If your practice has a Facebook page – that’s great. And if you’re updating it regularly with engaging posts – even better! But are you also utilising the power of Facebook advertising as well? This is one element that many businesses are still shying away from, and yet it offers great opportunities to reach even more people as the number of active users has risen to over two billion.
This shows that maximising your presence on this platform through advertising is key. Below are three reasons your practice should be advertising on Facebook:
Your patients are using it – and clicking ads
As mentioned, there are billions of users on Facebook, which means it’s more than likely that lots of your patients – and potential patients – are using it too. However, while keeping your page updated regularly is important, research shows that organic reach (the number of unique people shown your post through unpaid distribution) is falling and now stands at just two per cent of your audience.
Figures also show that there are 22 billion ad clicks recorded per year, which means your patients are likely to be engaging with adverts whilst scrolling. Also, more and more businesses are advertising on the platform with this figure now standing at three million… so if you’re not, you may find yourself falling behind the market.
It’s very cost-effective
You don’t need to spend a lot on Facebook advertising, so it can be a cheap alternative/complement to more traditional channels. The cost to reach 1,000 people via a newspaper advert is $32 compared to just $0.25 with a Facebook advert – that’s over 100 times cheaper. This is great news if you’re just starting out as it means you don’t have to invest a lot right away, then as you become more confident, or start to see results, you can easily increase your budget.
It’s very targeted
With so many users, you might think the sheer size and scale means it is not relevant for your practice – you might want to attract new patients but you don’t need two billion of them! But one of the key features of Facebook advertising is the ability to target your ads to reach the kind of people you’re trying to attract by factors such as age, gender, location, etc. This also means you can target different types of ads to different people, e.g. an advert for a tooth whitening offer might be aimed at different people to one advertising your next open day or appointments for children.
Taking all this into account, isn’t it time you took your social media presence to the next level and dipped your toe into the Facebook advertising water?
If you answered yes to that question, look out for our upcoming blog which will tell you how to create effective adverts for Facebook.
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