Category Archives: Online Reviews

Health care professionals have always had unhappy patients: always have, and always will. That’s just the way it is, and dentists are no exception to the rule.

These days unhappy patients can pull out their smart phones and in a matter of seconds, tell the world about what a rotten experience they had at your office – whether or not there is even a shred of truth to what they say.

This cannot be taken lightly, because reviews are a huge influence on your practice. For one thing they affect how you rank in local search results. For another, good reviews make you seem reputable and help drive new business your way, while bad ones can have the opposite effect.

What You Should Do

In spite of your dedication and skill, bad reviews will happen. How you react to them makes a difference.

The first thing you should do when you get a bad online review is … nothing. Don’t answer right away: wait a day or so, and respond with a cool head. When you do reply it should be in two parts.

• Personal. If you know who the reviewer is, reach out with a phone call or text. Politely thank them for their feedback and ask if they would like to discuss it further. Your willingness to do so will probably go a long way to improving the situation.
• Public. It’s important to reply to the review on the site where it appeared, too. A lot of people are going to read that review. A reasoned, respectful response shows that you care, take complaints seriously, and want to improve.

You can’t please everyone, but reviews can make or break your online reputation. The best strategy is getting more positive reviews, and there are ways to influence how many you get. ProspectaMarketing can help. We 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.

Positive online reviews are critical to the success of your dental practice. How critical? They’re second only to your outstanding dental care. Virtually everyone reads them before deciding whether to book an appointment.

By online reviews, we mean those written by your patients. They appear on Google My Business and similar platforms, and are influential because they represent real-world experience. Study after study has demonstrated that people trust online reviews as much or more than the recommendations of their friends and family members.

Online Reviews

New statistics about the importance of online reviews of local businesses, like dental practices, are particularly eye-opening. The numbers were compiled by BrightLocal, a local marketing firm.

• 93% of all consumers searched the Internet to find a local business during 2020.
• 34% searched every single day.
• 87% read online reviews, up from eighty-one percent from the previous year.

As you might guess, it’s good to have plenty of positive online reviews. But more important is that there are fresh ones. As far as most consumers are concerned, newer is better.

• 50% only read reviews written within the last two weeks.
• 73% only consider those written within the last month.
• 86% read those from the previous three months.

There are strategies you can use to promote a reliable flow of fresh online reviews, and expert help is available. ProspectaMarketing is 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.

There are no two ways about it: in order to grow your dental practice, you need positive online reviews. How important are they? According to one survey, half of the people who were asked said they would go to an out-of-network dentist who had good online reviews!

Good reviews mean more than drawing in new patients, of course. They raise your online profile (your reputation) and help you keep your current patients. You cannot put a pricetag on patients who are happy with the services you provide, and are willing to tell the world about it.

The Reviews Are In

These days virtually everyone has access to the Internet, and most people have a smartphone in their pocket or purse. They can check online reviews at a moment’s notice. People trust online reviews because they’re written by everyday people: their friends and neighbors.

• 85% trust patient reviews as much or more as the recommendations of family or friends
• 73% put more trust in a local business with good reviews
• 86% of people choose a dentist based on patient reviews
• 60% make an appointment with a practice after reading positive reviews

Getting Reviews

In today’s competitive environment it’s essential that your dental practice not only has a marketing plan, but has one that encourages reviews from your patients and uses them constructively.

The first step, of course, is to provide good services. This is what keeps patients coming back, and has them willing to share their experiences.

What’s the best way to encourage a patient to review your practice? A good strategy is to follow up an appointment with a polite request for feedback. You can do that with a text message or an email. Most people are happy to comply.

It’s okay to suggest a particular review site. Google is easily the most important, but Facebook is also really good, as is Yelp.

Marketing your practice can be exacting and time-consuming, but it definitely pays off. If you have any doubts about your approach, help is available. ProspectaMarketing is 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.

The occasional bad online review is a fact of life for any small business, whether it’s a pizza parlor or a dental practice. A bad review is no fun for you to read – but it isn’t going to put you out of business, either. What’s really important is how you respond.

Yes, a lot of people are going to see that negative review, but almost as many are going to see how you reply to it. That, in turn, will influence your online reputation.

A survey by Brightlocal underscores just how important it all is:

• 90% of consumers went online when looking for a local business in the last year
• Most of them read ten reviews before deciding to do business with you
• 97% of those who read reviews also read a businesses’ response to them

The lesson? Monitor your online reviews, especially those on Google and Facebook. Your potential new patients will be reading them. How you react may carry more weight than the review itself.

Responding

First, never ignore a bad review. Responding to a patient who had a negative experience in your office is the responsible thing to do, and readers will see that.

Far better is a reasoned resonse that demonstrates you can acknowledge something may have gone wrong. The Internet, unfortunately, makes a knee-jerk response easy. Click the Reply button and give that reviewer what-for. Resist the temptation; it is unprofessional and will make you look bad.

