You’ve completed your website and it looks great! Your copy is unique and addresses many of your potential patients’ questions or concerns. You have an active social media presence on several platforms. Your business pages are done and all your NAP (name, address, phone number) information is the same across the board. So, your online marketing strategy is off to a very strong start! However, you may have forgotten one key element: reviews. Why do you need reviews? What makes them so essential to your online marketing strategy?
Who Would You Listen To?
As a dental practice, your website highlights your strengths as a dentist, from your treatments to your amenities. As it should! But when you look for a business, where do you look first? You check out what other people are saying. An actual person’s opinion seems a more accurate assessment of a business’ strengths and weaknesses. As a dental practice, you need to have testimonials people can see. Doing so can actually make them more likely to visit you. Even if a competitor has an amazing site, if viewers can’t see what their patients are saying, they may not schedule that visit.
What If I Receive Negative Reviews?
This is always a risk. First, you should never have your staff write fake reviews for you. Some assume everyone does this and that it’s no big deal. But Google’s algorithms can spot a fake review, and penalize the site in question as a result.
Since you must rely on your patients, there’s always the risk an unhappy patient will leave a bad experience. If so, don’t delete it. Don’t respond with anger and vitriol. Instead, calmly apologize for their experience and invite them to contact you to rectify the situation. That’s it. If they respond with more venom, it reflects poorly on them. If you remain calm, you will look like a dedicated professional willing to help your clients. A mix of positive and negative testimonials is still better for your site than a complete absence of them!
How Do I Encourage Them?
We’ve had success with our “Have a Cup of Coffee on Us” campaign, in which doctors offer their patients a $5 gift card to Starbucks in exchange for their review. However, tomorrow we will be talking about a client that has managed to gather tons of testimonials without offering such incentives, so check back!
Do you have questions about encouraging testimonials? We can help! Send MDPM an email at: info@mdpmconsulting.com, or give us a call at 972-781-8861. Talk to MDPM Consulting today!