By Michael Stefanescu, 20 year optometrist and multi practice owner · Designed for Freedom
| Key Takeaways • Marketing only multiplies what already works. Fix three holes in the bucket first. Dispensing rate, ALV, recall completion. |
| • The four channels that work for AU independents. Google Business Profile, recall, referral systems, local SEO with a converting website. • Industry benchmark for marketing spend is 2% to 5% of revenue. On a $1M practice, $20K to $50K per year. • Cost per new patient in 2026: $80 to $250 depending on channel. Patient lifetime value: $800 to $6000• What usually doesn’t work on a small scale. Facebook ads, generic search ads, flyer drops, radio, sports sponsorships. |
1. The owner who was spending $5,000 a month on Facebook ads
A practice owner came to me about eighteen months before I sold my practices. She’d been running Facebook and Instagram ads for eight months. $5,000 a month. The campaigns looked great. Clicks, impressions, reach. She was excited about the data every month.
Revenue hadn’t moved.
Not meaningfully. She was up maybe 2% year on year, which in a practice her size, after wages and rent increases, was actually a real term decline.
When I sat with her and started asking the diagnostic questions, the picture became very clear, very fast.
Her dispensing rate was 61%. Meaning four out of every ten patients who left with a prescription walked out without buying from her. Her average ALV was $870. Her recall completion rate was 38%.
She was sending enough patients into the funnel. However she was haemorrhaging them out the bottom.
She didn’t have a marketing problem. She had three gaping holes in her bucket, and she’d been pouring more water in to compensate for what was leaking out.
This is the most common pattern I see. And it’s the most expensive one.
That conversation changed her business. Not because I told her anything clever about Facebook, but because I pointed a torch at the numbers she’d been ignoring.
By the time we fixed her foundations, her $1,000 a month in targeted local Google spend generated more measurable new patients than the $5,000 in social ever had.
Marketing works. But only once the machine it’s feeding actually works.
2. The brutal truth: marketing only multiplies what already works
Think about your practice as a bucket.
Every new patient is water going in the top. Revenue is what flows out the tap, controlled and measurable. But most practices I’ve coached had three holes in the bottom of the bucket before they ever thought about filling it faster.
Hole one: dispensing rate under 70%
The AU independent optometry industry average dispensing rate sits somewhere between 65% and 72% depending on the practice type and demographic. If yours is under 70%, you’re losing patients who have already been examined, already trust you, and already have a prescription. The easiest patient to sell to is the one sitting in your chair. If you’re not converting them, no amount of new foot traffic fixes that.
Hole two: ALV under $1,200
The benchmark data is clear. A well run independent practice (ProVision and similar benchmarking commentary consistently supports this) targets an average lifetime value per patient of $1,200 to $1,800. If your ALV is under $1,200, you’re undercharging, under presenting, or under serving, or all three. Adding new patients to a low ALV practice doesn’t create a high revenue practice. It creates a busy, low margin one. Read more on the numbers
that actually drive revenue in the profit margins deep dive for AU independent optometry. Hole three: recall completion under 60%
Your active patient base is your most valuable asset. Most practices define ‘active patient’ as anyone who has attended in the last 24 to 36 months. If your recall completion rate is below 60%, you are consistently under monetising the asset you’ve already built. Every percentage point of recall improvement is pure revenue with zero acquisition cost.
Fix these three holes first. Then, and only then, does it make sense to invest serious money in marketing.
3. The marketing readiness checklist, are you ready to spend?
Before you commit a dollar to paid marketing, run through this. Answer yes or no.
• Is your dispensing rate above 70%?
• Is your ALV above $1,200?
• Is your recall completion above 60%?
• Do you have the capacity to absorb 20% more patients without burning out your team?
• Do you have a booking system that can be accessed online, 24/7?
• Do you follow up every unbooked recall patient at least twice?
• Do you have a consistent referral process, not just hoping patients tell their friends?
• Does your practice have more than 30 Google reviews, and are you actively generating new ones?
• Do you know your current cost per new patient, even approximately?
• Do you have a clear first visit offer or welcome experience that converts new patients into returning ones?
Score yourself
Yes to 7 or more. You’re ready to invest in marketing. The channels below will compound your existing machine.
