SAN DIEGO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Chatmeter, the leader in local search marketing and review management, today releases a deeper inspection of the healthcare industry’s preparedness for the ubiquity of “near me” patient searches and rise of digital demands in the ‘age of the consumer.’ The latest edition of Chatmeter’s Local Brand Report: Reputation’s Role in Healthcare, focuses on how national healthcare systems fare at local reputation and where they can improve via reviews, listings, local SEO and business pages.
Six months since the mergers of CVS-Aetna and Cigna-Express Scripts made waves in the industry, there is significant opportunity and competitive demand for national-scale healthcare providers to take a local approach. As Google cites a 900% increase in “near me” consumer searches and 72% of patients turn to online reviews when selecting a healthcare provider, the industry must adapt to patients searching for doctors much like they find dinner spots.
“In many ways, the healthcare industry has taken massive strides towards embracing the future generation knocking at their door,” says Collin Holmes, Founder and CEO of Chatmeter. “Taking the time to manage reviews and interact with people is an absolute must, but there is still a lot of work to be done in order to stay current, relevant and discoverable across all channels.”
Chatmeter’s Local Brand Report: Reputation’s Role in Healthcare
Highlights of the report include:
- Healthcare systems are more attentive to reputation management than retailers – On average, healthcare systems are responding to 38% of online patient reviews. This is surprisingly high for such a risk-averse industry, and in comparison to the retail industry's review response rate of 1.4%. Healthcare also shows a rapidly growing attention to online reviews, as its rate of response increased from a year-long average of 21%.
- Listing accuracy must improve for national systems to succeed locally – the healthcare industry struggles to maintain an accurate depiction of its businesses in listings across platforms such as Google, Yelp, Healthgrades and ZocDoc. It stands 16% below the Chatmeter standard, a major red flag as listing accuracy accounts for 35% of Google search engine rankings.
- Patients know what they need, but not who they need it from – The healthcare industry ranks low in ‘unbranded keyword’ optimization, meaning patients and search engines can find them if they search by specific clinic or doctor name, but not by generic terms such as “hospital” or “doctor,” which account for 82% of their queries.
Chatmeter’s report finds that as a whole, the healthcare industry is priming itself for success but has room for improvement when it comes to optimizing for emerging technology and consumer demands. Despite the complexity of hyper-sensitive data and stringent regulations, healthcare is notably ahead of retail in regards to review response rates, putting it on the path to Voice Engine Optimization as consumers naturally begin turning to voice devices for medical needs as well as consumer queries.
Chatmeter used real consumer data to determine the biggest areas of opportunity for a brand to increase its visibility in search results and improve the customer experience in the healthcare space.
To learn more about findings from this report, visit Chatmeter at Healthcare Marketing & Physicians Strategies Summit today in Chicago at booth #40 or read more on Chatmeter’s blog: https://www.chatmeter.com/blog/the-local-brand-report-reputations-role-in-healthcare/
About Chatmeter
Chatmeter (www.chatmeter.com) helps enterprise brands and agencies managing multiple locations increase their revenue. Since being the first Local Reputation platform in 2009, they now analyze and improve over 1,900,000 storefronts for their reviews, rankings and listings.
They help businesses across retail, healthcare, auto, restaurant and hospitality make a distinct impact in revenue by identifying several areas in their online presence that drive customers to choose their location over a competitor’s. Chatmeter takes this a step further with the only integrated local visibility rank tracker so you can measure ROI using the most complete local presence management platform in the world.
The benefit for the clients is complete online presence management simplified into a single dashboard. They also power a white-label reputation management dashboard for many agencies across the U.S.
Some healthcare clients include AMITA Health, Pinnacle Healthcare System, Saint Dominic Health Services, NextCare Urgent Care, SMI Imaging and Benzer Pharmacy.
