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.

I have seen first hand the trouble that can be generated by an incompetent dentist. So, I understand the strong motivation to find a good dentist. In fact, there is research showing that 60% of patients do online research before visiting a new dentist.

Unfortunately, most reviews about dentists which are written on the Internet have a negative angle. Basically it is the frustrated patient who has the independent motivation to write a review online. Are these reviews generally helpful to prospective patients? For the most part, no. Although only 20% of dentists have review written on the Internet, this number is growing.

Do think that when someone is happy with the dental care they receive they jump online to write a review. Analysis of the reviews which have been written about dentists clearly show that they tend to be negative. What a dental practice needs to do is get as many patients as possible to write a review. Then the dental practice will have a representative sample of what their patients think.

If you were to look online, you would get the impression that 80+% of dental services are horrible, which is simply not the case. dentists need to take control of their online reputation before some frustrated and angry patient tries to hijack it. Controlling your reputation is the single best way to market you dental practice on the Internet. As far as I know, there is only one service that helps dentists manage their online reputation. I founded this service, The Review Book. My hope is that patients will actually be in a better position to research a dentist when seeing the reviews published by our dentist clients.

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 dentist marketing program.

You may ask how hard is it to control my online reputation and use it as a dentist 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.

With online reputation management tools, getting the positive word of mouth online is a cinch. As a dentist, you will feel good when you see what most your dental patients have to say. There is really no better way to market than to get referrals from your existing patients. By facilitating the process of getting favorable patient reviews online, you are essentially turbocharging that positive word of mouth process that generates referrals from your existing patients.