When is the last time you visited a new restaurant, hotel, or any business without skimming their website, yelp, or google reviews? It’s certainly been awhile for me. A lot of medical offices and organizations rely on referrals and old-fashioned word-of-mouth from satisfied patients and colleagues to acquire new patients or customers. Some focus very little on online reviews and medical internet marketing in Phoenix. For those of you who think that word-of-mouth is all you need, here is a stat that might change your mind. According to a local consumer review survey by searchengineland.com conducted in 2014, 88% of consumers trust reviews found online as much as personal recommendations.
When I recently purchased a new laptop, I probably spent upwards of 10-15 hours just researching the specs, keeping an eye out on prices, and most importantly, reading A LOT of reviews. I looked at the reviews on Amazon, on costco.com, on newegg.com and more. That was just for a relatively expensive laptop, imagine if that were something involving serious health consequences and/or a pricey medical procedure. You may be thinking, sure, you’re just an over-analytical freak though. That may be true, but if that’s the case a growing segment of the population are also over-analytical freaks. According to the same study, 88% of participants have read reviews to determine the quality of a local business, and 39% do so on a regular basis.
If you are reading this article and thinking to yourself, “Well I have a couple of patient testimonials on my website, so that’s good enough.” Think again! Patient testimonials are great, don’t get me wrong. However, most modern day consumers read quite a few reviews from different sources. Perhaps people are just a little more suspicious these days, but whatever the cause people are doing more and more research before deciding where to spend their money. Sixty-seven percent of consumers reported reading up to 6 reviews, 85% of consumers read up to 10 reviews, and 7% read 20 or more.
So if you don’t think online patient reviews are important to your medical internet marketing strategy, you are quite mistaken! Contact New Wine Web Design today to find out how and where to increase the amount of positive online reviews and how to effectively manage your practice’s reputation.
Images used under creative commons license – commercial use (11/17/2015) Glenn3095 (Flickr)