Reputation Marketing lies at the intersection of brand identity and reputation management. Unlike authority marketing, which uses content created by you to showcase your expertise, reputation marketing uses content created by others, most commonly patient reviews. Though reputation marketing has been used successfully for generations, the world of internet marketing is only beginning to realize its full power. 

The foundation of a successful reputation marketing campaign is built upon establishing and managing a reputation of quality. Your service must be top-notch to earn a stellar reputation. Then you need to proactively collect, respond to, and share the reviews and other earned media.

One of the best ways to understand the impact reputation marketing can have on your practice is to study brands that use reputation marketing well. When you do, you quickly see that reputation marketing can bring many benefits to your practice.

The Lamborghini Example of Reputation Marketing

At Driven Dental Implant Marketing, we know that having the right engine driving your implant marketing campaign is critical to your success. But an engine alone won’t drive profits to your practice. Your entire practice needs to exude the same quality and performance as the engine for it to come together.

That’s why Lamborghini doesn’t toss one of its performance engines on a Datsun chassis and bring the car to market. If they did, they’d quickly lose the reputation for both luxury and performance.

Dental practices can learn a lot from companies like Lamborghini. Admittedly, Lamborghini doesn’t spend too much time collecting online reviews. They also don’t spend too much time driving traffic to their website. But Lamborghini knows that its reputation is the key to its long-term success. And the reputation they have built has allowed them to continue to thrive without relying on paid media. They rely on the quality of their cars and the strengths of the relationships with their customers to drive their marketing engine.

That’s also why you won’t see Lamborghini commercials on TV. It’s one of the best examples of the strength of reputation marketing.

Nobody Has Seen A Lamborghini Commercial While Watching An Episode Of The Bachelor, But Everyone Knows They Make Some Of The Most Luxurious Performance Cars On Earth.

Here’s how you can apply Lamborghini’s story to your practice.

The 4-Step Reputation Marketing Blueprint for Dental Practices

Years ago, dental practices relied on traditional word-of-mouth advertising to spread their reputations. Today, you can achieve even better results — and faster — by earning, collecting, and sharing a steady flow of high-quality online reviews.

Even better, doing so doesn’t need to be complicated. It doesn’t take any complex marketing strategy. You don’t need to have a masterful marketing mind. In fact, you can achieve incredible results with reputation marketing in just four simple steps. And you can make it even easier in more effective using simple online review software.

1. Decide What You Want Your Practice To Be Known For.

Do you want to be known as providing fast service, VIP treatments, being responsive, or having convenient appointment times? Write down everything you want patients to say about you when you aren’t listening.

By deciding what you want for your practice, you will make your reputation marketing much easier. That’s because it helps you get clarity on your messaging, tells you where to focus your time and resources, and helps you pre-frame what patients and others will say about you online. 

For example, if you want to be known as providing fast service, you can ask patients to share feedback about how quickly they were served. When they remark how they were seen on time and got in and out of your office, quickly, you can ask them to share a review about that experience online, which we’ll talk about below. Giving your patients something specific to talk about in their review makes it much more likely that your patients will follow through — you made it much easier by telling them what to talk about. It also makes it more likely that you will collect a steady flow of reviews that talk about what you care about most — speedy service.

2. Adjust Anything About Your Practice That’s Inconsistent With Your Vision.

Virtually every practice who writes out a practice vision will notice parts of their practice is inconsistent with what they want to be known for. So once you know your practice vision, examine what needs to be added, removed, or adjusted to better align patient experience with what you want every patient to say about you.

Continuing the speedy service example, examine your scheduling, staffing, paperwork, and everything else that impacts how fast patients are seen. Does your patient intake process have inefficiencies you can improve upon? Change them. Do you still require patients to fill out paperwork in your lobby? Consider sending them an electronic version before their appointment instead. Then you can simply ask them if anything changed in the day or so since they filled out the paperwork. If not, you just cut out several minutes from the patient intake process.

If you have trouble identifying what might need to be changed, tell your patients what you’re trying to become known for and ask them for their feedback based on their experience. Or, ask a friend to make an appointment and share their experience with you.

3. Ask Happy Patients To Provide Feedback In The Form Of An Online Review.

Before patients leave, take the advice of The Reviews Doctor, Len Tau, have a team member ask them about their experience. If the patient provides constructive criticism, have the team member thank them for helping improve the practice. If they rave about their experience — which is more likely if you’ve already taken the first two steps — have your team member ask them if they’d be willing to share their experience through an online review.

Make sure your team member lets the patient know what you want to improve the level of service in the dental industry and the best way to do so is for patients like them to share their positive experiences online. That way, people who are anxious to go to the dentist might take a chance and finally get the healthcare they need to live in optimal health.

4. Share Screenshots Of Your Online Reviews On Your Website And Social Media.

If you’ve taken the first three steps, you should begin to receive a steady flow of positive online reviews for your practice. As they come in, take a screenshot of them and save them in a shared folder. At least once or twice a week as the volume increases, share a screenshot on all of your social media channels and on your practice website. When you do, thank the patient for the review and telling your followers about your vision for your practice.

As you build your reputation marketing engine, having an experienced team by your side can make all the difference in the world. At Driven Dental Implant Marketing, we have the expert care you need to attract a steady flow of high-quality implant patients that match the reputation you want to build for your practice. To get started, schedule a free strategy call with us, today.