A new article posted on Search Engine Land by the president of Bright Local, an online business listing management company, reveals the results of a sizable study they conducted. After analyzing 15,191 Google My Business listings with over 580,000 images, they found a strong correlation between listings that had more images and improved performance in multiple metrics.

Important Performance Boosts

Jamie Pitman, the author of the article , wrote, “I don’t think I can overstate the importance of photos to local businesses,” and as the study reveals, the performance boosts that these small business with more and more frequent photo posts than their competitors, are definitely the sort of performance boosts that dentists can use: clicks, calls and direction requests, all stemming from increased views in search.

Pitman shares that businesses with more than 100 images on their Google My Business profiles get:

  • 520% more calls than the average business
  • 2,717% more requests for directions to their location
  • 1,065% more website clicks

Why? Probably because GMB listings with 100+ images also get:

  • 3459% more maps views
  • 960% more search views, including…
  • 1038% more branded searches (searches for the business by name)
  • 713% more discovery searches (searches for the types of services that the business provides)

Listings with just one image posted get 65% – 70% LESS in all of the above metrics.

What Does This Mean for Dentists and Their Marketing?

100 images may seem like a lot, but it’s an attainable goal even for a dental practice. More important than reaching 100 images as a goal though, is to adopt a marketing regimen that posts images at this pace. The good news is that the images posted to your GMB profile don’t have to- in fact shouldn’t- be posted exclusively by your practice (including Pro Impressions by extension). Your patients are able to post photos to your GMB listing as well.

For a moment though, let’s pretend that your patients are totally incapable of sharing pics of your office on your GMB listing. What would it take to get to 100 images in a year? Well, if your team posted just 1 pic daily for 4 days a week for 50 weeks, you’d double the goal! So, how about 2 photos per week? That doesn’t sound that difficult, does it?

Then, you can also encourage patients to upload photos, as Pitman points out, by creating a space where patients are enticed to take selfies or photos of each other, or some sort of beautiful or interesting environment in your space. Obviously, the example at the top of the post from my trip out to the FOY® Advanced Course are not targeting our practices’ target demographic, but they are easy examples of providing props or features to encourage photo taking. Taking photos is a great habit to get into for your GMB listing and social media efforts on Facebook and Instagram.