How this Optometrist is Taking her Practice to the Next Level

Dr. Abby Jakob set up her businesses, Eyes, in Kingsville, ON, after attending school in Halifax and Illinois. Abby mostly relied on word of mouth to grow her business, but knew that if she wanted to take the next step, she would have to fully leverage the power of the Internet. In collaboration with the Digital Main Street Transformation Team, Abby came up with a plan to expand her web presence and get her optometry services in front of more eyeballs (pun intended).

The first part of the plan was a social media revamp. Abby was already active on her socials, but was spending a lot of time and energy creating posts for her Instagram. The team decided to build out a social media schedule – designating each day of the week with a certain type of post. The team also used social media management software to pre-schedule her posts. Rather than scrambling every day to post something, Abby created a system that allows her to create all the posts for the week in one sitting (according to the predetermined schedule), schedules the daily posts, then sits back and lets the tool do the work. This streamlined process saves Abby time and turns her Instagram feed into a more structured and cohesive feed.

The second part of the plan was twofold: growing her email list and using email marketing to capitalize on that list. A website popup offering discount incentivizes to visitors as they browse the site. Once added to the list, they are put through an email flow which gradually informs them about the available services and eventually nudges them to book an appointment. The key here is to provide free, no-strings attached value before prompting the consumer to do anything. High credibility equals high conversion rates.

Abby has had no struggles growing her business organically – and now she’s ready to really take it to the next level with her new digital marketing strategy. She had this to say about working with a Transformation Team: “Everyone on my team was incredibly knowledgeable and helpful in sharing their expertise and advising me of ways to improve! It was such a valuable experience and I can’t thank them enough!”

Our Digital Main Street innovation partner in the Windsor-Essex and Chatham-Kent region is WEtech Alliance. See how they can help.

Written by Eric Daka