Welcome to Bite Size Dental Marketing. In this
episode, we talk to Dr. Leonard Tao, also known
as the Reviews Doctor. In his career, Dr. Tao
figured out that reviews are one of the most
important things when it comes to new patient
acquisition and managing the online reputation
of your practice. We talk about why reviews are
so important, what you need to be doing to get
more of them, and how it's going to impact the
success of your business. Enjoy. The reviews
doctor that not just anybody gets that name in
the industry. I want to know your story. What
inspired you? I know you're also a dentist. I
know you have your fingers in multiple pies and
you have a foot in this industry. But tell us
a little bit about you and how you got into this.
So I was an entrepreneur as a kid. I started
a baseball card business when I was 13 years
old. I was making about $60 ,000 a year and that
was in the late 80s, early 90s. Sold the business,
but I've always been an entrepreneur at heart.
I actually wanted to be a lawyer and I always
tell people this. I went to college in New Orleans
at Tulane and I'm in my apartment. I'm watching
TV and the headline news comes up with a stat
that says by the year 2020, there'll be 200 %
more lawyers than there are right now. And at
that moment, I decided I'm not going to be a
lawyer. OK, so and I called my dad and I said,
I'm going to go into dentistry, you know, and
he was a dentist himself. And he was like, that's
great. The plan was to go into practice with
him. Unfortunately, due to some medical issues,
my dad had to sell his practice that I was that
was earmarked for me. And I ended up by all by
chances, I ended up in the Philadelphia area
due to meeting a female and getting married and
then staying in the Philadelphia area. So in
2007. I bought a dental practice. I bought the
building. I bought the practice, obviously. I
kept the team. I gutted the building. I redid
everything about the practice. So if you went
in, you wouldn't even know it was the same office.
Very, very different look to it. And I started
to market my practice. And I always say I was
very much in debt. I was about $1 .8 million
in debt at that point. And I needed to really
attract patients to my practice. I was paying
about $18 ,000 a month in loans. to the companies
that obviously helped me start the business.
And I started marketing my practice by using
a lot of the gurus out there. So I used resources
like Dental Town. Facebook really wasn't a thing
back then, but Dental Town and magazines to kind
of pick those companies to help me learn to market
or help market my practice. And honestly, they
didn't do a very good job. And I ended up deciding
to learn on my own, which I did. And I tried
lots of things. I spent lots of money. I threw
darts at a lot of things, hoping it would hit.
And some of them did really well. One of them
being online reviews. And when doctors had two,
three, five reviews, I had 25 and 30 reviews.
And I heard from patients and the patients told
me that I found you online and I'm coming in
because you had more reviews than anybody else.
And something just kind of triggered me and said,
that's interesting to hear. Years went on. And
again, this is about 2010. And I was asked to
start speaking at dental events around Philadelphia,
really. And I spoke at a local event and some
dentist asked me to help them market because
I was very successful at it. And I'm like, I'm
not into that. I'm a dentist. I'm still practicing.
I still have loans to pay. I'm not starting another
career. But after about six or eight months,
I had about 10 or 12 people ask me. I said, you
know what? This may be something different. So
I created a consulting company to help other
dentists market their practice called iSocial
Dental Consulting. And I didn't love the consulting
model. I didn't love consistently reaching out
to these dentists to make sure they were doing
what they were supposed to be doing because I
couldn't do it for them. And I just didn't like
that model. So I changed something up. And one
of the things I decided was I was going to start
a review platform, something to make it easy
for dentists to get online reviews. Because it
was not easy to do. And I helped create a software
which we called iSocial Reviews. I ended up having
about 180 dentists using my software. And then
fortunately for me, BirdEye, the company that
I currently work for, bought my company from
me in 2014. So I sold my company. We had about
180 dentists. Combined then, we had about 220
at the time. That was in September of 2014. So
this September, I'll be at BirdEye for 11 years.
