5 Orthodontic Marketing Strategies to Scale Your Practice

5 Orthodontic Marketing Strategies to Scale Your Practice

by | Dec 28, 2021 | Dental Marketing Agency

Marketing strategies for your orthodontic practice must change as you move from thinking like a single-doctor practice to a multi-doctor office. The nature of the patient population, referral base, and expectations as well as the duties of key employees all shift as the number of providers increases. As an orthodontist thinking about growing your practice, here are five strategies you can use to transform your current marketing efforts into a successful strategy for growth.

1. Set up Marketing Automation Systems

Marketing automation is critical because it allows your practice to scale effectively without requiring an army of employees dedicated to managing marketing campaigns. Marketing automation allows you to manage multiple customer touchpoints, including email, text messages, and social media posts.

2. Keep Your Brand Consistent across Channels

The key to scaling your marketing efforts is to build a system that allows you to manage all of your touchpoints, including emails and social media posts. Your branding should be consistent across all channels so customers can easily identify when they are interacting with your business. Whether it’s your imagery, call to action, or tone of voice, consistency in your branding allows you to scale your reach with ease.

3. Invest in Online Reviews

Orthodontists who are thinking about growth need to treat their practice like a startup company by continually seeking new ways to lower cost-per-acquisition. Online reviews are a critical part of a successful marketing campaign because they’re directly influencing how patients find and choose their orthodontists. Make an investment in technology that allows you to collect, track, and respond to online reviews across multiple review sites. This is especially important for Google business pages which are often the most influential when it comes to online reviews.

4. Create an orthodontic blog on your practice’s website

Blogging is a great way to establish yourself as an expert in your field. By sharing industry trends and advice, you’ll show visitors that your practice is cutting edge and up to date with the latest orthodontic innovations.

Video blogs (vlogs) are another powerful tool for expanding reach because they allow patients from your local area to easily access information about your practice, orthodontic care, and treatment options. Videos are particularly useful for showing cases of difficult orthodontic problems that you’ve corrected.

5. Invest in pay-per-click ads

Paid search is one of the most cost-effective ways to drive local traffic to your practice’s website. Whether you’re targeting people searching for orthodontists within a five or 50-mile radius, pay-per-click ads are an excellent way to expand reach and build awareness of your practice.

If you’re thinking about scaling your orthodontic practice, it’s critical that you have a strong marketing strategy in place. The 5 strategies we’ve outlined can help you set up an effective system for growth and success. If all of this sounds intimidating and you want to learn more, reach out today so our team can partner with you through the entire process from branding to content creation.

Facebook Ads for Dentists: A Guide to Getting More Leads and Patients

Facebook Ads for Dentists: A Guide to Getting More Leads and Patients

by | Dec 20, 2021 | Dental Marketing Companies

Finding creative ways to get people’s attention online is a challenging yet necessary goal for a dental office owner. However, advertising on Facebook makes it easier to learn who your target customer groups are online. Facebook can also improve your conversion rate by turning ad viewers into paying patients.

There were about 2.85 billion active monthly Facebook users as of the first quarter of 2021. With so many users online, small businesses have plenty of opportunities to promote brand awareness through this social media platform.

Understanding how to leverage Facebook ads and the various ad formats will help you put your business in front of those who are more inclined to purchase your products and services. Consult the brief guide below to create business Facebook ads and boost your advertising efforts.

Why Dental Practice Owners Need Facebook Advertising

Facebook ads can be an incredible addition to any promotional strategy if you understand how to use them. They provide business owners with the ability to target people based on interests and keywords. Instead of broadcasting ads to everyone, the target advertisements will go to a specific audience.

Another reason why Facebook ads work for dentists is their low cost. Some paid advertisements can be costly, but Facebook keeps its rates relatively low. As a result, business owners can experiment with targeted ads to discover what works and what doesn’t without incurring high expenses.

How To Create a Facebook Lead Advertisement

The best Facebook ads are lead ads. Not only do they encourage potential patients to take some form of action, such as scheduling an appointment, but the ads also request information from people about themselves. 

With the information patients provide, your company will have valuable insights about the type of people who are part of your targeted audience and most likely to convert into dental leads. Learn how to make a Facebook lead ad below.

1: Create a Facebook Business Page

The first step is to create an attractive Facebook business page for your dental office. After filling the page with relevant information about your business, select the “Promote” button at the top of the page.

The next screen will have options for possible goals, such as boosting a post or getting more calls. Select “Get More Leads.”

2: Make a Contact Form

By selecting “Get More Leads,” your next screen will be a contact form. Facebook automatically generates forms with fields for “form name,” but you can customize the text to add a headline and form description.

The customized text provides an excellent opportunity for businesses to remind users of the benefits they gain by completing the form.

