12+ Reasons Your Practice Online Reputation May Be At Risk
Is your online reputation putting your practice at risk?
Managing your reputation used to be simple. You provided top notch patient care and word spread in your community. You built your reputation with professional, quality care and satisfied patients. Today, with more communication happening online than offline, that’s not enough.
Whether you like it or not, you now have two personalities or brands to maintain; the real life personality that your office staff, patients and community sees AND your digital personality or brand.
That’s right, when people search for a medical practice online, they don’t see the smiles of satisfaction of the patients that leave your office. They see your practice stacked up against your competition and, more and more frequently, will decide whether or not to call for an appointment based on what they see online.
Here are 12 ways you may be putting your medical practice at risk:
Ignoring your online reviews.
99% of your patients may love you and your team. But in today’s review economy, if you don’t have great reviews online, potential patients will view you with suspicion and look elsewhere to get their medical needs met.
Having only a small handful of reviews.
Most medical practices see at least a 20-30 patients a week. When a prospective patient sees only 3 or 4 patient reviews listed for your practice, it makes them question your credibility.
Featuring outdated patient reviews.
If you only have reviews from years ago on the social media review sites or on your website, it makes patients wonder if your reputation has gone south and sends them to your competition.
Trying to get reviews manually.
Asking for reviews should be easy but most practice owners find asking for reviews awkward and distracting from patient care. Its essential to automate the process.
Giving up on patient reviews too easily.
Ask 10 patients for an online review and yes, it’d be like Christmas all over again if you got 10 glowing reviews. You aren’t likely to get 100% of your patients to respond. But if you have an automated way to ask every patient you saw last week for a review, within a month you could easily have 12 to 20 reviews.
Worrying about getting a negative patient review.
Even the best medical practices have an unhappy patient from time to time. The key is to have a system which sends you their feedback so you can address their issue before it gets posted on a popular social media site and becomes a permanent part of your online reputation.
Not giving your patients a voice to give their thanks.
When you ask a satisfied patient for feedback, you are doing them a favor. Seriously — when you help a patient return to good health and improve their life, they want a way to let you and other people know. Asking for a review gives them a way to do this. Also, spelling out what they like about your practice increases their loyalty to you.
Underestimating the power of a positive review.
Establishing trust and credibility is the first step to attracting patients. When prospective patients see a positive review, they are much more likely to call. Practices using our Online Review Builder report getting 2 to 3 more new patients per week. That’s 100 to 150 new patients per year!
Missing out on the infectiousness of reviews.
When you have a steady stream of positive patient reviews and ask a patient to add their review, what happens? The positive tone of the reviews is infectious. Patients are more likely to add another great review, helping you stand out as the go-to medical practice in your town.
Losing ground in the search engines.
The more often the search engines find your practice mentioned, the more likely they are to give it a higher ranking, making it easier for patients to find you. Ignore patient reviews and you’re committing SEO suicide.
Procrastinating when your reputation is at risk.
It’s easy to put aside the decision about which reputation management software to get. After all, you’ve got patients to see (at least for now). Procrastinating is a HUGE mistake, unless all your competitors are hiding under a rock. If they’re as smart as the average practitioner, they’re moving forward, collecting reviews, and strengthening their digital brand. Don’t get left behind.
Not making your online reputation a TOP priority.
You get it that your reputation is what drives patients to your door and keeps them coming back, right? Then you’ll understand the importance of building and maintaining your online reputation, too, given that’s how more and more patients are finding you.
And one more!
Missing out on positive feedback for your team.
This won’t bring you in new patients, but it’s huge. Everyone likes getting positive patient reviews. A steady stream of positive feedback will re-energize your staff and motivate them to provide even better patient care. Try it! You’ll be amazed.
What’s the best way to begin improving or building your online reputation with patient reviews? Discover the top rated Online Patient Review Software here.
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