I run their dental division for them. I work
with about 11 ,000 dentists over the years. Obviously,
very big in the reputation space. But it's interesting
because reviews have really become even more
important than they were back then. And I always
like to say we are a reputation society. every
single thing we do in our society revolves around
reputation. You go to the movies, you look at
reviews. You go to a restaurant, you may go to
Yelp. You go to Amazon, you buy something, you're
not buying a one -star product, you're buying
a five -star product. So reviews really affect
us in more ways than one. And I was, as I said,
I tried lots of things. I did. I did radio advertising
and I was spending $30 ,000 a year and didn't
get a single patient from it. I mean, I tried
lots of things as a dentist to see what would
stick and what wouldn't. And the review stuck
and stuck well. And I picked the right thing
to go into as a career. And here we are, you
know, I'm 51 years old. I retired from dentistry
clinically in 2022. So I had not been clinical
for just over two years now. I speak all over
the country on online reviews. I have dentists
from all over the country reach out to me via
email and Facebook and text asking me for advice
on how to deal with this. And it's become like
my thing. And, you know, I remember coming home
one day back in 2012 and telling my wife, hey,
I'm going to start a review company. And she
was like, yeah, have at it. You know, little
did I know that, you know, many years later,
my entire career would be different now. So I
don't have my hands in anybody's mouths anymore,
but I'm still very, very connected to the dental
industry. You've been in this industry for a
while now with where you spoke about from as
early as 2010 with the reviews and stuff. Google
was a very different place back then. So can
you share a bit with us just this journey of
the actual impact and those things from when
you saw it? That's a great question. I mean,
things have changed dramatically. So one of the
big things that was happening back then was...
Google was partnered with other companies and
those companies could help get reviews on to
Google for you. So there was a company called
Demand Force. They're now owned by Henry Schein.
When you got reviews on Demand Force, those reviews
showed up on Google. And you had offices with
a thousand reviews or more. And then in 2016
or 2017, it was Google said, we're not using
third -party reviews anymore on Google. Yelp
reviews, Demandforce reviews, all these other
companies, all of a sudden, all those reviews
were literally dropped from Google. And dentists
went from having thousands of reviews to having
like no reviews because they weren't doing it
any other way. Me, I had already had gotten a
tremendous number of reviews. So I had a couple
of hundred reviews at that time. And that's really
what allowed patients to find me online. And
that's why they came in. So that's a big difference
as back then to where we are now. You know, Google
only shows Google reviews. Okay. Back then when
you search for a dentist in and around your area,
so dentist in your zip code, dentist in your
town, a map would come up. Back then it was A
through G. There were seven dentists on page
one. Okay. So visibility was a lot easier. Well,
a few years, probably five years ago, they eliminated
four of those offices. And now there's three
offices on there and you can pay for it to be
the fourth because you can do an AdWord on the
listings. So the real estate has become really
prime. And if you're not one of those three practices,
you don't rank, you're not visible. And if you're
below that three spot, people have to click on
more places to be able to see you. And it's only
like five to 7 % that actually do that. So if
you're not in that three pack, we call it you're
invisible. And that's what I teach. It's visibility
and credibility. So the goal has to be that if
you're not on that map pack in those three spots,
you're invisible. And if you're invisible, people
aren't finding you. So that was a big change,
okay? And back then, I still remember, I was
looking back at an old book I had given out,
a workbook that I had given out back then. And
I look back and I had written in there that,
you know, Google collects and shows or sites
show, there's 105 sites that can collect and
publish reviews for practices or for businesses,
100 plus sites. You had CitySearch, you had,
Angie's List. You had, I mean, Judy's book. You
had all of these directories that existed that
were collecting reviews. And over the years,
it's really become the survival of the fittest
because really all that matters right now is
Google, okay? If you're in California or a very
large city, Yelp, okay? And then maybe Facebook.
And that's it. There's really no other directories
or no other stuff you need reviews on. I mean,
there's WebMD. Your dentists don't get... patience
to go to WebMD that has reviews, but it's really
become it's Google or it's nothing else. What
about next door to you? Like those ones or is
it Facebook, Yelp and Google? In my opinion,
it's Google. Okay. Google is by far like it's
number one by a hundred percent. If you are in
those, if you're in California, you're in Chicago,
New York, Miami, Dallas, Seattle, those areas.
