Struggling to get more patient appointments? Our complete social proof guide for dental practices is what you need to boost your conversion rate. Learn how social proof for dental practices can help grow and scale your clinic.

Fear of missing out (FOMO) is a big thing.

Learning how to play with it can help you influence people and drive more patients to your clinic. A study found that 60 percent of people make purchases because of FOMO, mostly within 24 hours. Also, 69 percent of millennials overspend to keep up with peers and avoid fear of missing out.

And 60 percent had made reactive purchases to avoid missing out on an event.

FOMO also does wonders for dental practices. And your best bet to trigger it is using social proof.

And this is what this post is all about.

But first, let’s see what social proof is and how it benefits your dental practice.

What’s Social Proof?

Social proof is a psychological concept that suggests that people are often influenced by decisions made by others. It’s driven by people’s desire to belong or act within societal norms and expectations.

Marketers leverage this psychological secret to improve their conversion rates.

It involves providing evidence of a product’s wide popularity or acceptance to influence the purchasing decisions of the prospects or returning customers. And it works like magic.

For instance, consumers tend to think that a product is popular when they see a lot of people using or talking about it. Also, sometimes, we look at what others are doing to decide what we should do.

Of course, we believe that too many people cannot be wrong at the same time.

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Social Proof Benefits For Dental Clinics

Dental services are one of the most challenging things to market. The reason is, it deals with health and people tend to put their eyes more on the ground when deciding on a healthcare provider.

But using social proof communicates your credibility, enabling you to get their trust.

As a result, you can easily guide them to conversion, landing more appointments. And this means lower customer acquisition costs and more revenue. Besides this, happy customers are more likely to spread the word about your clinic, getting you more patients.

How to Use Social Proofs For Dental Practices

We have seen how beneficial social proofs could be for your dental office. Now, here is how to leverage it to improve your conversion rate and get more appointments.

Build a solid online presence

Most consumers research a brand online before buying.

Of course, they want to be sure they are dealing with real people. And the most straightforward way to show you are real is to have a solid online presence. Begin by creating a website and optimizing it to rank for branded searches. Also, add detailed contact and about us pages and your social media links.

Be active on all the popular social media platforms and use consistent information across all your profiles.

List your business on local business directories, including Google Business Profile and Maps. Brand your website and social media accounts to reflect your corporate identity.

We recommend advertising all your vacancies on an online job listing websites to build positive digital footprints. It also helps you gain trust and credibility.

More Reading: Dental SEO Strategy to Rank On Google: Definitive Guide

Share customer reviews

Customer reviews are one of the best ways your dental office can use social proof.

It’s effective because nine in ten customers read them to find a local business. Also, data shows that nearly 50 percent of trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. While about 54.7 percent read up to four reviews before buying.

These numbers prove what we already know.

An average customer relies on the wisdom of the crowd to make informed purchasing decisions.

So, prioritize getting reviews from customers. Your best bet is to list your dental office on all the popular customer review sites like Google Business Profile, Yelp, and Trustpilot. We recommend embedding these reviews on your home and landing pages for the best results.

It might get you nearly four times more conversions than if you don’t.

A study found that pages with customer review experience generate 3.5 times more conversions than those without. And can drive over four times more revenue per visitor (RPV).

Use Trustindex.io to embed patient reviews on your website. It’s our go-to tool for this. It promises to help you skyrocket your sales and get more reviews from customers.

Need to Get More From Your Existing Customers? Learn how we use Loyalzoo to improve our customer retention rates, get more referrals and build a loyal customer base.

Display video testimonials

Video testimonials are customer reviews on steroids.

About 77 percent of those who have seen a video testimonial on a product or service say it has motivated them to purchase. That is an insane conversion rate. Also, two-thirds of people would be likely to buy after watching a testimonial from a previous customer.

Combine this with reviews to enhance your credibility and convert more of your site visitors.

You can learn one or two things from Slack.

The company did a video on one of their biggest customers, allowing them to share inspiring stories on how the product helps solve their challenges and streamline their workflow. One of the things that stood out for us is the quality of the video, showing they put in effort to create it.

Additionally, Slack embeds the video on its homepage, making it easily accessible.

Also, you can click through to access more inspiring videos from other customers.

Leverage Influencers

Getting patients to trust you is often challenging, especially if you are a new clinic.

And in this case, it’s right to explore influencer marketing. It lets you leverage people’s goodwill to enhance your brand trust. Also, the channel helps you reach prospects at every stage of their buying decision, from the awareness stage to when they are considering a brand.

Again, influencer marketing conversion numbers are impressive. 

And here are a few that blew our minds:

• Over half of millennials trust product recommendations from influencers.
• About 92 percent of marketers believe that it’s an effective marketing channel.
• And 33 percent of Gen Z have bought a product based on an influencer recommendation in the last three months.
• Businesses make about $6.5 in revenue for every $1 invested in influencer marketing.

[Source]

Influencer marketplaces, like Grin, Impact.com, and Upfluence, can help you find influencers for your dental clinic. TikTok is another great place to find influencers. When you find one, define your marketing objective and goals and ensure to establish clear, measurable KPIs to track their performance. 

But if you can afford it, then hire an influencer marketing agency to plan and manage the entire process.

