If you’re looking to score well with aesthetic consumers, the folks at PwC’s Health Research Institute (HRI) have a little advice: Stop!

As the Institute notes in a new report, “Scoring Healthcare: Navigating customer experience ratings,” doctors who focus on stars, letter grades and other one-dimensional ratings miss an excellent opportunity to connect with patients, provide better outcomes and build their practices:

Scores are just a starting point on a journey toward higher-quality encounters and better health outcomes. Healthcare companies must look for new opportunities to connect the consumer experience in all aspects of the health journey.

In fact, it’s that “health journey” that separates simple rating systems from the reviews that aesthetic consumers post on sites like RealSelf, where community members often begin chronicling their experiences long before they even choose a provider. Given the “roaring conversation” those stories foster, it’s obvious that other readers put a lot of faith in them.

The PwC report says much the same. According to the report, 48% of survey respondents said they read online reviews, but once they do, 68% of them said that they used the reviews to choose a provider. That, in turn, suggests that doctors who have a better awareness and understanding of reviews reap the benefits that come from increased exposure and the resulting word of mouth.

The report goes on to say that most consumers are looking for reviews from “people like me.” Faced with multiple outlets for online ratings and reviews, they want to know how like-minded consumers made their decisions and chose their providers. On the one hand, that’s hard to discern from simple rating systems; on the other, it’s exactly why RealSelf users can sort reviews by a variety of parameters, including age, weight, gender, etc.

Put it all together and it’s obvious that online health reviews will play a growing role in patient-doctor interactions and that both parties stand to benefit from the trend. As Kelly Barnes, PwC’s U.S. health industries leader, puts it:

Healthcare organizations are increasingly operating in a world in which the voice of the consumer impacts the bottom line, and where customer experience is now a matter of dollars and cents. As consumerism in healthcare gains steam, customer feedback has become a determining factor in the success of health organizations.

Simply put, reviews help consumers determine quality of care, which in turn, can help doctors improve financial performance, market share and reputation.

Online reviews are like personal referrals but with much greater reach.

5 stars. 2 thumbs up. A++. When it comes to trusting information found on the Internet, there’s no escaping the fact that consumers give online reviews, well, glowing reviews. In fact, despite occasional reports of “astroturfing,” it seems they put more trust in them all the time.

In fact, according to a survey conducted by BrightLocal.com, 72% of consumers trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations. Not surprisingly, perhaps, trusting those reviews, in turn, engenders trust in the companies being discussed.

Doctors should trust them as well. Here are 5 reasons why:

Most online reviews are positive: According to DemandForce.com, 87% of reviewers say the reviews they post are positive some or all of the time. By comparison, just 2% say their reviews are negative some or all of the time.

More consumers are reading more reviews: In 2012, SearchEngineLand.com reported that 67% of survey respondents read 2–10 reviews vs. 58% in 2010. Having a high number of reviews also boosts consumer confidence by diluting the impact of any negative commentary.

More reviews provide better results in search rankings: With so many consumers reading reviews, it’s not surprising that search engine algorithms are giving them more weight. Adding reviews to your practice website aligns it with the way people actually search which can give you ranking leverage against both the competition and third-party review sites.

Positive reviews engender increasing levels of consumer trust: When asked how online customer reviews affect their opinion of a local business, 58% of respondents in the BrightLocal survey said positive reviews made them trust a business more, up from 55% two years earlier.

Positive reviews can be more important than price or location: 52% of consumers are more likely to use a local business if they have positive reviews. Conversely, just 28% cite price and/or location as the main decision-making factor.

Put it all together and it’s clear that building up a roster of reviews is a powerful tool, both for building trust and generating new business. And while asking patients to write a review of their experience may feel uncomfortable at first, chances are you’ll like their answers.

Encouraging patients to share their entire aesthetic journey with others provides more value for doctors than traditional post-procedure reviews. (Photo by Brian Smithson via flickr.)

At RealSelf, we often hear from doctors who say they have a hard time convincing patients to post reviews after their procedures. Frankly, we’re not surprised; after all, having completed their aesthetic journey, what incentive is there for a patient to take the time to write a post-procedure report?

Compare that to the non-stop stream of commentary that characterizes the Worth It Ratings section on RealSelf. People start talking about their procedures weeks and months before they actually have them; share their thoughts, fears and concerns throughout their journeys, and then pass on their impressions of their care after the fact.

There are thousands of people who are talking about providers and procedures right now, says Maureen Ezekwugo, EVP Doctor Community. One person starts posting about their situation and others make their decisions based on what they read.