Yelp may play a bigger role than in some other
people. But if you're in a suburb in North Carolina,
nobody Yelps there. So Yelp doesn't matter to
those people. So Yelp to some extent. And then
Facebook only has what they call recommendations
now. They don't have reviews. So even to that
extent, Facebook is not that important. So you
need to make sure that if you don't dominate
Google, you're still having issues with visibility
online. The goal here moving forward should be,
I have to get as visible and I have to look as
good as possible on Google. If I don't, it's
not going to help me. So in my opinion, you have
to go all in on Google at this point. I'm 100
% on the same page with you there. I always say,
I have this little saying I say to my dentists
is, Google reviews are the bitcoins of dental
marketing. That's my quote on that. And I say,
it is the most valuable thing and it will compound
over time and work for you as you continue to
get more. And it's not just the reputation thing.
It is, as you were mentioning a few times now,
showing up the visibility side of it. And I was
doing a little bit of research the other day
in preparation for this podcast. And I saw that...
I asked ChatGPT, pull surveys for me from 2023
to 2025 of any type of dental survey where patients
said why they find dentists, how they find dentists,
what's important to them. The single most important
thing that came up with every single patient
was the reputation of that dentist, meaning the
Google reviews. And 50 % of patients said they
would not even consider a dentist with lower
than a four -star rating. when they were searching
in Google search. Have you had that same experience?
Does the data agree with what you've seen? So
100%, I agree with you that it's so important.
Patients, when I asked my patients how they found
me, I would say it was over 50 % said that they
found me because of my online reviews. And yes,
they may have said, I found you on your website
or I found you, you know, your ad, but ultimately
I asked, well, why did you come and see me? and
they said it was because of the reviews that
you had. And in particular, I was not a perfect
dentist. I don't want a business to be perfect.
If you have only five stars, it looks imperfect
to me. It looks not genuine. I ended my career
with over 2 ,000 reviews with a 4 .7 star rating,
and I was very content with that. Okay. I think
you need to focus. I think the goal should be
4 .6 to 4 .9. That should be where you want to
fall. I do agree that businesses with less than
four stars, even if you're a referral practice,
people, when they look you up, are not going
to want to come in if they see a three in front
of it, a 3 .9. So I think you need to get definitely
over four stars. Anything less, you're in trouble.
And a lot of times you may be busy and not knowing
that you're actually losing patients because
of your reputation online. You have to put your
best foot forward. And unfortunately, you may
be the best dentist in the world, but you're
only as good as Google says you are. And if Google
says you're not very good, then you're in trouble.
So I agree wholeheartedly with those stats. I
use stats all the time to project how important
things are. But when you compare... dentists
to all other businesses. There's a survey that
was done and reputation mattered the most to
which of these industries and dentistry was second
just behind restaurants and cafes, which I thought
was odd. But that was number two of all the industries
out there, how important reputation was in choosing
a business. Exactly. And then I always say, I
would speak to a dentist when we were in a meeting
and I would say, if you're going to take the
missus out to a nice restaurant for the anniversary,
are you just going to... Close your eyes and
do this and then dot down? No, because if you
choose wrong, you're in trouble. So what are
you going to do? You're going to hear what other
people had to say, what other women had to say
about the place, about anniversary. Okay, this
place, this is the one that's perfect. If you
want to go to a new barbershop, if you want to
find a law firm, and then I'd say, so why do
you think, and I would ask the dentist, so why
do you think you are any different? than how
people think and they would say no no i guess
we're not then i'm like okay then why do you
have 60 reviews and you've been in practice for
five years and you're complaining about this
photo on the website that's wrong but you're
not but you're not focusing on the primary thing
that people are going to use to actually find
your business You're speaking what I've been
praising to people for 12 years now. This is
exactly what I talk about is how important it
is. And I always ask when I do like a lot of
like smaller classes, I always ask practices,
what makes them different? Okay. How does someone
differentiate between you and the dentist down
the road? Oh, we're great at customer service.
Everybody tells you that they're great at customer
service. That's not a differentiating factor.
Okay. Treat you like family. Right, right. Everybody
does that. We have technology. Everybody has
technology. So honestly, it comes down to, unfortunately,
it comes down to how you look online and reviews
play a huge role in that. You have to differentiate
yourself in what people say about your practice.