Aim for industry thought leadership

Thought leadership remains my favorite way to show proof.

Of course, customer reviews, video testimonials, influencers, solid online presence, and others are all excellent ways to demonstrate credibility and build trust. But I don’t think any does it better than this.

Imagine what it means for your clinic if patients see you as the most credible source for information related to dental care delivery, innovations, and solutions. Of course, it’s invaluable.

A lot of people will kill for this.

And this is achievable. First, research all the questions people ask about dental care. Also, find out their biggest challenges and pain points. Next, create original, quality content that addresses these problems. Inject your personal experiences into this content to demonstrate your expertise.

Additionally, interview other professionals to enrich your content with their experiences. 

The more original and helpful these articles are, the more people will reference and link to them, thus, adding more credibility and visibility to your clinic. 

Importantly, optimize your content to rank on Google for relevant queries to boost the reach. We have written extensively on dental SEO strategies. We recommend using the tips in the resource to achieve Google’s first-page rankings.

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Show proof with data

Most of the time you don’t need to do much to demonstrate brand credibility.

Simple use of numbers on your website can show people how far you have gone.

One of the good things about them is they save you the stress of saying too many words, allowing your web visitors to get your messages on the fly. And this is good for your conversion rate.

You could show the number of happy patients you have, referrals, and dentists on your website. Also, display the clinic’s years of experience to demonstrate how qualified you are. Again, don’t shy away from putting on view the number of awards and recognitions the clinic has. 

We love how Zapier keeps it simple.

The company shows how big its customer base is to demonstrate the brand’s credibility. Of course, having nearly two million customers is not an easy feat. Another thing we love about their approach is the compelling CTA  they added to encourage web visitors to take action immediately.

However, we recommend using stat counters if you have multiple data points.

Build Trust From SERP

If you are big on SEO, then it’s right to begin building trust from the search engine result page.

It improves your organic click-through rate, boosting your traffic search. Also, demonstrating credibility that early can impact your conversion rate big time. And your best bet to pull this off is adding customer review data to your Google search results.

And here’s one we did for a client in Abuja.

We used the JSON schema service rating structured data to help them get the rich result. To further improve credibility, we included their value proposition in the page title and also mentioned that they are a foremost British Council IELTS partner in the meta description.

And here is the result.

Use Stamps and Badges

You can leverage professional affiliations for social proof.

Sadly, this is another area where several dental clinics are missing it. And you shouldn’t. So, display stamps, logos, or badges of all the relevant professional organizations you belong to. If you don’t have any, then join them to boost your industry credibility.

Also, list your clinic on Better Business Bureau and place the badge on your site. And if you have the fund, then pursue ISO 9001 and ISO/TC 106  certifications. 

Add these badges where visitors can easily see them.

However, the best place is always at the footer. It displays them automatically on all your pages and posts, saving you the stress of doing that anytime you create a new page.

Here’s an example from The Vitamin Shoppe.

Also, do this for your earned media. 

But in this case, we recommend putting the badges above the footer. For instance, we put ours in the sidebar. However, this placement will not work for a dentist website, but for blogs.

You might consider placing yours the same way Fitbit does theirs.

Need to outrank competitors? Get hundreds of quality backlinks to boost domain authority, generate referral traffic, and get ahead of the competition.

Dental Social Proof Marketing: What Next?

Social proof-based marketing is your answer to low conversion rates.

It’s probably one of those things your top competitors do to get more patient appointments and stay ahead of you. However, you can level up with the strategies outlined in this article.

You can combine all of them for the best results.

However, we recommend you start with the simple ones first, like building a solid online presence, generating customer reviews, and using badges. Then, move to others gradually, until you fully implement them. Additionally, your clinic will benefit from these dental practice marketing strategies.

Action all the recommended tips to grow and scale your dentist’s office.

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FAQ

What are the types of social proof?

There are several types of social proof you can implement for your dental practice. First, get a website and build up your online presence. Next, generate customer reviews and embed them on your website. After that, add all professional affiliation badges on the site.

In addition to these:

• Get video testimonials from happy customers.
• Run referral programs to encourage customers to spread the word about your business.
• Display your earned media.
• Use influencers.
• Become an industry thought leader.
• Add review snippets to your search results.

Does social proof work for dental offices?

Yeah, social proof works for dental offices as in other industries. It helps you demonstrate credibility, show your expertise and build trust, which is essential for turning walk-in and web visitors into clients. 

How do I use social media for social proof?

Using social media to demonstrate proof is straightforward. First, join all the platforms your customers are active on. Next, use a consistent brand identity to create recognition. Now, get active on all these platforms, posting engaging content like:

• Customer stories
• Company milestones
• Helpful tips
• Industry news and trends

Also, run social contests to engage and charge your followers.

Which other ways can I improve my dentist office conversion rate besides using social proof?

Leveraging social proof is one of the best ways to improve your website conversion rate. However, in addition to it, eliminate distractions and friction to improve site navigation. For this, we recommend using Hotjar to learn how people browse your website.

Also, use quality images on the website and ensure not to clutter the whole space with too much text. Add enough white spaces where necessary to improve readability.

 Importantly, improve your website and mobile experience. And use compelling CTAs to guide visitors to conversion.