You Can’t Win if You Don’t Play

In my experience, dentists do not understand the value of Facebook marketing and often minimize it as unprofessional or a nuisance. They almost always do not have the time or the interest to manage their Facebook page.

Well it is time to wake up and realize that Facebook can and should be an important driver of new patient traffic to your practice. The key is to understand how to use it. Posting information on office activities, charity events, “cutesy” photos, Halloween candy buybacks, etc.–while demonstrating an “active” Facebook presence–rarely seems to bring in new patients.

Facebook as a business service is no longer free.  There are two kinds of ads that you can pay for on Facebook. One type is a pay per click or pay per impression ad that can be seen both in a newsfeed on a mobile device or on the right-hand side of the desk top device.  These ads can be highly targeted to geography, age, gender, and income level. Over the last few years, Facebook has done an amazing job of collecting data on all of us!  The ad can promote a particular service like invisible braces, or sedation, or cosmetic procedures like whitening or veneers. You have to be careful with these subliminal ads because Facebook will not run them if they are considered too promotional.

The second option for an ad is what is called a “promoted or boosted” post. These posts appear on your Facebook page and discuss the same services or treatments as the subliminal ads. However, these posts cannot be as highly targeted as the pay per click or pay per impression ads. For these posts,  Facebook only allows age and geographical range.

So what is your strategy? I believe that these ads should be used as a two pronged approach. Use the subliminal ads to get the highly targeted people in your geographical area to Like your page. You can port these people to your Facebook page hoping that they will Like the page, or you can port them to your website. When you have increased the number of Likes – say to over 600-700 –  then you should start using the boosted posts to show prospective patients the services you are hoping to promote.

These days, I am comfortable with a marketing budget of 2-3% of annual collections. Facebook advertising definitely should be a part of that allocation. The costs for Facebook advertising are very reasonable, and you can set your own budget to your comfort level. This should be a slow and steady process, and in the beginning, be more about branding and name recognition. An interesting observation is that Google and Facebook actually work together. For instance, if you are branding your practice on Facebook using subliminal ads in your service area, and someone sees them continually,  when they go to Google to do a search–and see your practice listed–they will have familiarity which increases the odds that they might choose your practice.

I don’t believe that this is a job for a staff member.  It is technical and time-consuming and probably should be outsourced to a media professional. I am sure that you can find people in your town who do this. I certainly am also happy to make a recommendation.