According to website creator Weebly, 62% of Facebook ad campaigns are unsuccessful…. and I’m certain the percentage of failed campaigns is EVEN HIGHER for dentists.
Why?
I’ve looked through dozens of dental practice ad accounts and it’s obvious that the dentists who create these ads don’t understand that advertising on Facebook is different than any other type of advertising.
Why Dental Practices Have To Advertise Differently on Facebook …
Facebook is not a place where people are shopping. People aren’t on Facebook to find a dentist or any other type of product or service.
People log into Facebook to kill time, connect with friends and family, multiple reasons, but none of them are to find a dentist.
So how can you use this platform successfully knowing this?
Here are three mistakes (aka money pits) you must avoid if you want to start running profitable Facebook ads:
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Money Pit #1 – Wasting your own time or your staffs time posting to your business page.
Running Facebook ads is not at all the same as posting on your FB business page. Unlink the two in your brain.
Facebook ads reach anyone that meet your target criteria on Facebook, like:
- Lives close to your practice
- Has money
- Needs certain dental work, etc.
In the example below, you can see some of the targeting options I’ve chosen to find middle-aged individuals that are wealthy enough to afford Invisalign:
Posting on your business page reaches a FRACTION of the people that actually like your page.
These posts also often have no clear goal. Maybe engagement?
The problem with posting on Facebook is that it uses an algorithm to decide if it will show that post on your follower’s walls. And Facebook only wants to show users the most popular/engaging content.
Unless you have something highly engaging that gets a lot of people liking and commenting on it, just posting on your business page will not reach a lot of people. It’s likely the post won’t even reach most of your followers.
I generally don’t recommend spending a lot of time posting to your business page, especially knowing how busy dentists are.
There are better ways to get more ROI for you time, like Facebook ads…
When you pay for newsfeed ads, this is how it will appear to users as they scroll through their newsfeed:
- Money Pit #2 – Spending money on ads that promote brand awareness.
Your dental practice is not Pepsi. You should not be doing brand awareness.
With large, established companies like Pepsi, their audience already knows about their company and their product. They can afford to do things that just display their brand, like billboards with just a photo of their product and a slogan.
It’s unlikely that your dental practice is widely known so you can’t leverage your reputation in your advertising.
Instead, like most small businesses, you need to make a good, specific offer to get people in the door.
Note: this doesn’t have to mean discount.
This could be a bonus (ex. free teeth whitening with X), free consultations, or payment plans for a specific treatment.
Once you make a very specific offer in the ads, next make sure you tell people exactly how to claim that offer – go to X website page, call this number, etc., like in the example below:
Don’t leave any room for error. People can easily become confused or overwhelmed when seeing online offers.
- Money Pit #3 – Not properly following up with the leads you get!
This one is the most painful to see because it’s the biggest waste of time AND money.
Imagine taking the time to:
- Write a good ad (or likely multiple)
- Create a sales funnel that convinces people to give you their contact info
- Learn the technical stuff necessary to properly run and test those ads
- Start collecting leads
…but then you don’t do anything with those leads to try and get them into the office??
I see offices do this all the time and not just with online ads.
If you’re going to go to all the trouble of running a marketing campaign, make sure you have the systems in place to see it through to the end.
This means having a system in place to properly follow-up with leads through emails and phone calls.
For my clients we get both going and this includes long-term email follow-up, since most people aren’t ready to move forward with $3000+ worth of treatment immediately.
We also either provide staff with a basic phone script (and I mean basic, because I know how hard it can be to get staff making calls) or take over the appointment scheduling calls if front desk don’t want to take on the calls.
Don’t get started with ads if you’re not prepared to setup some sort of follow-up system, especially for the bigger treatments. Not everyone who’s interested in a treatment will be ready to start the next day. You need to have a system to continue following up with them for at least 6 months.
Want to see if our done-for-you Facebook ads management is a good fit for your Dental Practice?
Facebook ads aren’t a good fit for every practice. Offices MUST have certain things in place before starting paid ads, including a high number of positive online reviews and well trained front office staff.
To find out if your office is ready to run ads and grow your practice using Facebook ads, click the button below to take our Facebook Ads Dental Practice assessment now >