Before contacting you I read all of your lovely reviews

My clients are hearing that from patients every week nowadays.

I’m not sure who actually taught us all to read and write reviews but I have a sneaking suspicion that the source is Jeff Bezos at Amazon. We have fundamentally changed our buying habits as a result.

Now even the provider (if it’s Uber or AirBnB) can review us.

The thing is – we don’t believe advertisers any more. They would say that wouldn’t they? That their product is good for us and is the best.

Yeah right.

In actual fact – the only advertising that we can actually believe (most of the time) is PRICE.

“We are the cheapest” is a message that can easily be checked before you have experienced the product or service (but be careful of those hidden extras).

The paradox of advertising is that, if you were actually the best, you wouldn’t need to advertise – so we are often asking “what’s the catch?”

The new buying process is to note recommendations from family, friends or colleagues and then to double-check that recommendation by reading online reviews from other real people.

Observation followed by verification.

Which is why is has become IMPERATIVE that you collect those reviews as a robust protocol in your business.

Step 1 – deliver great customer service;

Step 2 – do great dentistry;

Step 3 – conduct a strong end of treatment review;

Step 4 – make it easy for patients to submit Google and Facebook reviews;

Step 5 – minimum number of aggregate reviews required = 100 (so that Google’s algorithms can see you).

THIS IS NOW IMPORTANT, URGENT, ESSENTIAL

p.s. I was standing in Manchester’s Piccadilly Gardens at 21:30 last night, waiting to catch The Metro home, when a bus passed me with an advertising poster on the side.

“Don’t believe all of those fake reviews – subscribe to Which Magazine.”

Advertisers are mainly liars.