After you complete those fields, you can select the type of customer information you want to collect, like their phone number, email address, and additional contact information. You can also add questions for potential patients to answer or ask if they have an idea they would like to share.

3: Format the Promotion

Once the forms are to your liking, you will need to format the lead ad’s appearance to determine how it will look on people’s news feed. During this stage, you’ll add a promotion description, headline, and image or video. You can also choose a call-to-action by clicking on the “Button label” and picking an option from the drop-down menu.

Choose your words and images carefully for this step. You only have seconds to wow people with your ad and get them to click on it. You want to persuade the audience to engage with your business, so be sure to offer a special discount or coupon for providing their information.

4: Determine Your Ad’s Target Audience

When the lead promotion is perfect, you can tell Facebook who you want it to target. The platform will have existing audiences, but you can create new groups if you like.

5: Select Final Touches

When everything is in place, you will select your budget and determine how many days you want the promotion to run. The site will spread your total budget amount across the course of the promotion.

Tips for Improving Facebook Marketing Efforts

Develop a Content Strategy

Developing lead promotions on Facebook for your dental practice is relatively simple, but their success relies on the quality of your content. Content marketing is a way to use quality content to drive conversion rates online. Most small business owners are not proficient in creating top-tier content, but no one must be an expert to implement a basic marketing strategy.

Examples of content include a blog post, social media post, video, report, podcast, etc. They provide valuable information about a topic and contain details about the brand via FAQ pages, webinars, About Us pages, and testimonials.

When a person reads or views a post and learns about the brand, they will see a call-to-action message. The better the content, the more inclined they are to contact the business or make a purchase.

One effective way to maximize content marketing is to create multiple Facebook campaigns with varying goals and audiences. Having a content calendar with specific days to promote specific ads will ensure that your Facebook page has a steady flow of ads and content. 

Learn Who the Appropriate Audience Is

If a post or promotion receives a respectable amount of likes and comments but struggles with conversions, the lead ad probably doesn’t target the right audience. In the end, it’s ad revenue that indicates a successful conversion.

Consider further testing for your Facebook ad copy and its visuals to ensure that it speaks directly to the groups you want to reach. For instance, your promotion may focus more on a specific income that excludes people who would purchase your services. Gain inspiration for your targeted advertisements by gaining insight from your ideal customer’s demographics, interests, relationships, past events, and behaviors.

Use Facebook Marketing to Improve Your Leads

A Facebook promotion is an excellent business tool to increase conversions from your business’s social media page. Despite the ease with which users can create and post advertisements, it takes time to master the best practices for Facebook ads.

Our team are experts in helping dentists gain online visibility and increase patient conversations. We are happy to help you achieve your business goals, so please reach out to our team today using our contact us page.

 

 

 

How Dental Offices Should Write Content That Drives Results

How Dental Offices Should Write Content That Drives Results

by | Nov 12, 2021 | Dental Marketing Agency

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In this training, dental marketing expert, Chris Pistorius will talk about the importance of posting quality content to your Google My Business page. Chris will get into the details of what to and not do when it comes to writing content for your dental practice.

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Hey everybody, how are you tonight? Thanks for tuning in or watching the recording of this. Um anybody watching live looks like we’ve got a few folks uh pulling into the podcast right now, please let me know of any questions. We’ve got a chat feature here that uh that you can ask questions as we go through this. Um may be more than happy to either ask them or answer them live here or I’ll be sure to post them on linkedin facebook everywhere that we’re going to post this with the answers there as well.

So today I want to talk about dental practices and writing content. Usually those two things don’t go hand in hand. Um It’s something that’s a big part of our strategy here at kickstart dental marketing to get dental practices Great. S. E. O. Results. Uh Great. It’s great to build authority that way. Um content is king and you’ve just got to really, you know, bear down and write good quality content that your people, your clients or your patients and your potential new patients are gonna want to see.

So what I want to do tonight is just talk a little bit about how to write google my business posts that drive results using a google. My business profile is actually one of the most effective ways I think to gain exposure for your dental practice and improve your SEO rankings. Google my business. If you don’t know, it already is a free marketing tool. It doesn’t cost anything to sign up. It’s a great tool to capture the attention of potential patients as they are actively using google search and maps to find their next dentist.

So while most, it’s really known for giving businesses visibility on google maps and sharing customer reviews. But your google my business profile really has way more to offer than that and that’s what I want to get into. One of the most useful features that a lot of people don’t even know about. Our google. My business posts. Um Google my business posts allow you to share information about your practice, your services, your products, events offers. It’s located below your knowledge panel on your G. M. B. Profile and these posts offer room for detailed information about your practice and they do reach a pretty broad audience.

