You want to prove that you have a solid dental practice. You’ve created a solid website, and you provide outstanding care, but it just isn’t enough. Satisfied patients will often leave reviews. Turning those reviews into full-blown patient success stories can take your marketing to the next level.
Why Are Patient Success Stories So Important?
Highlighting patient success stories on your website or social media comes with several benefits:
- They encourage people to seek dental care. People may believe their tooth problem isn’t a major concern. While they might worry, they might not find enough evidence when they go looking — which means they might not get treatment at all. Patient success stories encourage them to seek medical care and explore treatment options.
- They can prove that you’re the right dentist for the job. People want to choose a dentist they can trust. Testimonials boost faith in your medical team — and patient success stories can do even more than that. In fact, having solid success stories can be significantly more effective1 than a standard marketing strategy.
- You can use them to expand the scope of your practice. While patient success stories might focus on one major issue, that isn’t the only thing they do. You can use these stories to show that you provide dedicated care, create custom treatment plans, and touch on the other services you offer.
Tips for Creating Patient Success Stories
Deciding on what stories to use isn’t always easy. There may be countless options, and you need to know how to choose the right ones.
1. Carefully Consider Your Goals
You don’t want to choose stories at random; you want them to support your specific goals. Consider what you’re trying to achieve by telling these patient success stories. Do you want to show how you offer comprehensive medical care? Would you like to highlight your expertise in a certain area? Would you like to emphasize your empathetic service?
Sit down and create a list of your primary goals. Then, sort through stories and find ones that work for your needs.
2. Know Where to Look for Stories
Deciding on your goals is only half the battle; you’ll also need to know where to find stories. There are a couple of places where you can start:
- Talk to your clinical team. Your dental staff members are the ones interacting with patients on a day-to-day basis. Because of this, they likely have countless stories to tell. Ask them if they can think of anything memorable.
- Look at social media. Social media can be a fantastic resource for all sorts of stories. Pay attention to comments left on your practice’s social media and search for any mentions of your practice; if you see something interesting, consider reaching out to the patient.
- Check Google reviews. Social media isn’t the only place that has testimonials. Searching through your Google reviews is an excellent way to find high-quality stories.
Still need some help? With Dental Intelligence Online Reviews, you make it easy for patients to leave and read reviews, and you can easily track down the right stories.
3. Make Sure You’re Staying Compliant with HIPAA
While you might identify stories you’d like to use, you can’t use them unless you follow HIPAA requirements. You want to make sure you follow all procedures correctly to avoid ethical or legal trouble. You’ll need to ask permission and get a signed agreement from the patient before sharing their story.
How to Write Effective Patient Success Stories
After identifying the stories you want to use, it’s time to create them. You need to make sure these patient success stories are effective, or they won’t work as intended.
Start with interviews. You’ll want to interview the patient and the staff members who helped them, but you may also want to consider interviewing family members. Speak with empathy and treat anyone you’re interviewing with respect. Once the interview is complete, thank them for their time.
Once you’ve collected the information you need, you can start writing. To create effective stories, you should:
- Focus on the important details and bring them to the forefront
- Make sure the content is concise and engaging
- Start with the most interesting details and go from there
- Consider including patient quotes to highlight important parts
Digital Solutions for Your Practice
At Dental Intelligence, we can help you get more online reviews to build strong patient success stories. Reach out to us today to schedule a demo and learn more about our digital tools and services for dental practices.
Resources
1 Forbes
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
