Why an Orthodontist Asked Us to Turn Off His Facebook Ads
The Holidays Were Slow for this Orthodontist
It was nearing the holiday season and the end of another year. You know, the time when most people save their money for presents and holiday parties. The last thing most people want to spend their income on is a new set of braces for junior.
At Ollerton Marketing, we typically notice a decrease in leads and overall business for orthodontists during the holidays and this year was no different. One of our orthodontist clients was getting nervous as his schedule was looking more and more bare and new bookings were coming slower and slower.
With a semi-panic tone to his voice, this orthodontist came to us and asked what we could do or what ideas we had. The answer was simple, take a break and enjoy your holidays. We recommended that he and his staff handle the orthodontics practice as usual and our team would create some simple brand awareness ads to run during the holiday season. We didn’t want to spend a lot of advertising dollars during this time because Facebook gets competitive and expensive during this time. Plus, nobody is paying attention to ads about braces and orthodontics. Consumers are focused on toys, deals, Black Friday, get-togethers, and overall holiday chaos.
Facebook Ads for Orthodontists Simply Work
Come first of the year however, people are ready to pounce! For this reason, we built a campaign with an attractive offer that would really make this orthodontist smile. We planned to start the campaign on January 1st and run it for two weeks as a flash sale. The orthodontist really wanted to bring in business and fill up the calendar with new patients. We knew it could be done.
Contact Ollerton Marketing About Facebook Advertising for Your Orthodontics or Dental Practice
The flash sale consisted of $1200 off braces for new full-treatment orthodontic patients only, valid for two weeks. We ran the ads for two weeks to targeted audiences based on geography and if people had shown interest in past posts or ads (retargeting or remarketing). The ads ran on Facebook and Instagram and linked to a custom landing page designed to capture contact information in exchange for the $1200-off coupon. Once people liked what they saw and gave us their contact info, immediately the orthodontics staff started receiving lead notifications.
New Patients Pour In from Facebook Advertising
After the two-weeks flash sale was over, the small-town orthodontics practice received over 35 leads. This obviously excited the formerly panic-stricken orthodontist, so he decided to run the ads and the same offer for another month. Boom! The leads poured in and so did the new appointments. In one month’s time, the once struggling orthodontics practice had 123 leads! These were people raising their hands saying, “We want this offer! Please call us!”
Hey Orthodontist, What a Great Problem to Have
The orthodontics staff was feeling overwhelmed and quickly saw their vacant schedule fill up. So much so, that there wasn’t anywhere to put new patients. They were booked 6 weeks out! People wanting to be seen were having to wait to get in. There was a magnetic sort of attraction happening, like people seeing others standing in a long line outside a night club and wanting to gain access even more. In a panic, the orthodontist called me and in a panic-stricken tone said, “We’ve got to turn off the Facebook and Instagram ads. We’re all booked up. We’re working more hours and I don’t know what to do!”
1.23 billion daily users on Facebook. Your customers and prospects are there.
Target Your Ideal Customers Quickly
Facebook knows a lot about its users. Everything from age and what pages users like,
to interests and job titles. It’s all there and advertisers can leverage this information to put specific offers in front of their ideal customers.
See Results Quickly
Advertisers can quickly know if their ads are working. Within 3-5 days.
Facebook Is Affordable
Most cost-effective form of advertising today. Compare to radio, TV, newspapers,
magazines, direct mail, Yelp, AdWords, etc.)
Facebook allows you to spend as little as you like and still get results.
Facebook’s Retargeting is Extremely Powerful
Retarget new advertising offers to visitors of your website, Business Facebook page, posts, and ads.
Engaging Ad Formats that People Love
Different engaging ad formats––video, images, slideshows, cinemagraphs, and more.
Call Buttons are Game Changers
Most Facebook users are on their mobile devices and calls to businesses are way more valuable than clicks on websites. That’s why Facebook’s Call Buttons are game changers.
Think about mobile Facebook users. They see an ad, click on the Call Now button, and the lead is captured. Amazing.
Quickly Test Your Ads and Use the Winner
A/B Testing. Quickly test ad A. versus ad B. and see which performs better. Results come quickly.
5 Ways Facebook Advertising Can Boost Your Dental Practice
Gone are the days of newspaper advertisements and expensive mailers. Where do people go for information? Simple, the Internet and social media. With over 1.6 billion users on Facebook you’re sure to reach new patients with advertisements about your dental practice.
Imagine a potential customer scrolling through Facebook as they lay in bed. A post featuring your dental practice appears naturally on their news feed with a video of you giving some tips and tricks on taking care of teeth with an offer for a free exam and teeth whitening. She clicks the ad, watches your video, and downloads your coupon. Upon downloading the coupon an email is sent to you and your staff with her contact information. The next day your front-office staff contacts her and schedules an exam and she is given the V.I.P. customer treatment that your practice is known for. That’s how it should work. Are you doing it?
If you’re not utilizing Facebook advertising to get more patients for your dental practice, your competitors are. Those potential patients, are being targeted this very moment by truly committed dentists with their own digital marketing strategies.
What’s your dental practice’s presence like on Facebook? Your team is most likely posting photos of the staff, patients, and local events to people that have already “Liked” your page, but what about those looking for a new dentist in the area? No matter how many “Likes” you have on your dental Facebook page, only 3% will ever see your posts. Yes, only 3%! Back in the day, when you posted on Facebook, the message went to your entire audience.