Okay. The doctor called me ahead of time. The
doctor called me afterwards. The doctor took
me to my dental appointment at a specialist.
Those are things that make the difference. And
those are things that people are going to talk
about because they're going to talk about things
that are remarkably good. or remarkably bad.
And if it's remarkably bad, they're going to
go online and bash you versus when it's positive
or remarkably good, you have to almost entice
them to write about you online. But you want
to capture those stories online. So you want
to capture a star rating of five, obviously,
but you want it to be a story being told, not
just great experience. The patients should tell
a story when they're writing these reviews. That's
what separates you from the competition. You've
touched briefly on the impact that online reviews
has on dental practice growth and patient acquisition,
why it's important. We mentioned visibility.
We mentioned on the perception that people have.
Can you give us just a summary for dentists of,
okay, Len, I hear what you're saying. How is
this truly impacting my patient acquisition and
the bottom line of my business? So let's take
a practice that's investing in marketing online,
okay? And I always tell people that unless you
have a steady flow of reviews, you're wasting
your money if you're spending a lot of money
on marketing, okay? Because the reviews are the
baseline. It's the foundation that exists, okay?
And you have to have a great foundation in order
to build that dental marketing up on top of it.
If you don't have a great foundation of reviews,
then I, in my opinion, the marketing that you're
going to do is actually going to suffer. You're
going to have negative ROI if you do not. have
a foundation of reviews. So I tell people, don't
get a new website. So I always say to them, well,
I'm looking at a new website. Well, what's the
reason that you're looking for a new website?
And I say, I'm not going to give you the answer,
but what's the reason? Well, I want to be more
modern. I'm like, that's not the reason. The
answer is that you want to get more new patients.
Simple. The goal of a website redesign is you
want more new patients. The website brings zero
ROI. Also, let's say you're doing AdWords. So
you're spending money for Google to advertise
for you, okay? Ultimately, they're going to see
this ad. They're going to think really highly
of your ad. They're going to go check you out
online, and they're going to see you have 18
reviews with a four -point star rating. They're
not going to come in. That is why I think the
most important thing about reviews is it allows
you to unlock what I call the key to be able
to market your practice to bring more new patients
in. So the foundation has to be set properly
or else things are going to fail on top of it.
So to me, that's one of the most important things
as to why you need to focus on reputation because
anything else you're going to do is going to
fail. I met someone who's doing TV ads. They're
literally spending about $3 ,000 to $5 ,000 a
month on ads on TV. They have 3 .3 stars with
28 reviews. I'm like, that's a waste of money.
Well, we're getting patients from, I'm like,
I'm sure you are, but I guarantee you're not
getting all the patients that were to come in.
So you got to focus on fixing those things first
before you go into this huge expense on marketing
your practice online. So I think that's one of
the biggest things that this whole, you know,
in terms of ROI. Now, how do you know it's actually
working for you? You have to be very on top of
things and you have to ask patients directly.
Why did you, how did you hear about my office?
Or why did you pick me over all those other offices
near me? And when you ask enough questions, it's
going to be, well, I read about you online. I
read your reviews. I love what people have to
say about you. And that's why I came into your
office. It may have been I saw the ad and also
I saw your website or I got a referral. But even
when patients are referred to you, they no longer
just pick up the phone and call. They don't do
that, okay? They're going to go, okay, let me
see what other people say about them. And they're
going to look you up online. And if you don't
have that reputation to support it, they may
not come in. So that's really where I think the
reviews are kind of the most important thing
a practice has to pay attention to because it
affects everything else they're doing in that
practice, as well as how much the practice is
earning from the marketing that they're doing.
Would you go as far as to say that no other marketing
or your effort really matters until you have
solidified, until you at least, what would you
say in the top three, top five, like what's my
goal here? Because I can't just say. You can't
just do any more because you're not there yet.
Like, where do I need to focus on getting to
the line before you're like, okay, you're in
a better place now. So, you know, it's hard to
say you're going to be in a certain spot. I would
say that if once you get to 100 reviews. Let's
say it's between 4 .6 and 4 .9. It can even be
5 .0 stars. It doesn't matter. When you hit the
100 to 150 reviews, I feel very confident that
a practice can be successful marketing their
business online. What if my competitor has 700?
