How are the online reviews for your dental practice? What is your strategy for getting more reviews? Do you have better or worse online reviews than your competitors?
The quantity and quality of your online reviews have a significant influence on whether new patients are comfortable calling your office to schedule. Even if they are referred by a friend, family member or co-worker, or if they find you on their dental insurance website – chances are they will look at your online reviews before they call your office.
Online reviews are often the 1st touchpoint that new patients have to your dental or orthodontic practice. Just like that 1st phone call experience – don’t you want your practice to shine to potential new patients?
Keep reading to find out more about how to improve your dental practice online reviews!
Current Online Reviews for Your Dental Practice
The 1st step in improving your online reviews to understand the current state they’re in as a baseline. If you don’t have your dental practice set up on these online review websites, start by opening a free listing.
The dominant online review website today is Yelp. Google reviews are increasingly popular as well – make sure you have a Google+ account set up so that patients can leave you Google reviews that show up in your Google searches.
Facebook also has a reviews section on business Facebook pages – and this ranking shows up in your Google searches. The last review website to consider is Healthgrades – it’s less widely used but can still be helpful to your online reputation.
Make a note of how many reviews you have on each of these websites, and your star ranking. Also, look at how recent your reviews are – if you have a lot of reviews but they’re years old, patients will not look as favorably on this.
It’s essential to keep a steady flow of recent, positive reviews to your dental practice to maintain a positive online presence.
Getting More Online Reviews for Your Dental Practice
Do you ever see a competitor’s online reviews and wonder how they get so many awesome reviews?
The answer is simple: They ask patients for them.
There’s no other way to get a consistent stream of positive reviews. If you wait for happy patients to review you, you’ll get a trickle here and there – maybe. Alongside of that, you’ll get the 1 grouchy patient who has to tell people about their less-than-perfect experience. All of that means you’ll have a lower star ranking that’s blasted all over the internet.
Many outstanding dental practices have sub-par online reviews, and this hurts their brand image. The only reason for mediocre reviews is not having a solid communication strategy to ask patients for good reviews.
How to Ask Patients for Good Reviews
Asking patients to give you good online reviews can feel uncomfortable at first. However, avoiding this important conversation means you’ll have fewer and worse online reviews. There’s just no way around it, so it’s important to find a comfortable way to ask patients.
- Ask happy patients for reviews. Whenever a patient compliments your practice or talks about their good experience, it’s a perfect opening to ask them for a review.
Here’s a sample ask, “We’re so happy you’ve had a good experience in our dental practice. I was wondering – would you be open to writing us a quick online review on either Yelp, Google or Facebook? We’d love if you could share your positive experience with others who are seeking great dental care.”
- Make it easy for the patient to review your practice. If the patient isn’t a regular Yelper, but they have a Gmail account – direct them toward a Google review. If the patient has spent their entire appointment on Facebook, direct them to a Facebook review.
- Follow up to give them the tools to write the review. It’s a good idea when you walk the patient to the check-out desk to let your front office team member know that the patient is willing to write a review. Then you can send an email to the patient with a direct link to the preferred review website, and thank them in advance for their willingness to share their experience with others.
Get More Positive Online Reviews for Your Dental Practice
Online reviews are critical to staying competitive in today’s environment. The only way to get current and consistent reviews is by asking patients for them, and making it easy for them to follow through.
If you’d like help building a strategy for your online reviews, or overall online marketing – we’re here to help! Contact us today to learn more about how we can customize a marketing plan for your office with both internal and external marketing. We are always flexible and can create a unique plan to suit your goals, needs and budget.