New patients often read your reviews before they make contact with you.
Strangers will read your Google Reviews.
Friends of friends will read your Facebook Reviews.
We’re not entirely sure about strangers – they can often be looking for a bargain.
We like friends of friends though because they arrive in our lives pre-qualified by a recommendation.
It’s because of that recommendation and our reviews that they contact us in the first place. That’s also why the conversion rate from consult to treatment can be so much higher.
Friends of friends are nice people to do business with.
So who writes reviews?
Generally, it’s people who have had an exceptional experience – a moment of truth – defined as:
“A moment of delight or disappointment that has a disproportionate effect on the recipient.”
Average doesn’t get reviewed (you don’t see many 2.5-stars).
Reviews are important as part of the discovery process for the right type of new patients.
Reviews are also important to Google’s algorithms and reviews from all sources are now aggregated to improve your organic search ranking (by the way, below 100 reviews from all sources, Google doesn’t take much notice of you).
How do you collect reviews?
There are two ways:
- Provide exceptionally delightful or disappointing experiences;
- Ask as part of your end of treatment protocol and give clear instructions on how.
Far more effective than blindly throwing money at digital advertising in the hope that a price-shopper might notice you.
