July 2017 Ceatus Chronicles

Which Review Sites are Most Important?

Elementary, My Dear Watson

Reviews have become a powerful form of online advertising, to be ignored at your peril. Nielsen data shows that potential patients believe online reviews just as much as a word-of-mouth referrals from friends or family members. Reviews also significantly impact buying decisions. A Better Business Bureau report shows that 88% of consumers use reviews when making purchasing decisions. And as if this wasn’t enough evidence, a now famous study from Harvard Business School shows that a 1 star differential in your star rating can change revenue by up to 18%!! All this adds up to one thing: You and your practice staff must be proactive about obtaining positive reviews.

Creating a highly positive online reputation is more challenging for healthcare providers than for other businesses. The reason for the added challenge? Healthcare reviews span a myriad of review sites. In addition to the usual consumer review sites such as Yelp, Google, Facebook and YellowPages, there are numerous review sites tailored specifically to healthcare, such as Vitals, RateMDs, HealthGrades, UCompareHealth, RealSelf…the list goes on and on. Unfortunately, some so-called “reviews experts” have been suggesting that a practice only needs to target two to four reviews sites. This recommendation is complete nonsense and does a great disservice to doctors and dentists and their practice revenue. Read on to learn more…

We Captured Real Healthcare Consumer Data

At Ceatus, we are in the unique position of being able to reach consumers directly through our large healthcare-related educational websites. These sites specifically target potential patients interested in plastic surgery, dentistry and eye care. We promote our clients to the hundreds of thousands of prospective patients who visit the sites each month. In addition, these sites give us a great vehicle to study how consumers research procedures, and the doctors who offer them. (Incidentally, one of the reasons we are a successful SEO company is because we constantly glean insight into consumer behavior through our large educational websites. We have consumer data that our competitors couldn’t dream of obtaining.)

Given the astounding level of disinformation about review sites being disseminated, particularly to healthcare professionals, we decided to reach out directly to consumers and find out the truth. And the truth was astonishing, as you will see below. We placed surveys on our large consumer sites: www.yourplasticsurgeryguide.com for plastic surgery, www.bettervisionguide.com for eye care, and www.yourdentistryguide.com for dentistry. These sites receive more than 75,000 visitors per week.

We asked two very simple and straightforward questions about review sites:

1) Which review site is most important to you when researching an eye doctor (or plastic surgeon or dentist)?

2) Which review site is least important to you when researching an eye doctor (or plastic surgeon or dentist)?

The results were different for each specialty, clearly demonstrating that a one-size review strategy does not fit all types of practices, contrary to what is suggested by many review companies. Different specialties must target different review sites to be most effective, and the review platform must be flexible enough to meet this requirement. The ranking order of the most and least valuable sites is shown below with ratings of 1 thru 10; 1 being the highest and 10 being the lowest rank. All results are based on at least 200 consumer responses.

The data shows that Google is very important for reviews but is not the “end-all-be-all.” While some rated Google as the most important review site, a large group of potential patients rated Google as one of the least important sites. The data also shows that recommending that practices target only a few sites, including Yelp and Facebook (as some companies do), is a highly flawed strategy. Why? Because, while it’s true that these sites are “well known,” they are viewed by many consumers as having low value. For example, in Eye Care, Facebook is rated the fifth most important review site and the third least important. This means that four other sites are seen by a large portion of consumers as more important than Facebook and only two sites are seen as being less important than Facebook. Facebook is, to a large group of potential patients, viewed down there with the Yellow Pages in terms of its value as a review site for elective healthcare providers. The data also shows that consumers value the healthcare specific sites, HealthGrades, RateMDs, Vitals and RealSelf (but only in plastic surgery for RealSelf).

What does all of this mean? It means that different consumers place different value on the different review sites. It also means that even if a majority of prospective patients place limited value on, for example, Facebook, there are still those that believe it has greater value than other review sites. If all of this sounds a bit complicated, fear not. The solution is fairly simple. To capture the full range of potential patients and create the best online reputation for you and your practice, a balanced strategy is required.

We developed the Ceatus Review Manager to cover the full range of review sites. This ensures that your reputation is protected across the spectrum of sites where prospective patients find value. The comprehensive nature of our Review Manager is why our proprietary system has been so successful and why so many doctors are leaving both “general marketing” as well as “review-only” companies to join us. Also, our great customer service makes it easy to be part of the Ceatus family. When you call, you get straight through to your account manager or your client services representative who know you and your practice, and never a call center.

To learn more about how consumers use reviews to make buying decisions in elective healthcare, or to see a demonstration of the Ceatus Review Manager, please contact us.

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