You have worked so hard to build your clinic, create a good name in your community and provide exceptional care for your patients all to have a negative review of your clinic take you down.

As you probably know, a bad customer experience will spread far faster than a good customer experience.  In fact, studies have indicated that people will tell 7 people about their bad experience that they may have had with your clinic, whereas people who had a good experience will only tell one.

But it gets worse.

Before blogs, forums, article sharing sites etc., when there was a complaint about you, it would perhaps linger for a few days or perhaps a few weeks and then it would die down.  However, now with the internet, negative comments and reviews about your clinic can last years… and years… and years.

Since more and more people turn to the internet for their research (e.g. finding what people have to say about your clinic), if you have bad online reviews, you can bet that your clinic is going to suffer.
To make matters worse, statistics indicate that 72% of internet users trust online reviews – whether the reviews are legit or not.


Here are the TOP 4 ways survive and protect yourself from negative online reviews.

1.    Bury The Site – This is great approach because by “burying” the site, you not only get rid of the review, but at the same time, you’ll also enhance your online presence.

Burying a negative review (which has been posted on a site of some sort) requires you to build “Mini Sites”.  These can be Wordpress sites or blogs that are between 3-5 pages in size that are then optimized for the keywords that are used to bring up that negative feedback.  Most likely the keywords are going to be your clinic’s name and your name.

The objective of building Mini-Sites is to have your sites begin to rank high on Google searches and by doing so, you’ll push the site that contains the negative review down (i.e. lower in search engine ranking).  If you get the review down into the 2nd page of Google, you can pretty much be rest assured that no one will find it (as typically no one really looks past the first page of Google).  In fact, 80% of the clicks are done with links above the “fold” – the last part of the screen that you can see without scrolling down).

The benefit with developing these Mini-Sites is that it will give you that much more online presence and you’ll dominate the pages when people are looking for you.  In addition, it’ll make your clinic look superior (i.e. the leader in your community).

2.    Gang Up On The Negative Posts – If you see a negative online review ask your star patients to reply to that post.  Having multiple positive reviews will squash a negative review and those that read the bad post, will pass it off as just a person with a grudge since you have so many of your patients defending you.

3.    Contact The Person Directly That Created The Negative Post – If you know who the patient is that posted the bad comment about your clinic, call him/her up and talk to the person about it.  DO NOT get confrontational when you call.  If you do, their defensive walls will go up and you’ll get nowhere.  In fact, it may cause that person to throw up another harsh online comment.

When you call, be empathetic… but overly empathetic.  Remember, all conflicts can be resolved and all parties involved can develop a good solid positive bond.  It’s all in the approach.

When you have addressed that patients concerns and you have come to a mutual understanding and are back on good terms, ask the patient to kindly remove the post.  Chances are they will.

4.    Encourage Your Patients To Complain To You BEFORE They Take It Online – it’s better to nip the problem in the bud rather than let it fester and explode in your face.

But, first and foremost…

Make sure that your patients take ownership of their condition and how their body reacts to treatment.  All too often chiropractors don’t have their patients take ownership and when the patient doesn’t get better, who do they blame? You.

Secondly, make sure that your patient knows that you always want to hear if they have any concerns or complaints while under care.   If they share their concerns with you, you can diffuse and address them and not have your disgruntled patient take it to the masses. 

So, how do you know if someone has posted a comment about you or your clinic? 

EASY and it’s FREE! It’s called “Google Alerts” and all you need is a Gmail account.  Google Alerts (just Google it) will email you and notify you if anyone has posted anything on the net regarding your clinic.  All that you have to do is sign up and enter the keywords that you want Google to look out for.  It’s that simple.

If you want to get an edge on your competition and find out what they are doing on the net or what others are saying about them, you can have Google Alert you of any posts that have been made online regarding your completion (posted by either them or by someone else) simply by entering the keywords associated with your competition (e.g. their clinics name).

Lastly and a shameless plug, if you want to start your clinic’s online presence right and drive massive numbers of new patients to your clinic, we at Promodocs have developed websites for chiropractors and have incorporated exclusive Promodocs Enhanced Website Features that will drive more new patients to your clinic than you ever thought possible. 

So, if you’re looking for a new chiropractic website for your clinic, we encourage you to check out our site to find out how the Promodocs’ team of  chiropractic website developers  have set a new industry standard and why our sites are so powerful in building your clinic or call toll free at 1-800-652-0592 today!

In this day and age, it is a well known and excepted fact that people’s first impression of a business that they are searching out information about is their website.  Chiropractic is no different.

The fact of the matter is, websites are the new store front…  whether you have an online business or a brick and mortar shop.   This being the case, peoples views on a business is based on how their website looks and functions.  If you have a run of the mill website, people will view your clinic inferior or run of the mill.  If  you have a website that will blow your visitors away by enhanced visitor experience, you can bet that your visitors will not only have a very high opinion of your clinic, but chances are they are going to contact your office and book an appointment.

Imagine walking down the street and seeing a 30 or 40 store fronts all looking relatively the same, but the items in the store range from clothes sold at Walmart to Armani and Dior.  Now, you’re the type of person looking for Armani but you can’t go into the stores  to see which one sells Armani, instead you have to stand down the road and chose the store that you think sells what you want based on the store front.

