# LASIK & Refractive Surgery Marketing | Fill The Lobby

> LASIK marketing for LASIK centers and refractive surgeons: candidacy exams booked, per-eye prices that match the bill, and ads with the risk information.

*Source: https://fillthelobby.com/lasik-marketing*

## LASIK and refractive surgery marketing

Candidacy first, then the price. Almost nobody books eye surgery straight from an ad. They take a self-test, book a candidacy exam, leave their contact lenses out for weeks before it if they wear them, and only then hear a price for their own eyes. LASIK marketing that is judged on clicks never sees most of that path. We run the ads, the self-test and the exam booking as one system, and stay in touch through the weeks in glasses before the exam and the wait for a laser day after it.

Fill The Lobby is a LASIK marketing agency for LASIK centers and the refractive side of ophthalmology practices, of every size in the US, from a solo refractive surgeon to a large group practice. The lasers used for LASIK are restricted devices, and the FDA has told eye care professionals that ads without appropriate risk information may be misleading ([FDA letter of 23 September 2011](https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/lasik/fda-letter-eye-care-professionals-september-23-2011), checked 3 November 2026). Most medical insurance won’t pay for refractive surgery ([FDA](https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/lasik/when-lasik-not-me), checked 3 November 2026), so the price in an ad is read closely and has to be one patients actually pay. Fill The Lobby puts the risk information and a fee patients really pay into each campaign before it goes live, inside the practice’s own ad accounts, where the ad spend goes directly to Google and Meta. Work starts with a 30-day Proof Pilot at one flat fee of $2,500. After the pilot, plans are priced per practice by clinician count.

## What actually books a candidacy exam.

### Candidacy comes before price

Not everyone who wants LASIK can have it. The FDA’s own list of reasons it may not be for someone includes a glasses or contact lens prescription that changed in the past year, and it says “no lasers are approved for LASIK on persons under the age of 18” ([FDA, When is LASIK not for me?](https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/lasik/when-lasik-not-me), checked 3 November 2026). So the first thing anyone books is an exam, and the campaigns are aimed at adults and built to sell it: what the exam measures, how long it takes, what it costs, and what happens when the answer is a different procedure or not yet. Every booking lands on your real exam calendar, and the people told they aren’t candidates are counted too, so a campaign that brings in the wrong eyes shows up as one.

### The per-eye price has to be the price they pay

LASIK is often quoted per eye, and the fee moves with the prescription and the procedure, which is what makes a low “from” price tempting in LASIK advertising. Since 28 October 2025 Google has enforced a [dishonest pricing policy](https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/16502634) under which advertisers “must clearly and conspicuously disclose the payment model or full expense that a user will bear”, and a low price advertised with no genuine intent to sell at it counts as bait-and-switch (Google, checked 3 November 2026). So the price in the ad is one your patients actually pay, it says whether it is per eye or for both, and the page behind it says what the fee includes, from the exam to the follow-up visits.

### “20/20” is a result claim

The people reading your ads have often read the FDA’s LASIK pages first, and those pages tell them they “may still need glasses or contact lenses after surgery” and to be cautious about “slick” advertising and deals that sound “too good to be true” ([FDA](https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/lasik/what-are-risks-and-how-can-i-find-right-doctor-me), checked 3 November 2026). An ad that promises perfect vision reads as exactly the ad they were warned about. We write about the exam, the surgeon and the procedure, and outcomes stay in the consult, where the surgeon can talk about them against the patient’s own eyes and risks.

### The optometrist is part of the path

Refractive practices often share care with [local optometrists](https://fillthelobby.com/optometry-marketing), who refer the patient, see them before surgery and handle the checks afterwards. That makes the optometrist a referral channel with its own path to the exam calendar, and the campaigns run beside it rather than around it. The page tells someone who found you through an ad whether their visits after surgery can be with their own optometrist, and a referring office can book a candidacy exam for its patient without a phone chain. Every exam is reported by where it came from, an ad, an optometrist or a returning patient, so the referral channel is counted on its own instead of being credited to an ad.

### FSA and HSA money has a calendar

Laser eye surgery is on the IRS’s list of medical expenses ([Publication 502](https://www.irs.gov/publications/p502) names “laser eye surgery or radial keratotomy”), so patients can generally pay for it from an FSA or an HSA, and the two run on different clocks. HSA amounts that remain at the end of the year “are generally carried over to the next year”, while FSAs “are generally ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ plans”. Any extra time is up to the employer’s plan, which can offer a grace period after the plan year or a limited carryover, but not both ([Publication 969](https://www.irs.gov/publications/p969); both 2025 editions, checked 3 November 2026). So the pages explain how FSA and HSA payment works at your practice, and the booking asks whether a patient is working to a plan-year deadline, so the follow-up can schedule around it.

