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It’s easy to feel like running a successful dental practice in the internet age is a little bit of a popularity contest. Dentists are increasingly relying on getting more positive reviews and social media to attract more patients.
Good word-of-mouth has always been a critical component of running a successful dental practice. But today, social media and word-of-mouth are synonymous. If you want to be the most popular dentist in town, you need to get patients to write positive reviews and testimonials.
When your practice has positive reviews on Google and several enthusiastic testimonials, you have stronger social proof of your expertise. This makes it easier for strangers to trust you. Collecting the right kind of reviews and inspiring testimonials can be challenging. Here are three ways or three ways you can motivate your patients to leave you great reviews.
Make Patient Visits Memorable
Nobody’s favorite thing in the world is to go to the dentist. If you want to stand out, you need to give your patients a reason to celebrate you. You need to find ways to stand out from the typical dentist’s office.
Some examples of things that you can do that will make your patients happier and more likely to leave your positive reviews include:
- Having free Wi-Fi
- Give patients discounts when you run late
- Setup a patient rewards program that gives prizes to loyal patients
- Run a membership program to allow people to finance their dental treatments even if they don’t have dental insurance
When you provide positive, unexpected experiences, patients are more likely to share those experiences online.
Get More Positive Reviews by Asking for Them
While it may be inappropriate for you as a dentist to directly ask a patient to leave you a review after you have finished placing a crown, your office can ask for a review. People need to be invited to leave good reviews. Otherwise, they will go about their day and forget about their great experience.
Instead of you jeopardizing your relationship with a patient, make an invitation to leave a review as part of the post-appointment literature that you hand out to patients. Your staff can also politely ask patients to leave a review or testimonial during positive patient interactions.
You can also send mailers to carefully screened patients to ask for testimonials.
You need to be careful about how you incentivize leaving reviews because it’s easy to violate terms of service of many different online communities if you appear to be paying for reviews in any way.
But there is nothing wrong with asking patients to leave an honest review.
Make It Easy for Patients to Leave Reviews
The sad truth is angry people will go to a great deal of effort to leave a nasty review. But people who are thrilled or satisfied will only leave a review if it is convenient.
If you want to collect more testimonials or more social proof to show that you are the best dentist in town, you need to make it as easy as possible for people to leave reviews.
One strategy is to have an online form you can link to that allows people to leave a testimonial. You can send the link in an email or a text message. You can even have an office tablet where patients can write a quick review or testimonial.
If you host the reviews on your site, you’ll be able to approve any testimonial before posting it to your website. This gives you the ability to only show the public your best reviews.
If you are trying to build up your Google reviews, then you can provide patients with a direct link to the Google review page as part of your post-appointment procedures.
With reviews posted to third-party sites, you want to only ask patients that you believe had a positive experience.
If you take the time to cultivate a patient-centered practice, ask for reviews, and make it easy for patients to leave reviews, soon you will have more social proof than any other dental practice in your area. This can boost organic search engine ranking for your website. It also makes it much easier for you to attract new patients because they will feel like they understand what to expect when they come to see you.
If you want to turn your excellent patient care to a competitive advantage, you need to set up a process of soliciting testimonials and reviews.