That’s a really hard determination to make right?  Now, what happens if a store opens up on that same street where the store front is beautiful decorated, has sophisticated and elegant signage  and really stands out from the other stores.  Well, chances are your going to go straight to that store and find what your looking for and completely disregard  the others, right?

And that’s exactly what online visitors will do when they see a bunch of chiropractic websites.  If visitors see just a plain static typical chiropractic website, the visitor will perceive that clinic as below par (whether justified or not).  But if a visitor jumps on to a site that blows them away and enhances their online visitor experience they will look no further and contact your office, right?  Of course.

So what makes a website stand out from all the rest?

1.    Contacting and Communicating with your Office has to be BEYOND easy – in the world we live in today, people have little patience and time.  Your chiropractic patients are no different.  Having a well visible phone number is essentially, but it’s just the start.  Your chiropractic website has to have a Live Chat function where your visitors can text chat to your staff via their  Smart Phone and computer (btw… statistics are indicating that more people are starting to search online using their smart phones than lap top and desk top computers - so your site has to be Mobile Compatible!).  Your site also needs Fillable Online Patient Intake Forms that can be emailed to your office (not just printed out by your website visitor and brought into your office) and there needs to be and Online Patient Scheduler where patients can book their consults and appointments online.

Never doubt this fact... your website HAS to be a complete extension of your clinic - educating, communicating, and booking - if it's not, believe me, you are loosing a ton of potential patients.

2.    Remove Website Clutter -Information must be concise and not overwhelming – all too often, chiropractors have websites where they jam pack it with information… tonnes of information, too many tabs and too many choices.  This is a website killer!  Just like the saying goes… “less is better”  If too much information is given, people will feel overwhelmed and will jump off your site to go to your competition.  In addition, because people are time sensitive and impatient they want their information is small packages so that they can just get what they need to know and then take action.

3.    Site Must Be Visually Stimulating – websites have to be visually stimulating and interesting.  By this I don’t mean having all these flashing lights and attention grabbing gimmicks.   I mean a website that is attractive and pleasant to the eye and one that makes the visitor to want to explore your site further and more importantly, drive them to contact your office to make an appointment.

4.    Doctor Must be Able to Build Rapport with their Visitors – This is massively essential and I cannot over stress this one enough.  Too many chiropractors think that throwing up a few pics of them with their patients or with their family members will allow their online visitors to get to know them and see how great and caring a doc he or she is.  Well, this may have worked a number of years ago but it no longer does.  Visitor-to-Doctor interaction IS the new standard.  That is to say, visitors want to get to know the doctor not from pics of them on a page, but from interacting with them… but from the comfort of their home!  This is why Webinars (i.e. Live seminars online) are growing in epic proportions.  Now I’m not saying that  you have to be online live all the time during your office hours, but all your Lay Lectures, promotional talks etc should be shown live online.  Therefore, not only will you be lecturing and building rapport with those standing before you in your clinic (or where ever you may be), but now you’ll be able to lecture and build rapport with all those people online.  Imagine how many new patients you'll be able to get now!

5.    Overburdening Visitors with Emails and Newsletters – A visitor email capture (having your visitors willingly provide you with their email address) and an auto-responder (i.e. an email/ e-newsletter mailer that sends those visitors that have given you their email address information on an automatic and continuous basis) are crucial to a successful website.  Much like #4, a lead capture and auto-responder built into your website is a MUST HAVE. 

In order to get as many of your visitors to book with your office, you need to be in constant contact with them and this is the reason why having a website that will automatically send out timed emails (i.e. auto-responder) to your visitors is so important. Sending out periodic  emails to your visitors is critical for your clinic success because they will keep your clinic top of mind and thus, if your visitor feels the need to see a chiropractor, your clinic will be the one they call. Not your competitor. 

But you CANNOT email them too much!  If your visitors/leads get an email from you more than 3 times per month, they will perceive your clinic as an annoyance and they will not only request to get off your mailing list, but you can bet they will never come to your office.

Now, if you have an old site or you have a site that does not incorporate the above 5 components, you may be thinking that this is going to be too costly to do, not to mention the cost of website optimization in order to build your online presence.

                                                     But fortunately there are options!

There are companies that you can find online that provide businesses with auto-responders services, patient scheduling services, webinar services and you can pay for all of them or choose which ones you think you need and depending on your budget.

                                                       However, there is a better way.

At the risk of taking away the importance and necessity of these 5 essential website features by sounding sales pitchy, Promodocs specifically builds websites for chiropractors that incorporates all these features and much, much more to create the most powerful chiropractic website available.

Our team of chiropractic website developer at Promodocs have spent countless hours and have done tremendous research in understanding what drives your online visitors to be motivated to not only tour your website but also to communicate and book an appointment with your clinic.

To learn more about how our chiropractic websites are so effective in bringing you new patients and why we are so different from other chiropractic website companies, visit us at http://www.promodocs.com or call us toll free at 1-800-652-0592 and take advantage of our limited time $200 Promotional Discount!