So what exactly is a google my business post, Google My business post is a type of social media update that can be published on your google my business profile. Google my business posts allow you to connect with your audience when they’re online, including the business hours, you’re open details about your practice, any events offers and more so kind of think of it as the facebook for google if you will. So when you do this right and when optimized your google my business profile shows up very highly in search and maps.

Um and by regularly creating quality and I do mean quality, google my business posts can really help you with your rankings on google posts can be used to tell patients about Events offers and specials announcements. A lot of other stuff too. But here are just a few tips that I think will help in best practices to help you write an effective google my business post that will drive results. It’s what we do here all the time. So it’s the same strategy that we’re using now. Um um Number one in the five steps to creating a great google.

My business post would be picked your post type first of all, google. My business provides several different post options here to use depending on what you’re trying to accomplish and the message that you want to get along. You know it’s really about you know your focus and your messaging um that you want to share, selecting the right type of posts on google. My business can really make your content more effective. Um one ways offer posts an offer post is a perfect for providing like a limited time deal at your dental office.

You can include a headline description. Uh Start and end date. And what’s cool is that these posts are only shown during the time that your offer is available. Another type is update posts. We use this quite a bit. It’s when you have news about your practice like new products, new services, a new doctor, maybe you’re expanding. Maybe you have a new website and you can use this type of post. This is a great way to keep patients informed about the latest updates to your dental practice event posts.

Unlike update post event posts um allow you to um if you have a special event like for instance one of our practices has a has a raffle. They do every month and they give something away. Right? So something like that. These posts can include a date range or times of day and they’ll stay live during that range product posts. Um So when you want to feature physical products that you have think toothbrushes Invisalign um sleep appliances you know anything like that. You know this is the post type to use.

You can include details like product names, description, price and a call to action which is very important. Um I think with any of these choosing the right photos and videos. Really helped to photos and videos are a great way to make your post more compelling. When you create a G. M. B. Post always include a photo or a video repeat after me. Always include a photo or a video. The posts you create need to attract engagement and photos, videos. And clear calls to action are really the foundations of a great post. Now.

The photo or video you upload with your new google. My business post should be authentic to your practice. So I don’t like stock photos here. Um Any image you should be visually appealing, engaging and represent your practice. Well if possible avoid having text over your photos particularly as images get cropped differently for desktop and mobile devices. Um you know, at the end of the day people buy from people even in dentistry, so don’t use those stock images. You know, it’s so easy nowadays with your iphone or android to do a quick picture, a quick video, it doesn’t have to be professional.

Um it just has to be authentic. I think that’s what people really want the most. So um let’s talk a little bit about picking a keyword driven title for your post. So keep your post title concise and include a keyword you want to target when you write a post if you’re not sure what keywords your audience would use to find your business. Check out the google. Keyword planner is a free tool um and allows you to get suggestions of keywords. Um you know, google my business posts can potentially influence your SEO ranking factors.

We find that it’s a huge factor in getting our clients to rank highly on google. So it’s smart to really create clear search engine friendly titles. Um also choosing the right call to action here or C. T. A. Um C. T. A. Is is an important part of this and you know we’re not selling used cars here so you don’t want to go overboard with a call to action like that’s not all or you know by now, you know, that’s that’s not really where we want to go with this where we want to go or are things like you know, learn more sign up call now, things like that are really more appropriate for dental, use a link in your post to you can use a link that relates to your google my business post.

The more specific a landing page you can use the better for example you could use the button, learn more and then send users to a landing page perhaps on your website that’s specific to the event when you’re promoting events. Now you also with google my business post, you want to consider the whole desktop versus mobile thing. So your google my business post will look different on a mobile device and then they will on your computer obviously. Um so while your post can include upwards of 1500 characters, it’s often recommended to keep them below 500.

That’s what we typically do. The entire content of a post is then visible on desktop devices but then it gets, the text gets truncated a bit on a mobile device. As a result, you’ll want to keep the most important information at the start of your post. So it doesn’t get cut off on mobile on the mobile view. Keep in mind that hashtags if you’re into social media that you use on social media won’t be relevant on google my business. Um They don’t impact your SEO or search rankings.

So it’s really best just not to use them at all. And don’t get rejected. Everybody hates getting rejected, right? So to avoid your G. M. B. Post being rejected follow google’s guidelines for G. M. B posts. They have a lot of rules for her starters don’t include your email address or your phone number in your post. Those are already listed in your google my business listing. And when you create a post to see to your call to action button will link to your website already. So there’s no need to include your website in the U. R. L. U. R. L. In the post.

