Community > Blog > Optical > Your Ultimate Guide To Executing A Successful Frame Sale Event
Looking for an impactful way to keep your patients coming back to your office between their annual eye exams? Hosting a frame sale is not only a good way to generate buzz for your practice, it also presents additional opportunities, such as:
Selecting the timing of your frame sale is key decision that can affect the overall results. Some important considerations:
Time Of Year A sale is a great way to bump up revenue during a slow period — look at sales by month from previous years to see trends or dips in revenue. Also consider possible reasons for identified dips — for example, if there is an annual festival that coincides with the sales decline, your patients will likely be attending that festival and your sale probably won’t have the desired impact.
It's not advisable to have a sale during a peak sales month such as the end-of-year rush —patients don’t need an incentive when they are already in the mode to update their eyewear so again, your sale likely won’t result in a significant revenue bump as it would if they come in for a second time to take advantage of the sale.
Time & Day Regardless of the ‘deal’ you offer, patients need to be able to come in when their schedules permit. Think of an average day for most of your patients— a person would go to work, do something after work, then have dinner a bit later. The ideal ‘sweet spot’ window for your sale should be a time that allows some leeway to accommodate varying schedules and/or traffic. For example, 3-7pm would be a sufficient window but could be extended to start earlier, say 12-7pm, to capture a larger cross-section of people with varying work and personal schedules.
Duration The length of time the sale takes place needs to show urgency and emphasize the importance of coming in for the sale. For example, if the sale lasts a full week, it does not convey urgency and offers too large of a window.
Your promotion should be sufficiently impactful to get patients in the door, and it should be easy to understand.
Examples of simple offers include the following:
You can add terms and conditions to the offer, but don’t add too many or you risk leaving the shopper wondering if it is a real deal after all of the ‘fine print.’
The event can revolve around just one or two brands (with the brand reps in attendance), or it can feature those brands and also include a discount for all other brands in your optical. It all depends on the audience you’re trying to capture and the type of event you want to create — one brand would limit your event demographics but would be more ‘exclusive,’ while offering a promotion that applies to any patient would be more mainstream and bring more people in the door.
Frames There are many things to consider when deciding which frame brand(s) to feature as the focal point of your event:
Possible event themes:
Lenses Even though you’re promoting a ‘frame sale,’ the primary goal is to sell complete pairs of glasses. To offer a ‘complete pair’ discount to the patient, you should also investigate getting a one-day ‘deal’ from your lab!
Most labs offer a 50% discount on a second pair — consider extending a similar offer to increase your multiple pair sales! I don’t typically recommend passing all the savings on to the patient. Consider your standard profit margin to help determine the degree of discount to offer. Reach out to a PECAA Optical Business Advisor today to complete a lens analysis and gain a thorough understanding of where you currently stand.
Talk with your lab representative and see what they can offer; some examples are:
Extras Determine if you want to offer additional promotions during your event, which you could offer as a courtesy to certain valued patients or use broadly to draw in more shoppers. These ‘extras’ could be donated from the participating vendors:
Insurance Considerations You will need to inform all staff members of your sale-insurance terms — patients will ask. Decide if or which insurance plan allowances can be applied to the promotion (this could be decided for you by the offers your lab and/or frame vendor provides you for that day). Typically, managed care plans are excluded from sale offers, but flat dollar amount allowances are permitted. For easy and clean math, you could also decide to not permit any insurance allowances to be combined with the sale offer.
After determining when your event timing and offer, reach out to the frame brand representative and reserve them! A compromise may be needed to finalize a day and time that works for them and your practice — you can also take this time to ask them if they have any suggestions or tips from frame sales that they’ve done for other offices.
Set The Day-Of Schedule The goal is to have the most successful frame sale possible, which is based around having patients in the office during the sale. You can set yourself up for success by adjusting the doctors schedule for that day — remove slots for follow-ups and medical appointments and adjust the timeslots to accommodate as many annual eye exams that you can — these are the patients who are the most likely to purchase eyewear.
Prepare To Be Busy Think back on the busiest day you can remember: what did you run out of? Where could you have used more help? What could you cut back on to accommodate for the increased volume? These are all questions you should ask yourself and prepare solutions for in advance of the event, so you can continue to deliver excellent service and keep the patient flow moving. Here are some items to consider:
Set A Sale Cadence After you’ve had at least one frame sale event, you should be able to gauge how often your practice will have future events — one or two per year is the most common. When you establish this cadence, your staff can mention the frequency to patients throughout the year - “Thank you for getting glasses from our practice, Ms. Smith. If you find you need an additional pair before your insurance renews, we’re having a frame sale in the fall.”
Having a solid marketing plan is vital to getting patients in your door — you want to generate buzz within your community and among your patient base. When people get excited for your event, they are more likely to bring a family member or friend and help spread the word.
Promotional Assets Before you can market the event, you’ll need cohesively branded assets that will be used consistently across all channels. This could be as simple as using bold typography and pre-approved brand images from the featured frame brand, or you may want outsource the project to a graphic designer. Here are some marketing channels to consider, which may require multiple sizes or formats of assets:
Where And When To Market Determine which channels you will market through, and complete the wording and graphics with plenty of time for them to be printed or digitally scheduled. The timing in which you market your event is important — if you market too far in advance, your patients could hold off on purchasing until the frame sale. You should start marketing no less than a month in advance. There are many ways you can get creative with marketing your frame sale, but here are some of the most common, including who they target and recommended timing:
There you have it — a thorough checklist to help you make your next frame sale the best yet! If you would like any guidance about your frame or lens markups, frame board management or optical benchmarks to set your optical up for success before your next frame sale, reach out to PECAA’s Optical Business Advisors, Joel Daniel or Kayla Irwin — at no additional cost for PECAA Max Members.
Kayla Irwin Optical Business Advisor
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Kayla is an accomplished professional with 17 years of experience in the optical field. Throughout her career, she has successfully managed and operated multiple optometry practices, including her own. With her extensive expertise, she has worked closely with hundreds of optometry practices, providing valuable guidance and support. In addition to her practical experience, Kayla holds a Ph.D. in counseling, further enhancing her ability to understand and address the needs of patients and professionals in the field. Combining her optical knowledge with her counseling expertise, she has developed several educational programs that greatly benefit the profession. Kayla’s dedication to the optical field, extensive experience, and commitment to education make her a valuable resource to our members.