Customer reviews, whether written or spoken, have long been important to any business. But if your clients rely on web searches to find your chiropractic office, they may be even more critical than you think. Your placement and visibility on major search engines like Google are directly linked to the quality and quantity of your reviews. Below, we’ll look at local reputation management strategies for chiropractors, including how to localize your online presence and steps to optimize your profiles.
Understanding the impact of online reviews
You don’t need a scientific study to understand how online reviews influence consumer decisions. Consider how you choose local businesses based on what your neighbors have to say. Local businesses especially rely on online reviews. Because they’re so deeply entrenched in the local community, by nature, the comments and complaints hit closer to home. If you want to boost your presence in a specific city or town, it’s important to regularly touch base with what your clients have to say.
Around 98% of people read online comments about local businesses, and 94% of them avoid a business because of bad reviews. In general, people aren’t looking for the most positive comments. Instead, they’re zooming in on negative feedback and trying to decide whether it’s worth taking the risk.
Steps to localize your online presence through reviews
Below, we’ll look at some standard steps to help you improve your online presence with better customer reviews.
Build a positive online reputation
As a chiropractor, it’s important to distinguish your business from your competitors. When a customer leaves your practice happy, you should encourage them to talk about what made their experience so special. You can also consider offering a small incentive for their trouble.
For example, you can offer 5% off their next appointment to post a review on Yelp. Print a QR code on a sign that a client can easily scan to connect right to your Yelp business page. It may seem somewhat unethical to offer an incentive for reviews, but keep in mind that the incentive is for a review as opposed to a positive review.
The good news is that while people are generally more inclined to leave bad reviews, the margin is slim. This means that satisfied customers are largely willing to share their experiences. When you respond to reviews, ensure that you’re specifically responding to the client’s comments, and provide local details in your reviews to help boost your search engine rankings. Even if you can’t make everyone happy, you can detail what steps you took to correct problems and how your business will improve in the future.
Utilize local SEO strategies
Your profile, review responses, and service menu all play a role in where you show up on the search engine. It’s true that algorithms can change at any given time, but the basic rules remain the same. Your information should be accurate, complete, and helpful to a searcher. They should know where you are, what services you offer, what your hours are, and what your customers are saying about you. Essentially, if they get a full snapshot of your business, your links are more likely to pop up in the coveted top spaces.
Here are a few tips to optimize your Google Business profile, Yelp, and Facebook pages:
- Reverse search: You don’t have to be an expert SEO strategist to run an internal audit on your review pages. You can use an incognito window to assess your standings and review your information. The first step is always to complete your profile as best as possible. Whether this means adding hours or listing your unique selling points, such as specializing in lower back pain, the more valuable information you add, the better your business complies with the terms and conditions of each entity.
- Add photos: People want to see where they’re going before they get there. Post photos of happy clients, clean massage tables, and friendly receptionist staff. You can also add location-specific photos, such as a picture of the cross-streets of your business or local landmarks that would help customers identify where you are.
- Use Google Posts: Digital assets like Google posts let business owners add more personality to their practice. The more you post, whether it’s about a special event or a new piece of research in your field, the more visibility you’ll get. While not directly connected to online reviews, it can help you create more optimized profiles.
- Easy action buttons: If you want your customers to take action, you should make the transition as seamless as possible. On all of your pages, people should have an easy way to call your practice, make an online appointment, or contact you for additional questions or concerns.
Leverage review platforms
Successful chiropractic businesses don’t necessarily need to put tremendous effort into all review platforms. Instead, they might pick a few and allocate their resources accordingly. For example, Google and Yelp are likely two major review platforms that your customers rely on. However, this doesn’t mean that you should discourage customers from using a review platform of their choice. Whether it’s Reddit or Facebook, the goal is to pay attention to what’s being said about your practice and respond accordingly. Keep in mind that most customers know that one single bad review on a largely unknown website is unlikely to sway their decision one way or the other. As long as you’re keeping up with the general consensus, your customers will take notice.
Besides discounts, your customers care about the following key factors:
- Claimed businesses: If your chiropractic office hasn’t claimed your business on platforms like Yelp or Google, it may come across as sketchy or otherwise untrustworthy to potential clients.
- Recent reviews: If the last review your practice had was from six years ago, a client might be less inclined to choose you. They may think that your business is either closed or doesn’t have room for additional clients.
- Responses: If you don’t respond to your customers or your responses are the same across every comment, the client may assume that you don’t care about any kind of feedback (positive or otherwise).
Encourage user-generated content
User-generated content (UGC) refers to any content made by your clients. This includes online reviews, but it also refers to any online experience. So, if a client takes a picture of their smiling back after you relieved their hip pain and posted it on Facebook, this user-generated content could encourage people to choose you the next time they have a physical ailment.
The best way to leverage UGC is to have a common hashtag that links your business with the post. It’s a type of online review that can have a much bigger ripple effect on local audiences. You can also ask permission to use user-generated content to improve your website and social media platforms. Often, the best way to encourage user-generated content is simply to ask politely. For example, you might send a follow-up email to a customer thanking them for their business and asking them to share their experience.
Monitor and analyze online reviews
You can set up review alerts for real-time monitoring, so you never miss a customer’s reaction to your business. Today, you can find tools that crawl nearly every potential website to ensure that you can step in when needed. However, for most local businesses, it’s not necessary to do an exceptionally deep dig.
Monitoring and analyzing data also allow you to spot the trends and patterns that affect your business. So if you notice that people appreciate your talents but don’t appreciate the wait times, you can work to improve your scheduling policies so clients aren’t left wondering when they’re going to be next.
Where to find help
Your reviews may not be the only thing that affects your online presence, but they do play an important role. The good news is that it doesn’t always take much effort to optimize your profile, especially if you can lean into the local aspects of your business.
Local reputation management strategies for chiropractors may not be difficult, but they can be time-consuming. If you’re looking for a team that can drive more visibility to your practice, consider partnering with Surefire Local. Our team specializes in localized online marketing for small businesses. We build local signals across all major platforms, so it’s easier for customers to discover and connect with you. We are the all-in-one platform to help you manage reviews, optimize your profiles across directories, and create better content.
Whether you want better blog posts or to write more impactful review responses, our platform streamlines it all. Plus, we provide analytics and reporting, including AI-generated recommendations, so you can make more strategic improvements. You can also use our educational resources, like webinars and blogs, to refresh your local marketing.
If you want to learn more about how we help you build a better local reputation, attend a Surefire Local demo today!