So steer clear of using all caps too. I hate that. Don’t scream at people write some words may also be deemed offensive. So use your best judgment here. Don’t post anything. You know, that’s going to get you in trouble or talk badly about local competition. We don’t want to go down that that road. Um, and lastly, just like I talked about, don’t use stock images. Don’t don’t use stock photography. Google. My business posts are really meant to highlight your practice, use photos of your team, your office, you know, happy patients or even an image of yourself customers, patients love getting to know the the owner of a practice, the doctor, right?

And this is a great tool to do this, especially with video added benefits. Um, you know, your business profile has a variety of features, including a Q and a section. You may not have known that. And what’s cool is that google’s machine learning can actually try to use some of the content from your posts to answer questions in your google my business knowledge panel. I know that sounds a little robotic, but it’s true posts you create on your GMB listing also help potential patients see that you’re an active and engaged practice alongside positive reviews.

When people utilize google search and maps to find practices like yours, your posts on google. My business will help you stand out from the rest of the competition. It’s all about being different, right? That’s what marketing, a lot of it is about and finding what’s unique to you. So when you can do anything like this to stand out from everybody else, why not do it? So having such amazing visibility in both google search and google maps is a huge win for dental practices. I’ve seen it day after day, the impact that this can have on a practice and really this free marketing tool Gmb is an incredible for practice, is looking to improve their SCL rankings in search.

So you know, contact our team if you’re not sure how to create a post or what to post about. Um or if you just don’t want to deal with this. I totally understand it. We have extensive experience in optimizing google, my business accounts in dentistry and we can definitely develop a great strategy for consistent patient driving posts and other type of content. The best way to start this process if you do want to speak with us is just go to our website, kickstart dental dot com. Uh, there’s a button there there hopefully is for free strategy session that would be directly with me.

I do all of our initial strategy sessions and I’m definitely talk about google my business, google my business posts and your market, your competition and what we think it would take to get you to the next level. So, um, I hope you enjoyed this. I hope it helped out a little bit. Um, hit me with any questions in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer very quickly. Thanks and we’ll talk to you soon.

SEO For Dentists – The Checklist

SEO For Dentists – The Checklist

by | Sep 8, 2021 | Dental SEO

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Chris Pistorius talks about the importance of SEO for a dental practice. Chris provides some great tips for dental practices that want to rank highly on Google and other influential search engines.

View Full Transcript

Creating a Local SEO Checklist

Do you have a dental practice with a great website but still struggle with bringing in local and organic traffic? Local businesses and national ones alike depend on good search engine rankings to thrive, and a sound checklist can help achieve that. To that end, our team recommends working with an expert to create and execute a local on-page SEO checklist for your website and business. 

Are you wondering why dentists need SEO? When you optimize your website for dental SEO, you may notice more significant search engine traffic, higher sales, more leads, and even overall business growth. Keep reading to learn more about building an SEO strategy. 

What Is dental SEO marketing?

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, revolves around making your website as appealing as possible for both your patients and different search engines. The goal is to have your audience find your site easily through a Google or Bing search, a listing on Google My Business, and other locations on the web. 

It’s imperative for today’s business owners to learn about SEO and how to make the most of today’s SEO tools. If you want to know how to do dental SEO, the following are some of the most common on-page SEO basics you should know about as you work to optimize your website. 

Internal links are links to other pages on your own website. Not only do these links help the search crawlers recognize the validity of your site, but they help customers navigate between web pages as well.

Meta descriptions, or meta tags, are short descriptions that Google and other search engines show on results pages. These descriptions give your website visitors a brief look at the services you provide before they even visit your site. 

Search engine spiders or crawlers are small “robots” that engines use to evaluate and inspect different websites. The search engines index different pages with these spiders, using algorithms to help provide you with more accurate search outcomes. 

Exterior links are links on your website that connect to other sites. Link building with external links to high-quality sites can help boost your ranking factor, as well as increase customers’ trust in your site. 

The title tag is what your customers first see when they search for your site online. Title tags are short-and-sweet descriptions of your business that appear above the meta description. 

The Keyword Research Checklist for Search Engines

If you’ve ever dabbled in SEO before, you’re probably familiar with keywords already. However, SEO efforts neither start nor end with keywords and optimizing your website goes far beyond simply incorporating your target keyword a few times. If you want to improve your website’s SEO, you should add the following terms to your complete checklist.

Long-tail keywords are a different type of keyword that changes how people find your site. While they are a bit more challenging to learn and use, the payoff can be significant if you utilize them correctly. 

Keyword difficulty has to do with how hard it is to rank on a search with a given keyword. When customers search Google for a primary keyword with a very high monthly search volume, for example, your site may rank very low. However, it may be much easier to rank for a related keyword with a more manageable search volume. 

Target keywords and related keywords are the meat of your keyword strategy: they are what your prospective customers will search for as they look for your site. 

