The first step to any successful marketing campaign is identifying who it is that you want to target. Now more than ever, Facebook is capable of helping you reach them quickly and effectively. Whether your campaign is focusing on brand awareness, capturing leads, promoting an event or boosting a regular post, Facebook gives you the capability to narrow your audience by age, location, demographic, interest and behavior. For dental practices, this can be especially helpful when you have specific offers, promotions, procedures or just want to promote your practice in general.

Age:

Your type of dentistry will be important when targeting by age. General dentistry may not be impacted but if you specialize in pediatric/geriatric dentistry or orthodontics you don’t want to waste your budget on people with whom the ad won’t resonate. Properly identifying the age group your ideal target audience is a part of is one of the first steps to a successful Facebook advertising campaign.

Location:

Facebook gives you the option to choose your location by state, town or even create a radius around your business’ location from one mile to fifty. Depending on how wide of a net you want to cast, you can adjust this as needed giving you the freedom to specify exactly where you want to target. Another option Facebook gives you is to choose whether someone has a permanent residence or was just visiting the area, which can help narrow your audience even further.

Demographic:

The demographic section will help you further fine-tune exactly who you want to target with your Ad campaign. Things like education and financial status may not be important to you but you can get great insight in the home, life events, and parents section. With these sections you can limit your audience based on who is living in a home or an apartment, recently moved to an area, marital status and if they have children. This all plays into the specifics of what type of dentistry you are advertising for.

Interests:

Facebook allows you to target potential patients by what they are interested in. This could mean selecting something as obvious as targeting someone for cosmetic dentistry by selecting “cosmetic dentistry” from the list. Another way to approach it is to choose interests that match what you expect to match your audience. This could mean selecting “parenting” and any related topics if you’re a pediatric dentist or “Sensodyne” if you’re targeting people with sensitive teeth.

Behavior:

Behavior can be a tricky category to choose from but when used properly, it can really benefit your ads! It’s hard to know exactly what type of behavior would make someone need a dentist. However, including or excluding certain types of behavior can make sure you’re not advertising to someone who would never be interested. For instance, targeting the category “new mover” or “recent homebuyer” means that that person is new to the area and would be a good candidate for your services. On the other hand, someone that is “likely to move” or is a “recent mortgage buyer” indicates the person will not be in the area for long.

Facebook Advertising is an easy and cost-effective way to target a specific audience to offer your services to. The key to success with Facebook Advertising is to explore different options and be unafraid to make a mistake with a category. The real time insights and data will help you to fine tune your audience and category and build a successful ad campaign!