One of the greatest things the Internet has done is that it’s given a voice to the consumer. This not only keeps businesses competitive through the need to provide quality service, it also rewards those small businesses who excel in this area by giving them positive PR for free. No amount of SEO, or PPC, or other form of advertising can compete with the cost-effectiveness of free PR provided by a good customer review.
Of course, on the other hand, a bad review can be just as damaging. No matter how great your website looks and how amazingly high you rank for your main terms in the search engines, a bad review can cause significant damage to your reputation and ultimately your business. For instance, imagine Goog
ling “Salt Lake City dentist pain free” and instead of your practice popping up as the number one place for pain-free dental services, you pop up under a review entitled, “Ouch! Worst dentist ever” that proceeds to go on about a patient’s nightmare visit that landed them in the hospital with an infection. Even worse, imagine that at the end of that review, the patient plugs your competition as the only dentist that could ease their pain. Where do you think the person searching for pain free dentists is going to go?
What’s Worse than Bad Online Reviews?
Of course, in a situation like that, it’s probably not going to ruin your whole business. One bad review does isn’t the end of the world. Most people understand that you can’t please everybody, so a bad review here or there typically doesn’t hurt too badly. I mean come on, what if that patient that left a bad review, actually walked into your office with a chip on their shoulder, didn’t listen in the chair and worst of all, went outside and smoked a cigarette right after the procedure before tossing their antibiotics in the bushes.
Okay, that’s a little extreme, but you get the picture. You can only do so much to please somebody. Everybody has to takes some responsibility for their own actions. Online reviews are fairly forgiving in that bad reviews will get buried by good reviews, assuming you are proactively working on getting good reviews. But there’s something far more sinister in store for small businesses when it comes to reviews and that’s no reviews at all.
When a business has no reviews that can scare off a potential patient or customer. It shows that the establishment either doesn’t receive much business or if it does, it’s nothing special. These are two very good reasons not to give an establishment your business no matter how you look at it. It’s hard to justify going to a restaurant that has zero reviews, as well as other services such as a dentist with no reviews, while the listing on the same page has 25+ glowing reviews.
How a Review Management for Dentists Program Can Help
So, what’s the solution here? In general, you have to let people know that you would like them to leave a review. Good places to get reviews are high authority sites such as Google My Business, Yelp, Merchant Circle, Insider Pages, Yellow Pages, etc. Of course, there are industry specific review sites as well such as HealthGrades and Dentist Ratings. The key is getting your customers—or patients in the case of dentists—to leave reviews on these sites.
A skilled online consultant can come up with solutions that you can implement directly into your website and business. By integrating your brick-and-mortar location with online services, you not only take a proactive path towards ensuring more positive customer reviews online, you also open the door for great incentive plans that will boost your client’s online interaction with your business. Interaction is the key to building a more solid relationship with your existing clients while simultaneously getting the word out there about your quality services to potential clients.
Do you need help increasing your online reputation? Get in touch with me, I have a very special program designed to catapult you ahead of your competitors and spreading glowing, legitimate reviews all across the internet.