By Jula Pereira
Compared to all the marketing options available for dental professionals today, Facebook ads are one of the most cost-effective ways for dentists to advertise their practice. Since Facebook is able to identify a user’s specific interests and preferences, it’s easy for a dentist’s Facebook ad to reach their ideal patients. With 2 billion people on this social network, Facebook advertising is a very powerful tool.
When it comes to advertising a dental practice, Facebook can be an especially powerful tool to market the practice, find potential new patients, and develop the dentist’s brand online. With a little time and work in the beginning, you’ll be well on your way to increasing leads and creating more happy patients.
Reach a Local Audience
Advertising on Facebook is ideal for locally based businesses who want to reach new consumers and clients in their vicinity. When signing up for Facebook, people enter quite a bit of personal information (example: where they live or work) that Facebook uses to target them with ads that are relevant to their location, interests, and other key demographics.
Know Your Target Audience
The key to a successful Facebook ad campaign is to know your target audience. Start with your current practice and do an analysis of your current customer base – age of your patients, male, female, where do they work, etc. Consider who makes the majority of patient appointments, probably women as they are more likely to make appointments for families with children. Using that information, you can target a specific audience with your Facebook ad campaign.
Get People on Your Mailing List
Promote a special offer through Facebook ads to capture email addresses for new leads. For example, you can do an offer for a free teeth whitening or X-ray when the new patient comes in for an exam. Once you have their email addresses, do a simple email automation sequence to nurture that relationship and keep them up to date with news and other offers from your practice.
Keep in Touch
Once you’ve got new leads coming in, it’s very important to follow up with them. You have a better chance of converting them if you reach out to them within 15 minutes of your leads clicking on your ad. Whether it’s with your mailing list or with calls, ensure that your front office staff is trained to handle the flow of leads with a good system. Talk to them on a personal level, not as just another patient. In your follow-ups, remember to be thorough and professional. Also worth noting, it often takes more than one point of contact to make a sale. Therefore, one conversation or email sequence may not be enough.
Use Different Approaches
One ad campaign is unlikely to bring you enough new leads to meet your goals. You’ll want to try a few different types of ads to see what may work best for your dental practice. One technique that you can use is an educational approach where you write a blog post on your website and promote that post through Facebook ads.
Depending on your specific practice, you could share more specific details about a type of service that your practice offers – sedation dentistry, orthodontics, etc. After that, you can then retarget your campaign to people who visited the blog post to see your free tooth whitening offer. Another potential ad campaign could promote testimonial videos of happy patients.
Running a successful Facebook ad campaign for your practice can take some time and finessing to find just the right strategy. Don’t be afraid to target different groups and create a different type of ad if you aren’t seeing the results you want. Advertising on Facebook is a great way to get new patients into your office without wasting time and money on old school methods such as print advertising.
Jula Pereira is the CEO of On Time Social, a Facebook advertising agency based one hour north of San Francisco. Visit her website www.ontimesocial.com.