The ad books an exam. The exam decides the rest.

Self-tests, candidacy exams booked and held, and surgeries scheduled, each by source, visible weekly. BAA signed before any data moves.

## The only agency that is also the customer.

We built and run our own clinical platforms (200+ clinicians, patients in 20+ countries), and every part of this system, from the ads to the answered call and the follow-up, runs there first, on our own money. Fill The Lobby is that engine, pointed at your practice.

## We do this in other specialties too.

### The candidacy exam that never gets booked

It is eleven at night. Someone who has worn contacts since high school takes the self-test on your site, gets “you may be a candidate”, and is told to call the office in the morning. In the morning they are at work, the result went nowhere, and the next eye surgery ad they see is another practice’s. Even when they do call, the exam can’t be next week. The FDA tells contact lens wearers to stop wearing soft lenses for 2 weeks before the first evaluation, toric soft or rigid gas permeable lenses for at least 3 weeks and hard lenses for at least 4, because lenses change the shape of the cornea and the measurements can come out wrong ([FDA](https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/lasik/what-should-i-expect-during-and-after-surgery), checked 3 November 2026). Weeks in glasses they would rather not wear is a long time for an intention to last.

So the self-test ends in a booking, not a phone number: an exam slot picked on your real calendar that night, with the instructions for their kind of lens sent with the date and a reminder on the day the lenses should come out. The practice keeps in touch through the weeks in glasses, at the number and email the patient agreed to be contacted on, with what the exam measures, how long it takes and who they will see. Self-tests, exams booked and exams held are reported side by side, so you can see the step where people drop away.

### The December rush that lands in January

In early December, someone checks their FSA balance and finds money they will lose when the plan year ends. They fill in your form on a Sunday. By the time anyone rings back, their exam has to wait two weeks for their lenses, the laser days before the holidays are full, and the front desk says to call again in January. In January they have a new plan year, a new FSA election and no particular reason to remember you. If they search again, they start from the top of the results, and your ad pays a second time for someone you already had.

So the deadline is planned for, not discovered. From November the pages say how late in the year an exam and a surgery can still be fitted in, and patients working to a deadline are offered the first slots. If their employer’s plan has a grace period, there may still be time after the new year, so the follow-up asks them to check with their benefits office and books the January exam in December instead of leaving a reminder to call. Every inquiry from the season is followed up until it ends in a booked exam or a clear no.

### Where the rest of it leaks

Nothing here is judged on clicks: the [LASIK ads](https://fillthelobby.com/services/paid-ads) we run are counted on candidacy exams held and surgeries scheduled, because ophthalmology digital marketing that reports only form fills can look busy while the laser days stay open. The self-test, the exam booking and the price explanation all live on the page, so [website and booking pages](https://fillthelobby.com/services/booking-pages) for a refractive practice put the self-test in front of a booking on your real calendar. Between the exam and the surgery date, [patient follow-up](https://fillthelobby.com/services/patient-follow-up) keeps each candidate moving while they weigh the price and the timing. LASIK SEO is mostly the questions people ask before they call, about cost, candidacy, recovery and payment, and [local SEO](https://fillthelobby.com/services/local-seo) builds the pages and the map listing that answer them; some of those questions now go to an AI assistant first, which is what [AI visibility](https://fillthelobby.com/services/ai-visibility) covers. The full eight, and how they hand off to each other, are laid out under [what we do](https://fillthelobby.com/services). Most LASIK patients have the surgery once, so the number that matters is the cost of each surgery scheduled rather than each self-test, and the [patient acquisition cost calculator](https://fillthelobby.com/patient-acquisition-cost-calculator) works that out from your spend and your surgery count. All of it maps onto the [seven leaks](https://fillthelobby.com/patient-acquisition-agency#leaks) we look for in week one.