For doctors, those conversations are like word of mouth on steroids. Encouraging potential patients to share their experiences from the beginning gets them speaking on your behalf and gets your name in front of others who are still weighing their options. Simply put, when 42% of patients say they receive most of their information about plastic surgery from social media, you can’t afford not to have a presence there.

None of which is to dismiss the value of post-procedure reviews. The problem is that the usual one-line reviews — “My doctor was great” or “I love my results” — don’t give potential patients the insights they need to make what may be among the biggest decisions of their lives.

Consumers have come to recognize that there are quality differences between providers and stars don’t tell the whole story, says Ezekwugo. If everybody gets 4 or 5 stars, how do they know they’re making the right decision? Increasingly, they look for transparency and authenticity.

And that’s exactly what patient stories provide. In that light, soliciting post-procedure reviews should be where your efforts to encourage conversations end, not where they begin.

Doctor Takeaways

1. Recognize that the conversation is ongoing whether you participate or not

Wishing doctor reviews would just go away is a waste of time. Today’s consumers read online reviews for virtually everything they purchase and doctors need to recognize the importance of those reviews or risk becoming invisible to the masses of prospective patients who read them.

2. Get the conversation going early in the process

It may sound odd to ask a prospective patient to “review” you before they’ve had a procedure but the fact is they’re already doing so when they post updates praising the time a doctor took during a consult or punishing another for not responding to an inquiry. Encouraging them to chronicle their entire journey makes for more informed, more confident patients and better outcomes for all concerned.

3. Get out of the star-rating trap

Asking patients to rate your services implies that it’s “all about you,” which is one reason patients have little incentive to write post-procedure reviews. It isn’t; it’s about them and how they felt about their experience. It’s also about giving back and helping others make good decisions, natural impulses that doctors can encourage with online forms and widgets that facilitate sharing.

4. Get help if you need it

While more doctors now recognize the importance of online reviews, some are justifiably frustrated by the challenge of getting patients to follow through. If that’s a concern, consider using one of the many companies that offer to handle the details of conducting satisfaction surveys, soliciting reviews and spreading them around the web.

Their peers.

Check out the “wheel of influence” in this infographic from the influence marketing company Crowdtap.com. It’s not surprising, perhaps, that 92% of consumers trust recommendations from people they know, but when 7 out of 10 trust recommendations from people they don’t, it’s obvious that online reviews and opinions carry a lot of weight.

By comparison, not a single form of advertising broke the 50% mark.

The numbers take on even more significance in social media circles. Consider the data for Facebook and Twitter, which shows that even when people share content on the major social networks, few of their fans and followers actually access the content. In other words, a large number of followers is a poor indicator of influence.

What’s that mean for doctors? As Josh Catone of Mashable.com writes,

[It] means effective influencer marketing is about enabling customers to easily make peer recommendations to their networks of close friends, rather than helping widely followed people blast out marketing messages to thousands or millions of people.

Doctor Takeaway

Successful social media marketing isn’t about reaching as many people as possible. It’s about reaching the right people, i.e., those who are actively researching a product or service, those who are communicating with other like-minded consumers and those who are ready to connect with providers who can meet their needs.

Photos courtesy of Dr. Mary Lee Peters, MD

Maybe it’s the time of year. At a time when millions of people resolve to lose a little weight, those who have already lost a lot of it are more than happy to share their experiences.

Case in point: aesthetic consumers who have had or are considering a body lift. In fact, according to the latest Buzz Index from RealSelf.com, body lifts posted the largest increase in conversation last month with a score of 175.

(The Buzz Index is a weekly analysis that compares the number of questions, comments and new reviews posted on RealSelf over the last 28 days relative to the last three months. With 100 representing a normal amount of discussion, higher scores mean increased interest and more buzz.)

The discussion on RealSelf’s body lift community pages offers a perfect example of the consumer decision journey that patients make as they research procedures, consider various providers and share their experiences with others who are just starting out. As the following posts suggest, the journey starts long before a potential patient walks in the door and continues long after they complete their recovery.

Pre-procedure research: MedicMomOIF, Dothan, Alabama, posted Dec. 17, 2012

Sigh. I am one week from having a belt lipectomy with VASER liposuction and more nervous than when I went to combat for the first time. I am a military mother, I have two birth children and my step-son…

I came across this site [RealSelf.com] and was up until 3 a.m. one night just reading about everyone’s experiences. I hope, after waiting all this time, that I am making the right choice for me, I am sure I will love it but the fear is taunting me. I guess I will update this post-surgery. Wish me luck

Post-procedure care: rg90025, Beverly Hills, California, posted Dec. 17, 2012

The surgery was so scary, but they made me so comfortable and everyone was so friendly and warm and caring. I could go on and on, but I would recommend this doctor without any reservation at all. I think what I like the most about him is that I thought that once the surgery/procedure was over, they would want to wash their hands with me. Totally the contrary. The doctor told me I could email him directly and send pictures to update him and he would reply. I have bothered this poor doctor with over 30 emails, to which he has responded to every single email.

