More businesses are attracting customers using word-of-mouth marketing, and it is proving to be an effective strategy—even for dentists. When patients are looking for new dentists or want to book a dental appointment, their first course of action is to go online and enter a search query on sites like Google. After that, they read the Google reviews of the dental practices that show up on the listings.
As more patients make their decisions this way, more dentists position their dental practice to have the reviews needed to capture prospective patients’ attention. With that in mind, we will highlight ten more reasons you need to prioritize getting more Google reviews as part of your dental marketing strategy.
Why Google Reviews Matter for Dentists
1. Build Trust with Patients
A good review, shared publicly, can go a long way to winning the confidence and trust of prospective patients. Patients often consider other patients’ reviews when making a final decision about their choice of dentists. The more your active patients share their reviews online, the more likely you get more patient leads and book more appointments.
2. Boost Your Brand Awareness
Google reviews are great for improving your dental practice’s online visibility. As more Google reviews are published about your practice, Google algorithm will improve your dental website’s ranking on Google’s search engine result pages (SERPs). This helps keep your practice at the top of searchers’ minds.
3. Improve Organic Search Performance
In addition to improving your website’s ranking and visibility, Google reviews can also boost your organic search performance and traffic. Since more patients can find you online easily, you can expect more traffic to your websites and a better conversion rate for getting new leads.
To keep up with the boost in organic traffic, be sure to have tools like a Live Chat that can keep visitors engaged and get them over the line to book an appointment.
4. Gather Patient Feedback
As more patients share their reviews online, you can learn more about how patients relate to your brand and receive your services. From the reviews, you may be able to learn one or two things that you and your team can improve on. By spotting gaps in your practice management or service delivery, you can discover growth opportunities and take steps to improve your patient satisfaction.
5. Reach Patients When They Are
Let’s face it: more patients are spending time online than any time before. So, if they can find your practice while sifting through online reviews, you can meet them exactly where they are. This can go a long way to improve your patient acquisition rate without increasing marketing costs.
6. Reach Local Patients
In today’s society, more patient value proximity and convenience. Patients would rather book an appointment with a dental practice close by than one that’s miles away. As more active, local patients share their Google reviews—especially those that include references to your community—the higher Google will rank your dental website for local patients searching for local dentists options.
7. Learn More About Patients
In the same way that you can learn more about your dental practice by reading your patients’ Google reviews, you can also learn more about your patients. You can learn what matters to them and how they like to receive your services. You might even get a handle on who your ideal patients are. This way, you can create better targeted dental marketing campaigns.
8. Get User-Generated Content and Social Proof
User-generated content refers to unsolicited promotional materials that are created by customers or, in your case, patients. This content is shared online by patients usually on social media platforms. But they could also be Google reviews written, by your patients, that speak well of your practice. You can take these content/reviews and use them as social proof on your website or as part of a marketing campaign.
9. Stand Out from Competitors
Google reviews can help your practice stand out from the crowd. Remember, patients are surfing the web searching for a good fit, so they will likely spend time reading reviews of different dental practices. The more reviews you have, the better your chances of beating the competition.
Also, be sure to reply to reviews—regardless of whether they are positive or negative. This can help show how engaged you are, how much you appreciate patients’ feedback, and how committed your team is to resolving patients’ concerns. You can learn all about replying to patients’ online reviews here.
10. Book More Appointments
We’ve mentioned this before, but we want to reiterate that Google reviews will get you more appointments. By getting more Google reviews, you can position your dental practice to acquire more patients and book more appointments.
If you want to improve your patient acquisition efforts, you should consider using Connect the Doc’s review tool to gather more reviews and automatically share them on the dental review sites that matter to your prospective patients.
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