We don’t need to tell you that everyone checks reviews these days — whether they’re looking for a plastic surgeon or an electrician. For this reason, reviews can influence your potential patients through social proof while also dramatically affecting your bottom line. In fact, a Harvard study found that a 1-star increase in review score increases revenue by 18%.
MD Internet Marketing President Logan Pence, outlines how to use the magic combination of online reviews and social media to boost your revenue and your brand online.
What People Look for in Reviews
When potential patients are moving through the funnel, they start to look at reviews. During this phase they are looking at a combination of factors, including number of reviews, overall star rating, relevancy of reviews and 1-Star Reviews. Yes, many people sort by Highest and then by Lowest to see how the office handles negative issues or if there are any common themes among the negative comments.
For example, let’s say we pull up Google Maps and click on a 1st plastic surgeon listed. What would your impression be if there are no recent reviews and not many reviews overall? Probably something along the lines of…meh, let’s move on. Google only wants to show relevant businesses and will usually push less relevant businesses down the list. What Google and your patients want to see are lots of positive, recent and relevant reviews. (Note: In aesthetics, that means patient reviews that share stories about their experience and mention the actual procedures within the review.
Below are two examples of what Google sees are the most common themes with your reviews.
Which Review Sites Are The Most Impactful for Aesthetics Practices
It’s important to have reviews wherever potential patients are, from healthcare-specific review sites to the general consumer websites. With over 15 years of experience in the aesthetics industry, we see Google as the number one place to focus on getting 5-star reviews. While it’s important to maintain a strong presence on other non-healthcare sites such as Yelp and Facebook, we see the largest ROI coming from Google. In other medical related fields outside of aesthetics or for plastic surgeons that accept insurance, healthcare-specific review sites such as Healthgrades, RateMDs, and Vitals can provide value.
Use Marketing Technology to Acquire Reviews
Marketing technology or Mar-Tech is the system the practice would use to help manage your online reputation. Often these tools include review monitoring, review requests via text or email, reporting and other valuable features to help enhance your online presence. The tool can also help your team focus on popular review sites where you lack reviews — especially positive reviews — regardless of whether the site in question is healthcare specific by choosing which links are used in the request. There are dozens of quality review platforms available today and we highly recommend everyone has one. For example, if you have lots of positive reviews on Google but not on Facebook, your review platform should have the capability to just send out requests for Facebook reviews specifically. While many review platforms lack the ability to focus on healthcare-specific review sites, we use a reputation management platform specializing in the healthcare space.
Choosing a review system that allows your patients to easily share their experiences, while strategically focusing on the review sites that matter most is critical to successful implementation.
Share Your Positive Reviews Everywhere
This is probably the most overlooked strategy that exists in reputation marketing. Everyone wants more and everyone wants to have their 1-star reviews removed but rarely are practices leveraging these 5-star experiences to drive revenue into the practice. Once you have lots of positive, relevant reviews on a variety of surgeries and treatments, it’s time to put them to work for you.
Here is how:
- Post procedure specific reviews on their respect procedure pages
- Create a reviews page on your site and add recent reviews
- Share reviews on social media
- Share reviews in your next e-blast
- Tell your staff to mention the reviews on the phone when speaking with new prospects
When patients make it to your website, you want them to see your reviews, but you also want to capture them and keep them there. We never recommend linking out to other review sites on your procedure pages, as you don’t want them clicking a link to a reviews site where, after reading your reviews, they can also read your competitors’ reviews! By keeping prospective patients on your website, you increase the chances of them making a buying decision then and there.
Facing the world of reputation marketing can be a daunting task, but it can also yield big rewards. Fortunately, the plastic surgery marketing specialists at MD Internet Marketing are here to help. We offer a range of services designed to help plastic surgeons optimize their review strategy and make the most of their marketing efforts.To learn more about reviews or reputation marketing, contact MD Internet Marketing today.