With so many chiropractors beginning to better understand how important online marketing is for the growth and success of their practice, it’s no wonder that more and more doctors are jumping on the internet marketing bandwagon.
As an increased number of clinics in your area build a more extensive online presence, there will come a time when there will be just a few factors that will separate the men from the boys when it comes to who gets the most clicks to their website. One of those factors is and will continue to be social proof testimonials.
Here is a free and easy 2 Step Protocol you can begin today to get you on the fast track to a socially proofed presence.
STEP 1
Claim your listing and create an account at 6 common websites that allow reviews. From there you should edit each one to include your clinic information, business description with keywords such as your services and your area, pictures, videos and any other information allowed. I have listed some of the more common sites below with instructions on claiming your business.- Yelp.com
– Google.com
– CitySearch.com
– Insiderpages.com
– Yellowbot.com
– YP.com
To find your business listing at the above services, and most of the others online, you will simply do a search for your clinic name in your city and state. Once you find it, click on your business and then on the next page you will typically see an option that says ‘Own this Business?’ or ‘Claim this Business’ or something similar.
Once you click that option you will be taken to the form where you can ensure the information about your business is correct as well as enter all the additional details you can about your business. The more information you enter, the better your listing will look and ‘feel’ to the visitors (i.e. potential patients).
After the form is complete, click ‘submit’ and you will be prompted to verify ownership of the listing in some way before your edits become permanent.
STEP 2
Now that you have claimed and edited your listing on several popular sites, you need to get some reviews from your patients. You could, of course, wait for patients to randomly go online to give you reviews and that will happen over time.
However, you may want to give your web based social proof a quick little boost at the beginning by employing a few ethical and effective approaches of getting testimonials. After all there is nothing that adds life to an online listing and stimulates people to click on your clinic name quite like those little highlighted stars do!
To help you get that ‘Social Proof’ shot in the arm try the following:
1. Email friends that have been in your clinic for treatment and ask them to go on one of sites above and do a review on your clinic. You no doubt have friends that have been in your clinic for treatment…well it’s time to play the ‘friend card’ and ask for a little favor.
2. Ask staff to send an email asking family members who have received treatment in your office to do a review. For example, if your CA’s uncle gets treatment at the clinic, ask her to have him do a review or shoot him an email to ask him.
3. Send personal emails directly from you or your office manager to any patients that are excited about your services and ask them to go online and do a review on your clinic.
I recommend you ‘ask’ for reviews via email verses face to face. During business hours, there is a good chance that each person who gets your message will already be at their computer. Your email message may be as simple as:
“Hi ___________, will you go on one of these sites below and do a review on your experience at the clinic. Our goal is to get a few reviews on each of the following websites by the end of this week and it would be awesome if you could help us out. How you review us is of course totally up to you.
You should just be able to click on any link below and enter ‘East Hampton Chiropractic’ and our city and state and find our listing that way. Thanks!”
www.yelp.com
www.google.com
www.citysearch.com
www.insiderpages.com
www.yellowbot.com
www.yp.com
Let me end this article with a little warning: Asking for reviews is powerful and can easily results in a lot of reviews in a short period of time. I recommend you ask each person to do just one review and not ask everyone at one time. One month you may ask your friends and the next month ask your staff to reach out for you and then the next month ask 10 or 15 patients and then continue on with a few more patients each month thereafter.
The reason I mention this is because with several websites, if they see that you went from no reviews to a huge influx all in just a few weeks, they will not allow the reviews to post. This is also why you should give the people you ask a minimum of 6 websites to choose from; to help keep the reviews distributed more evenly across the different websites. If you notice one site is getting more than 4 reviews in a month (assuming you typically had 0 reviews in a month) then you might leave that site off your emails for a while and direct efforts to the other sites.
