Like it or not, online reviews are a major factor in how consumers choose their dental care provider these days. And, as a result, your online review profile could either be fueling your new patient growth or hindering it.
I’d like to ask you to do a very simple exercise. Go to Google and type in ‘dentist’ and your city name, or ‘dentist near me’. Click on ‘More Places’ under the Map results, and have a look around at the Google review profiles of your competition. How do you stack up?
Hopefully, it’s quite well. And if so, keep doing what you’re doing to get those great patient reviews.
Now, if you didn’t stack up quite so well….it’s okay. You can fix that. And I’ll tell you just how to do it!
- Start Asking! Simply put….if you don’t ask….then patients are not going to proactively leave reviews for your practice. Ensure your team is asking every single patient they see (assuming they’ve had a positive experience) if they would feel comfortable leaving an online review. Look, I completely understand that it can feel awkward or uncomfortable to ask for reviews. Or that some older patients might need a little guidance on how to leave an online review. But, these are not valid excuses. If you need some pointers for your team, or some sample talk tracks, contact me and I’d be happy to provide that for you.
- Incentivize Your Team. Your team ultimately needs to be driving this process for it to be successful, and an incentive system will ensure it stays top of mind for them. Establish a team goal for how many patients reviews you want to get posted online in the next two weeks, and provide a team bonus if that number is achieved. Then, do it again for the next two weeks. And keep going. It’s a very worthwhile investment.
- Leverage an Automated Solution. You can absolutely grow your online review profile without any monetary investment. But, if you’re willing to put just a couple hundred dollars per month into it, you can have a robust reputation management solution at your fingertips that will help you not only generate reviews in a much quicker and easier manner, but will help you monitor, manage, and promote your online review profile in a much more impactful way.
About Kent Sears
Kent provides over 15 years experience in consulting and marketing strategy. His work has spanned the globe, in both public and private sector, with leading companies such as Microsoft and T-Mobile. He brings his corporate experience to help private practice dentists realize their full business potential through more effective marketing strategies to stay competitive in the rapidly changing world of marketing and healthcare.