Yes to fewer than 7. Stop. Don’t spend a dollar on ads. Every dollar you put into marketing right now is being partially vaporised by the holes in your foundation. Fix the systems first.
4. The 4 channels that actually work for AU independent optometry
Once your foundations are solid, these four channels consistently deliver results for independent practices in Australia. Not because they’re sexy. Because the data supports them.
Google Business Profile, the highest ROI tool most practices underuse
Google Business Profile (GBP) is free. It is the single highest ROI marketing activity available to an independent optometry practice, and most owners have barely scratched the surface of what it can do.
When a local searches ‘optometrist [suburb]’ or ‘optometry near me,’ the GBP map pack is what they see before they ever reach your website. If you’re not in it, or if your profile looks thin compared to the practice two streets over, you’re invisible at the exact moment someone is ready to book.
Here are the seven things most AU optometry practices haven’t done with their GBP.
1. Complete services list. Not just ‘eye tests.’ List every service. Contact lens fittings, dry eye assessments, paediatric optometry, myopia management, low vision assessments, spectacle prescriptions, OCT imaging. Every service is a keyword.
2. Weekly posts. Google rewards active profiles. A weekly post, whether it’s a tip, a product feature, a seasonal promotion, or a team highlight, signals that the business is alive and engaged. It takes ten minutes. Most practices post never.
3. Response to every review. Every single one, five stars and one star alike. A thoughtful response to a negative review builds more trust than ten responses to positive ones. And Google’s algorithm favours profiles that engage.
4. Photos updated quarterly. Real photos, not stock imagery. The practice exterior, the consulting room, the team, the equipment. People want to see where they’re going before they go. Update them seasonally. Flag your holiday hours at the same time.
5. Q&A section populated. Google lets anyone ask a question on your profile, and anyone answers it. Populate your own Q&A section with the questions patients actually ask. Do you accept bulk billing? What should I bring to my first appointment? How long does an eye test take? Do you have parking? You control the answers only if you put them there first.
6. Products and services with prices. If you offer any visible products (sunglasses, contact lens starter packs), listing them with prices in the products section increases click through. It’s also a differentiator most independents haven’t used.
7. Holiday hours updated. Sounds basic. Thousands of practices fail to update their holiday trading hours and lose bookings because Google shows them as closed when they’re open, or worse, shows them as open when they’re not. That’s a one star review waiting to happen.
For local SEO in general, the principle is this. Google wants to surface the most relevant local result. For ‘[suburb] optometrist’ queries, a fully optimised GBP, paired with consistent NAP (name, address, phone) across directories, is the foundation. Everything else sits on top of it.
Recall, the marketing channel hiding in plain sight
This isn’t technically ‘marketing’ in the traditional sense. But it is the most powerful revenue lever most practices have, and it costs essentially nothing to activate.
Run this maths.
You have 1,000 active patients. Your current recall completion rate is 40%. That means 400 patients come back per recall cycle. At your average visit value of $400, that’s $160,000 in recall revenue. Now lift your recall completion to 65%. That’s 650 patients returning. Same visit value. Same patient base. $260,000 in recall revenue.
That’s $100,000 in additional revenue with zero marketing spend. No ads, no agency, no new patient acquisition cost.
The mechanism is simple. A systematic, multi touch recall process. An SMS reminder at the 12 month mark, a second touchpoint at fourteen months if no booking, a third at sixteen months by phone. The exact script matters less than the consistency of execution.
Referral, both patient and professional
Referral is the most underbuilt system in most independent optometry practices. Not because owners don’t know it matters. Because they don’t have a structure for it. They rely on goodwill and hoping.
Goodwill doesn’t scale. Systems do.
Patient referral. The single most effective moment to ask for a referral is at the end of a genuinely positive appointment. Not via a form. Not via an automated email. In person, with a specific ask.
The script I’ve used and taught.
“I’m really glad we could help you today. If you have a friend or family member who needs an eye examination, I’d genuinely love to look after them. We’re taking new patients, and a personal recommendation means a lot.”
That’s it. No discount, no voucher required (though a simple ‘bring a friend’ card doesn’t hurt). Just a direct, genuine ask at the right moment.
Professional referral. GP relationships, in particular, are chronically underworked by most optometrists. A GP who sees 30 patients a day and refers even 5% to you for a diabetic eye assessment, a concern about pressure, or a child’s vision issue is worth thousands of dollars annually.
