Online Reputation Management: Exactly What You Need to do to Protect Your Med Spa

In this interview, Craig Daly gives med spas the inside tips they need to develop a proactive online reputation management strategy designed to deal with problems before they arise. He’ll explain why reputation management is so essential to med spas in particular and which channels matter when it comes to building and sustaining a positive reputation.

This episode will cover:

• How to stay connected with patients past, present, and future.
• What to do when you get bad reviews.
• The right way to seek out good reviews.
• What online platforms to watch.

Med Spas NEED good online reputation management – and here’s why

As we discuss in our interview, reputation management matters to all local businesses, but especially to businesses like med spas that cater to local users. Think about how people find out about and/or research your business. How do you decide which local business to choose when you need a service? A recent national study found that well over half of patients go to the Internet first to research service providers, with online reviews playing a key role in their decisions.

Craig Daly works for Podium Interaction Management software, a business that specializes in helping professionals with online reputation management. He knows and has seen firsthand the effects of good and bad reviews.

When it comes to med spas, your online reputation management can make or break your business.

Ask yourself this question: what would you think as a client if you were to go online right now to research your business? Would you have some serious doubts or would you think – this sounds like a good place? If you would have any doubts, then you may need to adjust your reputation management strategy.

Stay Connected – BE where they ARE

The first and most important step to solid online reputation management: you need to be present and stay accessible. You need to be able to reach clients where they already are – and where they will be soon. There are a few tools you’ll want to have in hand for this purpose.

Mobile apps with SMS and messaging are a great way to be proactive with your online reputation management

When it comes to meeting clients where they are, we cannot emphasize enough the importance of SMS text messages. That’s the main way we stay in touch with each other today, and that’s how you need to stay in touch with your clients. Statistics show that over 90% of leads would rather have you text them to follow up. The vast majority of patients prefer SMS for scheduling, verifying, and changing appointments.

24/7 access via on-call staff and/or automation

Always respond, even if there’s no one on hand to respond, at any time of day or night. Ideally, you’ll want some kind of automated message to let clients know that yes, you received their message and you’ll get back to them soon. During the day, try to have at least one person available to answer calls personally.

Centralized platform to manage all of your communication channels

Finally, the many channels clients use to reach you can be overwhelming – and it’s easy to lose feedback and customers in the midst of it all. You should try to find one, single platform you can use to manage all of these channels.

Negative Reviews Happen – How to Respond

Given the importance of a good reputation, a bad review can seem especially crushing. When your med spa gets a negative review – and sooner or later any successful business will get one – there is a right way to respond. Here are four key tips to keep in mind before responding.

1. Do a ‘post-mortem.’ Before you do anything, you’ll want to take a deep breath, relax, and then take serious look at the review. Who is making this review and why? Is there a known issue at your med spa? Is this something you need to investigate to ensure it never happens again? Perhaps this client was simply having a bad day. Whatever the cause, you’ll want to keep that cause in mind moving forward.

2. Have a quick, canned response ready. Depending on the review platform, there may be certain rules related to what you can and cannot say in response to a review. As a general rule, you’ll want to have a fast, pre-written response ready for any negative reviews you get. In this response, you should explain two things: 1) that you are sorry and 2) that you are available for follow-up.

3. Be honest and open and appear sincere in your response. Practice honesty, sincerity, and humility. Even if you know for a fact that what happened was not the fault of anyone or anything in your med spa, apologize anyway. It’s honest enough to say that you are sorry this person is upset and that you continue to be available to address their concerns.

4. Above all, do respond. Finally, unless the rules of this platform explicitly prohibit it, you never want to not respond. You never want to come across as angry or defensive, and you never want to leave negative reviews unanswered. You may think it sounds better to say nothing, but in reality that will just make you seem inattentive. Say something, keep it brief, and keep it courteous.

Seeking Positive Reviews

It’s important to consider when developing your online reputation management strategy that…
Negative reviews can hurt your business, yes, but so can the complete lack of any reviews whatsoever. If you find that your med spa has almost no reviews (yet), you may be tempted to start a review campaign, pushing friends and clients for good reviews. While this can help in the short term, Google and other platforms can usually spot the trick, and a short burst in good reviews won’t help your search results.

To get good reviews, you need to have a great business that draws and keeps clients. Any effort to seek good reviews needs to be one that will work over the long term. For example, think about including a clickable link to your Facebook page or other sites where they can read and share reviews. If you do decide to do this, make sure to put the link somewhere that isn’t intrusive, like on your website or Email signature. Over time, if you have a great med spa, people will want to review you – because it’s the right thing to do. That’s where you want to be.

The Platforms That Matter

Finally, when it comes to seeking and following up on customer engagement, there are several channels you’ll want to keep in mind. First, Google continues to dominate as the search engine of choice. Reputation and customer engagement helps ensure good rankings when people search for local businesses, so that if someone searches for “Med spas near me,” your business name will show up at the top of their list.

A more healthcare specific search engine, Real Self helps customers to find local healthcare providers – and you will want to watch results there as well. Because reviewers can and will use a broad variety of platforms, from Facebook to Yelp, what you really want is a central software platform like Podium that will give you total visibility across all platforms. Because, ultimately, what platforms matter? Answer: all of them, anywhere and everywhere that potential clients may reach out to you.

Are you looking for ways to increase visibility and draw in customers? Check out How to Market a Medical Spa.