For dermatologists, an online reputation can power a clinic’s success. If your practice generates positive online reviews, your local rankings, lead-generation efforts, and conversion tactics get a significant boost.
However, doing stellar work isn’t sufficient if you want an excellent reputation. You must also encourage reviews, manage them, and make the feedback visible.
Meanwhile, a poor reputation can hinder your digital marketing efforts and hurt your rankings on Google.
What Is Online Reputation Management for Dermatologists?
Online reputation management for dermatologists is the process of soliciting patient feedback, replying to reviews, and making these reviews available to potential patients.
- Soliciting reviews – encouraging patients to leave reviews, making it easy to leave reviews, and asking existing patients to share reviews on different channels.
- Managing reviews – replying to reviews as soon as they appear, whether they are positive or negative.
- Placing reviews – adding positive reviews on different channels, including your website, social media, and printed marketing materials.
Around 88% of patients read online reviews before choosing a doctor. Many of them check several platforms. That’s why it’s essential to make online reputation management an integral part of your marketing plan.
How Can Dermatologists Manage Their Reputation?
Since online reputation is key to your lead generation efforts, you must take a professional approach to its management. These best practices can help you get started:
Claim and Manage Your Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile (GBP) is your practice’s calling card on Google. When you create a profile, you become visible across Google’s network, including Google Search, Google Maps, and Google 3-pack. This can improve your clinic’s organic visibility tremendously.
For your GBP to impact your lead generation and conversion efforts, you need to:
- Claim or create the profile.
- Fill out all relevant information (don’t forget to use relevant medical keywords).
- Keep NAP (name, address, phone number) information consistent and updated.
- Add relevant, high-quality photos.
- Fill out the Q&A section with common questions that include keywords.
Your GBP listing has a place for patients’ reviews. When you encourage reviews and feedback, you can provide a link to your GBP profile. Once a patient leaves a review, it becomes visible to the rest of the prospects searching for a dermatologist on Google.
Solicit Reviews from Existing Patients
Only around 10% of patients leave reviews about medical services independently. However, 70% will do it when asked. That’s why a big part of online reputation management is asking for reviews and making it easy to leave them. To solicit reviews, you can:
- Send follow-up SMS, emails, or direct messages on social media.
- Add a “review our practice” page on your website.
- Post QR codes that lead to review pages in your clinic.
- Ask for reviews after the patient receives treatment.
The more reviews your patients leave, the more data you have. Meanwhile, positive reviews are a local search ranking factor.
Respond to Positive and Negative Reviews
No matter how many reviews your patients leave, you need to respond to each one of them as soon as possible. This shows other visitors and prospects that you care about patients’ opinions.
While responding to positive reviews is essential, replying to negative feedback is even more vital to maintaining a stellar reputation. When responding to negative reviews:
- Be polite and acknowledge the issue
- Apologize (even if the patient is wrong. E.g., “We are sorry you are unhappy with…”)
- Provide an explanation if applicable
- Give an option of discussing the problem on the phone or over email.
Ensure your responses contain keywords, which can also contribute to your SEO efforts.
Report Spam Reviews
Your competition could try to hinder your online reputation by posting spam reviews on your GBP. Thankfully, it’s possible to get rid of such spammy feedback by reporting it to Google.
Before Google takes action, you can respond to these reviews to show others that they are fraudulent. Be polite, point out inconsistencies, and ask the person to delete the fake review.
Monitor Social Media
If you put your practice on social media (an integral part of a successful marketing strategy), you need to check it to find reviews. If you notice that your brand is mentioned on any platform, you can encourage a positive discussion and use feedback for your purposes.
To find out when patients mention your clinic, you can either use social listening tools or check social media regularly.
Use Online Directories
Your Google Business Profile is a vital directory link, but it’s not the only one. You need to create profiles on relevant, online directories. Some directories to consider are:
- Healthgrades
- Vitals
- ZocDoc
- WebMD
- Yelp
This won’t just help potential patients find you but also generate new reviews that help with your online reputation.
Keep in mind that all these directories require review management as well.
Demonstrate Social Proof
For reviews to provide top results, you must show them off to potential and existing patients. Once positive reviews appear, you can use it in many places, including:
- Your website (landing pages, blogs, articles, service descriptions).
- Social media (posts, stories, promoted posts, Facebook dark posts).
- Printed materials that patients read while at your clinic.
Your key goal is to show positive reviews to as many people as possible.
Automating Online Reputation Management
For dermatologists, online reputation management is vital to the success of their practice. DoctorLogic makes it easier to manage your online reputation by automating a variety of processes.
DoctorLogic’s online reputation management tool helps you manage reviews across directories, receive notifications about your brand’s mentions, post reviews and testimonials on your website, and solicit feedback. To learn more, request a free demo today.