Why Is Dental Reputation Management So Important?

Not so long ago, dental reputation management wasn’t a huge concern. You could rely upon your happy customers and the word of mouth (no pun intended), and that was enough to keep new patients rolling in through the door. 

Things have changed with the popularity of social media and third-party review sites. Today, your dental practice is under the spotlight all the time. Just one unhappy customer writing snarky comments on social media could negate the years you sunk into making customers happy in an instant. 

In such a world, proactive dental reputation management is a must.

Here are the basics you need to know.

What is reputation management and why is it essential?

Dental reputation management is the process of monitoring and controlling the online reputation of your dental practice. If done correctly, a potential patient searching for your business online will see overwhelmingly positive content.

Nowadays, the internet has become a tool that many customers use to evaluate a medical provider. According to statistics, 84% of patients use online reviews while choosing a physician. Almost the same percentage of people revealed they trust online reviews.

Information presented online has a significant impact on the real world. Without dental reputation management, you risk not only losing your patients to your competitors but also risk losing your credibility.

You’re probably wondering why that happens.

To quote the Man in Black himself - the bad news travels like wildfire.

Having just a few negative reviews can quickly turn away new customers. To avoid this, you should put actual effort into dental reputation management, which will help you keep your reputation spotless and offset any negative reviews.

Surprising benefits of managing your online reputation

While dental reputation management is necessary to avoid any credibility fiascos, it also has a few surprising benefits, such as:

1. Improved search engine rankings

There are a lot of factors the Google algorithm takes into account when ranking websites. One of those is reviews. However, this isn’t limited to reviews on your Google Business Profile listing alone as third party websites such as Yelp and HealthGrades also play a role in how well your website ranks.

On top of that, the fresher the reviews, the better the ranking. When you combine that with the fact recent reviews are usually at the top, a big part of your dental reputation management effort should be generating a constant stream of positive reviews (we will get to that later).

2. Standing out from the crowd

There are many dentists out there, and the most successful ones are already leveraging SEO strategies and PPC advertising to improve their ranking. Naturally, you should be doing these too.

Reputation management SEO and PPC might be that secret sauce you can leverage to stand out from your competition through a boost in rankings from all the new reviews.

3. Improving your services

By keeping a close eye on your online reputation and paying more attention to reviews, you might be able to see if there are any common complaints in the reviews. 

For example, even if your reviews are overwhelmingly positive, they might still contain carefully disguised criticism. For instance, a customer might be happy, but they’ll also mention long wait times or inappropriate behavior from the staff.

This information is invaluable as it gives you a better idea of where you can improve. 

Who knows, maybe you’ll even discover new business opportunities. For example, you might spot a few reviews where customers complained that you don’t offer dental air abrasion. If that’s the case, you’ll know which new services your customers are most likely to appreciate.

The basics of dental reputation management

You shouldn’t wait until a crisis happens to start managing your reputation. A proactive approach is always going to win in the end. 

If you have no idea where to start, we suggest taking a step back and analyzing the current situation. Put yourself in the shoes of your potential patients and search for your practice online. This way, you can get an idea of what your customers see when they first land on your website or your business listing.

Factor in everything, including:

1. Are negative views visible?

2. When was the last time you received a positive review?

3. Have all your loyal patients left reviews?

4. How many reviews did you respond to?

Rolling in a lot of positive feedback also has the potential to bury any negative reviews you might have had in the past. Thus, one of the core principles of reputation management is generating new reviews. The question is how you’re going to accomplish this.

This involves making it as easy as possible for satisfied customers to leave feedback. For instance, you could generate a link that takes patients directly to the review section of your Google Business Profile.

A major problem with reviews is that unsatisfied customers are more motivated to leave a review than a patient happy with your service.

We suggest sending a text or an email containing the review link on the same day you performed dental work on a patient. By doing this, you can capitalize on the fact that their satisfaction is at a peak level, thus ensuring they don’t forget to show their appreciation online.

You should dedicate more time to negative reviews for obvious reasons. 

While review templates are fine, we suggest you personalize each response when dealing with negative criticism.

First and foremost, keep your cool when responding. Validate your patient’s experience, tell them you plan on addressing the issue, apologize, and offer additional contact information so they can get in touch and resolve the issue offline.

Remember to respond right away, as most customers expect a quick response. 

A spotless reputation can grow your practice

Implementing some of these strategies can have a positive impact on your business. While you probably won't be able to see the impact of dental reputation management right away, in time, the benefits will be easy to quantify (usually when you start having more patients on average).

Keep in mind that this is an ongoing effort, and depending on the size of your practice, you might have to do it every day.

While doing dental management reputation manually is possible, it might not be feasible. 

Thankfully, you can automate this entire process with ReviewArm, a reputation management platform. By using ReviewArm, the entire dental reputation management process is simplified.

For instance, you will receive a notification each time a customer posts a review. You can then use our dashboard to reply to those reviews on multiple third-party review sites. 

More importantly, you can use ReviewArm to generate new reviews. You can send out review requests automatically, or send them all out in bulk.

Fill out our contact form to sign up and receive automation features that make the process of dental reputation management easy.