In this day and age, nearly everything lives on the internet and it’s no secret that it’s an essential component of life, both personal and professional. The internet is an endless source of information and can positively or negatively impact your holistic practice, depending on your practice’s online reputation.
As potential clients turn to the internet to conduct research on holistic practices in their area, a phenomenon known as healthcare consumerism in which people shop around for the best care for their budget, it’s vital that your holistic practice is effectively managing its online presence and reputation.
Keep reading to learn more about the importance of your holistic practice’s presence and website plus tips for managing your online reputation!
Why Your Holistic Practice's Online Reputation Is Important
The holistic care market is a $37 billion business, which means that general awareness and demand for holistic and alternative treatments is flourishing. How will your holistic practice attract, engage, and retain these prospective clients? Your online presence and reputation certainly play a major role here.
Let’s first break down what your online reputation includes:
- Your holistic practice’s website
- Reviews, both positive and negative
- Blog articles that your practice publishes
- Press coverage
- And more!
Research shows that 63% of patients choose one provider over another based on a strong online presence. Since patients are leveraging the internet to research holistic practices well before they ever show up to your office, appealing to them via your online presence is critical, even if you’re not trying to attract new patients.
Patients will likely form their perception of your holistic practice based on your online presence, or lack thereof, so it behooves you to shape and refine your online reputation to the best of your ability.
5 Tips for Managing Your Online Reputation
Obviously, the ideal is that every external entity views your holistic practice as an effective, high-quality place to receive treatments, but crafting this reputation isn’t easy. Let’s dig into some of our top tips for managing your practice’s online reputation:
Build a Professional-Looking Website & Optimize It for Mobile Users
The first step to managing your online presence is to have one. Your holistic practice needs a website just as any other business needs one! With so many user-friendly, no-coding-needed website building resources available like Wix or Squarespace, there’s no reason to not have a website for your holistic practice.
These do-it-yourself tools often feature an automatic version optimized for mobile users, but it’s worth noting to make sure that your site looks good on a desktop or cell phone.
Request Honest Reviews from Patients
Word of mouth marketing plays an instrumental role in influencing which businesses people patronize; in fact, 86% of customers rely on word-of-mouth recommendations and online reviews.
As such, it’s good to solicit feedback from your patients both via patient satisfaction surveys and honest online reviews. If your patients seem hesitant to leave a review because they’re worried the process is too tedious or inconvenient, then you can do a brief tutorial of how quick and easy it is to leave one.
If you're not sure how to ask patients to rate you, here are a few suggestions:
- Hand a card to the patient with the URLs listed for key consumer rating sites and ask them to rate you
- Add a clickable link for key sites to your email signature and website
- Keep a tablet at the front desk and ask patients to post a review before leaving your office
Gaining feedback from your patients is a win-win because it validates your holistic practice’s efforts and builds the relationship between your practice and your patients. Be sure to try out different methods for requesting reviews to see which ones work best for your patients.
Upon Receiving Reviews, Engage with Them
A great step to take upon receiving reviews or questions online is to engage with them. It’s as simple as thanking someone for taking the time to leave a positive review, answering a posted question and encouraging the author to contact your office, or addressing a negative review with an apology and steps to resolve the issue, if relevant.
Your patients took the time to leave a review; it’s a good rule of thumb to respond and thank them for it!
Fill Out Every Online Profile Available for Your Business
With so many places for patients to research holistic practices, it’s beneficial to fill out and promote more than one online profile available to your business. This might include:
- Google
- Yelp!
- Bing
- Facebook
- Better Business Bureau
- And more!
Don’t forget to check out any local organizations or resources available to register your holistic practice’s website. Routinely keeping these profiles current can help more people discover your practice and learn about your services.
Stay Consistent in Your Online Branding
Last but not least, another top tip is to stay consistent in your online branding across all platforms. Maintaining your voice, no matter the platform, demonstrates authority, authenticity, and leaves a memorable impression in the reader’s mind. Whether it’s including your slogan or mission statement whenever relevant, or another manner for staying consistent in your online branding, it’s great to help readers learn more about your holistic practice.
Let Holistic Billing Services Handle the Medical Billing Burden!
If you’re feeling too burned out or overloaded with medical billing and coding processes, issues, or legislative updates to put creative and consistent effort into your online reputation, then let Holistic Billing Services step in!
Our friendly experts are knowledgeable in your specialty and can immediately boost your healthcare revenue cycle by handling your medical billing and coding processes. Plus, we operate as an extension of your practice, so you know that your success is our success!
Contact us today so you can focus on what matters most: your patients.
