In my experience, simply placing optometrist ads that say “book now” on many of the popular display ads platforms isn’t enough to drive a large volume of customers at a profitable CAC.
The magic with eye care ads comes through laser-precise targeting, a product offer that is already proven to be attractive for the type of customer we are targeting and an angle that’ll hook them.
The difference might feel a little confusing at first but we’ll dive into the details right here in this article along with examples of optometrist ads found online. By the end, I’ll also show you how you can spy on your own competitors to get ideas if you feel stuck with your ads.
7 optometrist ads examples
I took the liberty of finding some optometrist ads in the wild to give you an easy reference point.
This one is a pretty high-end production for a Georgetown optician by a creative agency.
More details here.
You might not be looking for a high budget branding production and in that case, let’s look at some more affordable examples. The one above is more brand based which usually doesn’t work well if you are looking to do direct response performance campaigns with the purpose of driving more customers.
Here’s an example from an optometrist in Maine.
And another from Australia.
Here are more examples:
The best online marketing channels for optometrist ads
From experiments, I noticed that optometrist ads tend to perform well on search and Facebook ads but for two very different reasons.
Search is pretty obvious – someone is searching for something like “optometrist near me” and an ad pops up. Match made in heaven.
On Facebook, it isn’t exactly the same as people randomly scroll the newsfeed, bored, looking at what their friends are up to. Here we can only find people with a general interest in for example glasses but without need right as they see the ad.
That means we have to do something extra in order for the person seeing the ad to click it right now, even though they most likely wouldn’t have any reason to do it now as opposed to any other day. We can do that in two ways: by either creating a reason for them to click now or finding a way to target those that need help now even though that isn’t possible on the surface.
The reason it’s even worth considering this when eye care ads on search appear like the obvious choice, is that it’s often expensive because our competitors figured out the same as us. It might not be worth it for us to pay the price necessary – we might be losing money on that funnel or we might be struggling to scale as there are only so many people searching for the relevant healthcare keywords within our service area. Ads on social can help us reach many more people.
The first way to make social ads work is to create a reason for people to be interested right now. That could be as simple as an exciting giveaway or a quiz showing the user which type of glasses best fit their face as a free digital download in exchange for their email. That way, we can create automatic emails to keep us top of mind next time they are in the market to e.g. book an eye exam.
There are many ways to do this but the point is that we hook them so we can contact them again via marketing automation in the future free of charge.
The other, much harder, thing is finding a way to segment those that are interested since that configuration and data aren’t naturally available with social ads.
We can do it by retargeting those who clicked on our search ads if they didn’t book a consultation. Another option is to run ads by the clinic’s address but often Facebook isn’t precise enough for it to work unless the address is secluded outside of the city. It’s also worth a test to run a lookalike audience based on paying customers to see if Facebook can find other people relevant to those. It’s a hit or miss in this case.
I’d like to try ads on Q&A sites like Quora but their traffic often isn’t that relevant for our local area as their targeting configurations tend to be more focused on placing our ad next to a specific question being asked.
36 search keywords for your eye care ads
If you can afford to make search ads profitable, it’s often one of the strongest channels to get eye care bookings these days. For your campaign to perform well, the right keywords are essential as that’s the way we make sure we reach the right people.
There are different types of keywords ranging from information seeking to looking to book a consultation and everything in between. Since you are paying for ads it makes sense to go after those where you feel confident you could earn your money back in bookings rather than offering free info.
| Keyword | Avg. Search Volume |
| ishihara eye test | 2400 |
| eye check up | 12600 |
| optometrist near me | 284000 |
| eye doctor appointment | 2100 |
| dry eyes | 165000 |
| vision test | 26400 |
| walk in eye exam | 3200 |
| eye exam and glasses | 2500 |
| optometrist appointment | 1200 |
| eye exam | 98600 |
| eye test near me | 37500 |
| optician near me | 138000 |
| eye care check-up | 10 |
| same day eye exam | 1800 |
| eye pressure test | 5400 |
| eye doctor near me | 852000 |
| dmv vision test | 4000 |
| cheap eye exam near me | 8600 |
| eye examination test | 1700 |
| eye test cost | 6000 |
| vision care tips | 10 |
| buy contact lens | 220 |
| eye optical near me | 5400 |
| eye checkup near me | 15400 |
| glaucoma test | 8800 |
| eye power test | 1500 |
| eye appointment | 8100 |
| contact lens exam near me | 2800 |
| vision exam | 2700 |
| fundoscopic exam | 5100 |
| eye exam near me | 145000 |
| optical places near me | 1700 |
| new eyeglasses | 1200 |
| best eye doctor near me | 13200 |
| contacts lenses | 10600 |
| children’s optometrist | 3100 |
The eye care ads offer
One of the most important things for your optometrist ads is the offer itself – what the customer gets and which product or service is for sale. Sometimes the product we earn the most from isn’t the one that sells the best via ads but we can use an attractive product on the ad itself to draw people in and then upsell them on the better earning product after. Similarly to when we go to a restaurant to eat and decide to get wine with the meal almost as an afterthought.