The investment. A one page ‘what we do and when to refer’ letter, a follow up phone call, and a simple ‘thank you’ loop. Every time a GP sends you a patient, they get a clinical summary back within 48 hours. That summary makes them look good to their patient. It reinforces the referral relationship. Most optometrists do the clinical work but skip the loop. That’s the part that turns one referral into many.
Build the same system with specialists. Ophthalmologists, paediatricians, neurologists, endocrinologists. Each specialty has specific eye related flags that are legitimately yours to assess.
Local SEO and the website that actually converts
Your website is either an asset or a liability. For most independent AU optometry practices, it’s a liability, because it was built once, never updated, loads slowly on mobile, and buries the booking button under two scrolls of generic content.
Here’s what I mean by a website that converts.
NAP consistency. Your Name, Address, and Phone number need to be identical across every online directory. Google, Bing, Apple Maps, Healthengine, HotDoc, True Local, your own site. Every inconsistency dilutes your local SEO authority. Do an audit. Fix them. This is the $300 line item in the budget section below, and it is worth every cent.
AU specific content. Not generic eye health content you’ve repurposed from a US source. Australian Medicare, bulk billing explanations (if applicable), references to specific local conditions (UV exposure in Queensland, for example), and language that reflects how Australians search. ‘Optometrist near me’ still dominates, but ‘[suburb] optometrist’ queries are high intent and winnable for independents.
Suburb pages for multi location practices. If you have more than one location, each location deserves its own optimised page. Not duplicated content with the suburb name swapped out. Genuinely localised pages that reference the area, nearby landmarks, parking, local context. Google can tell the difference.
Fast mobile site with booking above the fold. Over 65% of local searches happen on mobile. If your site takes more than three seconds to load or the booking button isn’t visible without scrolling, you are losing patients before they ever contact you. This is not a technical luxury. It’s a basic requirement.
Content strategy, minimal but targeted. You don’t need a blog with fifty posts. You need five to eight pieces of genuinely useful AU specific content, pages around your core services, a clear FAQ, and suburb level visibility. That’s it.
5. The channels that usually don’t work for AU independent optometry
Being direct here, because too many practice owners find out the hard way.
Facebook and Instagram paid ads at small scale. Social ads can work. But ‘can work’ and ‘usually work for a small independent practice spending $2,000 a month’ are different claims. Social ads require time to optimise, audiences to build, creative to test, and a funnel to land on. Most independents don’t have those elements in place, and they’re competing in an auction where Specsavers and OPSM have proper media teams. The result is usually expensive cost per leads with low conversion. At scale, with proper infrastructure, social can work. At $500 to $2,000 a month, it usually doesn’t.
Generic Google Search ads competing with Specsavers. Bidding on ‘optometrist Sydney’ or ‘eye test near me’ without geo fencing and negative keyword lists is a fast way to burn budget. You’re competing with brands spending tens of thousands a month on the same terms. The play is hyper local, geo fenced, long tail. ‘[Suburb] bulk billing optometrist’ or ‘[suburb] contact lens fitting.’ Tight, targeted, contained.
Flyer drops. The conversion rate on unaddressed mail for a professional service practice in 2026 is vanishingly small. It works for pizza. It doesn’t work for eye care. The cost per response is high, there’s no way to track it accurately, and the audience targeting is essentially zero.
Radio. Same issue as social at small scale, but worse. Radio builds brand awareness over time, which requires frequency and consistency to work. An independent practice running a six week radio campaign won’t build enough frequency to move the needle. The budget required to use radio effectively is beyond what most independents should allocate.
Sponsored sports teams and community boards. These build goodwill. They do not reliably build patients. If you’re doing it because you love the community, that’s a fine reason. If you’re doing it as a marketing investment expecting measurable return, you’ll be disappointed. Goodwill is not a marketing strategy.
6. The marketing maths, what to expect
Before you budget anything, understand the numbers.
