Online reviews have become one of the most important new patient referral methods for dental practices. But are online reviews really that important for your dental or orthodontic practice?
The answer is a resounding YES.
In the dental industry, it’s common knowledge that attracting new patients is the key to remaining profitable – in the average practice, 40% of production comes from new patients.
So how do you get more patients to your office?
To maintain the health of your dental practice and ensure solid revenue, online reviews can be one of the fastest, most efficient ways to get new patients in the door.
Why Online Reviews Bring in New Patients for Dentists
In a recent consumer survey by BrightLocal, 92% of consumers now read online reviews. When patients are looking for a dentist, online reviews are highly influential and are often trusted over a personal referral from a friend or family member.
Given the importance of online reviews for patients who are looking for a dentist (not to mention the value those patients will bring to your practice, it’s crucial that you know the status of your current online reviews, the mediums on which patient reviews of your practice can be found, and the best ways to attract even more reviews.
Once you understand the ins and outs of online reviews, you’ll be able to work on getting even more patients to review your practice and bring in more business.
Where to Find Patient Reviews of Your Dental Practice
Patients often use one or more of the following online platforms to review a dental practice:
- Yelp is one of the biggest consumer review platforms. Have you checked your Yelp page recently? Have you taken control of your Yelp business page so you can do things like check your reviewer metrics and respond to patient reviews? (Remember: if you’re not sure how to do this, we can help).
- Google Reviews is still considered an emerging review platform, but its popularity is growing quickly, especially since patients can now see reviews immediately when searching online for a local dentist or orthodontist, or by typing a dental professional’s name directly into Google.
- Facebook has a review feature for business pages. Because of the referral power of Facebook, it’s important that you have a Facebook business page. (If you don’t have one, we can help you build one). If you do have one, it’s never a bad idea to ask your patients for a review – just make sure your review feature is turned on first!
Apart from these popular online review platforms, patients will also look at another important place when searching for reviews about dentists: the Testimonials section of a dentist or orthodontist’s own website.
What Online Reviews Mean for Patients, and Your Practice
Dentists should visit all of the above-mentioned review platforms to get an idea about the amount and overall quality of their online reviews.
If you see mostly good reviews, fantastic! The important thing now is that you keep getting more of these good reviews from your patients to strengthen your presence on the reviewing platforms.
Non-existent or not enough online reviews simply means that you need to get more patients to review you.
If you see a few negative or mediocre reviews, don’t panic just yet. A few bad reviews can be good for business: Patients are more likely to trust a page with submitted are more likely to trust pages with a mix of reviews over pages with perfect reviews.
If you have way too many negative reviews, there are fixes. First, take those reviews seriously: read through them – if patients’ complaints are consistently about the same one or two things, these may be important areas for improvement in your practice. Developing action items based on problems listed in reviews can improve the patient experience. Responding to negative views on Yelp can be another good idea, but proceed with caution: an imperfect response could backfire, so make sure you talk to someone who knows online marketing and social media before responding. Finally, after addressing the negative reviews, make sure you return your energy to focusing on getting more positive reviews.
When it comes to your dental practice website, do you have a Testimonials page? If not, it’s important to build one. If you do have one, it’s a good idea to ask the patients on the page if they’d give you an online review as well.
What Can Dentists Do to Get Good Online Reviews from Patients?
For dentists to get good online reviews from their patients on Facebook, Yelp, Google, and more, it’s important to for dentists to know what a patient is looking for – simply being a great dentist probably isn’t enough.
Most patients are unable to tell the difference between a good dentist and a great dentist, so it’s important to go beyond being a great clinician. For example, you could be an excellent clinician, but if you have a bad bedside manner, patients will label you a horrible dentist.
What is a great dentist in the eyes of the patient? Here are just a few things that patients notice when they visit the dentist:
- The office – clean, well maintained, beautiful decor, smell, sounds
- The environment — the attitude of other patients in the office at the same time
- How comfortable they’re made to feel - Are they seen on time? Were they helped to understand the process? Were they walked through the procedure? Was the bedside manner appropriate?
- The dentist and the team — Are you and your team friendly, well spoken, and focused on your job?
- The appearance of the dentist and the team — Essentially, do you match your brand? Most require clean scrubs and a well-groomed appearance to match the brand. It’s fine if you and your team sport wrinkled scrubs, piercings, and tattoos – so long as this is the image you’re branding yourself on, allowing for no surprises for new patients.
These are some of the most important things that a patient looks for in a dental visit. Get these things right, and you’ll get patients wanting to leave you positive reviews online.
How Dentists Can Get More Positive Reviews from Patients
So how can dentists like you get more positive reviews from patients?
First, and foremost you need to ask yourself are you bringing enough quality to your patients to warrant good reviews. Then you need to develop a plan for soliciting reviews from current patients in order to attract new ones.
It’s important to be strategic when putting together a plan for getting new patient reviews. It’s also important to know how and when to ask for reviews, and to specify what you’re looking for: the idea is that the right kind of patient review can make your referrals more robust and targeted to your ideal client.
Contact CEI today, and learn how we can help you build out an online review strategy that gets new patients in the door.
