Barak Granot, Dental Marketing Expert and Co-Founder of DentoMetrix says, “In the last few years, the way that patients search for and find a new dentist has changed.” It used to be that dentist’s primarily got new patients through referrals from existing patients or through yellow pages ads. Consumers are now getting on the Internet and researching dentists, looking for reviews, information on services and pricing, all before venturing into the office or booking a first appointment.
“The data is visible,” Granot explains, “When someone is looking up a doctor’s name—even if they are just looking for a phone number or for more information—they will immediately see the doctor’s reputation from review websites. Reading reviews has become part of our buying process. Now, it is suspicious if there are no reviews and no information about a doctor or dentist and repelling if the reviews are bad so the only option is having great reviews and a lot of them.”
Granot believes that dentists are just becoming aware of the need for an online and social media presence, actively soliciting and monitoring patient reviews on accessible and popular websites and building a 5-star reputation—outside of the dental office. “4 out of 5 people who get a recommendation from friends and family for a new dentist will also check out the dentist’s reputation online,” he adds.
Granot works with dentists to create an authority marketing plan focused on building up authority and expert status in order to better compete within today’s marketplace. The strategy Granot utilizes hinges on dentists understanding that their reputation, as seen online, through social media, on their own website and from patient reviews can make or break both their ability to gain new patients and to retain existing patients in the face of stiff price-based competition from their competitors. “If you are positioned in the mind of prospective patients as the expert in your field, patients will be willing to pay more and not haggle on prices,” he explains. This strategy is quite unique. In that regard, Barak Granot and DentoMetrix are changing the face of dental marketing.
Granot believes that every dentist should create a system within their office that actively creates a flow of positive reviews to the most visited review directories (chiefly Google and Yelp), know how to fend off bad reviews and then make their good reviews visible to prospective patients. “This is not easy for most dentists to do and for some it goes against the grain of the way they were taught or think,” Granot adds, “But not doing so means losing their business to their more savvy competitors.”
Most dentists do not want to “run specials” on serious dental procedures or haggle on pricing in order to gain new business, but instead they need to focus on taking their own existing expertise and specialization within the field of dentistry, hand in hand with the specialties and capabilities of their practice and create an online presence that reflects the quality of care they offer, highlights their experience and workmanship and sets up systems and processes within the office to capture true patient reviews and testimonials.
Granot adds, “Prospective patients are looking up the dentist’s name in a lot of cases—whether coming from referrals or after searching their insurance data—and the dentist needs to control what they will see. If the dentist has a lot of great reviews and, in addition, was featured in national media outlets as an expert, then he or she is the hero.”
To learn more about Barak Granot and DentoMetrix please visit: http://dentometrix.com/.