How to Boost Your Online Reputation

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Boost Your Online Reputation

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How to Boost Your Online Reputation

Build Your Foundation: Your Practice

To improve your online reputation, you first need a solid foundation – both in-practice and online – otherwise many people who’d otherwise leave you positive reviews either won’t bother or will leave negative ones that will undermine all the work you’re doing..

In-practice a solid foundation is about getting “the basics:” right

A clean, attractive environment
Friendly staff
Clear policies and processes that are implemented
Great communication between staff and with patients
Great treatment results
A pleasant patient experience

Build Your Foundation: Online

Online a solid foundation means:

A nicely-designed website with all the basics covered (details of treatments, staff profiles, reviews, etc)

Up-to-date social media profiles (updated every few days minimum) with messages checked and replied to at least daily

A good overall rating on Google + positive reviews (with poor or no reviews, people will simply skip to your competition)

Once those things are in place, you’re ready start marketing to bring in new patients!

Improve Your Positioning: Trust

In order to ensure people feel compelled to leave positive reviews for you, you’ll need to cultivate connection and trust. Trust factors obviously enhance your overall reputation, too.

We’ll deal with likeability in the next section so, just how do you get people to trust you?

There are a large number of things you can do (including getting lots of reviews) so work through the list below and try to tick as many boxes as possible:

Get video testimonials, detail patient journeys and show plenty of Before and After pictures to help new patients see the kinds of results you can deliver and what they can expect.

Anything that positions you as an expert or thought leader is good: so blog posts, interviews and videos work extremely well.

Just the fact that you’ve been asked to do an interview is a major indicator that you are a trusted expert, so let the world know that you’re being interviewed by the local radio station, newspaper, etc.

If you or your staff complete any kind of training, let people know about it.

Even better, if you teach something, put up pictures on your website and social media showing that. For example, we had a client who taught dental implant techniques and so used several pictures from the class on social media (if you’re seen teaching other dental professionals how to place implants, then you must be pretty good at them, right?)

Other trust factors include:

Years of experience

Level of expertise (Platinum Provider, etc)

Speaking engagements – schools, professional organisations, etc

Awards

Membership of treatment-specific groups/professional organisations

Product logos (Straumann, etc)

Equipment (iTero scanner, etc)

Reviews by patients

Reviews by peers (no-one does this)

Payment processing (Visa, Mastercard, financing options)

Have a think what trust factors you can use for your practice and then add them to your website and marketing materials.

Improve Your Positioning: Likeability

As dental professionals, you know that most people don’t love visiting the dentist or having treatment. Many people are nervous, scared or just plain terrified.

This means that it’s really important to allay any fears that prospective patients may have ahead of time or risk them not booking in the first place, or going with a competitor who comes across as friendlier and more approachable than you.

What we’re looking to do is cultivate a sense that patients will be looked after well by a friendly team who will put them at ease and make sure their treatment is professional and painless. Doing so will go a long way to enhancing your overall online reputation.

In just the same way that you need to focus some of your marketing on building trust (so patients believe that you are the best dentist for the job) you also need to spend some time building likeability.

So, how do you do that?

The best way is to give people a “peek behind the curtain” and to show the character and friendliness of you and the rest of the team.

On a website you can do this by adding staff profiles with some personal details (favourite holiday destination/food/film, etc) + plenty of pictures of happy, smiling staff members and the team as a whole. Having a little knowledge about what you and the rest of the team are like makes it easy for people to imagine feeling welcome at the practice and to start up conversations and connect when they actually come in for their first appointment.

On social media you can post pictures with patients, the odd daft moment between appointments, gifts, comments and reviews from patients, etc, etc. These all show that you’re fun and friendly, and if you can find ways to show that your patients like and trust you, prospective patients will be more disposed to as well.

The pictures and content you post on social media can also go into your practice newsletter (people like to consume content in different formats and on their favourite channels so it makes sense to “re-purpose” your images and news like this.)

Talking head videos are probably the best way to get prospective patients thinking on a subsconscious level that yes, they’d get on with you and can imagine being treated at your practice.