## LASIK marketing: what refractive practices ask.

**Q: Can LASIK ads quote a price per eye?**

Yes, when it is a price your patients actually pay and the ad says what it covers. The FTC has brought this case before. In January 2023 it settled with a national LASIK chain whose ads offered the procedure “for a promotional price of as low as $250”, alleging that most patients who came in for a consultation didn’t qualify for that price in both eyes. The order requires the company’s price ads to disclose “whether the price is per eye, the price most consumers pay per eye” and “any requirements or qualifications needed to get the offered price or discount” ([FTC](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/01/ftc-order-requires-lasikplus-pay-its-bait-switch-eye-surgery-ads), checked 3 November 2026). That order binds one company, but it shows what the FTC looks at. A monthly figure for an installment loan brings in Regulation Z: once an ad states the amount of a payment, it has to give the down payment, the repayment terms and the “annual percentage rate”, using that term, as they apply ([12 CFR 1026.24(d)](https://www.consumerfinance.gov/rules-policy/regulations/1026/24/), checked 3 November 2026). We write each price ad from your current fee schedule, and the front desk quotes the per-eye figure the ad and the page show.

**Q: Can we say 20/20 in our ads?**

Only alongside the risks of the laser behind it, and that usually means on a page rather than in a headline. In its 2011 letter to eye care professionals, the FDA said that in deciding whether an ad is misleading it considers “whether the labeling or advertising omits important information related to the device’s limitations and risks”, that ads without appropriate risk information may be misleading, and that its actions may include warning letters, product seizures, injunctions and civil money penalty proceedings ([FDA](https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/lasik/fda-letter-eye-care-professionals-september-23-2011), checked 3 November 2026). That risk information “may include side effects, warnings, precautions, and contraindications”, and it comes from the labeling of the laser your surgeons use; the FDA keeps a list of every laser approved for refractive procedures. We write the ads about the exam and the surgeon, and every ad points to a page that carries the risk information your surgeons have approved for your laser.

**Q: How much should a LASIK practice spend?**

Our side of it is fixed: the Proof Pilot is thirty days at one flat fee of $2,500. Ad spend sits on top and goes from your own accounts straight to Google and Meta, so on the pilot we never touch it and never mark it up. The spend itself is sized to two calendars, your candidacy exam slots and your laser days. Contact lens wearers already wait weeks before an exam, so a budget that books exams further out than that is paying for people who may cool off before they arrive. It also depends on how many of your exams end with a candidate, because an exam that ends in “not for you” still uses a slot, and on which procedures you offer, since LASIK, PRK and lens-based options draw different patients. Week one sets the budget against those numbers before anyone writes an ad.

**Q: Do you market cataract surgery?**

We market the part of cataract care the patient chooses and pays for: the premium lens. Medicare covers a conventional lens implanted following cataract surgery, and under two CMS rulings a Medicare patient who asks for a presbyopia-correcting or astigmatism-correcting lens instead pays the part of the facility and physician charges above a conventional lens, plus the extra services that come with it ([CMS Ruling 05-01](https://www.cms.gov/Regulations-and-Guidance/Guidance/Rulings/downloads/CMSR0501.pdf) and [CMS-1536-R](https://www.cms.gov/Regulations-and-Guidance/Guidance/Rulings/downloads/CMS1536R.pdf), checked 3 November 2026). That choice is made before the surgery date and it is the same conversation as LASIK: what it costs, what it involves, and what the surgeon expects for that patient’s eyes. So ophthalmology marketing for a cataract practice gives the lens decision its own pages and follow-up, kept apart from the insured medical schedule, which carries on as it does.

**Q: When do LASIK inquiries peak?**

Going by search, January is the month to plan for and September the quiet one. In Ahrefs’ US estimates for the search “lasik”, January was above December in each of the last three winters and was the busiest month of 2024 and of 2026 so far, and September was the quietest month in 2024, 2025 and 2026 (Ahrefs, US, October 2023 to October 2026, checked 3 November 2026). The swings are modest, so the calendar decides when people can act more than whether they look: FSA deadlines at the end of a plan year, fresh FSA money when the next one starts, and for contact lens wearers, weeks without lenses before the exam. We plan the year around your laser days, with deadline patients booked in the autumn, January exams booked in December, and spend held back in the quiet weeks.

**Q: What should I ask a LASIK marketing agency?**

Ask what they report: candidacy exams held and surgeries scheduled, or only leads, because a finished self-test is not a patient. Ask what happens to a self-test completed at eleven at night, and who books the exam. Ask to see a price ad they have run, and check that the figure is one most patients pay and says whether it is per eye. Ask how they would follow up people who missed their exam. Google’s policy on [health in personalized advertising](https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/16701855) puts surgical procedures in its health category, where Customer Match and your data segments aren’t supported (checked 3 November 2026), so an agency that offers to retarget them on Google from a list of your patients hasn’t read it. Ask which marketing strategies for ophthalmology they have used to keep the refractive line apart from the insured medical side. And ask who keeps the ad accounts, the self-test and the list of people waiting on an exam when the contract ends.

Updated November 2026.

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