We recommend five steps for a successful blueprint for marketing your practice’s reputation.
First: be extremely focused on the patient experience. Make sure that you’re delivering the best care possible and that your entire staff understands the experience you want to deliver! Oftentimes, we get asked, “How do we know what our current patient experience is?” The answer is to ask every patient for feedback on their visit to your practice.
Second: encourage your patients to post an online review. This will give you feedback on your patient experience and also provide a marketing asset; a review for your business. Training your staff to be a part of this process is critical and having conversations with your patients about delivering the best patient experience is important, especially when patients are leaving the office. At the end of an appointment, we recommend handing out review cards to your patients and simply asking for feedback on their experience. It is also a good idea to have signage that promotes patient feedback. This communicates that you’re a forward-thinking practice focused on patient experience.
Third: Managing your online reputation is very important. Having someone in the practice designated to responding to your patient’s reviews, good or bad, is critical. If someone’s going to go out of the way and write a glowing review about your practice, make sure you thank that person.
Fourth: We encourage you to focus on answering every review that’s written for your practice but most importantly, remember that responding to negative reviews gives you the opportunity to turn a negative into a positive! Learn 5 easy steps for responding to negative reviews here.
Fifth: Marketing your practice’s positive reviews is a terrific opportunity that too many practice administrators overlook. Think of your reviews as marketing assets that tell the story of your practice from a patient perspective. Using them in your mailers, on your website, in social media, and in digital advertising can help drive new patients to your practice. Critically, be sure to follow HIPAA guidelines when share patient reviews and testimonials.
