Posted on June 4, 2021
Orthodontic practice management can be difficult because there’s often a lot of moving parts that you have to juggle. It’s not enough to have your equipment and skillset be top-notch anymore, you have to have another person (or team) manage your digital presence as well. Things like monitoring your online reviews are what orthodontic practice consultants are constantly recommending these days.
In fact, 77% of patients use online reviews when finding a new healthcare provider, orthodontist, or other professional that they need to help them. Unfortunately, not all online review sites are created equally, nor or all reviews that you find online truthful. When you’re thinking about marketing your orthodontic practice, you have to take all these factors into consideration and make the best decisions about them. In this article, we’ll go over the steps that you should take when thinking about online marketing strategies for orthodontists.
It’s just the law of averages: you’re never going to be able to please everyone, 100% of the time. Most patients that have a less than stellar experience at your practice will simply never come back and go somewhere else, but a small handful will leave scathing online reviews that make it seem like you’re the coming of the Devil. Instead of getting mad and responding in kind (which will only make you look worse), have your staff draft professional and courteous responses which both acknowledge the patient’s experience and seek to make it right. Whether this is with a refund if they edit the review to be neutral, or to provide a better experience, it’s much better than simply leaving them up for prospective customers to see.
There are so many online review and feedback sites these days, we don’t blame you for being unable to keep up. But on as many sites as your business is listed, try to “claim” the digital space and have any reviews or notifications sent to a central email address or account. This will allow you to keep up with whatever people are saying about you on the web and respond with professional courtesy. When you’re thinking about marketing your orthodontic practice online this can seem exhausting, but we promise it’ll be okay if you just take things one account at a time. The more a customer sees that the “genuine” business has claimed their presence online, the more they’ll trust that you do what you say you will.
Sometimes, when you venture online, you end up wading knee-deep into a pit of negativity and identity theft that it seems like you’d best not interact with. Despite our best guesses as to why someone would want to impersonate you, it happens more every year for a variety of reasons. Any false reviews, slander, or impersonation of your image must be fought against whenever possible. When you’re trying to get a hold on marketing your orthodontic practice, it does you an extreme disservice to have false information out there. Since you can prove who you are via identity documents, contacting sites that post this false information or let someone else run away with your credentials should be easy to stop. It shouldn’t be a top priority for your digital marketing strategy, but it needs to be on the list. False reviews, from someone who has never been a patient of yours, also need to be disputed so that someone can’t simply tarnish the name of your business without consequence.
When it comes to marketing your orthodontic practice, it’s always the little things that add up. If you can have a practical social media presence where you suggest tips for orthodontic care and let your patients know that you value them, you’ll go far. In addition to this, making sure that the things that are said about you online are truthful and from verified sources can go a long way toward making prospective patients choose you. You’ve worked hard to get where you are, so don’t let anyone mess it up today!
