How to Increase Your Reviews Online

Last Updated: May 3, 2019

Reviews have become more and more important over the last few years, especially in the chiropractic field. Managing chiropractic reviews online is a must. Many people say that they are influenced as much by online reviews as they are by word of mouth reviews from friends and family. This is shocking to most, but it’s true. That level of influence can be the difference between a new patient choosing your office over a competitor’s office. So how do you get your current patients to leave you a review in order to attract new patients?

Most chiropractors prefer not to ask patients for reviews and pass this responsibility off to a member of their staff. This is totally understandable considering how uncomfortable it can be to ask them face to face. The problem is that it’s no less uncomfortable for a member of your staff to do it and they certainly have less at stake when they don’t do it. The other issue that comes up is that they just don’t know how to do it properly. Either way, your patients aren’t giving you reviews and your practice suffers as a result.

All of this can be solved by putting a solid plan in place and spending some time to practice. Your first step is committing to asking every patient for a review. It’s a numbers game here and only a certain percentage of people that you ask are going to leave you a review. If your conversion rate is 10% and you ask 10 people you are only going to get 1 review. But if you ask 100 people and your conversion rate stays the same, all of a sudden you have 10 reviews. Simple math! Now say it with me, “I will commit to asking every single one of my patients for a review.”

Now it’s time to talk about how you are going to ask everyone for a review. There are a number of strategies that you can implement depending on how hands on you want to be. The most obvious is having either the doctor or a member of the office staff ask face to face. This is the easiest to implement but also the most difficult to execute day in and day out. Many offices choose to avoid the face to face request by asking for reviews via email. The emails can be sent to all of your patients at the same time on a quarterly basis in order to avoid missing anyone. They can also be sent based on appointment type if you do re-exams or something similar in your office. This strategy works well because it is sent right after you talk about progress that has been made with the patient.

There is one final option and it can be used in addition to any of the above methods. If your office sends out email communications, like a newsletter, you can include a link that directs them to leave you a review. This is the most passive approach but sometimes patients are less reluctant to leave a review when they aren’t directly asked. Repetition is the key here, so adding this approach can increase your success without investing too much of your time.