Social Proof: The Power of Patient Reviews
When a new patient visits your office or stumbles upon your Instagram, they don’t become lifelong patients right off the bat. You need to build trust with them first.
There are many ways to do this: through the content you share, with the professionals you network with, and maybe even at the events where you’re a speaker. However, the most effective way to build trust, obtain lifelong patients, and grow your practice in ways you’d never imagine is by social proof.
Social proof is a psychological theory by Dr. Robert Cialdini that describes the tendency to rely on the opinions of others to inform our own. If you take a second to think about it, this happens constantly in our everyday lives. We base our opinions and actions on other people’s opinions.
Think of any decision you’ve had to make in your life, big or small, and chances are that other people’s opinions or actions probably affected the outcome. This isn’t a bad thing; it’s just how the human brain works, and it is directly related to the concept of loss. People are averse to making a decision that could potentially be unsuccessful or result in a loss. So, in steps the concept of Social Proof influences our daily decisions. It’s also why the reviews are the first place we check when making an online purchase. The reviews help us to justify, validate, and sometimes they can make or break our decision to invest in something or someone.
Before soliciting, sharing or posting patient testimonials or reviews, check with your professional regulatory board or your legal counsel to make sure your actions don't violate HIPAA or any advertising restrictions applicable to your profession. Additionally, make sure you always obtain proper consent before sharing information.
Here are four important pillars to be aware of as you focus on the importance of patient reviews.
1. Popularity and Public Praise
Number of Followers
One of the more obvious forms of social proof is popularity. When you head to Social Media to check out hair salons in your area and you see an account with 8,000 followers and another with 150, you are most likely going to think the salon with a larger following is more credible. It doesn't necessarily mean that you wouldn’t have a good experience at the salon, but our brains are wired to associate popularity with credibility. If a lot of people like something, why wouldn’t you?
The same can be said about your practice. The more people who are having an amazing patient experience within your care who are also sharing their experience with others, then the more new patients will seek you and your care to help them, too.
Reviews/Testimonials
Reviews and testimonials are a major factor in people’s purchase decisions. In fact, 85% of customers trust local online reviews as much as personal recommendations, and that’s huge!
Getting your current patients to share their experiences under your care and to share their testimonials on your website, on your Google My Business, and across your social platforms is a fantastic way to let other people know what your patients are loving about your practice to further build trust.
Note that some regulated professionals are not allowed to use testimonials on their website so check with your regulatory board or legal counsel. However, you cannot prevent people from giving you a review on your Google My Business.
User-Generated Content
User-Generated Content (UGC) is content that your patients create and share with a tag to your clinic or by using your unique brand hashtag if you have created one. This type of content is not to get confused with sponsored content. UGC is organic content that you are tagged in, rather than asking someone to post or create content about your clinic.
A great way to promote UGC is to create content that encourages a conversation. You can ask people to tag a friend, caption a photo, or share a photo with your branded hashtag. An example could be, “Show us your favorite supplements and tag us in your post!” It’s not a review, but it will still resonate with those following you to see your loyal community participating in these prompts. It’s also a great way to get those existing patients to tag you for their following to see what raises awareness for your clinic. Patients will also be more likely to engage if they know they have a chance to be featured on your page, which is a good incentive for them.
The best thing about UGC is that people trust this a great deal more than sponsored posts. Why? Because of how authentic it is to others.
The user creating the content and sharing their experience is not gaining anything by sharing it; they simply want to do so because they had such a good experience under your care. You can’t ask for better marketing than that.
If you find that people are tagging your clinic and sharing their experiences, you will definitely want to share it on your page and other platforms. However, it is important to remember to get permission first before re-sharing UGC.
2. Where To Use Social Proof as Marketing
Your Website
Your website is your online hub for everything and anything related to your clinic. Even if someone finds you on Instagram; they will most likely click your link and visit your website to get more information. You want to create a section (preferably on your homepage) that showcases patient reviews and testimonials.
Social Media
Social media is often the first touchpoint for many of your patients, and you need to make sure your patient reviews are visible and easily accessible. You should always share a review as an individual piece of content and then also share it with your Instagram stories. Then, you can save a highlighted section on Instagram that’s dedicated to your patient reviews so that new visitors can easily view them.
This is a great way for potential patients to see what others are saying about you to continue building their trust. You can even use these reviews in your paid Facebook and Instagram ads.
Google My Business and Yelp
Google My Business and Yelp are both two of the most popular places to read reviews on a business, and yes, this includes your clinic. You want to encourage your audience to leave reviews on these sites because these will add credibility to your practice.
When you see a business with 100+ reviews and 4 to 5 stars, you’re going to assume you will have a good experience as opposed to a bad one. You want to utilize these outlets to share your social proof as best you can.
Emails
The great thing about showcasing your patient reviews throughout your emails is that the people viewing your emails are already a warm audience that has subscribed to you. You can include a review along with an image that relates to the content you're discussing within an email. Or you can dedicate emails to go out with subject lines such as, “Hear what my patients have to say” or “Patient success stories.” You can get creative with these.
3. How to Ask for Social Proof
Now that you understand social proof better, where can you leverage it for your marketing and why is it so valuable?
Offering incentives can seem enticing but is against Google and Yelp policies, so be cautious there. Look instead to sending an SMS message during your onboarding with a link to your Google My Business Review section or send an email to a new patient asking if they would be willing to share their experience.
Collecting social proof must be part of your marketing strategy, and it must be consistent. It’s not just a one-time thing. You want to update your reviews as time goes by because just like your services and clinic, which will require adjustments, so will your patient’s experiences.
4. Your Patient Experience Creates the Best Social Proof
Knowing how important social proof is when it comes to marketing your practice and reaching a wider audience should tell you one thing. The only thing more important than collecting and sharing social proof is having an amazing patient experience for them to want to talk about and share with others.
The more value you provide and the more seamless customer service you offer, then the more your patients are going to want to tell others about you without you even having to ask! This is the ultimate goal.
If you think about how many times you’ve wanted to write a review about a place you’ve visited or a service you had, it's usually because you’ve had a really bad experience or a really good one. You want to offer that 5-star experience for them to willingly write these amazing reviews.
Think of any wonderful customer service you’ve experienced, and you’ve most likely shared that with family and friends immediately out of excitement. You share by telling others that they just have to try a certain restaurant, stay at a particular hotel, or go see a named chiropractor.
If you continue to add value to your patients, then offer the highest customer service possible and make sure you collect and share your social proof. There are no limits on how big your practice will grow from this.
