There is tremendous untapped potential to implement a first-rate dental marketing program. First, lets get a couple of things straight. Patients like nothing more than being able to check the references of a dentist that they are considering visiting. There is clearly tremendous value in this.

Tremendous complications for the patient can be generated by an incompetent dentist. This explains the strong motivation to find a good dentist. Because of this, 60% of patients validate there dentist before their first visit.

So are the dentist reviews which are popping up online of much value to patients. In a word–I say “NO”. Not only are these reviews not useful, they can damage a dentists marketing efforts. About 20% of dentists right now have an online review written about them. The problem is that the vast majority of these reviews are written by a patient with an axe to grind.

Generally speaking, patients who are satisfied or delighted with their care don’t jump online and write a favorable review about their dentist. Rather, it is those patients who want to damage a dentists reputation who are most active in reviewing dentists on various review sites available online, such as citysearch, yelp, etc.

You may be wondering, why should I really take control of the reputation of my dental practice. With 80% of dental reviews being unfavorable, it is just a matter of time before your reputation takes a hit and your new business suffers as a result. Without a doubt the best way to attract new dental patients is to actively take control of your online reputation. It will be both fun and easy for your dental practice to do. This was the reason I founded The Review Book, an online service that makes it ridiculously simple to capture reviews from your existing dental patients. The key part is, you control which review gets published and pushed out over the Internet for other potential dental patients to see.

There is great value for a person seeing the first person voice of a patient which is not colored with frustration. For dentists, the service will be an excellent way to facilitate positive online word-of-mouth and let potential patients know what their current patients are saying about them. That is the essence of an excellent online dental marketing program.

You may ask how hard is it to control my online reputation and use it as a dental marketing strategy. In one word: Easy. We all like to hear what our happy patients have to say it human nature. It is my working presumption that most dentists do a good job and largely have patients that are happy. So whether you want to focus on cosmetic dentistry, orthodontics, teeth whitening, etcetera, getting representative feedback from your patients will be good for business.

Getting more patients from your existing patients is the best and most economical way to grow your practice. In order to do this, you need to facilitate positive word of mouth about your practice. With easy to use online management services, your dental practice will be able to easily capture patients reviews. And the key to the puzzle, is that with your own review site you decide what gets published and pushed onto to the Internet and what gets deleted. It is super simple.