge: how to consistently meet this elevated standard?

Let’s hear what people are saying about the lead follow-up process:

“In today’s digital-first world it’s increasingly important to be fast and first. In fact, 78% of consumers will choose the first business to respond to their inquiry. You can’t improve what you haven’t measured. Creating a repeatable process to routinely test your digital funnel is paramount to success in a digital-first world. People turnover, websites break, and workflows change. These changes are difficult to detect without a solid process in place to routinely digitally mystery shop your practice and continuously monitor your speed-to-lead contact time.”

– Dan Haddad
Marketing Director
Laser Eye Institute

“I think the most important thing I come back to repeatedly is for practices to regularly “shop” the patient journey.  Search for yourself as though you are a patient, click on all the links on your website or other marketing assets, call your own practice or others and ask a couple of questions. Shadow a patient through a consult and/or do one as a group as though you are doing a play and refine messaging and flow together.  It’s very easy to come up with many ideas for optimization, but the great practices make time to evaluate and refine and practice.”

– Amy Jo Lippe
Account Manager, Florida Region
RxSight

5. Evolving Privacy Standards Should Not Be Ignored

2024 marked another year of healthcare digital marketing compliance updates, requiring medical providers to reassess their online marketing strategies due to increasing concerns about patient privacy and stricter data protection regulations.

A major development came in June when the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas issued a ruling that partially vacated HHS guidance on website tracking technologies. While initially causing some confusion in the industry, the ruling specifically addressed the combination of IP addresses and visits to public (un-authenticated) healthcare related webpages.

The realm of SMS communications also saw increased scrutiny. Medical practices implementing text message marketing or appointment reminders need to ensure they have proper documentation of patient consent for SMS communications, maintain secure messaging platforms, and provide clear opt-out mechanisms.

The international dimension of digital healthcare marketing also gained prominence this year, with more practices wondering about the impact of GDPR on their operations. Even U.S.-based healthcare providers need to consider GDPR compliance if they’re treating European patients.

This complexity is particularly evident in how practices must handle capturing lead and patient information. HIPAA-compliant forms remain the foundation for any medical practice doing digital marketing, as the combination of collecting personal identifiers with health-related information from leads still constitutes Protected Health Information (PHI) under HIPAA regulations. Plus, forms can be used to collect the required consent forms for SMS communications.

Looking ahead to 2025, industry experts recommend the following when thinking about compliance and digital marketing:

• Reviewing your website forms and the technology behind them.
• Staying up to date on state level privacy laws as these supersede many others.
• Updated privacy policies that reflect current regulatory requirements.
• Continuing to evaluate online pixel technologies and the HHS Bulletin.

Turning Strategy into Success

The more you can anticipate changes in consumer behavior, stay ahead of technology trends, and focus on building meaningful relationships with your customers, the better positioned your business will be to thrive. Start planning now by setting clear, actionable goals, optimizing your existing processes, and investing in the right tools and talent to fuel growth.

Contact the team at Glacial Multimedia to learn how we can help your practice navigate the challenges of 2025 with innovative marketing strategies, cutting-edge technologies, and expert guidance tailored to your unique needs.