Well, you are right. It probably will be too much for most people, but here is why you should ask anyway and let them decide that. The bottom line is that 70% of people out there do some kind of online research before making a purchase or trying a new service and the SEO value of reviews is indisputable. If your prospects look on Google Local search results and see one practice has 17 mixed reviews (good and bad), and you have none, they are going to go with the one that at least has some good comments over the one they know nothing about. They will probably even read the bad ones and see how the practice responded and maybe even be impressed by the response they showed.
You know that probably most of the patients you solicit won’t review your practice but you can be sure none of them will if you don’t ask (except maybe the really unhappy ones). The practices that have a lot of traction with online reviews have a system in place to make sure they consistently ask a certain number of patients to review them each week, knowing that only a small percentage of the people will actually go ahead and do so.
In addition to setting up a system to personally ask patients for reviews, here are some additional tools that we provide and suggest our clients use to encourage patient reviews:
- Google and Yelp business-size reminder cards.
- Royalty Free Review Us online graphic to use in print, send via email or post on social media.
- Great example of a Review Us online link on a practice web page that helps patients leave reviews.
- Easy to forward email template, with links to the practice review pages on Google, Yelp and Facebook.
In other words, just do it! Ask for reviews.
Need some help to get your patient review system in place? We’re here for you. Contact me at Daniel@eyecarepro.net or phone (412) 532-6542.
