7 Reasons Online Reviews Are Essential for Your Healthcare Practice

As a healthcare practice, how you are perceived in the community is essential, especially with the emphasis placed on social media outlets and online reviews. Please take advantage of online reviews and use them to boost your digital marketing. 

Introduction to Online Reviews

Reviews about a patient’s service and experience can be posted on your website, social media accounts, and even listed online through major search engines. Depending on what others experience, these reviews can be positive or negative, but they will all be displayed.

For example, a customer can go to Google, search for your practice, and then leave a review so that others searching your practice will see the rating and their experience. In many cases, potential patients will choose healthcare practices with the highest ratings and fewer issues. 

Why Are Online Reviews Essential To Your Healthcare Practice?

These reviews can significantly impact your practice and how many patients you see yearly. 

  1. Develop a strong reputation and brand for your practice.
  2. Naturally improves your SEO so customers shopping for your services 
  3. Reach a larger audience and potential patients
  4. Increase patients visiting your practice. 
  5. Give you insight into what is not working and needs improvement. 
  6. Encourages stability and loyalty from current patients
  7. Understand what is working in your facility

The ways online reviews help your healthcare practice are enough to manage them and ensure they accurately reflect your mission and services. 

Ways To Ethically Source Online Reviews

When sourcing online reviews for your healthcare facility, you must do so appropriately and ethically. You cannot offer a bribe of money, discounts, or goods for the review. However, you can encourage them to do the review so that you can improve their experience. 

  • Ask for reviews after providing excellent service and while the experience is fresh. Most customers will have their smartphones in hand, and you can quickly mention to them how great it would be to carry that positive energy online to social media. 
  • Provide links for them to leave a review when you email them shortly after the visit. 
  • Make leaving a review easy and short. Most customers will not want to spend much time writing the review after the enthusiasm disappears. 

How To Use Both Negative and Positive Reviews As A Way To Grow Your Business

Reviews give you a different perspective to see where you can make improvements. Seeing your practice from one viewpoint allows you to miss things other customers see. Most negative reviews will all start to say similar things and give you an idea of where to improve. 

Positive reviews tell you what is working and what you don’t want to change. For example, if you have a particular employee who is continuously named, you may want to do everything to keep that person in your facility and away from competitors. 

Let Valet Health Assist You Today

If you need leading digital marketing content and other technological solutions, contact Valet Health today for more information about our services.