Consider using a keyword research tool to help identify the keywords that can help your website rank better, such as SurferSEO or Semrush.

What Should You Put on Your Complete SEO Checklist? 

Just as SEO can help bring more search traffic to your website, outdated SEO and inadequate on-page optimization can hurt your rankings as well. So, in addition to improving other aspects of your website, you should also check for other issues that may require fixing along the way. Of course, a reputable SEO agency can help you identify any problems with your site, but this on-page checklist can also help you get started. 

Duplicate content on your website can be a problem for multiple reasons. Not only will it rank worse in Google’s algorithms, but it can make it more difficult for your customers to navigate your website as well. 

Broken links can lower your direct ranking factor, and they can also frustrate customers who visit your site. Therefore, it’s critical to find broken links as quickly as possible and repair them to keep your site running smoothly. 

Site speed is a crucial part of the patient experience on your website. If your page speed is low, and a patient has to wait too long for it to load, the chances are that they will move on to another site. 

Category pages help structure information on your site and let patients navigate through pages more easily. For example, it’s easier for patients to find a specific blog post on your site by navigating to the “blog” category page first.

Technical SEO is a different type of SEO that deals with the deeper coding issues of your site – specifically, its infrastructure. Bad technical practices can result in crawl errors, a poorly structured data markup, or even a bad customer experience, so it’s essential to integrate a technical SEO checklist into your overall plan. 

An SEO plugin can be a handy tool for those who maintain a blog (such as WordPress users). Many of these tools will help you integrate SEO best practices and keywords into your posts as you write them. 

Using Your Toolkit: Google Search Console and Analytics, Bing Webmaster Tools, and More

Besides the terms we listed above, you can find many more executive-level tools out there that can give your practice a more significant edge. These tools can help you identify the exact steps you should take to help your site rank better, both for customers and for common search sites. 

Google Search Console is a great place to start improving your site’s search rankings. The tool works with your site’s infrastructure to help you identify different steps you can take, such as by submitting an XML sitemap.

Google’s Analytics feature is a suite of tools that helps you improve your site’s search rankings from a customer-centric perspective. Connect Google Analytics to your site using your Google Analytics account to make use of programs such as Google Tag Manager and Google Optimize.

Webmaster Tools is Bing’s version of a tool to help you rank better on Bing’s search results. To use it, create a Bing Webmaster Tools account and link it to your website. 

There are dozens of things for website owners to learn and hundreds of tools to utilize with the goal of bringing in new web traffic – so much, in fact, that it can feel incredibly overwhelming. If you are wondering how to market a dental clinic and need some help, consider contacting our specialized SEO management team. We can help you build your business’s online presence in new and meaningful ways.

Online Reviews For Dental Practices – Do They Matter?

Online Reviews For Dental Practices – Do They Matter?

by | Aug 25, 2021 | Dental Marketing Companies

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Chris Pistorius, author of “The UItimate Guide To Internet Marketing For Dentists” talks about the impact of online reviews on dental practices. He also discusses the best way to get reviews, how to handle negative reviews, where you should put those reviews, and some tips on using reviews as social media boosters.

View Full Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome to another edition of the dental marketing podcast. I’m your host Chris Pistorius. And today we are going to talk a little bit about online reviews and how they factor into dentistry and are they important, do they matter? Does anybody actually pay attention to those? And how do we know? It’s a question that we get here at kickstart dental marketing a lot from clients or potential new clients about their reviews and what’s the best way to get good reviews or do they matter at all?

So I thought I would address that here in the next few minutes and maybe answer some of those questions for some of you out there that are enquiring. So Here’s the thing with online reviews. You know we’ve been, our agency has been around serving the dental community for over 12 years now. And so we know a little bit about reviews in terms of how they are actually working with dental practices. And every study that I’ve seen shows that as many as 90% of potential new patients actually look at online reviews before they decide if they’re actually going to pick up the phone and call or fill out a form on your website or click the text chat button or even schedule an online appointment right then.

So I sometimes refer to online reviews as the silent killer because you don’t know how many people are actually looking at the reviews and then deciding to maybe not call you because of that right? There’s a lot of things in digital marketing that we can track. That particular aspect of digital marketing is almost impossible to track. So, you know, I think it’s important to really build a good online reputation, you know, by getting feedback from your patients. I think it’s essential not just in dentistry, but in today’s business culture.

So how do you get, you know, customers or patients, I should say to leave feedback and even more important, how do you, how do you get them to leave a positive review for you? You know, the coveted five-star review, if you will, so now you might be tempted to buy into the thought that good patient reviews and reputation management, we call it in the business are kind of out of your control. It is what it is, just let it happen organically. Right, well, not so much.

