BRINGO Blog

Via the “Medical Quack” blog:

A recent article in the SF Business Times finds that the proliferation of ratings and reviews is having little effect on consumer behavior because it is confusing them.

Based on our experience, I’m not sure whether the conclusion is totally correct — we have seen a positive effect in generating new business for dentists and other healthcare providers based on positive reviews that we have helped them generate through their patient bases.  My guess is that the effect of the reviews probably depends on the sector and the source of the reviews - and the effect may not be as measurable in the aggregate, but for individual healthcare practices that manage their online reviews well, it can make a big difference in generating new patients.

A recent article in Forbes highlighted the growing demand for cosmetic dentistry in the US, citing a survey of members of the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry showing year over year growth of cosmetic dentistry patients of 12.8%.

Similarly, a recent Dental Ecomonics/Levin Group dental practice survey showed average gross dental practice production went up 7% in the past year (lots of great stuff in this survey — more on this later). This is all great news for the health of the industry — patient demand is up, as well as production — especially in such highly profitable areas as cosmetic dentistry.   The results we’ve gotten for our clients certainly do nothing to disprove the notion that patients are out there, looking for dentists.

So things are great — what’s a smart dentist to do? Sit back and enjoy the good times while they last?

I’d argue that now is exactly the time to be doubling and tripling your efforts to bring in new patients. There are more new patients in play than ever before, and each patient is worth that much more once you bring them through the door. It is much easier to keep a patient coming in once they have a relationship with your office, than to constantly generate new patients — especially when the times turn and things are not as good. Now is a great time to be out there establishing long-term relationships with new patients while they are in play — it’s the best way to ensure that your practice will be healthy during the bad times as well as the good.

I had meant to blog about this earlier, but it somehow got lost in the holiday rush.

TechCrunch published a great chart that shows the traffic for the various Google properties. Google Maps ranks 4th, behind general search, image search, and GMail, and also posted one of the top growth rates of all the properties (52% growth from a pretty large base of traffic).

Coupled with the recent research that shows that online resources such as maps and local search has surpassed offline media as the main place people look for local businesses, it’s obvious that paying attention to making sure your practice is visible across the most important and fastest growing online properties such as Google maps.

How do you make sure your practice is visible? While conventional wisdom says that you need a website to get started on the web, the business listing is also becoming increasingly important. In fact, for many of our clients, business listings in local directories and those focused in dental, chiropractic and other healthcare-related spaces provides a significant percentage of new patients we drive to their practices, and are often more ready to set up an appointment (begin further down the decision-making cycle).

Business listings appear on Maps whenever a user searches for a dentist, chiropractor, or healthcare provider in their area from the Maps or Local interface. In addition, it appears on the main search page (if it is optimized correctly) when someone searches on a geographic- and category-related term (such as Dentist San Diego, or Chiropractor Chicago). A basic business profile may already exist in many of the properties for your practice — most of the big players buy their data from big data clearinghouses and pre-populate basic information to fill out their directories. However, I’d advise taking a closer look at what’s contained in those listings, as most potential patients will want to know more about your practice than simply name, address, and phone number. Most directories will allow you to add additional information such as a practice description, office hours, specialties, languages spoken, parking availability, and other information that is important to potential patients. Providing and updating this information is important, as the more complete the information is, the more likely a patient will pick up the phone and call you to set up an appointment.

One other thing to notice is that many of these directories collect and/or aggregate consumer reviews. This is also becoming increasingly important to marketing your practice, as managing reviews can make or break the image your practice has online. I will write more about this topic in upcoming posts.