12 Oct
When you started your online reputation management for medical business, things went smoothly at first. However, with the passage of time, you couldn’t help but notice that your overall medical business “rep” had started to incline. You may have also listed yourself for a Google My Business account and you see your medical competitors climbing on top of your medical services. To make matters worse, there are negative patient reviews starting to pile up on your social media business accounts. Does this mean that your medical services aren’t simply up to par? No.
Online reputation is a tricky thing and can drag good online business down with it if they simply don’t keep up with it. As an online medical business, you get most of your patient leads from the internet and if your brand image is tarnished or unpopular on it, it won’t matter if our medical services are phenomenal. Online reputation management for medical businesses is the most crucial aspect for their survival, and if they fail at that, not even SEO can save the day.
As a doctor, it is quite easy to get confused about where to start with saving your online medical reputation since there is an abundance of misconceptions around the best way to approach it. To some, it is about improving PR, to others, it is about better social media marketing. What matters is finding a holistic approach to improving your online medical reputation so that your existing and potential patients can approach your medical business free of any bad reviews or ratings without any danger of turning away from your services.
What Is Online Medical Reputation Management?
As a doctor, you want your medical business to connect with patients, build permanent business-to-consumer relationships with them, and provide them the best of your best. That can become impossible if bad ratings or reviews are weighing them down. Online reputation management, or ORM, deals with building patient relationships by developing a positive business image, being proactive when things turn negative, and repairing the damage done to your online presence.
ORM’s Importance For A Medical Business
Your medical business’s first impressions go a long way in determining the success of your patient conversion and maintenance strategies. Your online reputation determines if a potential patient will convert to your medical service or if an existing patient will continue to be your patient. A marketing study indicated that 91% of patients trust online reviews as much as they believe in personal referrals. Further, 86% of patients read reviews when it comes to local medical services in their area.
Another statistical study also shows that medical businesses risk losing as many as 22% of patients if they find one negative review while considering converting to their medical services. Even if your medical business is performing optimally, you need to keep your online reputation management strategy brushed up at all costs to continue gaining patient leads.
5 Handy Online Reputation Management Tips for Medical Businesses
Online marketing is a multi-faceted platform, so to make sure that your medical business stays performing optimally try opting for a couple of handy strategies. Here are five proven online reputation management tips you can follow to rebuild your online medical presence.
A Pre-Step
To begin, you must conduct an in-depth analysis of your online presence instead of simply acting on your suspicions. Log onto all your social media business accounts, GMB accounts, etc, and check up on your reviews/rating page. Conducting a SERP campaign can also help you understand the position of your online medical presence. If the negative reviews are crossing the positive ones by even 5%, it’s time to roll up your sleeves.
1. Go Proactive
Nothing is worse than letting your bad reviews pile up. This means that you simply haven’t been actively engaging with your patients. Try to address every of your patients’ queries, remarks, and complaints.
Try to satisfy every patient in your reviews section and direct them to email correspondence if they are proving to be a bit more difficult to address their issue in depth. Patient satisfaction is key when it comes to maintaining your online medical presence.
2. Opt for Digital Tools
AI-controlled digital tools are a great substitute for conducting manual reputation diligence. Tools like Google Alerts and Hootsuite are great picks when it comes to ORM. These tools can help you monitor your online medical presence on all your social media or listings accounts and send you auto-generated alerts whenever your negative reviews and ratings start to pile up.
It should be noted that while AI solves most of our problems, it may slip up when it comes to online medical reputation management. This is because ORM is mainly consumer relationship management and requires personalization.
3. Keep Your Responses Public
While it may be tempting to delete or respond privately to bad patient reviews and ratings, you must remember what you are doing all of this for. To keep up a strong online image. 51% of online businesses revert to their positive online reputation because they keep their correspondence with their customers/clients public.
That way other potential customers/clients can see that the business is focused on consumer satisfaction and that adds up their online presence. Be sure to respond to every negative review patiently and try to help them out as much as you can.
4. Advocate Your Medical Services
While it is important to address unsatisfied patients and their complaints, it is also necessary to promote positive reviews on your medical site and social channels. Putting up positive reviews and mini testimonials helps you revert the damage done to your online presence and helps you develop it further. Ask your patients to leave a review after they have used your medical services. This is also a great way to advocate for your medical business to promote your reputational growth.
5. Choosing A Medical Marketing Agency
ORM is a tricky part of medical marketing. So it is understandable if you, as a doctor, can’t control all aspects of it to control your online medical presence. This is where you will bode well with picking a medical marketing agency to do online reputation management for your medical business. Since they will have premium monitoring tools, strong PR strategies, and frequently conducted check-ups, your online reputation will be in good hands.
Hopping On The Online Reputation Management Train For Doctors
A positive online medical reputation for your medical business can set it apart from all of your medical competitors, convert new patients, and build a strong and faithful patient base. This is why you must never neglect your reputation management services for doctors, even if everything seems to be going well. Adopting a proactive approach can help you control your online narrative and build a medical presence that can tower over others.