I’ve never been a fan of what I call ostrich marketing, which is kind of putting your head in the sand and just hoping that good things will happen. Right. I think we’re past that now and that strategy definitely does not work. And I think that holds true for online reviews as well. I mean, when your practice actually utilizes a structured review system, a way to send out reviews on a consistent basis, there’s no doubt that you can drive more new patients and potential new patients to the website itself and to ultimately schedule an appointment now as a practice owner, you know, where do you begin with encouraging those high-quality reviews.

How do you motivate the patient to leave a google review or a Yelp review or on HealthGrades, How do you even get them to do a video review for you? Would that be cool? So that’s what I want to talk about here is how do we do that and you know, what’s the best way to do it? And I’ll tell you how we do it as well and you know, what works well for us. Somebody is in the industry, I will tell you though, before we get into that, I know that there’s a ton of platforms out there that, you know, they do reputation marketing or they do reputation management, you know, Den tricks has it built into their system, there’s, you know, tons of evil soft, you know, everybody has the ability to do to try to get reviews from your patients.

But what I found and what we found here at kickstart is that it’s not the technology or the platform of actually sending out requests for reviews, it’s what you say, it’s the content, it’s how you, how you theme it, it’s how it’s when you send it, what’s the best time to actually send for that review and also what can we do in the office and not just rely on technology to drive those reviews. So, when I talk about online, our views here, I’m not really talking about technology, there are tons of different ways to do that.

We haven’t technology that does that as well. It’s more about the content, the personalized touch of getting those reviews. So let’s get let’s get to it. So what our reviews, what is feedback, how does it help you as a dental practice owner? Well, patient feedback as we talked about in my opinion is 11 of the lifeblood of the dental practice. I mean to start what you need to know is is that there’s dental reviews online, whether you have anything to do with about have anything to do with it or not.

And they’re largely determined by the patient’s overall experience with your practice, right? So the more knowledgeable and thorough that your staff is in delivering great service and a great experience for that patient means the greater likelihood patients are gonna feel compelled to rate that dentist. Now. Unfortunately what we see is that you know, a lot of reviews come from P. 22 things. One there even there just over the moon happy from what you did what you’ve done for them. But secondly, they’re really pissed off and they’re more compelled to leave a review when they’re pissed off than when they’re happy and that sucks as a business owner.

I’m a business owner too I get it. So it’s the patients who have a positive experience with your practice are the ones more compelled to offer good feedback. The thing is that when you can get them to leave you a good review, they automatically turn into kind of a practice advocate for you because they feel loyalty because hey, I put my brand on this practice now, I’m going to defend it right. That makes them more likely to refer friends or family members.

So when you have patients actually leaving you a positive review, you’ve turned them into almost a patient ambassador and they’re more likely to actually refer you out. So there are some, definitely some byproducts of going out and getting good reviews. But on the other side of that reviews are also a great opportunity to help correct mistakes and, and further, kind of refine your services and how you do things because think about it, you know, reviews. If you get a negative review and everybody does right, it’s going to happen.

You shouldn’t get defensive about that right off the bat anyway. You need to learn more about it, see what happened. First of all make sure it’s the right person because we see a lot of people here at kickstart that might leave a bad review for one of our clients, but it actually wasn’t our client, you know, that is similar name to somebody else. So first of all, make sure it was your patient okay. And if, if it’s not your patient, you know, do everything you can, to, to reach out to them and say, hey, I think you have the wrong, the wrong practice.

Could you take a look and you know, if not please call us and we want to, we want to try to work that out. But um, you know, so it’s, if it is a legit review and it is a negative review then learn from it, see what, see what the problem is offered to reach out. You know, give a phone number right in the review because think about when you respond to reviews like that, you’re not just responding to the person that left a negative review.

Your also responding to the people who potentially see those responses, right? So if they see a negative review, They’re automatically gonna be attracted to see what that was all about the -1 and how you responded. So respond to it say, hey, we’re gonna do everything that we can to try to try to earn your business back. We apologize for any mistakes. Please call me directly at this number. Um and let’s talk about it and try to make it good for you. And sometimes when you do that and they actually do communicate back with you, you can actually get them to review or remove that review.

So that’s what feed, that’s what the review systems are all about. That’s some ways that you could potentially respond any negative reviews. So there’s tons of websites out there that allow you to allow people to leave reviews about your practice. But I will tell you today that the top two that I would worry about would be google and facebook now google is increasing and increasing and increasing engagement with the reviews that I believe is the number one platform because people already using their platform, they’re already going to google first to do a search for Dennis near me um cosmetic dentist, dear me best dentist in whatever city.

