Three Ways to Get Google Reviews for Your Dental / Healthcare Practice
Three Ways to Get Google Reviews
Welcome to Practice Treatment Plan’s Weekly New Patient Marketing Tips! Today’s tip is part two of a 5 part series in October all about Google Reviews. Here is a quick preview of what is coming up. For more information please call 888.412.8820 or email me at ben@practicetreatmentplan.com.
Oct 1st Importance of Google Reviews
TODAY Three Ways to get Google Reviews
Oct 15th Three MORE ways to get Google Reviews
Oct 22th How to handle bad reviews
Oct 29th What about other review sites?
Soliciting Reviews – Be Careful
The most important part of your Google+ Business page is patient reviews! Do not be shy about asking your patients to post reviews of your practice to your page.
However, according to Google you should not be soliciting and rewarding patients with a financial incentive to review your practice. The reality is though that most businesses do it anyway because it is very hard to get your patients to self-motivate to review your practice, even if they love it. In fact, the people who are self-motivated to review you are usually the ones with negative things to say. Google will remove reviews if they see that they are coming from the same computer IP address (i.e. your office’s Wi-Fi connection). So don’t bother having all of your employees take a few minutes to post a review of your practice from the office. Google is onto that! Also, setting up an iPad as an in-office review kiosk will most likely backfire as well. In fact, make sure your patients know that they should not be connected to your office’s Wi-Fi when they post while in your practice, even if you did not ask them to review you. Another red flag that Google will look for is a sudden spike in reviews. If you are suddenly inundated with reviews, they may assume that you were soliciting/rewarding patients for them, and remove them.
So, with that cautionary note behind us, let’s look at three EFFECTIVE ways to encourage patients to review you. Whether you want to include rewards or incentives is up to you.
Method #1. Deliver Exceptional Service and Experience.
Yes, I know that sounds cliche. But the fact is that delivering exceptional service and experience is THE most effective way to get referrals and positive reviews from patients. This is easier said than done of course, because it cannot be done overnight. It will take planning, execution and tracking of results. Service is what you are supposed to do well. Experience is the WOW factor, the exceptional experience that they were not expecting.
If you succeed, your patients will be excited to compliment the service that they received. When they do, just ask them if they would be willing to give you a review on Google.
Method #2. Mine Your Core Base.
You hear this phrase used in politics often. Whenever a candidate needs an injection of money, the first place they will turn is to the subsegment of supporters who offer unwavering support. You could do the same! Identify 10-20 extremely loyal patients, family or friends that have visited your practice and just ASK them to review you on Google+. Getting started is just that easy! Getting ten 5-star reviews can make a world of difference. Send them an email with a direct link to your Google+ Business page and instructions on how to do it. Need a sample email to send? Email me at ben@practicetreatmentplan.com and I will provide one.
Method #3. Blast an Email to Current Patients with GMAIL accounts.
Access your dental software and email patients that have an email account through Gmail and send each of these patients a link directly to your Google+ Business page requesting that they review you. To review a business on Google, a user needs to have a google account. Those patients with Gmail email service already have one. ONE CAUTIONARY NOTE: you may want to review the list prior to sending! Are there patients with Gmail accounts who had a bad experience? If so, I would remove them from your list.
Next week we will share THREE MORE ways to encourage patients to review you on Google+!
Benjamin Suggs
Chief Healthcare Marketing Strategist
Practice Treatment Plan, Inc.