Cost per new patient acquisition, AU 2026
| Channel | Monthly cost | Cost per new patient |
|---|---|---|
| Google Business Profile optimisation | $0 to $50 (your time) | Negligible |
| Local SEO and citations | $300 to $600 | $40 to $150 at 3 to 8 patients/month |
| Hyper local Google Search ads | $400 to $800 | $80 to $180 depending on suburb |
| Referral system | ≈$0 (time only) | Effectively $0 |
Lifetime value of a new patient
This is the number most practice owners get wrong. They think in terms of first visit value ($200 to $450 typically). The right frame is lifetime value. ALV per patient, over your average patient retention period.
A patient retained for ten years, with an ALV of $1,200 and a recall cycle of two years, is worth roughly $6,000 over their lifetime with you. That changes how you think about a $150 acquisition cost completely. It’s not expensive. It’s a bargain, provided the machine keeps them.
Payback period
For most practices, the payback on a well structured marketing investment is one to three years. Not months. This is a long term game. Any agency, consultant, or tool that promises you new patients within 30 days at meaningful scale is selling you something. Exceptional results happen. They’re not the baseline.
Benchmark for a well run AU independent. 2% to 4% annual revenue growth from organic channels alone. Top quartile performers layer intelligent marketing onto strong foundations to reach 8% to 15% annual growth (IBISWorld AU Optometry industry data). The outliers doing 25%+ are almost always running a very specific playbook with proper systems already in place.
7. A realistic $2,000 per month marketing budget
If you’ve scored 7 or above on the readiness checklist, here’s how I’d allocate $2,000 a month in 2026.
| Channel | Monthly allocation | What you’re buying |
| Google Business Profile + reputation | $0 cash, 2 to 3 hours of time | Weekly posts, review responses, photo updates, Q&A |
| Local SEO and citations cleanup | $300 | NAP audit, directory corrections, suburb content |
| Hyper local Google Ads (geo fenced) | $400 | ‘[Suburb] optometrist’ and service specific terms only |
| Content (newsletter, local PR, suburb pages) | $500 | 1 newsletter, 1 suburb page, 1 PR pitch monthly |
| Review platform tool | $300 | Automated review requests post appointment |
| Testing reserve | $500 | One new channel per quarter, kill what doesn’t work |
| Total | $2,000 | $24,000 annually (≈2.4% of $1M revenue) |
This is not a ‘spray and hope’ budget. Every line is accountable. Every line has a metric attached to it. If the hyper local ads aren’t generating trackable new patients after 90 days, reallocate. If the review platform doubles your GBP review count and increases your map pack ranking, double down.
8. The 6 metrics that tell you if marketing is working
If you can’t measure it, you’re guessing. Here are the six numbers to track monthly.
1. Cost per new patient (CPNP). Total marketing spend divided by new patients acquired that month, by channel where possible. The goal is to know which channel delivers the lowest CPNP. Most practices have no idea. Start tracking.
2. New patients per month. The baseline metric. Know your number. Know your seasonal trend. Know your target. If you need 25 new patients per month to hit your growth goal, every marketing decision is anchored to that.
3. First visit to second visit conversion. Of every patient who visits for the first time, what percentage books again within 18 months? This is a direct proxy for patient experience, clinical quality, and recall system effectiveness. A low conversion rate here is a conversion problem, not a marketing problem. Fix it before spending more.
4. ALV trend. Is your average lifetime value per patient moving up or down? Marketing cannot fix a declining ALV. It can accelerate a rising one.
5. Recall completion rate. Monthly. Track it. If it’s under 60%, it’s your highest priority revenue lever. Nothing else comes close.
6. Google Business Profile views to direction requests ratio. GBP gives you this data for free. Views tell you how many people saw your profile. Direction requests tell you how many were interested enough to navigate to you. A low ratio means your profile isn’t compelling enough. A high ratio with low bookings means your website or phone handling is failing the handoff.
9. My own marketing playbook, what worked and what bombed
I’ll be straight with you here.
I built my first practice in Canley Heights in the middle of the GFC with under $25,000 in capital. My marketing budget was essentially zero. What I had was time, a community that needed accessible eye care, and a commitment to being the best option on the street.
My early marketing was neighbourhood. Door knocks to local GP clinics with a one page referral guide. Relationships with the community pharmacists. Reviews from every patient who said something kind. A Google listing I treated like a shopfront.
That was it. And it worked, because the foundations were right. Every patient got a thorough examination, a clear recommendation, and a recall system that brought them back.
When I later invested in paid channels, here’s what I learned.