Post-procedure, paying it forward: Lisa Haupert, Iowa City, Iowa, posted Dec. 16, 2012

After Haupert shared several posts and informative videos about her late-November lower body lift, she received the following comment:

Hi Lisa, Thank you SO much for sharing your story. You are quite an inspiration! Kudos to you on all the hard work that is weight loss/life style change. Your tips have been very helpful for me as I am scheduled for my lower body lift on 1/16! There are a lot of emotions that are felt in the weeks before this surgery — and I’m not even there yet. Once again, your advice has been most helpful and I will continue to check back to your page for updates. Thanks again!

While each of the above patients is in a different stage in their own aesthetic journey, it’s obvious that those stages also represent serial points along a circle that continually reinvents and reinforces itself, a reality that helps explain the high Buzz Index for body lifts.

How about you? Is your practice seeing an uptick in inquiries about body lifts — and are you doing everything you can to convert those inquiries into new patients?

What’s that got to do with cosmetic surgery? More than you might think. In recent years, the hotel industry has come to realize that the way travelers make their buying decisions has changed. Sure, reserving a hotel room and a rhinoplasty procedure are two very different things; nevertheless, doctors can glean some valuable tips from what forward-thinking hotel companies are doing.

Here are four of them:

Adding reviews turns lookers into bookers

Recently, executives at the Wyndham Hotel Group recognized the obvious: many guests won’t book a hotel without reading user reviews — good, bad or otherwise — on sites like TripAdvisor. The solution? Incorporate those reviews right on each property’s website.

“Consumers are going to look at reviews anyway,” Gareth Gaston, senior VP of global e-commerce recently told HotelNewsNow.com, “and we don’t want to give them a reason to go somewhere else (for them). After adding TripAdvisor ratings and reviews, we saw an increase in conversions by 30%.”

Negative reviews are not all bad

At Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, management uses software to track reviews and respond to negative commentary. The result is a scorecard that lets property managers see how their response rates compare to company benchmarks.

Furthermore, the company reaches out to reviewers with direct responses, which provides a personal touch that takes the conversation out of the public eye. “It’s a direct conversation, not an opportunity to market,” said Robert Simon, director of interactive marketing.

Tell a story and people will listen

Four Seasons further enhanced its websites by adopting the social-media mantra to “think like a publisher.” To accomplish that goal, the company created an editorial group to write and post stories about each property, efforts that have made the sites more “sticky.”

“The average time people are spending on the site is seven minutes, which is fantastic,” Simon told HotelNewsNow. “Before it was five minutes; now they’re looking at photos, watching videos, etc.” That, in turn, has led to more bookings and increased revenue.

Keep it simple for better clickthrough rates

According to Gaston, Wyndham has pared its site-search features to four basic questions that save visitors from having to enter in extra information that takes more time and raises visitor frustration. After making the change, the company saw a 40% improvement in clickthrough rates.

Needless to say, visitors to your practice website aren’t choosing between thousands of options but the same rules apply to contact forms, information requests and any other website element that requires visitor input. (This is especially true for mobile users.)

Keep your website simple, keep it fresh with good content and keep it real with reviews from other patients and visitors will keep coming back.

Big-screen TVs for a few hundred bucks, designer hand bags at half-price and children’s toys for cheap, cheap, cheap. With Black Friday and Cyber Monday right around the corner, it’s easy to think that shopping is always about acting fast to get the best deals.

Obviously, aesthetic consumers approach their buying decisions a bit differently. In fact, as recent surveys of RealSelf users clearly demonstrate, they take their time, they do their homework and they care more about their providers’ expertise than the prices they charge. Consider the data:

When asked how long they had been researching a procedure before submitting an inquiry to a doctor, the top 3 responses were:

• Just started: 30.13%
• 1 month: 20.09%
• 1–3 years: 17.47%

When asked how important online reviews were in choosing a doctor, 96% said “Very Important” or “Somewhat Important,” with three-quarters of those saying “Very Important.”

