Perhaps you're a recent graduate from Optometry School, or maybe you have spent time working in a corporate optometry practice, or even as an associate OD at an independent practice, and you have decided to go out on your own and open your own optometry practice. You are excited about the opportunity to be your own boss and build a practice on what services you enjoy providing – from dry eye to sports vision and anything in between. The following 9-12 months will be highly stressful as you look to get your practice off the ground – securing a location, deciding on your offered services, ordering office equipment, hiring staff, and naming your practice. Hmmm…naming the practice was one task you hadn't considered up to this point.
The chances are that naming, branding, and marketing your practice was not on the top of the list of what you learned in optometry school. It's OK - you can do this! Here are a few things to consider when picking your practice name:
1. Avoid choosing a name that highlights your geographical location (i.e., Southbury Eye Care)
- A lot can go wrong if you go this route. What if you decide to open a new location in a different city or move your practice? If you pick your city name to incorporate within your business name, you limit yourself to any future changes or additions to your practice. It will be confusing to your existing and new patients.
2. Steer clear of choosing a business name with your name included (i.e., John Smith Eye Care)
- Choosing to incorporate your name will be very limiting to your practice. At some point, you may decide to bring an associate OD on board, and you will be interested in increasing demand and patient volume, which will create opportunity for your practice to increase revenue and generate more buzz in your local community.
3. Just keep the name simple
- Your name needs to be easy to remember for quick patient recall. If the patient has to google your business to remember your name instead of just looking up your phone number, address, and business hours, you risk the patient being unable to locate you. They may wind up selecting a new provider due to frustration
4. Create multiple business names and get feedback from business colleagues, friends, and family.
- The people you are asking to provide feedback are probably not marketing and branding experts; they are consumers, though. They can give feedback on what sounds good to them, is catchy, can be easily remembered, and represents the services you plan to offer in your practice.
5. Check to see if others have a similar business name to what you are considering.
- Originality counts, and naming your business similarly to a competing practice will do nothing more than create confusion for patients, making it difficult to decide which practice to choose for their eye care.
6. Secure a website domain once you have chosen your business name
- Your domain is the website URL that you choose for your website. This domain name should stay aligned with your business name. Check out a domain provider to make sure the domain you want is available and then purchase it. If you plan to use a digital agency to help with your website build, make sure you keep ownership of the domain name. Owning your domain will allow you to switch agencies and take your website address with you. The last thing you want to do is get in a situation where you have to re-purchase your domain name.
Piece of cake, right? Well, not exactly. However, if you follow the above considerations, you will be well on your way to choosing that perfect practice name.
Steven enjoys spending time with his family, following the New York Rangers and listening to music. Fun fact – Steven has seen over 400 live concerts beginning with his first show in 1983.
