We know that the title is a bit alarming, and we're sorry if it scared you. It is critically important for you to learn about the value of online reviews. In this post, we'll quickly cover why you, as a chiropractor, must build your brand online and the role online reviews play in marketing your practice.
Build Your Brand Online
With more than 3 billion people actively using the Internet nowadays (and the fact that that number is growing by hundreds of thousands annually), a large number of chiropractors already realize that having an online presence is critical when it comes to achieving higher levels of business success. That’s why many are taking brand-building actions such as developing an easy-to-use website and creating profiles on some of the more popular social media sites like Facebook or Twitter. But, that’s usually where it ends.
Step #1: Setup the Best Chiropractic Website
Certainly, setting up the best possible chiropractic website and having an active social media presence are positive steps that can take your chiropractic business in the right direction. For instance, both of these actions can help you better position yourself to be found. Your prospective patients can find these places when they are searching for a new chiropractor. Additionally, each one also allows you to engage with current patients in a way that inspires their loyalty and makes them continue to come back for more.
Step #2: Harness the Power of Online Reviews
However, there is one more place you should be, one more thing you can do online that can take your chiropractic business and make it even bigger and stronger. What is it? The answer to this question involves harnessing the power of the online review.
Chiropractic Online Marketing & The Power of the Online Review
Gone are the days when people would simply pull out a tattered old phone book, run their pointer finger down the yellow pages, and pick a chiropractor solely on name recognition or by seeing an ad that jumped out at them. While this process of choosing businesses worked in the 70s and 80s, now people typically start that search for service providers by going online.
Patients search out websites and social media pages to see what types of services you offer, how much you charge, and where you’re located; but they also use one other online resource when deciding which chiropractic provider they want to trust with their family and their health. They use online reviews.
What Exactly Is an Online Review?
Online reviews, which can be posted on online review websites like Yelp and Google, are an opportunity for your patients to share the experiences they’ve had with your practice. In general, these reviews involve rating you, your staff, and your services on a five-star scale, providing additional written comments to help support why the person gave you a specific number of stars.
How Important Are Online Reviews?
Depending on how much the person has to say, these written commentaries can be just a couple of words or, sometimes, an entire page. No matter how much they write, though, what they elect to reveal about their experiences with your business can have a huge impact on whether or not others select you as their chiropractic service provider. And since one Yelp survey found that 85 percent of consumers (that’s four out of every five people!) find their service providers by first locating them online, this is one area you should be paying a lot of attention to.
Patients Rank You and Your Competition Based on Reviews
Perhaps more importantly, that same Yelp survey found that online reviews play a critical role in whether consumers choose one business option over another, either placing you in front of or behind your local competitors. Specifically, they found that online reviews were “regularly” taken into consideration 27 percent of the time, with another 49 percent of the survey respondents admitting that other people’s online reviews were taken into consideration some of the time. Add these together and three out of every four Internet users are using online reviews to determine who they want to do their business with—which chiropractic provider they want to give their money to.
Another survey, this one conducted by Dimensional Research and involving 1,046 people, found similar results in that 88 percent of the respondents admitted to letting online reviews influence their buying decision. So why is it so important to take a more active role in what others are saying about your chiropractic practice? It’s all about reputation management and building online reviews.
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