Right, So that’s where they’re going to automatically see your first reviews. Okay, number one platform, number two is facebook and unfortunately facebook I think made a mistake a year or so ago when they changed how they did reviews, they change their star ratings. So now it’s like recommended versus a certain amount of stars, right? But people are still paying attention to facebook and guess what facebook’s about, the second best biggest used platform on the internet behind google. Right. And then there’s yelp. Okay, that’s where I would probably put number three, let me go on record as saying, I do not like yelp.

And I know there’s a lot of people probably agreeing me with this, I don’t like their business practices. I don’t like their advertising campaigns and how they set those up. Um we’ve tested multiple paid advertising accounts on yelp and we had very few that had gave any type of return on investment. Okay there review system is very strict. You could have 20 patients go and leave you a good honest review on yelp and maybe two or three or five of them would stick stick meaning they didn’t get filtered out.

They have such an aggressive algorithm to try to remove um fake reviews that it’s it’s turned up too high and even the good reviews get filtered out and they don’t ever show up. So you you do all this work to get people to review you and your patients do all the work to actually leave the review and then they might go back and it’s not the reviews are not even there. Right so to me yeah yelp people do look at it but in my in my opinion they look more at yelp for restaurants and entertainment than they do for actual dental practices.

So if it were my practice I would focus on google and facebook and then if you want to go to like a HealthGrades, you know that could be a good third option as well. The mistake that I think you can make with reviews is giving them too many options. So if you send them a review request you say, hey leave us a review google yahoo yelp. HealthGrades dog HealthGrades dog pile dot com. You know you give them like 10 different choices and that just causes confusion and they’re not gonna they’re not gonna engage because I’ll do it later. Right?

Whereas if you give them one or two options. I’ve already got a google account or yeah, I’ve already got a facebook account. So it’ll be really easy. Right? So those are the top top review review sites that I think that I would recommend using. So all right, we figured out where to we want to get those reviews now. How do we encourage positive reviews? So, I mean the average dental patient is pretty darn busy, right? You know, the old saying is with dentistry is people typically don’t like to go to the dentist because of time fear or money, Right?

Or maybe all three of those things. But you know, time is certainly a big part of it. So they’re limited with time. So not only do they not even want to go to the dentist, but they don’t like how long it takes to go to the dentist and now you’re asking them to take another what, 10 minutes or something to leave a review about the dentist. Right? So most patients who had a good experience are are happy at the thought of leaving a review. Um But not all of them will do it just from an email or a text message that’s sent to them sometimes not even it doesn’t even matter how good they’re written.

So the first piece of advice that I want to give you in terms of getting more positive reviews is first of all ask, you know, this should not be you should not wait for technology to ask for you, right? Um I know dentists as a as a kind of a stereotype or a little bit more introverts. You know, not everyone certainly. But you know, and asking a patient for a review might seem like you’re I’m crazy for asking you to do that. But it goes a long way because you as a dentist has have a personal relationship with that with that patient.

They are looking up to you in terms of their health. Um just you being a doctor. Um they really hinge on almost every word that you say. So a lot of our clients, we have actually talked to them before they leave the bay and they’ll say, look, you know, once you’re done, you’ll probably get an email or a text from us asking you about your experience here today. If you don’t mind, it would mean a lot for me if you would give us some good feedback. That’s it, that’s it.

You’ve set it up now. They’re expecting that that that email or text message and somebody of authority has asked them to help them out, help you out. And that is going to go a long way to get more reviews. Okay? So if you feel like you can do that and you don’t have to do it for every patient. But you know, just just try it out and I promise you that that that will work a lot. So another way to cultivate good reviews is to find recurring keywords of online customer reviews or patient reviews about the practice and incorporate those into the content of your website.

Um It’s kind of high level, it’s something that we do here so that when a when a patient is searching for a dental practice in your market, your practice is actually more likely to show up on google. So um it’s just a way to potentially potentially drive some more of that activity. So you some feedback as well. I mean you used the feedback that you get from online reviews to improve the practice. Um it’s a proven way to create better brand, you know and if you want to tell me that dentists don’t shouldn’t be doing brand marketing than you know you’re crazy because they should be more than anybody more than coca cola should or Pepsi or any of the huge brands because a local brand, if you can actually brand a local brand, it’s way more powerful because people resignation with local much more than they do national brands.

So uses feedback to resolve issues and identify what patients love so that you can fix what is wrong and deliver more of what they love. I mean think about it as a dental practice, you’re not selling dental products and services you’re selling solutions to problems, right? So somebody’s in pain, Somebody wants their smile to look prettier, you know that’s what you’re in business for. So also engagement, you know, engage with your patients about their experiences by responding to the to the reviews. Okay. So I see a lot of time, we talked a little bit about, you know, not responding to responding to negative reviews and how to do that, but you should be responding also to positive reviews. Okay.

