Facebook Marketing PartnerOnline social media platform Facebook provides a golden opportunity for dental practices to generate new patients. It attracts a large volume of visitors and boasts sophisticated targeting technology for advertisers.

Facebook ads basically work on a pay-per-click (PPC) basis, when you pay a small fee every time someone clicks on your advert. Alternatively, you can choose a cost-per-impression (CPI) system – paying every time Facebook shows your ad, regardless of whether anyone clicks on it.

The benefits of Facebook advertising for dental practices are worthy of consideration by any dentist looking to increase their patient base and boost marketing campaigns.

Facebook ads appear across a broad range of online platforms, including laptops, smartphones and tablets, as well as desktops, and they are easily visible and clickable, giving your practice a powerful means of getting its message across.

How Facebook Can Boost Your Dental Business

Founded in 2004 by Harvard students Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin as a college-based social network, Facebook enjoyed rapid growth. In 2006, it overtook MySpace as the most popular social network in the world. The success of Facebook has been attributed to its appeal to both individuals and businesses.

In 2015, more than 70 per cent of adults using the internet were logging on to Facebook, presenting a huge opportunity for businesses such as dental practices to promote themselves.

Another benefit of Facebook advertising for dental practices is that it enables you to connect with the growing number of people who regularly use smartphones. Facebook boasts more than 800 million users who access their mobile app daily.

Facebook marketing makes it easy to gauge how your advertising campaign is performing. Its analytics system clearly sets out your conversion rate and other social metrics, so you can see how your promotional drive is comparing with those of your competitors. This enables you to fine-tune your campaign as and when needed.

Prominence on Facebook can also boost your practice’s brand image. Facebook users view their newsfeed several times a day, giving your target audience repeated exposure to your advertising. Even if these prospective patients don’t immediately click through to your website, your ad’s consistent visibility helps to build trust in your practice.

Facebook ad click-through rates (CTR) are also steadily increasing as the platform tweaks its advertising tools for businesses.

One downside among the many benefits of Facebook advertising for dental practices is that it can be hard to stand out from other advertisers. However, this is a challenge that can be easily overcome with the help of our team of expert marketing partners with Facebook. We keep up to speed with the latest developments in social media marketing (we live and breathe this stuff!).

Why Organic Facebook Content is Becoming Less Effective

For many online marketers, Facebook is the platform of choice when it comes to social media marketing, because of the low cost of building a brand and attracting new business.

Facebook has simply become too big to ignore. In 2015, as the number of active small business Facebook pages hit the 40 million mark, it announced new measures – including one-on-one chat support – to help those companies, especially the ones that advertise. The social media giant also pointed out that only two million small businesses were active advertisers on Facebook.

Jonathan Czaja, Facebook director of small business in North America, maintains that a presence on Facebook is a powerful asset in its own right, but the U.S.-based TechCrunch online publisher of technology industry news, reported in 2014 on how the reach of free, organic content on Facebook pages was declining through more competition and the limited attention span of users.

In May 2015, The Telegraph newspaper reported that a study by technology giant Microsoft had revealed that the average human attention span had plunged from 12 seconds in 2000 to eight seconds. Goldfish are believed to be able to hold a thought for nine seconds.

If your dental practice runs a Facebook business page, very few people will actually see your updates. The visibility of business pages in news feeds has been steadily reduced by Facebook over the years, to such an extent that you now need to harness the power of Facebook ads if you want prospective patients to discover what your dental office has to offer.

And the good news is that you don’t need a massive budget. Somewhere in the region of $50 will get your message across to up to 10,000 people, and you can be very picky about whom you target.

Reaching Out to More Prospective Patients

People on average devote nearly two hours a day to interacting with digital social networks, and in America 40 minutes of that time is spent on Facebook, publishing comments, giving status updates and sharing photos. Every minute, Facebook fans Like more than four million posts. Over 1.5 billion log on to the platform every month, nearly half a billion via mobile phones.

In August 2015, Facebook boss Zuckerberg announced that his social network platform had passed a significant milestone, with more than a billion users logging on to Facebook in a single day.

Yet, as we’ve already seen, Facebook attracts only two million active small business advertisers. The situation of a high number of potential patients coupled with relatively few competing dental practices makes Facebook too good an opportunity to miss for a dental office seeking to generate more clients.

If your dental website contains quality, informative content, you want people to know about it, and you may well share it in the form of updates across social networks such as Facebook. However, you need Facebook adverts to reach out to more people.

One of the benefits of Facebook advertising for dental practices is that it will enhance your organic reach, because as people share your Facebook ads, your content will be exposed to a larger audience. This type of engagement and interaction can quickly snowball, resulting in more and more potential patients in your geographic location learning about the advantages that your dental practice has to offer them.

Targeting Your Audience with Facebook

Facebook boasts some nifty tools for targeting your audience, including life-event targeting, tapping into purchase behaviors, using custom audiences to nurture leads and build loyalty, and layering targeting options.

Driving New Patients to Your Door

The days when online social platforms were just a way to connect with existing patients have long gone. Social ads now provide a powerful means to engage with prospective new patients looking for the dental services you offer.

Having been set up to benefit small local businesses, Facebook is an ideal medium for dental offices to promote themselves. Your practice can easily reach your local community – and the potential patients within it – without having to break the bank.

Facebook is not simply about getting Likes anymore. The huge benefits of Facebook advertising for dental practices represent a potent force to steer a steady stream of new patients towards your practice’s door.

Work with an Expert Facebook Marketing Partner

Trying to run an effective and successful dental practice is more than a full-time job! You focus on doing that and let us, your Facebook Marketing Partner, focus on setting up profitable Facebook marketing ads. Give us a call today to start receiving calls from new patients from Facebook!