Physician Referral Marketing Doctor & Dentist Reputation Management New for 2015

TROY, Mich. - Jan. 20, 2015 - PRLog -- National healthcare advertising agency Physician Referral Marketing (PRM) opened to the public their online reputation management services for doctors & dentists effective January 1^st, 2015.  Laura Mikulski, VP of Business Development, says the service had previously only been available to a select few established clients as the agency perfected methods of soliciting positive reviews and combatting negative reviews in the multiple forums available to patients reviewing online.

http://physicianreferralmarketing.com/doctor-reputation-management/

“Something physician & dental practitioners don’t realize it just how crucial it is to stay on top of online reviews” says Mikulski.  “In the industry, we see a general fear of implementation to active management of patient reviews, primarily because practices worry that in soliciting reviews they’ll open themselves up to negative reviews.  Fact of the matter is, those negative reviews are going to happen whether you actively engage in reputation management or not- angry, disappointed patients don’t need motivation beyond their feelings to leave a negative review, but happy patients often need to be prompted several times before sharing their positive experience.  The goal of reputation management is getting those happy patients to leave reviews before negative ones get a foothold, to sort of offset any negative ones that do occur.”

The physician online reviews management services are customized to the niche and needs of the organization, says Val Fiott, one of PRM’s local managers, but also include standard packages.  They include automated email campaigns to patients with links to appropriate targets for patients to review physicians & practices, text messaging campaigns to immediately link to review sites from a mobile device, and physical media takeaways that patients can use to access the preferred review site.  PRM claims that their methods are capable of more than doubling positive reviews on sites like rateMDs, Healthgrades, and Yelp.

“Another facet of the important of reputation management is the impact it has search engine optimization and ranking factors, which greatly influence online visibility” says Mikulski.  “We place a strong emphasis on getting reviews to the sites that show up when a potential patient is searching for the practice- those are the sites that will most heavily influence whether that patient makes an appointment or not, and if the review site listing is tied to the clients website it imparts a healthy boost to their organic ranking within Google searches due to the increased activity.”  Mikulski adds “During our trial phase of the service, we found that many doctors & dentists contracted with services that included online reviews on an approved subpage that the physician or dentist controlled, like Demandforce and ReachLocal.  Those services seem great, in theory- in practicality, those reviews aren’t coming up in local search results for the service or practice name.  Most potential patients are searching for terms like “dentist reviews Michigan” or “best cardiologist in Arizona”.  The tendency is for people to search for the service they need, or the niche, in their particular location.  When that happens, Google+ Local listings often are the first thing they see- and are a golden opportunity for medical and dental professionals to direct patients to review them there, despite not having absolute control over the review posted.”

PRM physician & dentist online review management differs from services like those offered by Reputation .com as well, in that PRM focuses on increasing positive reviews rather than trying to remove negative reviews.  As Mikulski says “There is no way to remove negative reviews, even if you think they’re completely fabricated.  You can contact the poster directly to remove them, but review sites like Yelp, rateMDs, and Healthgrades do not offer ways remove negative online reviews.  Any company that promises they can get rid of your negative online reviews is blowing smoke.  A smarter tactic is to increase positive reviews to avoid the ‘snowball effect’ of predominantly negative reviews, where patients who were only mild dissatisfied feel compelled to ‘pile on’ after reading other negative reviews.  By increasing positive reviews, you’re basically creating an environment where the patient who might feel poorly about their recent experience is more likely to consider it a fluke, rather than the norm, and less likely to report it.”  Mikulski urges those considering reputation management services like Reputation.com to do their due diligence and read sites like RipoffReport.com for user experiences before committing the rather large budget to work with them.

Physician Referral Marketing online reputation management services for physicians & dentists pricing begins around $500 per month, and encompasses all applicable review sites.  Discounts are available when bundled with services like Search Engine Optimization & Patient Recall Services.  More information is available at their website:

http://physicianreferralmarketing.com/doctor-reputation-m...