Online reviews are quickly becoming the leading form of word-of-mouth marketing for businesses of all types, and surveys continue to reveal their rising appeal. With 85% of respondents admitting to trusting online reviews as much as recommendations from friends, it’s worth your time to maximize the benefit of any and all positive reviews your business receives. After all, getting patients to leave you a positive review online takes a lot of hard work, and you deserve to share the good news.
One way to extend the reach of a great review is to highlight it in a blog post on your website. This content can then be shared on your social networks and also in your email newsletters. These posts can also include helpful information within the content itself, while also incorporating favorable reviews to encourage readers to seek your help if they’re suffering from hearing concerns as well.
Consider the three article formats below to showcase your happy patients and encourage others to join their ranks:
Patient Stories
There will be times when patients are so thoroughly satisfied with their results that they give generous reviews about their experience with you. These reviews present an opportunity to highlight the journey each patient took from experiencing a hearing concern to delighting in exceptional results. You will certainly need patient consent to share their story, and you should obtain this consent in writing before and after your blog has been written (but prior to publishing it). Usually, patients who are this thrilled with their results are happy to allow you to spread the good news further. If he or she would prefer to remain anonymous, the review would need to be left by “anonymous” on whatever website it was published on (which is not always possible) and a pseudonym should be used for the story itself.
These kinds of relatable posts tend to be the most popular kind, so spend some time laying out all of the details of your patient’s situation before coming to see you. You want your readers to be able to relate to the symptoms and their effect on your patient’s life. Once you paint a clear picture of his or her struggle, then go into the details about the relief your patient experienced through your thorough and welcoming care. Be sure to express the patient’s experience throughout this entire journey – one of limitation and frustration to a place of unexpected clarity and renewed connection, for example. Readers want to relate to this patient’s emotional state, as many of them will likely have some or all of the symptoms described.
As for the review, you can either quote it in the beginning or end of the review, depending on how you want to introduce this case story. It’s also important to express gratitude for the patient taking the time to leave a review and being willing to share his or her story.
Common Misconceptions
An easy way to highlight a group of positive reviews is to use them to shed light on frequent questions or misunderstandings about hearing treatments and the like. By selecting a few reviews that touch on common misconceptions such as, “hearing evaluations are lengthy and unnecessary,” or “I don’t actually need hearing aids anyhow,” you can directly address these pervasive beliefs with successful patient testimonies.
Don’t worry about having the perfect review to match to a given misconception, but do use discretion on how you describe a patient’s situation. Unless you receive explicit consent (in writing) from the reviewer to describe their case in more detail, you should just stick to the details shared by the patient in the review itself. The main idea here is to simply expand on what struggles people overcome in general by visiting your office.
Outline of Results
Take advantage of a handful of positive reviews by highlighting the successful results they represent in your patients’ lives. You could do this “spotlight on results” type of post as a longer article looking at a few different reviews at once, or as a series of shorter posts focused on one result/review at a time. The latter will offer a more focused appreciation of each reviewer (and indirectly encourage more reviews from current patients), and the former will give a strong dose of persuasive information about your services in one article.
The nature of your posts will be determined by the reviews you’re choosing to highlight, but ideally will center around the most common results your patients are seeking: improved hearing, better ability to navigate important listening situations (e.g. work, family, etc), tinnitus relief, and so forth.
When designing your approach for a results-oriented post like this, be sure to thoroughly describe the problem seeking to be solved. Instead of just describing a patient who couldn’t hear well in meetings, go into the frustrations that can present to really allow your readers a chance to relate to the patient at hand. Avoid imposing that reality onto your actual patient who left the review (unless it’s clearly stated as such ), and just keep your analysis general and non-patient specific (this isn’t a case story, as above, but more of a description of the results that are possible, with reviews to prove it).
Leveraging your reviews like this can be a great way to create a popular blog post and create effective marketing all at once. Remember: you work hard for every positive review you receive and your future patients deserve to hear about what’s possible.
Having trouble getting patients to leave you reviews at all? Consider improving your patient review rates by adding ReviewMe to your website for the easiest way for patients to leave you a review on the most popular websites. Click here to learn more or simply contact us to take advantage of this today.
Enhance Your Content Marketing with Patient Reviews
