Why Online Reviews are Important for your Business
Online reviews are continuing to become more important in your digital marketing strategy. You can use reviews to attract patients by building trust with potential customers. Customers are constantly using online reviews to make decisions about the services that are well suited for them. And patients are turning to the internet to help them choose which doctors and practices they would like to visit. Learning about the experiences of other patients can either make or break the chances of a patient choosing to visit a practice.
Why are online reviews important?
- Help Acquire New Patients: Consumers will usually visit your website, look at your average business rating, and read a few reviews before booking an appointment. 70% of patients aged 60+ rely on positive patient reviews and a strong average star rating while selecting their healthcare provider1.
- Build Trust: 95% of consumers trust online reviews of doctors2. Consumers are using online reviews to make decisions. Positive reviews play a large factor in your practice having a good reputation.
- Improve Online Visibility: Consumer reviews also impact Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Having more reviews can improve where you rank in local searches which will increase the chances of customers clicking on your website.
- Identify Areas of Improvement: Collecting reviews is also a great way to gather feedback and recognize areas that need improvement. You may uncover feedback from customers about business operations, employee performance, customer service, etc. By collecting reviews, you can uncover problem areas, and act on these to improve your business.
Why do the quantity of reviews matter?
Another thing to keep in mind is that the number of reviews also impacts patient decisions. Having more reviews is social proof to potential customers of how a business operates over a longer period. This means that consumers might choose to visit a practice with more reviews and a lower overall rating than a practice with a high rating and only a few reviews. Also, if your practice receives a negative review but there are a lot of other reviews, the negative review will have less of an impact on influencing potential customers. As a benchmark, 50+ reviews are a good indicator to customers that a practice values their patient experience.
How can you get more online reviews?
At Phonak, we have a simple and easy tool to help you acquire more reviews and standout in your community: The Online Patient Review Platform. With this exclusive service offered to our partners, you can access a user-friendly online review management system, which will allow you to request and manage reviews across several online review sites from one single platform.
Here’s what one member had to say about the success of using this service:
“For years as a practice, we’ve struggled to generate online reviews. Recently, I enlisted the help of the IC team to generate the online automated review tool. Now without actively asking, we are quadrupling the amount of reviews we receive on a weekly basis.” – Nathan Lev, Owner & Hearing Instrument Specialist at Sound Advice
The online review system makes it easy to generate reviews! The system is automated, so your staff doesn’t have to spend time reaching out to patients. It works behind the scenes, giving your staff more time to focus on patient experience!
Visit the Inner Circle dashboard, call your Phonak Representative or email practiceservices@phonak.com if you are interested in this service!
Sources:
- “Study of Online Reviews Reveals the Importance of Having High Star Ratings for Healthcare Providers in 2021,” HealthCareDive.
- “95% of Americans find online doctor reviews reliable,” MobiHealthNews.
Amanda recently joined the Sonova family in 2021. She graduated from Purdue University with her bachelor’s degree in marketing and is passionate about collaborating with hearing care providers to better marketing efforts.