Almost certainly, yes. Most ophthalmology marketing — independent and PE-backed alike — targets the same broad demographic: adults over 55, searching directly for cataract surgery, LASIK, or glaucoma treatment by name. It’s the easiest audience to define and the most expensive to reach, because everyone is targeting it the same way.

The audiences practices consistently overlook are the ones defined by an activity or identity rather than an age bracket or a diagnosis. Athletes whose performance has quietly declined and assume it’s conditioning, not vision. Tradespeople whose close-up work has gotten harder and assume it’s fatigue. Hobbyists — golfers, cyclists, shooters, anglers — who’ve adjusted their technique without ever considering that their eyes, not their skill, changed first.

None of these groups think of themselves as eye care patients. That’s exactly why they’re underpriced as an advertising audience and overlooked by larger, centralized marketing teams that are built to run the same broad campaign across dozens of locations rather than build something specific to one community’s interests.

The opportunity isn’t really about finding an exotic niche — it’s about finding one your practice can speak to credibly. A practice in a market with a strong golf or pickleball culture, a large cycling community, or a concentration of a particular trade or profession already has a built-in audience that no one else in eye care marketing is talking to directly. The content and targeting required to reach them is usually simpler and cheaper than another round of competing for the same in-market keywords everyone else is bidding on.

The hardest part is rarely identifying the niche — most practice owners can name two or three candidates within a few minutes of thinking about it. The hard part is committing the content and ad spend to it long enough to become the recognized authority for that specific group, rather than treating it as a one-off campaign.