What worked. Hyper local search ads with tight geo fencing and specific long tail terms. The ROI was trackable. When I geo fenced a 3km radius and bid on ‘[suburb] bulk billing optometrist,’ I knew exactly what each new patient cost me. Google Business Profile obsession, weekly posts, responding to every single review, updating photos every three months. Over five years, it compounded into map pack dominance in the suburbs I operated in.
What bombed. A nine month Facebook campaign that generated plenty of reach and almost no booked appointments. A brand awareness radio spot I ran for twelve weeks that I couldn’t attribute a single patient to. Sponsoring a local sports club, genuinely wonderful people, genuinely zero measurable ROI.
The principle I came back to every time. Every dollar in marketing should be measurable against a dollar of revenue. Not perfectly. Not immediately. But traceably. If you can’t draw a line between spend and revenue within 12 months, either the channel is wrong or the tracking is wrong.
By the time I exited my practices in 2025 (multi seven figure transaction, after 17 years building), the practice that commanded the highest multiples weren’t the ones with the biggest marketing budgets. They were the ones with the best foundations, the most consistent recall systems, the strongest local reputation, and the most predictable new patient flow. Marketing had served them. But it had never been the whole answer.
10. Frequently asked questions
How much should an independent optometry practice spend on marketing in Australia in 2026?
The industry benchmark is 2% to 5% of revenue. For a $1M practice, that’s $20,000 to $50,000 per year. However, the right number depends entirely on your foundations. If your dispensing rate is under 70%, your ALV is under $1,200, or your recall completion is under 60%, no marketing budget is the right spend until those are fixed.
Does Google Business Profile really matter that much for optometry?
Yes, more than almost anything else. Local ‘near me’ and ‘[suburb] optometrist’ searches dominate the patient acquisition journey. A well optimised GBP with strong reviews, regular posts, and complete information consistently outperforms expensive paid campaigns for independent practices. It is free to use and the highest ROI tool available.
Are Facebook ads worth it for a small AU optometry practice?
Rarely at small scale. Social ads require proper audience building, creative testing, and funnel infrastructure to work efficiently. Most independents spending $500 to $2,000 a month on social ads see high cost per leads and poor conversion. The budget is better directed to GBP optimisation, recall, and hyper local Google ads until you have the systems to support a proper social campaign.
What is a good cost per new patient for an AU optometry practice?
In 2026, a well managed acquisition cost sits between $80 and $250 per new patient depending on channel, metro versus regional location, and practice niche. Given a patient lifetime value of $800 to $6,000 depending on ALV and retention, even the higher end of that range is economically sound. The problem is that most practices don’t track this number at all.
How important is the website for an independent optometry practice?
More important than most owners realise, but not as a brochure. Your website needs to convert. That means fast mobile load, a booking button above the fold, clear service pages, suburb level SEO content, and NAP consistency with every directory. A slow, generic website actively loses you patients who found you via Google and then bounced.
What is the fastest way to increase revenue without spending on marketing?
Improve recall completion. The maths is straightforward. 1,000 active patients at 40% recall completion versus 65% recall completion is 250 additional appointments per recall cycle. At an average visit value of $400, that’s $100,000 in revenue. No ad spend required. For most practices, this is the single highest leverage action available.
When should I hire a marketing agency for my optometry practice?
When you have scored 7 or above on the marketing readiness checklist, you know your cost per new patient, and you need to scale a channel that’s already showing results but requires more time or expertise than you have. Not before. An agency cannot fix a conversion problem or a recall problem. They can amplify what already works.
11. Ready to get the foundations right?
If your foundations are already solid and you want a structured plan for what to do next, coaching is open to a small number of AU practice owners each quarter. The work we do is about building a practice you can either scale or sell on your terms. Start there.
About the author
Michael Stefanescu is an Australian optometry business coach and former multi practice owner. He spent 17 years as a practising optometrist and built, scaled and sold his own practices in Sydney. He now coaches independent Australian optometry owners through the systems, marketing, financial and operational frameworks that build profitable, sellable practices. Read more about Michael or apply for the $1M Optometry Business Accelerator.
Sources and further reading
• IBISWorld, Optometry & Optical Dispensing in Australia, 2026
• ProVision, Independent Optometry Network Benchmarking