The New Facebook

When Facebook first burst on the scene, many dental offices created Business pages with the high hopes of capturing leads and gaining new patients at a rapid rate. As many of you who tried this know, it didn’t quite work out that way. But over time, Facebook has introduced marketing tools that have enhanced the platform to allow businesses to market themselves. As a result of these changes, dental offices are able to target potential patients and get them to become aware of their content, unlike ever before.

Have you ever logged on to Facebook and seen ads on the side of your screen? Those ads are targeted specifically to you. They may be targeting you because of where you live, what you have indicated you like, how old you are, or even what you have talked about on Facebook.  Thus Facebook’s ad platform will allow you, the dentist, to target people who live within the communities you serve. This, I believe, is an extremely effective marketing strategy.

Think about this: what if you could show your face and a note about how amazing your office is to every person living in the area where your practice is located? Historically, the only way you could be assured to reach these people would be through direct mail. Now with Facebook ads, you can create an ad that targets people in your town and show them that ad multiple times. This can be done for a fraction of what it would cost to direct mail them.

Additionally, Facebook has recently allowed business pages to “boost their posts.” What this means is that when you post something on your page, you now have the capability of paying to ensure that your content shows up not only in front of the people who Like your page, but to their friends as well. You can also choose to show that content to people targeted by age, gender, geographic, or language. The results are measureable, and with Facebook’s superior analytics, you are able to see the impact in relation to the dollars you spend.

It is important to understand that your impact and results will be commensurate with the amount of people who are in your target area and who Like your page. The amount of people who Like your page can easily be grown by using Facebook ads. So my recommendation is to use the ad platform to get as many Likes as you can. From there, if you are posting interesting content, you will see an incremental increase in engagement and eventually lots of new patients. It should be noted that Facebook  won’t allow you to boost a post unless you have 100 Likes, so work first on increasing Likes, next on posting interesting content, and last on boosting the posts of that interesting content.

If it all seems like too much, ask for help. There are people out there who specialize in Facebook marketing. These people take the time to understand how to leverage Facebook’s tools to increase the exposure of your practice, stay up to date on the changes, and provide valuable insight that can help you grow your effectiveness using this platform. Contact me if you would like a recommendation.