When asked to name the most important factors in choosing a doctor for a cosmetic procedure, the top 5 responses were:

• Board certification: 61.88%
• Experience: 61.61%
• Price: 49.73%
• Before & After Photo Gallery: 48.90%
• Online Reviews: 42.31%

Clearly, today’s aesthetic consumers are not impulse shoppers. Instead, they’re making major, potentially life-changing decisions; they’re looking for insights from other patients and expertise from providers, and they’ll take as much time as they need to make those decisions with confidence.

Doctor Takeaways

1. The route to an aesthetic procedure is rarely a quick trip

While almost one-third of survey respondents said they’d just started their aesthetic research, it’s important to note that the figure provides no indication of how long they’ll continue it. At RealSelf, we see many users conducting research for months or even years before contacting a doctor, a window of opportunity that allows doctors to establish contact and build a relationship long before a user decides to pick up the phone or visit a clinic.

2. It’s time to embrace, not avoid, reviews

When 96% of users say reviews from other aesthetic consumers are either somewhat or very important, it’s time to recognize that you can use them to your benefit. Younger consumers, in particular, count on reviews — especially those on brands’ own websites — to help them make their decisions.

3. A reputable doctor trumps a good deal

After years of training and tens of thousands of dollars, it can be disheartening to read stories about less-qualified providers performing cosmetic procedures. The good news is that patients overwhelmingly report more satisfaction with the results they get from board-certified cosmetic surgeons. Doctors who help spread that message — via blog posts, social media and other online outlets — help themselves and the industry as a whole.

Perhaps you saw the figures released earlier this year from the number-crunchers at Nielsen. Looking at what sources of information people trusted most, the company found that less than half (47%) of the people surveyed trusted paid advertising. Depending on the outlet — TV, magazines or newspapers — that was a drop of 20–25% from 2009.

Instead, says Nielsen, they were more likely to trust recommendations from friends (92%), followed by other consumers’ online opinions (70%) and content found on branded websites (58%). And while the first should be obvious — one-to-one recommendations from friends have always been the gold standard — the other two are expected to play a more powerful role in the years to come.

Consider the following stats from BazaarVoice.com, which underscore the increasing importance of online conversations as Millennials begin to dominate the marketplace:

• 84% of Millennials report that user-generated content (UGC) has at least some influence on what they buy, compared to 70% of Baby Boomers
• 64% of Millennials feel that companies should offer more ways to share their opinions online in the future
• 51% of them say consumer opinions found on a company’s website have a greater impact on purchase decisions than recommendations from family and friends

That last one is especially telling as it represents a seismic shift in who these new consumers are listening to, where they’re choosing to do so and what they’re going to demand from those that they ultimately give their business to.

Question is, will they find what they’re looking for on your practice website or somebody else’s?

Doctor Takeaways

1. Prime the pump by encouraging UGC on independent sites

At RealSelf, we’re proud of the “roaring conversations” that our community of 3 million users engage in on everything from Accutane to Zoom Whitening. By extension, doctors who encourage patients to post reviews get a de facto introduction to a highly targeted audience that represents a great opportunity for conversion.

2. Tighten the bond by adding reviews to your practice website

As noted above, more and more consumers expect the providers they patronize to incorporate UGC on their branded websites. For doctors, this not only shows that you “get them” but that you truly value their input. At the same time, posting reviews on your site can lead to a better ranking in search results because reviews are what many of those consumers are looking for.

3. Act fast to convert those motivated visitors into new patients

Whether visitors to your site come from a search or referral, they’re still nothing more than leads that need to be qualified. With the power of the Internet at their fingertips, these potential patients not only expect quick responses to their inquiries; they also have no compunction about reaching out to multiple providers at once. Have a response plan in place for those leads, set reasonable expectations and then beat them, and you’ll beat the competition as well.

In 1989, the FDA approved the use of Botox for select medical conditions; the Internet was a concept unknown outside research circles, and a first-time author named Stephen R. Covey wrote a little business/self-help book called “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.”

Needless to say, much has changed since then. Botox is a multi-billion-dollar industry; the Internet is accessed daily by millions of people, and doctors who hope to be successful need to deal with marketing realities unimaginable a quarter-century ago.

With that in mind and with a nod to Stephen Covey (who died in July), we offer seven habits for aesthetic professionals in the social era:

Have a plan: Building an online presence can feel overwhelming if you try to do it all at once. Instead, think one step at a time, such as defining how your practice will generate more online reviews from happy patients and then layering on pieces such as photo galleries and Q&A expertise. (At RealSelf, every doctor has his or her own Doctor Community Advisor who can help optimize their time and resources.)

