#278 Negativity Gets 13x the Clicks as Positivity

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Most dentists think a negative Google review hurts their growth. The reality is that negative content gets about 13x as much attention as positive content, which creates an opportunity if you know how to respond correctly.

In this episode, Gary Bird breaks down the psychology behind online reviews, why prospective patients read negative reviews first, and the exact response framework that turns criticism into trust. You'll learn how to stay HIPAA-compliant, avoid defensive responses, and use negative reviews to strengthen your reputation and attract more patients.

Drawing on real-world experience at SMC and insights from working with 1,195 dental practices, Gary shares a practical strategy that every dentist can implement immediately to improve patient trust, online reputation, and new-patient growth.

If you're serious about dental marketing, Google reviews, practice management, fee-for-service growth, and building a stronger practice, subscribe for more Dental Marketing Goat episodes every week.

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Dental Marketing Goat is the go-to podcast for dentists who want to grow faster, market smarter, and build practices that thrive in today’s competitive landscape.
Hosted by Gary Bird, the Dental Marketing Goat himself and founder of SMC National, recently named Best Dental Marketing Agency by over 60,000 dental professionals. Each episode unpacks the real strategies, marketing frameworks, and operational shifts that high-performing practices use to attract more patients and increase production. Whether you're a solo practitioner or scaling a DSO, you’ll learn how to align your marketing, team, and systems to drive predictable growth.

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Transcript

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Today we're going to talk about how negativity gets 13 times more attention than positivity. And the best example of this is in the news media. Now, before I break this down, I'm going to tell you exactly how you can use this for your practice so you can grow. Because you, as dentists, deal with a lot of negativity from patients. Patients, a lot of times, will say they hate the dentist and they'll leave these negative comments in reviews that and they've never even worked with you. And or they come in and they just make up these fabricated stories. You can use all of that to your advantage because people are actually looking at that, that negativity, more than the positivity that you put out there. So, first of all, let's break down in the news media. Why is the news so negative? Well, what the news media, all of them have figured out, is that negativity gets 13 times more clicks or views than positivity. So if you can talk about the puppy that died in the well, that will get 13 times more hits than the puppy that was saved from the well. Does that make sense? So it's really important to understand that, and that's part of human nature. I've recently been dealing with a lot of negativity online from several anonymous dentists that are just absolutely trying to destroy my business, destroy me. They're leaving us bad Google reviews. We've never worked with them. A lot of times we don't even know who they are, and they hide their identities. And what I've noticed, this is not the first time that I've dealt with this. What I've noticed is our traffic, my views all go up, our traffic goes up. People begin to ask, who is Gary Bird? People begin to hear about me that have never heard about me before. And in the short term, it hurts, right? You don't want people talking bad about you. It never feels good. But always, my experience is always in the long term, it always ends up positive as long as you're doing what you're supposed to do. Now, how can you flip this into a positivity? Uh, how can you take the negative as a better way to say it and turn it into a positive so you get more new patients, so you can grow your practice? So, in your Google reviews, you're gonna have negative reviews and you're gonna stress about them. First of all, let me tell you, do not stress about those. Don't stress. Look at them as opportunities. Do not look at them as things that are going to end up ending your business, ending your career, causing so much damage that you can never recover from it. That's 99.99999% of the time, that's not the case at all. It's not gonna hurt you. In fact, it's actually going to help you. And I'm gonna give you the exact scripting on this, okay? So let's say some psycho leaves a random review and they came in, but what they're describing isn't what actually happened in your office. Let's say that that's what happened. Your knee-jerk reaction is to defend yourself, but that is the wrong response. That's not how you want to deal with those. There's an exact scripting and an exact way that if you respond to them this way, it'll help you get more reviews. On Google, because of the nature of Google and so many Google reviews now, dental offices have one, two, three thousand Google reviews now. People can't go through all the positive reviews. It's too many positive reviews. So, what they do is they go to the negative reviews. You've probably done this on Amazon. So you go on to Amazon and you look for a vacuum and you it has 5,000 good uh reviews. What do you do? You go and look at the negative reviews. Now, if all the negative reviews on there are like they sent me the wrong one, I ordered a white one and they sent me a black one, and that that it's they got like 50 negative reviews about that. For you, if you don't care about the color of the vacuum, if you're like, I don't care if I get a black or a white one, makes no difference to me, then those negative reviews mean nothing to you. Right? And how they responded, if if they all responded, oh, I'm so sorry, we're gonna get it right back out to you, da da da da da da da and uh we'll get you the right color, we'll correct it. It was it was a mistake on the manufacturer's side, we'll we'll make it right for everybody. You go, oh, it's a good company. Hey, if they send me the wrong color, not a big deal, I'm gonna move forward with them. The negative reviews don't actually hurt your buying decision process. Now, if you go to another vacuum and it says, I got it, I had to manufacture it, like I had to piece it together, it had missing parts, and over and over and over again, that's what it says. And then inside of that is the manufacturer, like, no, it was user error, user, it was your fault, you're so, you know, you don't know what you're doing, you don't know how to follow directions, our vacuums are so good. And you see that over and over and over again, that's gonna be a red flag not to work with that individual. So, what patient all they're looking for, the new patients. I'm not so worried about the patient who left the review. I'm worried about the thousands of people who are gonna come and read your Google reviews and then they're gonna go right down to the negative review. If you can get that person with the negative review, if you can just leave this statement, and I and if you want the exact scripting on this, I have this all outlined, you can comment down below, but I'm gonna give it to you right now as well. All you have to do is say, Hey, Mr. Patient, we're so sorry that you had this experience. That is not our ever our goal. Our goal is insert mission statement. We would love to connect with you and learn more about what happened and where things went wrong. We're always looking to improve. Thank you for stopping by and leaving your feedback today. You don't violate HIPAA, you don't, and I know what you're thinking. You're like, I don't want to respond to that crazy person. I don't want them back. They're not coming back. Crazy people who leave crazy reviews aren't gonna come work with you. They're they're they're people aren't that dumb. They're dumb, but they're not that dumb. So then you go in and you flip that negative review into a positive, and a normal, rational person's gonna read it and go, uh, if they have a problem, they're willing to work on the problem. That's all people want. That's all people want. All people expect of me as a dental marketer is hey, if we have a problem, can we work it out? I'm not really worried about the crazy people who roast me online and never worked with me and make up stories. I'm not worried about them. Who cares? In the short term, people go, Oh, is this true? No, it's not true. Oh, okay. And then I get more traffic and then I keep growing. And you can do the same too if you flip those negative reviews into the positives. Now, if you want the whole PDF and the outline that tells you how to do this on each review and et cetera, et cetera, comment down below. I can get that to you. But don't miss out on the opportunity to turn the negativity into a positive. It gets 13 more views or clicks 13 times more than the positive stuff. So it's important that you know how to flip the negative into the positive. Hope you have a good one.