Want More Reviews on Review Sites
You as a practice owner, should want more reviews on review sites to help control the positive narrative about your office. The importance of responding to patients online could not be more prevalent as reviews continue to grow more than ever before. Aside from the fact that reviews from patients help others decide whether they should visit your practice or not, reviews are now more prevalent on search results pages—meaning a lot of eyes can see what is being said about your dental practice online.
The influence that reviews have on potential patients is staggering: more than 88% of online prospects incorporate reviews into their decisions (Webrepublic, 2015). Practices are told to get more reviews on review websites to keep attracting new patients. With so many review websites out there, where does a dental practice even begin? Your practice may be afraid to manage patient reviews on review sites as you may not want to end up in one of these situations:
- receive zero reviews
- receive zero recent online reviews
- receive negative online reviews
- or, your practice simply has unmanaged online reviews across multiple review websites
Unfortunately, your dental practice is missing out. This lack of free online word of mouth is actually hurting your practice through inaction, because reputation drives conversion.
1) Practice reviews and social posts help shape your practice’s online reputation
In fact, one of the worst things your practice can do is ignore your online reviews and social posts. As easy as it is to make a mistake when handling your practice’s online reputation, it can also be easy to recover if done properly (and with apology). While damage will inevitably happen, your dental practice can take steps to mitigate the degree of damage that can occur. The biggest mistake of all your practice can make is not participating in helping to shape the conversation about your practice online.
2) Practice reviews provide valuable feedback for your dental practice
While it can be easy for your practice to take negative comments to heart, it is important to recognize that reviews are constructive feedback. All in all, reviews are valuable feedback! They help your practice gauge their performance and see how you can improve. There is always room for improvement and a lot can be learned even from positive practice reviews. Through reviews, your dental practice can see which products or services you should be boasting, which needs work, and even discover which employees rock at customer service.
3) Your dental practice reviews can now appear in search results
Search engines have caught on to the popularity of reviews and are now displaying them more prominently. So, if someone searches for your practice, there is a chance that reviews from review websites could be displayed on the search engine results pages. In Google’s markup—the annotated content that appears in search—of a practice or product, practice reviews and ratings can now be included in search results. In other words, when a user performs a search on Google, Google will find and possibly display review summaries from online practice reviews and consumer ratings. Below is an example of how dental practice reviews now showing up in search results.
Want more reviews on review site, how do you do it?
There are a variety of methods your practice can employ to ask for more online reviews, including emailing patients manually, using surveys, asking patients to leave reviews with codes and review sites on their receipts, or utilizing review generation software to automate the practice review process.
Three important review website management tips:
1) Remember to add or claim listings on the top review sites
It’s a good idea to add or claim a listing or business profile on the most popular review sites (unless your business doesn’t fit with the niche), correct your practice’s listing information and start getting more dental practice reviews!
2) Your practice should keep asking patients for reviews
Asking the average patient for a review can be hard work. Granted, it is often easiest to get reviews from patients that are either really happy or really unhappy with the level of service they were provided. Your practice should always remember to ask as patients are busy creatures and will not remember unless they are asked or reminded to leave feedback.
3) Patients are more open to leaving reviews on review sites
Why not just ask for reviews or testimonials on your practice’s website? Well, asking patients to leave a review on your practice’s website seems a lot more screened and inauthentic than simply asking patients to leave reviews on a trusted review site. Since the review site is a third party, it feels more open for patients to leave an honest, unbiased review.
Dental Practice reviews are here to stay
In conclusion, there’s no getting away from reviews. The good news is that there are methods to get more practice reviews as well as effectively managing reviews from patients. Also, dental practices needn’t fear negative online reviews, as there are ways to negate the effect of negative reviews.