In the medical field, patient feedback is of the utmost importance, especially when there are multiple providers in a single area offering the same or similar services. This gives customers many options to choose from, and most of the time, the company with a better reputation gets the business. Learning how to manage your reputation and cultivate valuable customer reviews is critical for your veterinary practice – here’s how to do it.
Why Your Online Reputation As a Veterinarian Matters
One of the most powerful digital marketing assets you have as a business is your online reputation. That’s because, on the internet, perception is reality. The buyer’s journey has been changing and consumers are savvier than ever before. Not only do they want quality products and services, but they also want to deal with companies that go above and beyond trying to serve their customers.
Veterinary clinics in particular must pay attention to what customers – namely, pet parents – are saying about their establishments within their communities. Because veterinarians typically offer the same services across the board, they face stiff competition in most locations. Unless a vet offers some sort of specialty service, such as exotic animal care, they will be in direct competition with every other veterinarian in the area.
This makes cultivating a good word-of-mouth reputation important, and online reviews are a significant element. Keep reading to discover top reputation management tips for veterinarians and how marketing software can play a direct role in the ongoing management of your reputation online.
5 Essentials For Reputation Management
Reputation management involves a multifaceted strategy with many moving parts. There are different ways to go about cultivating a good reputation online for your veterinary clinic, and here are just 5 of them you can start with right away.
1. Claim Your Veterinary Clinic’s Online Business Listings
Your clinic will likely be listed in numerous online business listings, similar to the way yellow pages used to work. You don’t take out the listing yourself, but if you claim it, you can manage the information that appears in the listing. The most common platforms you’ll want to claim your business on are Google Business Profiles, Facebook, Yelp, and Trustpilot, but there are many others. You can search for the name of your veterinary clinic to see what listings come up, and you can then reach out to those webmasters for permission to edit the listing.
You should fill out your clinic’s online listings as thoroughly as possible; don’t leave any fields blank if you can help it. Include your address, telephone number, email address, website URL, hours of operation, a short bio, and any other important information about your clinic that you can include. Clinics with blank or unclaimed listings are typically chosen by pet parents less than their competitors.
2. Request Patient Reviews
Customer reviews are an extremely important part of managing your online reputation, or in this case, patients’ owners. Reviews by pet parents who have brought their animals to your clinic or have otherwise utilized your services make a significant impact on the decisions of future potential owners.
More pet owners will choose your clinic over others if you have a large number of good reviews. Similarly, fewer owners will choose your establishment if you have a lot of negative reviews, especially if the reviews tend to say the same thing.
While it’s unethical to solicit positive reviews for your clinic, you can encourage pet owners to simply leave a review. Although this does make it easier for owners who are unhappy with your clinic to leave a bad review, most people who choose to leave a poor review already intend to seek out the information to do so – providing them with it would make no difference. The value you gain from getting more happy customers to leave reviews outweighs the few bad reviews you might get as a result.
3. Respond to Both Negative and Positive Reviews
Check your clinic’s listings regularly for new reviews and be sure to respond to both positive and negative reviews. You may think that commenting on a bad review will bring more attention to it, but a conscientious response to a terrible customer rating can actually have benefits for your clinic.
Customers today don’t expect businesses – veterinary or otherwise – to never get a bad review. It happens. Instead, they are looking at how many negative reviews there are and going even further to see how the company responds to unpleasant or even downright nasty reviews.
If you don’t respond at all, that counts against you in the opinions of most potential customers. It also counts against you if you respond angrily or if you try to divert blame for the issue onto someone or something else. The only way to make negative customer feedback work for your clinic is to respond thoughtfully to bad reviews, erring on the side of going out of your way to make the customer happy.
4. Keep Your Finger On the Pulse of Your Online Reputation
It’s important that you monitor your veterinary clinic’s reputation consistently to identify any opportunities for growth as well as to identify concerns that need to be mitigated as quickly as possible.
The last thing you want is for a negative review to be sitting on one of your business listings for three or four weeks without your knowledge, all while potential customers are reading about your clinic and using that review – with no response – to make a decision on whether or not to book an appointment.
If you are a small practice with already established reputation management skills, you may be able to do this yourself. Or, you may want to consider outsourcing this part of your business while you focus on treating your clients’ furry friends.
5. Don’t Do These Things . . .
We’ve discussed a lot of things you should do to help cultivate a positive reputation for your veterinary brand online, but there are also some things you’ll want to avoid. Here are some things not to do when managing your web presence:
- Don’t stress over bad reviews. Every establishment gets negative reviews from time to time. Unless you notice a pattern that could indicate a problem you need to address, a well-thought-out and kind response to negativity should leave you in the clear.
- Don’t fear customer feedback. You might be a bit nervous to ask pet owners what they really think about your practice in case you hear something you’d rather not. But whether or not you like what you hear, or even if you agree, you should take customer feedback seriously.
- Don’t purchase customer reviews. Buying customer reviews can land you in a lot of hot water and the benefits you get from purchased reviews typically aren’t worth it. Don’t incentivize 5-star reviews. Instead, focus on providing an excellent experience for your patients and owners and making it easy for them to leave a review.
Attend a Surefire Local Platform Demo Today
Local marketing and online reputation management go hand-in-hand. Managing and optimizing customer reviews and business listings for your veterinary clinic is a critical component of your overall local marketing strategy and shouldn’t be neglected. But not all vets have the time or skills to manage this particular aspect of their business – after all, their degree is in animal medicine, not digital marketing. If you find yourself in this position, you’re not alone.
What Local Marketing & SEO Can Do For Your Veterinary Clinic
Outsourcing your local marketing, reputation management, and search engine optimization (SEO) can help ensure your web presence is up to date and that your veterinary brand offers customers quality content. You can stay focused on treating man’s best friend and growing your practice while your local marketing agency works behind the scenes to create an online presence that brings both you and your clients value.
Book Your Software Demo
Surefire Local is a leading provider of business intelligence marketing software and can work with your veterinary clinic to learn the platform and craft a comprehensive digital marketing strategy that helps you grow your patient base, service offerings, and revenue year-over-year. Our clients typically see more than an 80% increase in the number of online reviews they get when we employ our proprietary marketing strategies and as much as a 385% return on investment. Not only will you see the difference, but so will your customers. Give your patients and their owners a better veterinary experience both online and off with the help of Surefire Local. Contact us today to book your demo or call us at (703) 884-8442.