Advertising on FacebookAs a dentist, you likely already know how important it is for your practice to have an active Facebook profile. It provides a place for you to connect with patients and for prospective patients to learn more about your practice in a more casual way than your website. But there’s so much more to Facebook than just having a practice profile. Advertising on Facebook can be a very effective way to create more visibility for your practice online and drive new patients for a relatively low cost.

What’s great about Facebook advertising compared to other forms of online/PPC ads is that there are so many available options for ads on one single platform. You can customize the type of ads and the position of those ads depending on your unique advertising goals and budgets. If you haven’t dug in to the world of Facebook yet or you’re not quite sure how to make it work for your practice, here’s a quick overview of the types of options you can access with this platform.

Create Ads by Objective

Facebook offers up to 10 different types of objectives for the ads you create on their platform. Some of the best options you could choose from for your dental practice include:

Target Your Specific Audience

Another great feature Facebook advertising offers is the chance to really hone in on your target audience with the information that users list in their profiles. You can show your ads to specific audiences based on targeting options like:

You can also choose to target an audience that already is connected to your practice or page in through someone in their social circle, which has a higher likelihood of converting viewers. The targeting options you choose can be saved and fine-tuned based on the performance of your ad campaigns.

Budgeting

Facebook also offers different budgeting options depending on how much you want to spend on your campaigns and how you want to allocate those funds. You can choose to have either a daily budget or a lifetime budget. This means you can set a specific dollar amount as the maximum for ad spend per day or you can set a specific time frame for the entire campaign along with a dollar amount maximum. You can also choose whether you want your budget to pay for clicks on an incremental  basis that is more spread out during the day, or whether you want your ads to show as much as possible all at once to spend your budget quickly (if your campaign is time sensitive).

One of the main advantages of Facebook advertising for your dental practice is that it doesn’t take a lot of advertising budget to start getting more visibility with your ads. You could choose to spend anything from $30 per month to $1,000 per month. It’s easy to start with a small budget and increase over time if you see that your ads have positive ROI.

Getting Started

If you dedicate a little extra time and even a small amount of marketing budget toward Facebook ads, you’ll probably be surprised at just how much new traffic (and ideally new patients) it can produce for your practice. In a future blog post we’ll talk about best practices for setting up your campaign, creating your ads, and managing your budgets. For now, check out Facebook’s Adverts Guide for a more comprehensive overview of what this platform can offer your dental practice.

Combine Facebook Ads with Direct Mailers for an Even Bigger Reach

No matter how extensive of a campaign you create on Facebook, there will always be a segment of potential customers who you can’t necessarily reach with online ads. Additionally, sometimes it takes multiple touch points with potential patients to convince them to actually pick up the phone to make an appointment. Maximize your reach and your impressions with potential customers by combining your Facebook ads with direct mail postcards. Just like with Facebook, our direct mail postcard campaigns allow you to target specific locations and demographics so you get the best ROI for your campaign. Contact us today to learn more about how our direct mail postcards can improve your dental marketing!