This is because video ticks so many boxes. When you make a video to give advice about a particular issue or treatment, you’re positioning yourself as an authority (trust) while also being helpful in advance (care) and – hopefully! – coming across as a friendly and approachable professional.

Building trust and likeability are 2 things few dentists bother to do on a conscious level. But it’s this kind of attention to detail that makes the difference between a practice that just does OK and one that thrives.

Get More Reviews

Which of these dentists would you check first?

The dental practice with the highest overall rating and the most reviews will attract the most initial attention.

These days, 3/4 of people say they trust online reviews as much as they do recommendations from friends and read an average of 10 reviews. If they’re looking for a particular treatment like Invisalign, they’ll search for treatment-specific reviews, too.

Basically, you want to get as many high star-reviews as you can, for as many treatments and services as you can, and to keep them up-to-date (no-one cares how you were doing a year ago).

Some people consider Google reviews to be easily-manipulated, so make sure you get reviews on a number of sites (Facebook, Yell, NHS Choices, etc) to confirm that your high rating is legit.

You can use our complimentary reviews system to ramp up your reviews and keep them up-to-date on any review site if you sign up on Richard’s free blog/emagazine/membership site: Dental Practice Growth.

If you’re looking for something a bit more powerful, check out our automated Premium Reviews System here.

Showcase Your Reputation: Local SEO

If people can’t find you, they won’t see the reputation you’ve worked so hard to build. Now you’ve got your foundation and reviews sorted, it’s time to make sure people can find out all about you.

The most effective and affordable way to bring in a steady stream of new patients is by getting featured in the “maps” section on page 1 of Google.

This process is typically referred to as “local SEO” and you can do this by getting your Google My Business (GMB) profile optimised.

Once you’re in the GMB “3-Pack (so-called because only 3 businesses are profiled) you’ll typically appear on page 1 for every treatment and service you offer (this is why we recommend this option first).

Ranking in the GMB results is quite fast, taking between a few days to a few months depending on competition levels and how well optimised your profile is to start with.

Local SEO/Google My Business profile optimisation is one of our main areas of expertise so if you have any questions or would like to know more, please get in touch.

Showcase Your Reputation: Website SEO

After Local SEO/Google My Business/Maps ranking, the next thing we recommend to ensure people have a good impression of your practice is simply to be at the top of Google (top as in #1!)

Why? Because many (most?) people associate the #1 site with quality and some people still believe that Google ranks the best businesses at the top.

The number one position on Google actually gets more traffic than both the #2 and #3 spots combined, and 13.5 times more than the #10 result, too, so being at the top certainly won’t hurt the number of new patient enquiries you bring in.

Of course, your website is a great place to showcase your reputation.

You can create a “wall of love” page on your site where all your top reviews are displayed (this is part of our Premium Reviews Service) and you can even embed them on your homepage like this:

Showcase Your Reputation: Video

Once you’ve got lots of great videos, why not put them into video form to showcase your testimonials and create an impression of outstanding clinical results and customer service?

Videos are easily the most-consumed type of content on the internet (largely due to the fact that people are lazy and would rather watch something than read!)

Testimonial video creation is easy: you can simply create a slideshow of reviews and images/music or we can create them for you using our video creation service.

Video interviews are also a great way to educate prospective and current patients, answer their questions and position you in the positive light of “expert.”

Once created, videos are extremely shareable and can be easily uploaded to YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter – making sure even more people see both your 5-star reputation and expertise!

Finally, your videos can be SEO-ed to ensure they’re prominent on Google and/or YouTube. They can also be added to your website and social media.

There’s nothing that will position you the same way as video.

Showcase Your Reputation: Social Media

Social media is a great way to showcase your reviews and make sure they reach a wider audience.

With our social media service, we’ll take your reviews and turn them into attractive posts like this:

We offer a service where we’ll post to your Facebook, Instagram and Twitter pages every other day for an extremely affordable price. Please get in touch if you’d like to know more.

Need more help?

If you’re looking for more information on any of the marketing techniques mentioned on this page (or any others!) or would like to learn how you can get these working for your practice, please get in touch using the form below: