In the last few of weeks, I’ve seen ads from 2 different parts of the country offering the same promotion:
Buy One, Get One LASIK Surgery.
aka BOGO LASIK.
Pay for your first eye, get your second eye free. Like a bonus box of saltines on Blue Light Special at the Piggly Wiggly.
Except it’s surgery. For your eyes.
I call this a version of the Deep LASIK Discount (DSD), a mega-discount offer that is detrimental to your practice and the industry at large.
To be clear, I’m not talking about ads from the chain shops who promote “lasik starting at $250 per eye.” We all know that’s a crock of garbage.
The two ads I saw were from independent ophthals who are running DLD deals to get people in the door.
So let’s talk about a Deep LASIK Discount. Is it a good idea? Does it work? Should you do it?
Before we get into the nutty gritty, I want to address 2 camps of people who will read this article.
Camp 1. You’ve never run a Deep LASIK Discount. Maybe you haven’t had to, or you haven’t thought about it, or you refuse to.
If that’s you, congrats.
What you’ll find here are compelling reasons to reinforce your decision not to run DLDs, reasons you can share with your colleagues for the betterment of the entire industry.
Camp 2. You have run Deep LASIK Discounts. Maybe you’ve even done a BOGO deal. Maybe you’re doing one right now.
This essay isn’t dumping on you. I understand the compelling reasons to create such an offer, but I’ve also seen the pitfalls that creep up as you run these types of promotions.
Regardless of your camp, my goals here are the same:
- To build an argument against devaluing your practice.
- To share the many ways I’ve seen Deep LASIK Discounts take practices in the wrong direction.
- To convince you of your value so you can get paid what you’re worth.
First, a confession. I’ve run my fair share of Deep LASIK Discounts in my career.
Many years ago, we ran major LASIK discounts for clients. Now, I can honestly say I’ve never done a 50% off deal, or a Buy One Eye, Get One Free promotion. But I’m guilty of using DLDs.
So I do have experience with this approach. And it works. And I refuse to do it any longer.
Here are the 8 reasons why.
1. Deep LASIK Discounts Attract the Wrong Demographic
If you could wave a magic wand and get your ideal prospect to walk in the door, what would she look like?
Someone price shopping? A tire kicker? Someone who wants you to discount?
Or someone looking for value? Looking for a practice that cuts no corners. Someone who knows this is actual surgery, not a Labor Day sale on lawn chairs.
If you could pick, you’d rather the latter. But when you’re pushing a Deep LASIK Discount, especially something as stark as BOGO, that’s not who’s walking through your doors many times.
You get the high maintenance price shopper. You get the person fixated on price and can’t see beyond it. Here’s why:
2. Deep LASIK Discounts Make Price the Central Focus of Your Service
A lot goes into the solutions you provide for your patients:
- Your education and experience.
- The education, experience and care of your team.
- Your facility
- The technology you offer
- Your pre-op and post-op care
- and 50 other aspects…
But when your central messaging is around how great your discount is, that’s the thing people focus on.
Focus on price, and your prospects will too. Is that what you want?
3. Referrals Spread Your Deep LASIK Discount Far and Wide.
Maybe a short/term boost with a Deep LASIK Discount isn’t so bad, right?
The problem is that DLDs persist.
You know when you accidentally bite your lip, then what happens? That spot swells, and you keep biting it. It gets easier and worse every time.
For example: Someone comes and gets a BOGO LASIK procedure. They tell their friends. What’s the first thing they say?
“Wow! My vision is awesome!”
Right, but what’s the second thing they say? “…and I got it for half price!”
Question: If you know your buddy got a screaming deal on a thing, are you going to pay full price? Why would you?
You wouldn’t. You’d ask for the same deal.
People want the deal their friends got. Or the deal they heard on the radio last week. Or the deal they saw on your website that time.
So you extend the deal to that one person. Then to another. Then another.
“We were gonna run this just for a month… but why not let it go a little longer?” Seems like a decent idea, yeah? People still want the deal.
Of course they do. Who wouldn’t?
That’s why a lot of these types of promos go on… and on… and on. Then what?