Have a presence: The Internet is a forum that only works for you if you can be found by the people who are looking for you or people like you when it matters. Own your name on all the major social networks; make sure your contact information is consistent across the board, and coordinate your social, SEO and SEM efforts to ensure consumers researching aesthetic procedures find you and not your competitors.

Be an expert: Consumers want to trust the doctors they choose and they rely increasingly on the information they find on the web to start that process. Sharing expert opinions on topics that they’re curious about builds value in your reputation as a doctor who is willing to help others without asking for something in return. (RealSelf’s Q&A is a great place to take control of how your expertise is positioned on the web.)

Embrace the conversation: Doctors who eschew social media for fear of bad reviews miss the larger point. People are already talking about you online; ignoring the conversation won’t make it go away. Instead, respond to patient concerns and complaints quickly, calmly and in accordance with privacy regulations. Research has shown that consumers — and the other consumers who are listening in — respond favorably to companies that take the time to respond to them.

Bring it back home: Including reviews on your practice website offers subtle but powerful evidence that you truly care what patients think. Likewise, incorporating social-sharing options promotes conversation and the relationship-building that today’s consumers demand. At the same time, such content also generates “social signals” which score well with search engines, ensuring better rankings in organic search results.

Align your team: Building an online reputation that truly represents your expertise takes time and effort. From your front desk person to your patient coordinator to your post-op nurses, it’s critical that everyone is aligned with creating a happy outcome for the patient. A properly trained staff will also be a great resource for uploading photos, soliciting patient reviews and getting the right Q&A to your desk for more efficient use of time answering questions online.

Be patient: It’s easy to think of social shoppers as looky-loos who aren’t worth interacting with but that’s a risky philosophy. At RealSelf, we see aesthetic consumers researching procedures and providers for months or even years before making their decisions. They may not be “ready to buy” today or tomorrow but doctors who keep in touch — by answering questions, sending informational emails, offering invitations to special events — stand a good chance of getting the call when they are.

Finally, consider this: Although it didn’t get the publicity that “Seven Habits” did, it’s worth noting that Covey published a sequel to his book in 2004. Called “The 8th Habit: From Effectiveness to Greatness,” it recognized that the world had, indeed, changed since 1989 and that the “challenges and complexity we face today are of a different order of magnitude.”

His advice? Have a voice: In an era when consumers have both unprecedented access to information and unsurpassed influence on the online conversation, authenticity is essential. The key to greatness, wrote Covey, is to find your voice and inspire others to find theirs.

If that’s the case, we can only hope that Gartner is also correct in its prediction that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) will begin to crack down on the practice.

Of course, it goes without saying that such “astroturfing” represents the height of unethical online behavior but the fact is that it’s part of a larger trend that assigns undue influence to Facebook “likes,” Twitter follower counts and other vanity metrics. As Patricio Robles of Econsultancy recently wrote:

The metrics by which social success is often measured are not always so easy to grow organically, but they’re cheap to manipulate. And a marketer looking for a reason to indulge in that manipulation can easily justify questionable tactics: the more [insert social media metric here] I have, the more legitimate ones I’ll attract.

At RealSelf, the issue of fake reviews is no esoteric debate. Our community guidelines explicitly state that: False reviews, “helpful vote” abuse and other dishonest gaming practices erode trust in confidence and will not be tolerated.

And we’re not afraid to take action as we did in 2008, when we filed suit against Lifestyle Lift Holdings because we believed they were posting fake reviews.

We believe they have violated our terms of use by posing as patients posting reviews on our site, which is misleading and unfair to our community, said CEO Tom Seery at the time. These sort of fabricated posts threaten our community’s trust in us. We have no choice but to challenge these actions.

And doctors should be every bit as leery of such practices. Simply put, in a profession where reputation is everything — and one in which social media is increasingly where reputations are made — the long-term risks of unethical behavior far outweigh any presumed benefit.

The only ones fooled by online love-buying are the marketers engaging in the tactic, says Robles. When it comes to earning an individual’s business and keeping it, trust, respect and satisfaction are far more important. And you can’t purchase those.

Doctor Takeaway

People respond to real reviews from real patients, not unrealistic raves

Consumers are rightfully skeptical of overly positive reviews even as they take negative ones in stride. Like any business owners, doctors should follow the advice of Gartner’s Jenny Sussin, who suggests companies “promote trust by openly embracing both positive and negative reviews and leveraging negative reviews as a way to encourage customers with positive experiences to share them. They should also respond to ratings and reviews in an official capacity to demonstrate willingness to engage in productive conversation with anyone.”