I mean, it helps that a couple of different things, people are going to see that you’re taking the time to respond. It just takes a few seconds per seconds per a few seconds per review. So it’s not like it’s a big time suck and you could have somebody in the front desk easily do it now. Don’t use the same thanks bob for the great review every time, mix it up a little bit, you know, make sure it’s unique. Um you know, thank them for the business. Um, you know, just engage with them in any way.

It just shows to them it’s worth their time to leave you that that review. And then it also shows people that don’t know you yet, but they’re looking at your reviews that you are actually engaged and you appreciate what they’ve done now, I’ll tell you also that you should highlight positive reviews on your website, everybody does it right. I do it myself. Um, but just know that when you put positive reviews on your website, they are never going to be as trusted as much as actual text reviews on independent websites Because what fool would put negative reviews on their own website. Right.

It kind of makes sense. So you know you can feature some reviews on your homepage. I like to put pictures next to the reviews that just spruces them up a little bit. So if you’ve got some graphic design experience or somebody in the office that can do things like that then you certainly should try. Um I like to pretty those reviews up, put an image next to it and some creative tax and use those as social media posts as well. Those seem to go a long way and there’s tools like canvas C. A. N. V. A. That you can use um to spruce up.

So open those reviews. Um You can also send people directly to customer surveys. That’s a possibility instead of a review. We’ve tested that and yeah you get the surveys back and that’s cool. But then what do you do with the survey? It’s not like other people can see those. Right. So we typically stay away from the customer surveys and we do more of the um send them directly to the review site so that they can leave that review directly online. Okay so we talked a little bit about negative reviews.

I want to kind of cover that a little bit as well because um this just came up with a potential new client of ours. They really had um it was a worker actually that they had to let go and they went on several different review sites and just bashed him and put negative stuff all over the place. So um you know, the point here is no matter what or no how no matter how great your practices somehow somewhere there’s probably going to be some negative feedback coming around as well.

That’s not the end of the world. I mean if you look us up kick start doing marketing, you’re gonna find a bad review on google. And that’s from that same exact experience we were hiring for I believe as a web developer or something. And um when we decided to hire somebody and the person that was in the running didn’t get the job and took it out on us by actually putting a negative review on google for us. So you know, it’s just gonna happen. So you know, I would like I talked about it, I think that I would engage um positively to negative reviews if that makes sense.

I mean the first thing start, you start by responding right away. It shows the person you’re paying attention um any response is better than no response. Um a fast response is best, right, apologize for. Well, first of all make sure it’s actually your patient if you can write if you think that they’ve gotten your name wrong and they’re looking for another practice and you know, certainly respond that way. Um apologize for the experience if it is a real real review, even though you may not be apologetic in the in the situation, you’re validating their feelings, you’re making them feel hurt, right?

And the people that are looking at these reviews are seeing that as well, like I said, offer a resolution, tell them how you can correct the situation, Whether it’s to have them come in for free or whatever it may be, do whatever you can to resolve that. Because number one you could get them back in resolve the relationship. You don’t lose a patient and you can also probably get them to take that bad review down, right? Ask them to give you another chance. I know it sounds desperate and not everybody will be comfortable without, but it shows that you care about their experience and ultimately every patient experience that happens in your practice.

Um and lastly use that negative feedback to correct. And I mean, look for, you know, if you get two or three bad reviews over a year, is that the consistently the same thing is at the front desk, is it they were hung up on is that they were put on hold too long. You know, if there’s something consistent there, then we need to probably change something in the practice business wise. Right? So anyway, I’m gonna I’m gonna stop here. I mean, I could go on this for probably an hour or so, but um you know, I think it’s just to answer the question I originally gave up online reviews for dental practices.

Absolutely do matter. I’ve got studies to show it. I’ve got actual real marketing results to show it. You do need to pay attention to it. You do need to make it a priority in your practice. Um Remember it’s not the technology it’s not den trick sending them out for you. It’s not you know demand for sending them out for you whatever it may be. It’s how you put those together and what you say and how you ask and when you send them is the real connection here and that’s how you’ll drive more good reviews.

Um So anyway of course my company kickstart dental marketing shameless plug. We one of our specialties is this and helping with um online reviews. Getting more of them putting systems in place and writing the content just the way I just talked about so if you do need some help with that, feel free to reach out. Best ways just go to the website kickstart dental dot com and click on the free strategy session button. I do all of those myself. So you could talk you’d be talking with me directly and we can talk about how you do reviews now or any other marketing and maybe put you on track to make everything better.

So anyway thanks so much for tuning in for another episode and hopefully you’ve got a lot out of it and um we’ll be back next week with another great topic so yeah.