Well, of course. People always ask me how many
reviews is enough, how many reviews is too much.
They're never too much. You may be in a small
town. There's a dentist in... in a town in Georgia,
McDonough, Georgia, they have like 7 ,000 Google
reviews, an insane number of reviews. So if you're
in that small town, you have to, that's your
competitor. And then there's towns that are much
bigger that have 25 reviews. So it really depends
on how your competitor, how many of your competitors
have definitively. But there's nothing wrong
with, you don't have to be equivalent in number
of reviews. If you want to market yourself, Key
to unlock that is somewhere between 100, 150.
Even if your competitor has 250, 500, 700, to
be able to market, that's the number I want you
to be at, okay? To really have success in driving
those patients organically that are just looking
for you, the goal has to be in the map pack.
I mean, that's really where you need to be because
you could have 800 reviews and you don't have
visibility and nobody sees those 800 reviews,
then you're wasting it. Then it doesn't matter
for you. So it's a hard thing to answer. It's
a combination of those things. But that's why
I teach visibility and credibility. If you have
both of those things, you have a really good
reputation and you're visible, that's where things
really work well for you. And do you have a case
study of somebody that you've worked with that
you've seen when we really put in the work on
the reviews, we build systems in the office to
regularly get into, if someone enters the office,
this is how we treat them, this is what we do,
before they leave, someone needs to ask them
for a review. Like those type of systems where
you can share with us, okay, the practice went
from this to this. You mentioned it earlier,
actually. How do you measure this? Well, I'll
give you an example of an office. So I met an
office. I don't want to call them out, but I
met an office in 2020 doing a demo on BirdEye.
And they were a startup practice in January of
2020, which was probably like the worst time
for someone to start up because COVID shut them
down for a couple months after that. And I met
them in September of 2020. and they loved what
I had to offer them. They were very hesitant
to move forward simply because they had just
been out of a shutdown. They were a startup practice.
Financials were very difficult. So this particular
practice was a startup. They had really poor
listings, is what we call it, and they didn't
have a ton of reviews. They made the decision
not to move forward, and that was fine. And I
am the least pressure salesperson. I always tell
people that. And I said, here's my contact information.
You reach out to me. However long you need, I'm
happy to help you. They also said they wanted
to do it themselves. Okay, and I'm like, okay,
try to do it yourselves. You can't, but you can
try. So I never heard from them again. Never
heard from them again. Three years later, I met
them at the Greater New York Dental Meeting.
And I remember who they are. I pulled them up
on the map and showed them that in the three
years, they only had gotten 30 -something reviews
and the listings were not improved and the ranking
actually got worse than when I first spoke to
them. And I have a program that I use to show
them this. So then they realized that they couldn't
do it on their own. They were obviously in a
better financial state and they decided to move
forward with the software. And they were not
making any other changes. They weren't getting
a new website. They weren't adding any type of
marketing. And in three or four months, I think
was the numbers, the ranking online on the local
ranking on the maps significantly improved to
where they had, they went from a 4 % local search
volume to a 60 % local search volume. And they
went from having 13 patients a month, new patients,
to almost 25 new patients a month. That is because
they had the visibility and the credibility.
And when you have both of those things combined,
you end up attracting more new patients to their
practice. And they had reached out to me to find
out how they looked because they saw a dramatic
increase in the number of people that were calling
their office. That's how this all takes place.
So that's a huge success story that I talk about
almost every demo that I do and every session
I do because it's a dramatic change in how they
appeared online and all of a sudden saw a huge
increase in number of new patients they were
doing without actually adding any other type
of marketing, which is the key. Yeah, because
often people would think, if you think about
dental marketing, you see this, how much this,
that, that. But I agree with you. There's certain
things that if you can at least just focus on
that. starting out on some of the things that
you mentioned now then that's going to make a
big difference so you spoke about the the impact
that it can have you spoke about a case study
now I come to you and I say I agree with you
Len it is important I know what you mean it's
uh you made your point how do I get this operating
in my office what do I need to do to actually
because I'm I'm struggling. I mean, dentists
wear many hats. I'm struggling. I'm under stress.
