Facebook can help you reach new dental implant patients through targeted ads. A dental implants campaign can raise awareness in your community and show that your practice is experienced when it comes to placing implants.
With a bit of creativity and planning, you can create your own campaign to generate leads. Here’s how you do it:
Step 1:
Create Facebook Posts
Images can make or break your campaign. A good image can tell a story at a glance, while a bad image can confuse or fail to attract any attention at all. Not to mention: the image has to follow Facebook’s rules and your provincial college advertising guidelines. With so much riding on getting this right, follow these tips to create effective posts for your campaigns.
• Focus on the overall benefits of dental implants without making people feel bad about having any missing teeth. This will help you to stay in line with Facebook’s restrictions on personalization in healthcare advertising, and keep the college happy. Avoid personalized messages like: “Your teeth will thank you” or “Are you missing teeth?” Instead, state the facts: “Dental implants replace a missing tooth for a secure, natural fit.”
• Choose an image that shows a smiling, active person to represent your services. We choose people who look like typical patients, which means avoiding overly polished, air brushed images. After all, if your patients have a few wrinkles, you will want wrinkles in a dental implants ad.
• Make sure your images are zoomed out to show at least a full headshot, as images that are focused too close on the teeth or denture will be blocked by Facebook’s algorithm. It’s better to showcase a final product or lifestyle shot.
• Add your branding to all images, so that if your image is shared or copied, you’ll continue to get benefit from your ad. We also add a disclaimer on all ads so that it’s clear the person in the image is not a patient: “Stock image, posed by model.”
• Be careful not to add too much text to the image. If any more than 20 percent of the image is covered with text, it will reduce the ad’s effectiveness. You can use Facebook’s text overlay tool to see if your ad is balanced correctly. https://www.facebook.com/ads/tools/text_overlay
Step 2:
Choose Your Ad Type
There are two ad options in Facebook – a boosted post or an ad.
When you share a post on Facebook, you can add an advertising budget to that post to have it be seen by people who don’t follow your page. This is called a boosted post. An advertisement is very similar, but it won’t show up on your newsfeed. Plus, Ads Manager offers extra features like split testing ads or images, and distributing your ad on other ad networks. Whichever ad type you choose, focus on the following tips to get the most out of your ad budget.
Step 3:
Target the Right Group
Consider the content of the ad, the kind of new patient you want to attract, and the location of your practice when creating your target audience in Facebook.
With dental implants, think about the procedures involved and what kinds of patients receive that treatment. Implant supported dentures or bridges are for patients who have experienced significant tooth loss. Single tooth implants can be for anyone who has suffered a dental trauma or who has experienced tooth loss. Which kinds of patients are most likely to fall into these groups? How old are they? What interests do they share?
Consider which kind of patients you want to attract to your practice. If you want to attract seniors, you may want to set a minimum age for people who can see your ads or find the areas in your city where seniors tend to live.
Speaking of location, patients may be inclined to drive a bit farther for dental implants. Targeting an area slightly beyond your typical patient base works well for this type of campaign.
Step 4:
Set Your Budget
You don’t need to spend much to get people looking at your ads on Facebook. If you narrow your audience down properly, you can get away with spending even less. As you enter your budget, you’ll notice that Facebook will estimate how many people will see your ad each day it runs. Use this tool as your guide to determine the budget that’s right for each ad.
Step 5:
Monitor Your Progress
During the planning stages, it’s important to set realistic goals and decide what you will consider a success. If you are interested in attracting new patients, how many new patients will justify the amount spent? Remember that one dental implants patient may pay for the whole campaign.
If you’re interested in letting your current patients know that you offer dental implants, you may want to focus on getting as many impressions on your ads as possible. A win for this type of campaign may be a few more patients asking you about dental implants.
Whatever you decide, monitor the progress of your campaign and adjust your target audience, ad and budget as you see fit.
When done correctly, Facebook advertising campaigns can help your practice attract new patients for the services you offer. The targeting options give you the chance to reach the people who would be the most interested, which will save you time and money.
About the Author
Brent Parr has been a leading voice in healthcare marketing for more than 17 years. As the Co-founder and CEO of Optio Publishing Inc., Brent and his team design and create innovative marketing campaigns that leverage Facebook, YouTube, Google Search and AdWords. Optio Publishing produces high-quality patient education videos – including Optio Dentistry and Optio TV – that are used by dental professionals around the world. For more information visit www.optiopublishing.com or email brent@optiopublishing.com.
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