Get 5-Star Ratings with Reputation Management
You want every patient to leave a review about their visit to your dental practice. You especially want them to leave 5-star reviews. So how do you encourage patients to give you great feedback online for a fine dental visit? How do you manage any not-so-stellar reviews? Reputation management is the key to getting the ratings you deserve, and more of them.
Establish Good Reputation Management at Your Dental Practice
Whether your dental practice is old school or new school, it must have an online presence. It’s the only way to succeed, thrive, grow, and be known in your community. But a good website isn’t enough. After all, where else can patients talk about how great you are but online? You need:
- Social media presence
- Online review sites
- User-generated content
When a person is seeking a new dentist, the first thing they do is go online and look for reviews. They don’t need anything fancy, but they do want legitimate, believable, user-generated content that tells them whether you’re the right dentist to call for an appointment.
How to Improve Reputation Management
Reputation management is a fine art, and it is important to have a dedicated member of your team working on this aspect of marketing and promotion so you can focus on growing your business and doing the dental care you love to do. Good reviews speak for themselves; bad reviews and complaints do too. But every bit of feedback requires a response, whether it’s a thank you, apology, reassurance, or otherwise. And this means someone must be prepared to address them. Good reputation management includes:
- Increasing positive reviews
- Minimizing negative reviews
- Constant monitoring of major review sites
- Giving personalized responses to all reviews, whether good or bad
- Engaging daily with users
The Rules of Online Reputation Management
Word-of-mouth recommendations are powerful, but potential patients trust online reviews left by strangers just as much as the words of someone they know well. To develop a positive reputation, you want to focus on curating five-star online reviews. Here’s what you need to know:
- Respect every review: You could have a hundred glowing reviews but one negative review can wreak havoc within minutes and turn people away from your dental practice. You can’t ignore this kind of feedback – damage control is essential to prevent excessive reposts, shares, and lost patients.
- Be prepared to put in the time. Deflate a bad review by acknowledging and validating a patient’s feelings and telling them how you want to make their experience better or right so they’re satisfied. You can maintain all the power – don’t be afraid to use your upper hand.
- Be proactive: You might have plenty of great reviews, but your credibility isn’t a sure thing once it’s been established. You must nurture your brand and respect your patients, whatever their opinions, even if you disagree. Engage with patients who have good and bad things to say. Add five-star reviews to your website. Personalize all your engagement.
Need assistance with reputation management? Want help getting the five-star ratings you deserve and have more patients writing online reviews? Find out if Independence Dental DSO and our marketing teams can work for you. Contact us today to learn about the benefits we offer.
