The best defense is a strong offense!
Websites, SEO and Social Media are major marketing tools that practices are using to find, engage, and bring patients through their doors. Your new-potential patients are taking to the web to find doctors in their area with a good rep and fair price. What you might not know is that people are also talking, rating, and reviewing you online. Don’t you want to be a part of that conversation?
80% of all searches online are healthcare related. 1 in 3 people post about their healthcare experiences, and 2 out of 3 consult online reviews for medical treatments. THIS IS A BIG DEAL! Most practices don’t even know that they are already on the doctor review websites and that patients can go ahead and start public profiles for them.
Think about it. Most of the time, the only people who are going to go online and take 10 minutes to search you, find you, and review you, are the patients who are really upset. Most review sites are filled up with negative reviews from the bad seeds, bashing their experience, and over-reacting about their experiences.
The difficult part is getting the happy patients to go search for you, find you, and review you. For patients, review sites are valuable information portals to help them select who they are going to schedule a consultation with. For Physicians, online reviews can attract new business, or shut you down. So the question is, how do you tackle this?
If you have all positive reviews, people will see that as a red flag (meaning you probably wrote them and they are fake). You want to be realistic. You can’t please everyone. So building a strong offense of positive reviews will flush out any negative ones you might have. Creating an incentive program for patients who share their positive recommendations online are a great way to reward the people who take the time to build your online reputation. Part of the social media program we offer at Incredible Marketing includes reputation management. We will work with you on building your positive online reputation, so you can benefit from online reviews bringing you new business instead of them turning it away. Call us to learn more about reputation management and how we can bring you more online business!
