Around 80% of consumers say that they trust patient testimonials as much as personal recommendations. Patient testimonials act as proof of the quality of your healthcare practice.
Your prospective patients could be apprehensive before getting treatments from you. They generally prefer to hear from other patients and will investigate your work before booking an appointment. It is common for today’s Internet-savvy people to cross-check any healthcare team and see how previous patients react regarding their experience and results.
Therefore, it is essential to gather an abundant amount of testimonials from your patients and even create a series of them to showcase your quality. If patient testimonials aren’t a part of your marketing strategy for your practice, you’re falling behind and pushing your competition ahead of your brand. Patients will trust providers that have good ratings and good testimonials.
So, let’s discuss some of the better-known channels where you can receive Testimonials from your patients.
The 6 Top Channels That Drive Patient Testimonials
1. Directories
Business Directory portals like Google My Business, Yelp, Yahoo Local, Merchant Circle, and many more allow individuals to compose reviews. If you are registered in these directories and have good reviews, you can share them on your website wherever suitable.
Asking your patients to provide testimonials of your brand in these directories proves valuable in optimizing your online presence and building your healthcare practice’s goodwill.
It can help you generate more search traffic to your practice since the more you reviews, ratings, and testimonials you generate; the more your service will advance up the list for results.
2. Review Sites
Make full use of review sites to gather testimonials from your patients and focus on reviewing niche review sites and general ones. Try to position your practices in industry-specific review portals or, at the very least, the proper segment of the general review portals. I.e., those that talk about the healthcare area so patients can easily view and post a review about your practice quality.
3. Website
While Google appears to place a large amount of value on 3rd party platforms, your website is still an important platform to get testimonials. Make sure you have a section specifically on your website for posting testimonials.
Ensure the design is such that patients who visit your site can easily find and post reviews on these pages. Blogs are another great, but often overlooked, option for gathering testimonials from your satisfied patients.
Keep a comment section in the website blogs and proactively ask your patients to comment and share their experience.
4. Facebook
Facebook offers a lot of great features for promoting your business. If you have a Facebook page created as a “nearby business,” your page will have a Review tab, so make full use of it and encourage everyone to post a review of your healthcare practice.
Since most of your patients have a Facebook account, the process is easy for them to access your business page and share a review. They can do it in your office while they’re checking out. Facebook reviews are great for building a brand and reputation.
5. LinkedIn
Most people overlook that LinkedIn can be an excellent source for getting testimonials even though it is limited to individual profiles and not available on the business pages.
However, even with this limitation, it’s still beneficial, especially if you’re a sole proprietor, doctor, owner of a healthcare organization, or an essential member of a particular ambulatory service unit.
Ask patients to recommend you from a business point of view, and if they do, you can use it as a testimonial for featuring on your website or other review channels.
One last note regarding LinkedIn, don’t forget your employees and the fact that most of them have LinkedIn profiles too. Encourage them to be active on LinkedIn since this can promote the practice. Still, it may lead to individual employees receiving recommendations from your customers. It eventually can boost their positive attitude and enhance productivity.
6. YouTube
YouTube is the second-largest search engine globally owned by the largest search engine globally – Google. Combine that with the fact that video is more appealing than other forms of promotion.
What about a video of your clients discussing how your healthcare services helped them? If your patients have any YouTube account, then urge them to add recordings of their experience. And, they can send those URL links to you. You can then feature these recordings to all the various channels and make a playlist of client reviews.
To conclude, patient testimonials are essential for your healthcare practice, but it’s also challenging to get consistent testimonials. The first and obvious way to get them is to provide excellent treatments to your patients. Undoubtedly, it naturally increases customer retention and satisfaction.
The second and most comfortable way is an advanced Patient Loyalty Program that helps boost the process of promoting your healthcare practice, especially if it has high-end features and functionality to assist in marketing your service on the various channels.
For nearly a decade, NextBee has specialized in developing best in class Patient Loyalty Program. The tool is embedded with high-end features, including analytical reports, integrated social actions, a review & rating system, and much more.
