3 Ways Facebook Ads Bring in Dental Patients
Here is the thing about dental marketing with Facebook ads. When it comes to any type of paid ads such as google, facebook, and instagram, “paid” usually refers to pay per click or PPC advertisements. This means that you only pay for your advertisement when a potential patient clicks on your ad. Facebook is an incredibly popular platform for PPC advertising because of its unique ability to show our content in a way it looks like everything else on the patient’s facebook feed. They can like and share our content (which is free advertising) and what we do end up paying for is at an incredibly low cost per click. In this short post I’m going to talk about 3 ways facebook helps to bring patients into your office.
Facebook Knows Its Users
Since facebook was first created back in 2004, it’s always been geared toward better understanding its users. Facebook knows what we like and what we don’t. It knows where we go and what we like to spend our money on. It knows our behavior online, like if we’ll watch a 2 minute video or only the first 20 seconds to just get the general idea. In fact, facebook knows its users so well that its almost creepy! But it benefits us as the marketers.
When we put our content out on a billboard, everyone on the freeway sees it, regardless of interests, behavior, or anything besides maybe their commute to work. So our ad that says “10,000 Off Full Mouth Implants” might cause some people to say, “Holy crap that doctor is giving $10,000 off!? $10,00 off of WHAT?!” With facebook that is much less likely to happen because facebook knows its users and its algorithms are very good a finding the person who is most likely to engage well with the content we put in from of them.
Advanced Retargeting
Have you ever been looking at something to buy on Amazon, and then you get distracted on another site and see an ad for the EXACT thing you were just looking at on Amazon? This is Called the Google Ad-Network. Facebook similarly has the ability to retarget people who visit YOUR website on THEIR social media platforms. This means that anyone who visits your website, regardless of how they got there, can now be added to an ever growing pool of warm leads that you can send ads too on facebook. But it gets better. You can target people who visit specific pages of your site with ads that pertain to them! If the potential patient was on your site and they spent the most time on your “Sleep Apnea Oral Appliance Therapy” page, we can send them ad ad about oral appliance therapy.
Geo-Location
This is my favorite part of facebook ads. If you have the facebook app installed on your smartphone you may remember it asking you to set your location setting to be “Always On”. Most of us probably don’t think twice about apps asking us for permissions, and neither do our potential patients. With this privacy option selected facebook knows where you are, where you’ve been, and where you’re likely to go. This means we can target people in very specific locations, such as competing dentists in your area, sleep centers (if you do dental sleep medicine), and even places like army bases or college campuses where you know they have great dental care. When used correctly, this is the magic behind facebook’s ability to know its users and out ability to deliver converting content.