4. You End Up with a Perpetual Price Reduction.
Once you’ve run your Deep LASIK Discount for a few months, people don’t see your retail price as your actual price anymore. Your actual price is a 50% discounted rate.
Jos A. Bank is a value-priced mens clothing store.
If you’ve seen their commercials, you know they always advertise a special – half-off jackets, 3-for-one dress shirts, buy a pair of dress pants, get two free pair of chinos.
Through this constant revolving door of promotions, they have trained their customers NOT to pay full price. How? Because there’s always a deal.
When your Deep LASIK Discount perpetuates month after month, eventually, you train folks not to pay full price.
And at that point, you lose one of the biggest advantages of any kind of sales promotion…
5. Ongoing DLDs Lose the Benefit of a Time Constraint.
One of the biggest advantages of any type of sale is time constraint.
“This weekend only!” “Black Friday deals!” “Act now or you’ll miss it!”
But when your thing is always on sale, the urgency disappears. The time constraint, which is one of the biggest advantages of a sale, simply dissolves.
”Troy, are you saying I should only do DLDs in the short-term?” No! Because they’ll turn into long-term, self-sabotaging traps.
6. Even Though You can Drop Your Retail Price, Your Cost and Liability are Fixed.
Profit trumps volume in most scenarios. If I had to choose one, I’d rather you do fewer treatments at a much higher margin vs. more treatments on razor-thin margins.
One of the main reasons is this fallacy that pops up any time we talk about discounting and profit margins:
“Well, we give 50% off, so we give up 50% of profit.”
But that’s bad math.
Your costs aren’t variable. Are Alcon and Zeiss giving you a 50% break on your click fee? I doubt it.
Do your techs take a 50% discount on their hourly pay? Of course not.
Your liability is also fixed. Do you assume half of the responsibility because they paid half price for their procedures? Of course not.
You may be taking in BOGO money, but your expenses offer no discounts. Don’t forget this.
Let’s switch gears and talk competitive advantage for a moment.
7. Unless You can be the Cheapest, Competing on Price Offers no Real Strategic Advantage.
Credit business strategist Dan Kennedy for this simple yet vital reminder.
Walmart can compete on price because they’re giant. They have major purchasing power, which means they can cut costs, and they make up their thin margins in volume.
Amazon falls into a similar boat.
For Wal-Mart and Amazon, their low pricing is an advantage because it’s the lowest available, and they can sustain it.
You aren’t them.
Unless you can be the cheapest in town (which I would never recommend, see reason #6 above), price cuts don’t afford you a true strategic advantage. You’re a few hundred more than one guy, a few hundred less than another.
Why break your back doing cut-rate cases, taking home next-to-nil profit, when it’s not even giving you a strong position against your competition?
8. If you think price is the only way you can compete, it’s time to reassess.
Let’s get down to brass tacks on exactly how you got to this point in your life.
- You spent an extra decade+ on your education.
- You absorbed hundreds of thousands of dollars in cost / debt to get a medical degree.
- Then you had the audacity and fortitude to open your own practice, serve patients, and create jobs.
- You continue to invest in ongoing training and technology to stay at the forefront of your field.
You didn’t do all that just so you could compete on price with the discount chains down the street.
You’re worth more than that. The value you provide is more than that. The value you bring to your community and your patients and your team and their families – it’s all worth more. And it’s time to act like it.
in closing: Are You Going to Chase Profit or Volume?
Do you want to be the surgeon bragging about how many treatments he did, dealing with discount-chasing clientele, as you barely keeping the lights on?
If you’re totally volume-focused, go for it. BOGO LASIK does work to get folks in the door, but at a major monetary and positioning cost to your practice.
OR would you rather care for your high-end, value-based, happy-to-pay-full-price-for-your-services clients and grow a healthy, profitable practice?
The punchline is this:
You don’t have to choose just one. You can raise volume and prices.
Nearly all of my consulting clients increased their prices and their volume in the last 12 months. They are all some of the highest if not the highest priced practices in their markets.
And that, in my humble but accurate opinion, is where you want to be.
It’s not complicated. Here’s the roadmap:
- Stop the mass-market discounting.
- Raise your prices.
- Demonstrate value that exceeds the new price.
- Repeat Steps 2 – 3 at least once a year.
Now let’s go.