Futuredontics
Empowering Dentists to Control Their Online Reputations

Online listings and reviews help prospective patients choose a dentist. While many expect the website to be the first point of exposure for consumers traversing the web, prospective patients often encounter a dentist’s listing on Google or other online platform before the website. The marketing opportunity this provides, according to Charles Burbridge, Director of Client Services at Futuredontics^®, is often not fully exploited: “Many dentists approach actively managing their widely dispersed online presence the way some of their patients approach flossing – they understand the need but don’t take the time.”

Futuredontics, the dental industry’s premier provider of new patient referrals, is committed to helping dentists better appreciate the criticality of devoting time to this contemporary form of word of mouth marketing and making the process easier. The company recently supplemented its longstanding call center-based patient acquisition with an online service available through Dentistry.com, a consumer-facing website educating prospective patients and driving them to dentist profile pages. These profiles are rich online listings embedded within a dedicated dentistry site. So the company repositioned its popular and award-winning ReputationMonitor^® SaaS product by attaching it to Dentistry.com, providing it for free and adding low-cost support for active management of the Dentistry.com profile and the broader range of dentists’ online listings.

This new model of free automated monitoring combined with low-cost active management of online listings is a winner. Dentists using ReputationMonitor report that the tool is very effective in clearly displaying all consumer reviews and additional information prospective patients see throughout the web; providing timely notifications of new reviews; and identifying incorrect representations of their practice in directory listings.

Futuredontics provides the tool for free so all dentists can be fully informed about how their business is presented throughout the web. The provision of low-cost support for listings management - “this is a loss leader for us,” says Burbridge – ensures that busy dentists and office managers have access to the expertise and time required to take firm control of the way they present themselves online.

Many dentists approach actively managing their widely dispersed online presence the way some of their patients approach flossing – they understand the need but don’t take the time.?

Brandon Vernon leads the listings management service team. He advises dentists to begin with careful attention to ‘Big Five’: Google, Facebook, Yelp, Instagram and YouTube. Once they get started – starting is the toughest part - they’re often hooked by the resulting measurable increases in SEO and new patient acquisition. The next step is to extend the efforts more broadly to smaller platforms such as MapQuest, Yahoo Local and Bing. Dr. Mehran Daoudian of the American Medical and Dental Institute asserts, “Working with Brandon over the past several years, being diligent about organizing and maintaining my online listings and being responsive to consumer reviews, I’ve seen significant increases in website visits and phone calls originating online. The increase has been progressive and continues to grow.”

In response to the question of why Futuredontics, which generates the bulk of its revenue through new patient acquisition, has chosen to subsidize customer access to a SaaS product and support service positioning dentists to generate the largest number of new patient leads on their own, Co-President Steve Ostrover explains, “Having inherited a lot of degraded operational systems and processes, we knew we had to change a lot of what we did and re-establish ourselves. A big part of that has been invigorating customer service, committing ourselves to service in the deepest sense of the term. Customer interests first. We don’t hesitate to empower our customers to do more on their own because there’s always a large portion of the dental community looking to acquire as many new patients as possible. We’re very confident in our overall value proposition.”