Most people who are looking for a dentist will go to someone they can trust. This is especially the case in this day and age when consumers have a lot of options and information on their hands.

All they need to do is look you up online and they will quickly be able to make a snap decision on whether to trust you with their mouths or not.

Unfortunately, many dental offices are still using old strategies and are relying on referrals. While that may be OK, you simply can’t afford to not have good reviews working for you.

What I am about to share with you is a strategy which will help you dominate your city in 12-18 months if you choose to pursue it daily.

The first thing to understand is that if you have enough good reviews on Google, Google’s algorithm will naturally place your dental office at the top of search results whenever someone searches for a dentist in your city.

Assuming that your city has 300,000 people in it, once you dominate Google rankings by having lots of positive reviews, you should bring in at least $20,000 to $40,000 of additional business every month.

So how many good reviews do you need to get there?

Well, it depends.

I would say that if you are in a mid-sized city, 200-250 positive Google reviews should to the trick but always aim to get 250+ reviews with an aggregate rating of at least 4.5 out of 5.

In my experience though, most dental offices don’t focus on getting good reviews. Yes, they might ask a few patients to review them on Google, but doing things that way takes a lot of time and the results aren’t worthwhile.

Here’s what you should do instead:

Whenever someone comes into your office (irrespective of whether they are here for a free dental checkup or have paid you for treatment), and are about to leave, your front desk should give them a short handwritten note saying “Thank you for your visit. Please take 2 minutes to review us here: <link>”.

The note should be handwritten and not printed. Handwritten notes are personalized by nature and you will see better results that way.

Once the patient leaves, your front desk should call them up the next day to ask if they are happy with their experience at the dental office  and also to remind them to write a review.

If they don’t answer, leave them a voicemail and a text asking for it.

Most people are extremely busy and need multiple reminders to leave you a review.

This is exactly why you may currently see that treating 15-20 patients lands you only 1 review.

You can easily improve the process and see better results by actively asking everyone who has received some sort of a treatment to leave you a review and then following up with them.

Once you start following this strategy, you will see around 20 reviews coming in for every 50 patients you treat. At this rate, it should take you around 12-18 months to get 200-250 reviews, after which your practice starts dominating the city.

This is the simplest way to considerably increase your revenue. The only challenge here is to ensure that your staff has an incentive to follow this strategy every single day.

Action: Explain the importance of asking for reviews to your staff. It would be a good idea to incentivize your staff in some way (bonus, gift cards, 2 day paid leave etc.) to ensure that actively pursue this strategy.