At ProspectaMarketing, we handle all aspects of our clients’ online and digital marketing. If you’re a dental practice that needs to revamp their advertising approach, and are at a loss as to how to achieve this, we can provide a specific, customized team of SEO and tech specialists that fit your needs. Together with a group effort from your team members, they can help you achieve the reach you need for your practice to flourish.

One of the main avenues by which we increase awareness of a business is the strengthening of the connection between patient and practice. And the best way to do that? Online reviews.

However, since we’ve already focused on both the importance of online reviews and the effect of a review response on your marketing efforts, today’s article will instead describe the many steps you and your team can take to ensure your satisfied patients follow up their visit with a lengthy, descriptive review.

The Reason

You might be wondering: why are reviews something I need to foster? After all, if I perform my services successfully and the patients remain satisfied, shouldn’t reviews happen organically? Yes, in a perfect situation. Organic review growth that simply springs out of the ground is definitely favorable marketing windfall. But, in most cases, it’s going to take a little work to get your patients writing.

There’s also the question of the type of review they leave. If a review is a four- or five-star review, but doesn’t fit certain requirements, it might end up at the bottom of your Google profile and be essentially useless to you as a marketing tool. For these reasons, here are five steps you can take to ensure that your incoming reviews are bountiful and rank well according to your metrics.

The Solution

  1. Team Training: Setting up a short training course for your team members is often the way to go. Though the topic of fostering reviews is covered during our client orientation meetings, we encourage the practices we represent to continually remind their team members to ask for a review during their wrap-up consult with a client. Set up a sort of “script” with your assistants, hygienists, and receptionists; one that thanks the patient for their business, asks them if there was anything that could be improved about their experience, and inquires as to whether they would leave a review on your service of choice.
  2. Mailing Lists, Text Alerts, and Digital Notifications: If you’re clients are on a mailing list or a text-based alert system, it’s a great idea to follow up with a short and easy link that leads to your preferred review service.
  3. Guided Questions To Foster Descriptive Reviews: When setting up templates for the aforementioned “script,” or for any form that you might present to a potential reviewer, consider questions like “How have your dental implants changed your life?”; or “Why would you recommend us to someone seeking a dentist to do quality work?”; or even “Why would you recommend our sedation dentistry services to someone who struggles with dental anxiety?” With guided questions, you will ensure that your reviews are not simply star-based. Since services like Google Reviews rank entries based on relevance, it is very likely that a four- or five-star review that lacks keywords and written content will sink to the bottom of the list. This will almost ensure that potential clients miss it.
  4. Focus On Your Keywords: When crafting your guided questionnaire, make sure you focus on questions that cover your strengths. The best way to do this is to analyze your most popular keywords. If you focus on cosmetics, there’s no reason to be asking patients about your viability as a sleep apnea clinic. If, however, you have a wide range of services, make sure not to overwhelm the reviewer. Too many questions will quickly make someone regret agreeing to a review, and will most likely guarantee that they don’t review you again. What’s worse, they might exit the review process altogether. Instead, pick two or three main services that are relevant to the patient and to your practice, and write questions based on them.
  5. Keep It At Five: In the same vein as our previous entry, make sure your questionnaire is breezy, easy-to-read, and over quickly. All you need is a small bit of text, written by a satisfied patient, with one or two guided key words included. So, keep it at or under five questions. If you absolutely must include more, make them very short. After the patient has successfully submitted their review, don’t badger them – even if the result wasn’t a tasty SEO morsel of keywords and relevant services, it’s a step above an empty review, and that’s always a positive. Further follow-up might just result in the patient feeling overwhelmed or annoyed, which we never want.

Balancing the often uncomfortable work of requesting reviews with a tactful approach to practice-patient relations is one of our specialties at ProspectaMarketing. What’s best, it’s a team effort. We make sure to guide your dentists, assistants, hygienists, and receptionists on the best ways to manage and respond to reviews. We will even do it for you, if your specific situation benefits from this approach. ProspectaMarketing are an experienced Internet marketing firm specializing in dental practices and the tools of Internet marketing. We help you reach key prospects who are looking for what your practice has to offer. Our unique and thorough approach provides visibility, financial accountability, and ongoing refinement and improvement. You can find out more by contacting Lane Anderson toll-free at 1-877-322-4440 Ext 101, by email using the form on our Contact Us page, or online at ProspectaMarketing.com.