Dental Marketing 101: Reputation Marketing for Dental Practices

Brand perception refers to consumers’ thoughts, feelings, opinions, or assumptions when they become aware of your brand or business. A good reputation can go a long way to improve your dental practice’s brand perception. With effective reputation marketing strategies, you can make a great impression on your prospective patients and turn them into active, high-value patients. 

Reputation marketing is a strategy that focuses on developing a positive brand perception to promote your dental practice. It leverages your dental practice’s reputation to build better awareness for your services, engage your patients, and acquire more patient leads. As a result, reputation marketing improves your patient experience, reduces costs, and boosts revenue. 

This article discusses six reputation marketing tips that you can start applying right now. Although reputation marketing also involves traditional press, this article focuses on online reputation marketing strategies and their impact on your dental practice. 

1. Manage your dental practice’s online listings
2. Ask high-value patients to share their reviews
3. Reply to patients’ reviews and feedback 
4. Highlight your dental practice’s policies and values 
5. Manage social comment sections
6. Set Google Alerts

1. Manage your dental practice’s online listings

Google My Business and dental directories, like Healthgrades and ZocDoc, provide dental patients with vital information about dentists and dental practices in their local area. These directories help patients identify their ideal dentists and make informed decisions about their next dental appointment. With a Google My Business profile or listings on dental review sites, dental practices benefit from greater online visibility, web presence, and patient lead generation. 

If you haven’t already claimed your dental practice’s profile on important dental directories, you should do so right away. Ensure your practice’s contact details, hours of operation, and links on these directories are accurate and updated. By keeping your profile updated, you reduce the chance of losing quality leads from these directories. 

2. Ask high-value patients to share their reviews

Your high-value patients are active patients who enjoy your service so much that they will be open to sharing positive reviews about your dental practice. You know them; they are those patients who engage positively with you or your team, make payments on time, and are always happy to book their next appointment. They are your dental practice’s brand ambassadors. 

Consider asking your high-value to share their reviews, feedbacks, or comments about your dental practice on relevant online directories or review sites. Yelp, Healthgrades, ZocDoc, RateMDs are some of the most popular review sites used by dental patients. Use Connect the Doc’s automated review tool to automatically ask these patients to leave their genuine reviews on these sites after their appointments. 

92% of new patients read online reviews when choosing a dentist. Many of these patients may never even visit your dental website; they simply read other patients’ reviews and, right then and there, decide if they are going to contact your dental practice or not. More than anything else, positive reviews are so vital to your practice’s reputation. The more reviews your dental practice, the more patient leads you can secure from dental review sites. 

3. Respond to patients' reviews

While it’s great to have your dental practice’s online reviews published and shared on relevant dental review sites, you have to respond to them. If your practice has hundreds of online reviews, it may sound like a lot of work to respond to them all, and that’s fair. Yet, even a handful of replies can go a long way to convincing prospective patients who read those reviews to book an appointment with you. 

By responding to your online reviews, you can show patients that you sincerely care about their feedback, and you’re willing to work to keep improving yourself and your services. More so, it makes other patients feel more comfortable about sharing their reviews and feedback. A show of gratitude on positive reviews is all it takes for more patients to feel a bit more connected to your practice.

For negative reviews, there are few things to consider. Firstly and most importantly, make sure your response complies with HIPAA regulations. Analyze the review and if there’s any fault on your part, take responsibility and, if possible, be quick to offer a solution. If it is a case of miscommunication, misunderstanding, or a patient who’s being difficult, respond in a way that tells them you appreciate their feedback and offer to look further into the issues. Consider redirecting them to your dental practice’s policies or ask them to call your practice to continue the conversation and resolve the situation. If the review is abusive, fake, or spam, do not hesitate to flag and report it.  

4. Highlight your dental practice’s policies on your website 

Your dental practice’s policies are values and standards that govern your practice’s operations, responsibilities, and management. Ideally, your practice’s policies should include details about your patients’ rights and responsibility, confidentiality statements, safety and quality assurance procedures, mode of operations, and any other information that guides interactions between you, your team, and patients. Consider sharing your policies publicly on your dental website. This way, patients can learn more about practice when they visit your website and when necessary, you can always refer patients back to your policies. 

5. Manage social media comment sections

If your dental practice has a social media presence, you should assign a team member to monitor and regulate your comment sections. Your practice’s social media pages should be a safe space for current and prospective patients to engage with your practice and with each other. Flag, report, or delete comments that are abusive, fake, or spam. If patients share their reviews, feedback, or concerns in your comment sections, be sure to address them and use that opportunity to build your positive patient engagement and experience.

6. Set Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a free Google service that notifies you when a predetermined keyword is recently mentioned on a web page, online article, or new scientific research. With Google Alerts, you can monitor the use of your dental practice’s name online. By doing this, you can track how internet users perceive your practice’s brand and use that information to know how to build better reputation marketing strategies. You can also use Google Alerts to stay on top of other topics relevant to you or your patients.
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By applying these reputation marketing tips, you can be well on your way to improving your practice’s reputation and brand perception, increasing your patient leads, acquiring more patients, and boosting your revenue. A good reputation positions you and your team for success as you work to meet your dental marketing goals.

With an extensive array of dental marketing tools and expertise, Connect the Doc’s marketing specialist can support you along the way and guide you to improve your practice’s reputation and acquire more patients. Contact us today to get started.