Dr. Lorne Lavine Dental Technology Consultants Printer Friendly Version

Word-Of-Mouth 2.0

It is an undisputed fact that in the world of dentistry, no amount of expensive advertising or fancy marketing can best the power of word-of-mouth referrals from your satisfied patients. What your patients say about you is the ultimate driver of business success.

Today, consumers increasingly turn to the Internet to locate and select a dental practice. Understanding this phenomenon and using the right tools will help you create and maintain the most relevant, valuable practice builder you’ll ever have: the experience and feedback of your own patients, shared with millions of prospective patients actively seeking a new dental practice. It’s up to you to choose: Will your online reputation consist of a single thread of random gossip, or will it become your most valued asset, carefully managed and nurtured to give you the best return on your investment?

Leveraging Google to Drive New Patient Volumes—As you probably know, the largest and most powerful search engine is Google. Today, 67 percent of all online searches are conducted using Google. Google sees 3.2 billion—yes, with a “b”—visits per month. As a dental practice, you can optimize your Web site to come up in the free, natural search results. If you choose to pay for exposure, you can subscribe to Google Adwords, paying for each “click” generated from Google to your Web site. The higher you bid for a click, the higher your placement in the sponsored section of Google. There are many dental practices that bid more than $6 for every click, resulting in thousands of dollars spent on Adwords each month. One particular practice I am aware of spends more than $3,000 a month on Adwords and claims the cost is “worth every penny.” As with all advertising it has limitations, beyond even expense. Ads are companies promoting themselves, and today’s savvy consumer recognizes this and filters information accordingly.

Build Your Online Reputation Now—So how do you, as a dentist, take advantage of this new tool to guide and shape your online reputation? It is important to remember that this is not a practice snapshot in time, but rather a reputation built and sustained over time. Your best chance of securing and maintaining a “top 10” placement is to be among the first to populate your Google profile—and to keep a steady stream of relevant reviews and quality practice information flowing in to Google. You can do this one of two ways: passively or actively.

The Passive Approach—You can hope the patients who visit your practice have the wherewithal to create a Google account, find your Google profile, and submit a review. This requires time and effort on your patients’ part, and staff time to inform patients and promote the process. Even if your staff is dedicated to making your patients aware of the online review process, you can only hope they remember to follow through once they go back to their busy schedules at home and work. If history is any guide, a passive approach will result in one or two reviews posted over the course of several months.

The Proactive Approach—Today, the only integrated approach to proactively managing your online reputation in Google is through Demandforce, an online patient communication company. They recently announced a data integration agreement with Google that enables dental practices to easily populate their Google profiles, including posting reviews, directly from data originating from the Demandforce communication system. Each patient is automatically sent a thank you email message after each appointment. As part of the thank you, he/she can choose to submit a confidential survey of the visit as well as a public review. Practices can read the reviews and post a response or ask for a review to be removed if it does not meet standard posting requirements. After seven days, the data is automatically sent to Google to populate your profile. This proactive approach results in dozens of reviews being posted to your profile every month.

Whether you opt to take a passive approach or a proactive approach to build your online reputation, I highly recommend you take charge to ensure it accurately reflects and therefore benefits your practice. Your online reputation is your business and those practices that realize it early on will have a significant head start over their peers. Solicited or not, online reviews are here to stay. Our patients’ satisfaction and their resulting word-of-mouth referrals will always be our bread and butter; only the serving plate has changed. What are you doing to shape your online reputation? Have you “Googled” your practice or your competitors lately?

Lorne Lavine, DMD is the Founder and President of Dental Technology Consultants. Dr. Lavine holds two prestigious certifications, the A+ Certified Technician designation and the Network+ Certified Professional. These designations demonstrate proficiency in computer repair, operating systems, network design and installation. Dental Technology Consultants provide dentists a full range of services relating to the implementation of technology.

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Dr. Lavine can be reached at drlavine@thedentistsnetwork.net.

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