Examples:
- Free eye test
- By glasses and sunglasses with the same strength for free/at a discount
- Lense subscription discount
- Eye test for a driver’s license
A good trick to creating eye care ads is brainstorming ideas based on the targeting options available on each one. For example, by scrolling through Facebook’s interests and behaviors, and coming up with ideas for offers as we know we can reach relevant people. The same is true for keywords with search ads.
The best way to get started if you are stuck without any ideas is looking at what your competitors are doing.
Competitor ads research for optometrists
Imitating ideas from competitors is the quickest way to get started and hit the ground running. These tools aren’t perfect and sometimes ads don’t show up but that’s life. If you don’t know your competitors, I’d simply Google around to find those that cover the same service area or type of customer like you, as a starting point.
When you have a list of competitors, it’s time to dive in. For reference, a list of ten competitors or so is a good starting point but you’ll know when we look at their ads since some won’t be advertising and won’t be that useful in this case.
Similarweb.com can sometimes offer ideas but I’ve gotten better results with tools like SEMrush and Facebook’s ad library.
How to use SEMrush to find eye care ads
SEMrush isn’t a free tool but they tend to offer a free trial. I’m not familiar with any free tools with similar capabilities but that doesn’t mean they are not out there.
Anyway, to see what competitors are doing we simply fire up the URL in SEMrush after logging in.
Then scroll down all the way to the bottom.
Here we have three interesting things. One is the latest publishers (in the top left corner of the screenshot above) which shows which websites have shown their ads. Often businesses buy what’s referred to as RON (Run of Network), which means buying ads broadly across the network or inventory of sites available that sell ads. That means we might find some sites that are not at all relevant but after digging deep, we could discover some hidden gems.
I’ve you’ve got a decent budget but struggle with time as is the case for many venture backed tech startups in our industry, this tactic makes sense because you’ll quickly be able to see which sites convert and remove those that don’t.
The second thing is landing pages (in the top right of the screenshot above). That gives us an idea about how often their ads have led to a certain landing page. In this case, it’s almost all the front page of the website.
Finally, at the bottom, we have examples of the ads and we can switch between classic display ads and text-only ads. We can also click ‘view details’ to see more in any of the three categories. The ads can help us get ideas for our overarching campaign angle – in the example above, they are running with an angle around the annual exam. I’ve given some other examples above in the section about the offer.
Essentially angles can be the insight or the problem we solve for customers and it is usually the thing that will make the biggest difference besides the product offer and the targeting. That means one angle might bomb while another will drive bookings like there’s no tomorrow.
If you are totally stuck for ideas, one of the best things to get “unstuck” is to reach out to existing and potential customers to ask them why they’ve been going to an optometrist in the past. The responses could be ideas for angles and there’s no way to know which one performs best without testing them in the market.
How to use Facebook ads library to find optometrist ads
Another option is to use Facebook’s free ad library. It requires a Facebook ad account, I believe, but that’s it.
It’s as simple as clicking ‘all ads’, ‘all ad categories’ (see the arrows in the screenshot below) and search for either the specific brand you are looking for or with general keywords.
For example, I found a clinic below and they are running with an angle around free anti-reflective coating when buying premium lenses. We can even click directly on the ad to see which landing page they are using.
Social media accounts
We can also look at their social media accounts and fan pages for ideas based on which content got the most engagement. Of course, it could be as simple as that post getting ad money behind it and the rest didn’t but otherwise, it’s likely because the post resonates.
Takeaways
- Angles are among the most important things to get right with your optometrist ads as it can make the biggest difference in performance
- Looking at what competitors or similar businesses are doing is usually useful especially if you are stuck on creative ideas
- Continue testing to get the best results – even seasoned marketers in the space doesn’t always know what the market will respond the best to
Leave a Reply