Your response should be direct and to the point. Concede that something went wrong and that you are willing to make it right. That’s enough. Remember that 97% who are going to read your reply!

ProspectaMarketing is 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.

To bring new patients to your dental practice you have to let them know you’re there. That means using the power of the Internet to spread the word. What’s the best approach? A killer website? Social media? Or is there a new platform emerging?

The answer is that there are multiple systems at your disposal, and you should be taking advantage of  them all. It’s the best way to reach as many prospective patients as possible.

Casting A Wide Net

Whether they’re looking for a restaurant, a dry cleaner, or a new dentist, virtually everyone turns to the Internet. That isn’t going to change anytime soon. Consumer survey after consumer survey bears this out:

• 92 percent read review sites when they are looking for services like dental practices
• 88 percent trust the online reviews they read as much or more as personal recommendations
• 72 percent say that positive reviews give them more trust in a practice

The beauty of the Internet is that is puts an enormous amount of information at our fingertips. Consider this scenario: someone just moved to town and is looking for a new dentist. They want to find a provider they can take the whole family to. The first step? A Google search that turns up a list of local dentists, each within a few miles of home.

From there, they will probably read some Facebook or Google reviews. There are plenty of them. These reviews, written by their new neighbors who have had experience with these local dentists, will tell them which practices best fit their needs and have good reputations.

These lesson here? Your dental practice must cast the widest net possible, with a presence on online channels like social media (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), email, YouTube, and pay-per-click ads. It’s the best way to attract new patients.

Sound daunting? Help is available. ProspectaMarketing is 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.

Online reviews have never been more important to small businesses. Almost everyone reads them, and almost everyone is influenced by them. Healthcare providers, including dental practices, are among the small businesses for which the most reviews are read.

According to one survey, ninety-two percent of consumers read online reviews before deciding whether to part with their hard-earned money. Probably because they are written by ordinary people, these reviews do more to influence a business’s reputation than anything else. Most people trust them as much, if not more, as the recommendations of family and friends.

In terms of global traffic, Google and Yelp are among the Internet’s top review platforms. More than half of all consumers, in fact, visit a business within forty-eight hours of Googling them.

Bad Reviews

You can’t please everyone, and bad reviews are going to happen now and then. It’s important to always keep that in mind. Remember too that, as we have written elsewhere on this blog, there are actually benefits to an occasional negative review.

One bad review isn’t much to worry about, but they are never to be taken lightly. Most negative reviews are driven by financial or billing issues. Sometimes customer reviews cross a line: they are grossly unfair or even untrue, and written by someone with an axe to grind. To make matters worse, there are companies trying to take advantage of that: they’ll offer to remove bad reviews for a fee – in order, they usually say, to protect your online reputation.

If you are approached by a company promising to remove any bad reviews, take a pass. Such offers are at best unreliable and at worst deceitful. Your online reputation does matter, and promoting and protecting it is a subject in and of itself. But it is virtually impossible, in most cases, for a third party to remove – that is, to permanently delete – a regular bad online review from a legitimate patient.

What You Can Do

The platforms that provide customer reviews want to present information you can trust: opinions that are honest and authentic. Google and Yelp both have strict policies about review content, and will delete any that deviate from them, such as:

• Abusive reviews
• Reviews from current or past employees
• Fake reviews
• Unsolicited commercial content (spam)

Removing a review can be an uphill battle, but it can be done – especially when the facts are on your side.

ProspectaMarketing is an experienced Internet marketing firm; we understand Google and Yelp review policies, and know when it’s worthwhile to fight to remove negative reviews. We specialize in dental practices and use the tools of Internet search marketing to 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.

A negative online review can seem like a real slap in the face. You are a consumate professional committed to excellence, yet there it is for all the world to see: an unhappy patient griping about a bad experience while in your chair.

You might be tempted to shrug it off. You can’t please everyone, after all. But no one likes unfavorable comments, no matter how mild. Worse, negative reviews have the potential to damage your online reputation. They must not be ignored.

The New Word of Mouth

Online reviews have never been more important to the success of your practice, or to any small business, for that matter. They are the new word of mouth: most people turn to review sites before deciding how to part with their hard-earned dollars, and dental practices are not exempt.

Reputation management experts say that it’s important to reply to every online review you get. Needless to say, that can be very time-consuming, but you must consider the risk of not doing so.

Prompt Reply

Responding to online reviews shows your patients and potential patients that you are concerned, and that the experiences of your patients in your care matter. Replies do not need to be detailed: a simple thank-you to a positive comment is enough.

Negative reivews, on the other hand, need a little more thought. A prompt, reasoned reply to a harsh comment shows a willingness to address an issue. You can invite the reviewer to follow up with a private message, or even a phone call.

As we have said elsewhere on this blog, there can be benefits to negative reivews. Always keep in mind that your replies are there for anyone to see. Never take any negative review personally, and never respond in kind!

____

ProspectaMarketing is an experienced Internet marketing firm specializing in dental practices. We use the tools of Internet search marketing to 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.