The staff, I have to hire a new hygienist and
it's costing me more than ever before. How do
I do this now? So I think the first thing I always
teach offices is they have to decide, they have
to commit themselves to doing this. So you have
to make the commitment, number one. Number two
is once you make the commitment, I think you
have to create a reputation culture in your office.
And what I mean by that is when someone comes
into the office, they're going to have their
teeth worked on. They're going to then be asked
at some point to write a review. You have to
almost know that you're being observed and watched,
and someone's going to report on your behavior
through a review. That's what it is. And if you
create this reputation culture and you know this
is going to happen, you treat the patients with
the best customer service. So the customer service
has to be top -notch, okay? Remember, most dental
reviews that you see don't talk about services.
They don't know if their dentistry was bad. They
don't know if they have an open margin on their
crown. They know if they were treated well and
they're happy and they had no pain. That's what
people talk about. If you ran late, they're going
to talk about it. If there was a money issue,
they're going to talk about it. That's what they
talk about in these reviews. They also don't
really mention team members' names. So they talk
about the doctor and team. Or the staff at the
office was great. The doctor's great. Dr. Tao
and his team are great. They don't mention individual
people all that often, okay? So knowing that,
I think it comes down to, one, you have to ask
patients. Now, if you're uncomfortable, the verbiage
changes. You want to ask for feedback about the
experience. You don't want to ask for a review
directly. It sounds like you're begging for it.
So you want to ask for feedback about the experience.
If team members ask, the more they ask, the more
you should get. Unfortunately, it comes down
to... When a patient goes online to write a review,
there is a lot of steps involved to write a review.
It's like 14 steps long. And a lot of patients
are not going to go to that extent. So in my
opinion, I work for BirdEye. I mean, this is
not a BirdEye sales pitch, but you need to use
an automated system that will do the work for
you. And then all you need to do is ask because
these services make the process really easy for
the patients. But if you don't ask and don't
inform the conversation and let them know that
they're going to get a text message that's going
to make it very easy for them to write a review,
It's very difficult to see success, okay? When
I had my software, iSocial Reviews in 2013 and
14, mine was a fully manual -based system. There
was no automation there, okay? We have automation
with BirdEye now because we integrate with the
practice management software, Dentrix, EagleSoft,
OpenDental, all the cloud -based stuff. And when
I had my software, I would see jumps. So when
they first started, you see a huge jump. I would
have a meeting with them three months later.
It would go down to here. I would meet with them.
It would go back up again. You want a steady
stream of reviews. One of the biggest ranking
factors now is the velocity of reviews, how many
you're getting. And there's case studies being
done, not necessarily on dental offices, but
even restaurants. And they showed three restaurants
that had a very similar number of reviews, but
one was clearly outranking the other ones when
you did search. And it showed that they were
getting higher velocity reviews than the other
businesses. Okay? So velocity of reviews is very
important. You want a consistent flow of reviews,
not five one day and then, you know, you wait
a month to get more. That doesn't work well for
you. As long as you end up with this consistent
flow of reviews. It also looks better. I've seen
if it's like every two day, every third day,
every fifth day, every eighth day, like four,
that looks way better in terms of public perception.
Correct. So you want a steady flow of reviews,
ideally every day. It's going to be hard, but
ideally every day you want at least one review,
in my opinion. So the goal should be at least
three plus a week. So at the end of the month,
you have 12 to 15 reviews. At the end of the
year, you have 150 reviews. I mean, that's the
way to look at it. So, but you know, it's asking,
it's hoping and praying if you, if you, if you
just rely on them asking, cause a lot, the, I
mean, you ask a hundred patients to write a review
online, 98 % of them are going to say they're
going to do it, but only five to 7 % actually
do it. compared to asking someone and saying
yeah yeah i will do it you know that like um
remember to leave us a review and then you're
in that moment and you feel guilty so you're
like okay yes of course i will but then as soon
as you leave the door it's like okay cheers so
i know that happens as you said now i want to
ask you though did you see a difference in the
bird eye system because if i play devil's advocate
i'll say Hey, if the doctor asked me and showed
me a QR code in the office and said, hey, you
can just scan it and go. Is that success rate
higher in what you've seen in internal efforts
or getting that text? Because I get it from restaurants
often and I would just be like, no, it was a
good thing, but I'm not getting it. So what's
your opinion there on those two types of efforts?
