How to Gain Referrals Through Positive Social Media Reviews

Social media can be a prime source of referrals for chiropractic practices, particularly social media reviews

Referrals are an important source of new patients for any chiropractic clinic, and some of your best new patients are likely to come from referrals. For a current patient to refer you to a friend or family member, they need to have a high level of satisfaction with your practice.

It follows that if you want referrals, you need to provide high-quality services and make sure what you are doing is meeting your current patients’ needs.

That said, referrals are a form of chiropractic marketing that works well. Effective ways to encourage referrals include:

• Asking patients directly to refer others to you
• Providing incentives for referrals
• Having a card or other materials that patients can give to friends and family members

Social Media Referrals

While these are all good ways to bring in new patients, using social media can be even more effective. When a patient mentions you on their social media page or shares a post from your page, some or all of their friends, coaches, and/or colleagues will see it, depending on the algorithms used.

People spend an average of two hours and 24 minutes per day on social media networks and messaging. And one thing many people like to do is respond to a problem posted by a friend by recommending a product or service that has worked for them.

You can encourage your patients to share information about your practice online by posting interesting information on your social media channels. You could also offer contests or giveaways that ask entrants to share the post to their personal social media pages.

All of this amounts to potentially hundreds of people seeing each recommendation for your practice. And the best part? Much of it happens passively (with no effort from you or your staff).

Benefits of Social Media Marketing for Small and Medium Businesses

The benefits of this type of social media campaign for small and medium businesses are numerous. Social media is cost-effective compared to other forms of marketing, like print, radio, or television ads. The low cost allows small and medium businesses to compete on a more level playing field with larger businesses.

Social media marketing is also more targeted than other forms of marketing. It allows you to direct your messaging specifically to individuals who are likely to have a need for the services you provide.

You don’t need millions of people to see your posts — only the right people. Soliciting social media reviews is one of the most effective ways to find them.

The Role of Reviews on Social Media

As social media grew from a simple interface to encourage interaction to a way to promote products and services, reviews became a part of the process. Today, 93 percent of consumers say online reviews influenced their purchasing decisions, and 87 percent of consumers say that they read online reviews for local businesses in 2020.

What’s more, 72 percent of consumers have written a review for a local business.

Social media reviews represent a rich opportunity to raise brand awareness and build trust, but that’s not all. Before a potential patient contacts your practice, odds are they’ve looked at online reviews first, not only to satisfy their quality criteria, but often to find answers to specific questions.

For instance, someone who is looking for a chiropractor who uses acupuncture could read reviews to find out if you provide that service. Other information that reviews can provide includes whether you accept insurance, offer evening hours, or are available for emergencies.

People will look at both positive and negative reviews, so it’s important to respond to negative reviews with an offer to talk personally and resolve the issue. If you are able to

resolve it, the issue becomes an opportunity to position your practice as caring and responsive to the needs of your patients.

Social media reviews also improve your site’s search rankings on Google, which increasingly values external and third-party reviews as being more authentic. There are social media plugins available for your site that will show a compilation of reviews

from your various pages, which will help with your site’s SEO.

This means more people will find your site, and after reading positive reviews, will be more likely to become patients.

There is much to gain and little to lose from social media marketing, including the use of reviews. Creating and maintaining social media pages takes some time and effort, but it is time and effort well spent in the referrals it will generate for your practice.

Reviews, Referrals, and CTInTouch

As the most-referred chiropractic software with more than half of customers referred by a friend or coach, ChiroTouch understands the importance of referrals to your chiropractic practice.

ChiroTouch’s patient communication tool, CTInTouch, can make the referral generation process easier by automating review requests. You can use it to automatically invite positive reviews to both boost referrals and improve Google search results.

This versatile tool has the capability of targeting messages to regular clients, asking them to leave a five-star review on their preferred social media site(s) to help the practice get new patients.

In just a few minutes, you can use CTInTouch to schedule a request for reviews that goes to all of your regular clients. You can also schedule the message to be sent weekly or monthly to remind patients that you’ve requested a review.

CTInTouch can also send individual review requests, which can be helpful if a patient gives you positive feedback in person or via email or phone. The tool pays for itself with time savings and the new patients it can bring to your practice.

Check out the short video below to see how easy it is to use CTInTouch’s referral tools.

Sample Referral Campaign

Here’s an example of a request that can be used in a referral campaign using CTInTouch:

Dear [Patient Name],

Thank you for being a regular patient of [Chiropractic Practice Name]. If you are happy with our services, please consider leaving a review on our Google Business page,

Facebook, or Yelp to help us reach more people.

Leave a review by [Date], and we will enter you into a drawing to win a free acupuncture session or chiropractic adjustment.

Thanks for your help in making our practice better meet the needs of our community!

Sincerely,

[Chiropractic Practice Name]

With CTInTouch as the backbone, social media referral campaigns are easy, effective, and best of all, automated.

Let’s talk about how ChiroTouch can make it happen for your practice.

For More Information

If you’d like to learn more about marketing your chiropractic practice, check out our on-demand webinar, Unmarketing: The New Way to Engage Patients,” by Dr. Jason Deitch. Or download our free eBook, “Email Marketing for Chiropractors.”

If you’d like to stay in the know on the latest information on the chiropractic profession, sign up for our newsletter.

We’d also love to show you more of the many ways a ChiroTouch subscription can help you and your staff run a more efficient practice. Book a no-obligation demo today to  learn how we can help your practice be the best it can be.

In the meantime, you can find us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ChiroTouch/. Drop in and say hello!

And as always, have a well-adjusted day.