Most Doctors know that online reviews are very helpful.They can improve the flow of new patients to any practice. The challenge many Drs face is figuring out how to get reviews from happy patients.
Patients that are not happy are quick to post a review...but happy patients aren’t as likely to take the time to post a review about their great experience with you.
What can make a bad review worse is that the reviews are not verified in any way, so the truth may become a casualty in a bad review from an angry or perhaps unreasonable person.
Bad reviews can negatively impact your practice because potential patients are seeing a very one sided story. You might have 800 very happy patients and 10 that are unhappy but if only the 10 bad and 3 good review you online, you’re not going to be well represented online and most likely be unfairly judged.
How are online reviews used to influence a potential new patients impression of you?
Potential patients search a Doctors name to see what kind of reviews he or she has online. They often check the larger healthcare sites like Healthgrades, Vitals and others in an attempt to learn about a Doctor before trusting him or her.
How do you look online and stack up to other local Drs?
Search your name online and see what comes up. Do you have more than just a few good Google reviews? How many stars do you have? How do you look on Healthgrades, Vitals, Wellness.com and the other big healthcare review sites? Do you have a complete and complementary profile on each, or is your profile missing your photo, bio and a good number of 4 and 5 star reviews. Are other local Drs appearing on your profile in a section like the one below taken from Healthgrades. In this case - 5 alternatives to this Dr are offered to people looking at the Drs profile.
When other Doctors appear on your profile you tend to lose some potential patients to a competitor with more stars - this is known as leakage. So, not only can a low number of 4 and 5 star reviews cause people to question whether they should trust you for treatment but healthcare review sites give them other Docs as alternatives to seeing you for treatment. This is not an accident - those Drs know something that you don’t.
So what can you do to:
- Get more 4 and 5 star reviews
- Look great on the major healthcare sites
- Appear on competitors profiles
- Keep competitors off of your profile
- And get more patients
Here’s how we help you take control of your online reviews.
We send a chrome book (laptop) to our clients that happy patients use to write an awesome review on the spot, in the office that will go on your website, the major healthcare sites, your Facebook page, and may add stars to your organic rankings on Google.
Like this on Google:
If you search a similar term for your practice, do you have stars on your organic rankings? Which Dr do you think is going to get selected from Google by a potential patient...the one with 5 stars and 100 reviews or one with no stars.
This may be somewhat unfair. The Doc with the stars may or may not be the best provider but perception is reality to most people.
On Facebook, we can share your 4 and 5 star reviews like this:
Why does generating reviews this way work so well?
We’ve already talked about how unhappy people will review you quickly and happy people somehow forget to review you despite their best intentions.
You and your staff know which patients absolutely love you. Do you think that if you or a team member asked nicely, that a patient that really likes you, wouldn’t spend 3 minutes and create a review on the spot?
You know they would!