In current LASIK climate, focus marketing on reducing patient fear

SAN FRANCISCO — The current LASIK environment presents an opportunity for practitioners to re-evaluate their marketing efforts. One successful strategy is to focus efforts on reducing fear in potential patients, according to a refractive marketing consultant.

Shareef Mahdavi said that just because LASIK has been around and on the market for a number of years, fear has not evaporated from the public mind. He spoke about retooling one’s refractive marketing strategy here at VisionQuest 2002.

According to Mr. Mahdavi, cost is not as important an issue as many practitioners think. The segment of the market that is price-sensitive, Mr. Mahdavi said, will eventually arrive, but the LASIK market currently remains in the early-adopter phase.

“We tried to force adoption before the consumer who is price-sensitive was ready to adopt. That time when price does become an issue, I believe, is still many years away,” Mr. Mahdavi said.

Instead of concentrating on pricing, Mr. Mahdavi recommends addressing each aspect of the consumer decision-making process, the same process used to make general purchases. This is especially important because LASIK patients tend to weigh the procedure far more heavily than they do other decisions such as purchasing a new car or home.

“There is a very strong emotional benefit that goes along with this procedure,” he said.

In addition to addressing the decision process, Mr. Mahdavi recommends following up with patients who inquire about the procedure, as well as patients who have already had LASIK.

“The truth is that it still takes 8 months for the average patient to come to a decision, and a bunch of them take over a year. This is not a wake-up-in-the-morning-and-have-it-done decision,” he said.