Patient Reviews: Use Them to Your Advantage

When it comes to converting online visitors into patients, one tactic can encourage potential patients take action: online reviews. While publishing reviews might feel like opening a can of worms, benefits outweigh any potential issues. There is no reference better than satisfied patients to recite your success stories.

Sharing happy experiences of your patients on your website, blogs, case studies, social media posts, etc. will prove how you deliver on your promise in the real world. In fact, according to Nielsen, nearly 92 percent of people trust a recommendation from a peer, and 70 percent of people trust a recommendation from someone they do not even know. This means a positive review might bring you what other marketing activities will not.

Get Patients to Review Your Practice Online

Satisfied patients are your biggest brand ambassadors. You could have the best marketing strategies in place, but if you are underutilizing the feedback from your happy patients, you are not optimizing resources at your disposal to drive traffic to your website.

Many practices fuss about handling the one or two negative reviews, but the most efficient way to combat a negative review is to load up on positive ones. This means you will need to encourage your satisfied patients to share their happy experiences. Here are six tips to get you started:

1. Ask patients for encouraging reviews: Positive reviews posted by your happy patients are an efficient way to improve your practice's online reputation. However, be sure not to ask staff members, family and friends to post fake positive reviews.

2. Make the review posting process easy: Patients are more likely to post a review if the process is quick and easy. You must take the necessary steps to reduce the friction and minimize the effort required to post a review. For this to happen, you need to have a robust feedback system that allows you to collect reviews and use the valuable insights seamlessly.

3. Offer incentives: Reviews can make a lot of difference in your practice. So in order to acquire them, go the extra mile and offer something to your patients in return. A free service or a discount coupon can further encourage your patients to post an online review of your practice. If a patent is happy with your service but has not given you a review because of a lack of interest, this technique can do wonders.

4.Send follow-up emails: Make it a habit of sending a follow-up email to patients after they leave your office and request them to share their experience of your service. In addition, in the emails, make sure to include a link to your social media pages giving them the option to provide feedback wherever they want to.

5. Get listed on third-party review sites: Make sure your practice is listed on the major third-party review sites so that patients can easily post their feedback.

6. Deliver excellent service: The most positive reviews are the result of exceptional patient experience. Be kind to your patients, and they will return the favor by posting positive reviews.

Once you get those reviews, how can you leverage patient reviews to promote your medical practice? Here are a few ways.

1. On your website: You can add patient reviews and testimonials on your website. Choose the feedback that talks about the benefits of your services. Ideally, the feedback should explain how precisely the patient benefited from your services. If the review talks about how your service measures up against your competitors, you have hit gold. You have a winning review and it should be placed prominently on your website.

2. On social media: Should you share positive reviews with your followers on social media? Absolutely. Keeping HIPAA guidelines in mind, you must thank the reviewer for providing the feedback. If social media networks such as Facebook and Instagram are relevant to your practice, share the positive reviews with your followers. This will not only help you attract new patients but will also boost your brand image across social channels.

3. In newsletters and emails: You could weave patient testimonials tactfully in the content you write for newsletters. Make sure the patient reviews look like organic plugs. You can send targeted newsletters and emails with relevant reviews that focus on specific treatments or services.

4. In eBooks and marketing materials: Using reviews to influence the opinion of potential leads is one of the best ways to attract more patients to your practice. If you are writing an ebook about your practice and on the services you provide, you will do well by including the voices of your existing patients.

5. As a case study: Case studies are an excellent way to use patient reviews, and they help your practice immensely. Case studies depict how a service assisted a patient in turning his life around. It focuses on one problem that your service helped solve uniquely. Case studies are an effective way to highlight your success.