Building Your Dental Practice's Online Reputation
We have all tried a number of different ways to get new patients through the door. Whether you send out mailers, use Google Adwords or work through internal referrals, you are putting effort into attracting new patients. I have had the opportunity to sit across from dozens of dentists to discuss their marketing efforts and one thing that I have seen stand out more than anything else between those who are successful and those who aren't is their reputation.
Building Your Personal Reputation
Building your personal reputation can seem unnatural to many people in dentistry. You see, in and ideal world, patients would know how awesome their clinicians skills are. Unfortunately, in the real world, they don't. You need to teach them why you are awesome. Finding a way to do this on a daily basis will be key in growing your practice. When patients understand what makes you awesome, they feel confident in referring you to their friends. Internal referrals is something that can really move the needle when it comes to new patients.
Building Your Online Reputation
You will hear a lot of statistics about the percentage of your patients that are looking for you online before going calling you. You know that 93% of statistics are made up on the spot right? (yes, like that one) Having said that, it can be safely assumed that a lot of people will search for you online before calling you. What are people saying about you online? Anything? Good things? Bad things?
Online reputation is something that can build naturally, but often needs a little guidance from the office. There are a number of different systems to gather online reviews from patients. Find one that is affordable and use it faithfully. If you are taking good care of patients, the good online reviews will serve you well!
I recently started working with an office called Canyon Rim Dental. They had been working on gathering reviews for quite some time and had a good number of reviews in a few different locations online. We rebuilt their website with a bunch of quality content and they immediately shot to the second page of Google in a very competitive market. When you get reviews supporting some of these big business listings like Google My Business and Yelp, they can provide a lot of value for search engine rankings.
Amplifying Your Other Marketing Efforts
Aside from packing some awesome value for SEO, building your online reputation supports your other marketing efforts as well. If you send out a mailer with an awesome offer, it would not be surprising for a good number of people who are trying to decide on whether to act on that mailer of not to look you up online. Good reputation plus a good offer increases your likelihood of converting that person into a new patient.
I am not going to advocate one way or the other in this article as far as companies go to gather these reviews, just know, if you are not doing it, and you are trying to grow, you should be doing it.