So I want to be clear. So QR codes work. The
patient still has to do a lot of the work. The
problem is if they're doing the QR code in the
office and writing the review in the office,
then because of location services being on their
phone as well as Wi -Fi access in the office,
Google and the other providers will see that
the reviews are being left in the physical office
space. And based on what I see over time is they
lose reviews when that happens. So I don't like
the fact that offices use the tap device, one
of those pop devices. Those are not good for
business. I mean, I've seen many offices really
get in trouble using that over and over and over
again. The why I like the text after the appointment
is because they're not in the office space at
all. Okay, so it's done at home. There's no issues
of people thinking that they're being, or you're
manipulating them, the reviews. Because again,
if you ask a patient to do a review and say,
here's a QR code and you're watching over them
to write the review, do you think they're going
to write something negative? Of course not. That's
why when you use Google Maps to go to a restaurant,
okay, you get a review request from Google, but
it doesn't happen until the next day. It doesn't
happen while you're physically in the restaurant
eating. They want to wait until there's no bias
anymore. So the best time, I think, is to send
a text message at the end of the day, just inform
the patient that they're going to get one, and
then let the automation from the software take
over, and you'll get significant success that
way. I have a last question for you. I want to
know the future. I know AI is obviously a hot
topic right now. Technology is moving fast. Dentistry
is moving fast. You've had quite some time in
this industry now, and you've seen it grow. Where
is this going? Well, I think a tremendous amount
of it is going to be AI, 100 % so. And I'll give
you an example. So I do Google searches a lot
for offices I speak with. I mean, not that I'm
practicing anymore. I'm not an owner of my practice.
But the practice that I sold, I just did a search
for, and I just typed in Pennsylvania Center
for Dental Excellence reviews. The first thing
that comes up is the AI overview from Google.
I just want to read you what it says. It says
the Pennsylvania Center for Dental Excellence
receives highly positive reviews with patients
praising the friendly and comfortable environment,
knowledgeable and general staff, and thorough
and efficient dental work. Many reviewers highlight
the team's ability to address patients' concern
and make them feel at ease during procedures.
Here's a more detailed breakdown of the positive
feedback. And they list literally, it goes on
and on and on about what basically the reviews
show. So it's using AI to come up with this detailed
report summary on Google. So this is the future.
If you don't make yourself look customer -friendly
and have great reviews, the AI, when they ask,
is not going to look too highly of you. So I
think that's a big thing you have to pay attention
to. And you don't want bad reviews to appear
in the review snippet that's on the Google business
listing. So again, this is where this whole reputation
culture comes in. It's making the reputation
a priority for practices because with AI, if
you don't look great, it's going to really hurt
you, okay? Now, again, I don't think the visibility
part is ever going to change. I'll go over real
quick a couple of the big ranking factors so
people understand. Number one is total number
of reviews. Number two is velocity of reviews.
Number three is the total score you have, which,
again, 4 .8, 4 .9, all the same thing. Another
big ranking factor is looking at your primary
category. So if you're a dentist, you want your
primary category to be a dentist. If you're an
oral surgeon, you want your primary category
to be oral and maxillofacial surgeon. If you're
an orthodontist, you want it to be orthodontist.
But you also want to make sure you have secondary
categories as well. So for a dentist, it could
be cosmetic dentist. It could be dental hygiene.
It could be teeth whitening services, dental
implant provider. There's a lot of different
services that you want to select as your secondary
categories. Okay. And the other ranking factor
is making sure this name, address, and phone
number is consistent. There is another aspect
of visibility that's On top of the reviews. So
just having reviews is only one way to get visible.
You actually have to have something else incorporated
in that. And that's making sure that the practice's
name, address, and phone number is consistent.
This is something that's referred to as listing
management or citation claiming. All of these
directories Google looks at for trust. And if
the information isn't consistent, no matter how
many reviews you have, you generally don't rank
high on the maps. And I have offices galore that
have 600, 700 reviews, but their listings are
not very consistent and they don't rank. So you
need to make sure that that's information, the
name, address, and phone number is consistent.
