Building digital trust is essential to attracting more patients.
Without digital trust, patients will look elsewhere for their care. Eventually, this could decrease your practice’s market share and cause financial hardship in the future. Increasing this trust-factor doesn’t have to be hard. Here are three ways medical practices can increase digital trust.
What is Digital Trust?
Digital Trust is the feeling patients have when they believe you care about them and have a solution to their problems — all without ever meeting you in person.
How to Increase Digital Trust
#1 Provide Education/Advice
Your medical practice website should include a section for patient education. It should list the different medical conditions you treat and include symptoms, treatment options, FAQs, etc. When patients learn something valuable from you they are more likely to trust you.
For example: If you treat constipation, list three things patients can do on their own to see if the problem really needs a visit to the doctor. Even if this doesn’t help the patient’s condition, they will be more likely to call you for advice and expertise if they do need professional treatment.
#2 Have Great Physician Profiles
Great doctor profiles have smiling doctors, relatable bios, professional photos, special training, etc. Patients are looking for someone they can connect with and someone who can solve their problems. A decade-old cell-phone picture and a list of degrees aren’t going to cut it. Read more.
#3 Great Google Reviews
Google reviews are some of the first reputation markers that potential patients see. If there are two doctors listed in the local search results, and one has 25 reviews and a 4.5 star rating, and the other one has 2 reviews and a 3-star rating, most patients will gravitate to the higher-rated physician. This is a natural human response since we tend to look at others’ opinions and actions to inform our own.
Reviews should also be recent (within the last couple months – couple weeks is even better). Old, out-dated reviews won’t carry as much weight with potential patients as recent ones. Make sure you have an ongoing reputation management process in place to encourage reviews and respond to issues as they arise.