Now, just to be very clear, where we see a lot
of issues are for people who started up a practice
and didn't do it before. We see issues with people
who moved their practice to a new address recently.
We have people who bought a practice recently.
And again, the starter practices, that's where
we see the biggest concerns. As an example, if
your address is 100 Southeast 22nd Street, Suite
A, there's so many different variations of your
name that you can have. So you have street, ST,
you have avenue, you have suite numbers, unit
numbers, STE. There's so many different variations
and that's where things are going to be problematic
for you. So you have to ensure that this data
is consistent online because if it isn't, Okay.
No matter how many rubies you have, you aren't
going to rank online. Okay. Because Google sees
it as different businesses because it's not matching.
Well, Google looks at it as a big trust factor.
And if things don't match, they don't know which
is the true address and phone number. And then
they have problems ranking. Okay. One of the
ranking factors you can't change. And that's
how close the business is, how close the office
is to the center of the city. And Google selects
that and you can't change that. Okay. Most other
ranking factors you could control. All right.
So if you have, if you check all those boxes,
you generally rank higher than your competitors.
That's really what it comes down to. So in the
future, I think it's going to exactly the same.
I think there's going to be more put on reviews
because again, reviews have always stayed the
same. And I think it's going to only increase,
but if you don't put a focus on reviews in your
practice, even if you are. very satisfied with
the number of patients you're seeing, you will
see a steady flow of a decrease in flow of new
patients, in my opinion, because there's going
to be a competitor who comes in. They're going
to have something that I call social capital
and not monetary money capital, but social capital.
And they're going to take advantage of the social
capital and they're going to pass you in the
rankings. You're going to wonder why. Len, that
is a perfect note to end it off. Before we go,
I want to ask you. If people want to get a hold
of you, of course, we will leave it in the show
notes too. If you have anything interesting coming
up, courses, where people can find you, please
let us know. Sure. So I am very active on social
media. So if you simply look me up, I'm on LinkedIn,
I'm on Instagram, I'm on Facebook, but you can
look me up. Message me on social media. I am
uber responsive. I'll share my cell phone with
you because it's all over the internet. I'm not
saying something that isn't there, but if you
want to text me, you can text me. My phone number
is 215 -292 -2100. You can also go to my website,
which is drlentow .com, drlentow .com. On there
is all my contact information as well. My email
address is len, L -E -N, at drlentow .com. If
you want any information about BirdEye, you certainly
can go to BirdEye's website. I run their dental
division, so you're going to get assigned to
me as well. So you're going to speak to someone
there and they're going to put you on my calendar
anyway. So if you have interest, you can always
reach out to me directly, but you can go through
BirdEye's website to learn more about what we
do. And I do have an event, my events in September,
September 26th and 27th. It's the third year
we're doing it. It's called Supercharge Your
Dental Practice. It's 13 amazing speakers. It's
not. just me. It's 13 amazing speakers. We've
got two panels, one on increasing practice revenue
and one on AI. We've got a ton of sponsors. It's
in Fort Lauderdale, Florida at Pier 66 Resort
on September 26th and 27th. And we expect 250
plus people there. It's the third year we're
doing it. It's at least at this resort for the
next three years. One of the most beautiful resorts
we've ever seen. You can go to superchargerdentalpractice
.com. And check out what it is. And if you want
to save $100 on registration, you can use the
code RAVING, R -A -V -I -N -G, which relates
to my podcast called Raving Patients. But that's
the information I have to share. And like I said,
bring in the questions. I'm happy to answer things.
And hopefully I can continue to lay the framework
in the industry for dentists who want to focus
on their reputation. Fantastic. Again, this is
such an important part of the success of your
practice. Listeners, dentists out there, listen
to what was said today. Go and put it into work.
I promise you, Len has a lot of experience over
me. I've been in this space for five years now.
We have seen so many dental practices and this
is one of the most important things. So get out
there, go get those reviews, focus on your reputation.
And if you need more help, you know where to
go. Thank you so much. Have a good rest of your
day.