Times have changed. If you want your target audience to see your content and learn more about your great dental practice, you have to PAY TO PLAY. Remember, it’s the way Facebook monetizes their platform, but it’s not necessarily a bad thing for dentists. What’s the value of a new customer for your practice? Are you willing to spend a few hundred dollars to get 5 new patients? The answer should be, “Yes” because the return on your investment will be much higher.
When it comes to results for dental practices and other sectors of healthcare, Facebook advertising has huge potentialand is surprisingly affordable. Making that investment can quickly translate into a non-stop flow of new patients for your dental practice––something that’s always welcomed.
Here are 5 different ways Facebook advertising can boost your dental practice and make it grow beyond expectations:
1. Facebook Advertising Creates More With Less
If your budget for marketing is limited, don’t worry, in comparison with other popular advertising methods, Facebook offers more potential return in exchange for a smaller investment. Plus, you only pay when someone is interested enough in your offer and decides to click on your ad. Compare this to direct mail advertising, where a dentist pays a graphic designer to create an ad, then pays the cost of printing thousands of mail cards, and finally pays for postage to go out to hundreds of homes hoping someone will call. How expensive and ineffective is this method?
If you’ve never advertised your dental practice online, you may have doubts about the effectiveness of your efforts. I mean, it can be nerve-racking to send you hard-earned dollars out into cyberspace with little knowledge of what could happen.
Testing and experimenting in Facebook advertising can lead to quick returns and clear statistics about what works, who is clicking your ads, what time, where they live and more.
2. Facebook Advertising is Targeted and Precise
Most people looking for dentists will only travel within a 3-7 mile radius of their home or work. Do you want people living 40 miles away clicking on your ads? Of course not. It’s expensive and they aren’t your target audience.
Facebook advertising has powerful and precisesegmentation tools to ensure that your ads are showing up only to people within your target audience. The power doesn’t stop there. Facebook has so much data on its users that you can target your ads to audiences with specific interests and behaviors. You can even place your dental advertisements in front of people that have visited your website in the past, keeping your brand top-of-mind.
After you define your ideal customer or target audience, it’s easy to target your advertising efforts and maximize results by only showing ads to individuals with high potential of becoming patients.
3. Facebook Advertising Allows Great Use of Video
One of the most powerful ways to share content and engage your target audience is through video. Facebook gives priority to video because they are the most consumed, effective, and engaging medium. Video effects people’s behavior, captures attention for longer periods of times, and can deliver valuable content easily and quickly. Video doesn’t have to be a high-end expensive commercial. All you really need is a tripod and a smartphone. Most smartphones, these days record high definition video that rivals many professional cameras. In fact, viewers typically prefer authentic videos that feature people they can relate to or provide value-based content.
An example of value-based content could be a 60-second video of a dentist giving free advice to viewers. Answers to the top patient-questions is a great way to begin. People have questions, so press record and answer them. Easy, right?
4. Facebook Advertising Helps Establish Trust
People want to trust a dentist before spending time in their chair. Most will ask friends or family for a referral. Others will search Google for reviews. Facebook allows dentists the capability to provide advice, be social, show their staff, promote offers to new patients, and gain trust. Creating trust and a connection with the community should become a priority for dentists. By promoting free content and advice to new and larger audiences, dentists can leverage Facebook as a tool to forge a bond and solidify new relationships with people searching for a new dental provider.
Facebook advertising allows you to create an easier way to communicate with the potential patients. By adding contact buttons in the ads, the individual can be redirected to a chat room, contact page, landing page, or a phone number for the dental office.
5. Facebook Advertising Makes the Most of Your Content Marketing Efforts
Creating high-quality content that delivers value to the audience takes time and isn’t easy. That’s why it is can be frustrating when we create quality content but no one sees it. In this case, Facebook ads are often used to leverage or recycle existing content and attract new patients.
By using content and Facebook advertising, dentists are catching the audience’s attention in non-intrusive ways. While paid ads are, from time to time, disliked for offering nothing but a sales approach, using them along with free value-based content can result in an effective strategy.
Conclusion
I’ll say it again, gone are the days of traditional methods of advertising like newspapers, magazines, and mailers. They are expensive and difficult to track. People are forever on their mobile devices and computers searching for information, products, and services. Are you there? I bet you are, but how effective are your strategies.
Facebook advertising gives power to dentists and healthcare providers, allowing you to target and track where their money is going. So, where is your money going? How are your marketing dollars performing for your practice? Facebook advertising simply works and your potential customers are waiting to hear from you.
What’s a cinemagraph you ask? They’re the coolest thing since sliced…well, you get it. Have you seen the still photos in your Facebook or Instagram feed that capture your attention with a subtle moving part only to keep you staring and wondering, “How’d they do that?” In this case the cinemagraph accomplished its advertising purpose, it kept your attention for more than a split second. It grabbed your attention and caused you to pause, wonder, question, and focus. This is the power of a cinemagraph in advertising especially on Facebook and Instagram.
A cinemagraph, or living photo, in its most basic form is a still photo in which a minor and repeated movement occurs, forming a video clip. They are published as an animated GIF or in other video formats such as an .mp4, and can give the illusion that the viewer is watching an animation.
Cinemagraphs can be easily created with a digital video camera or smartphone camera, a tripod, and some editing software such as Adobe Photoshop or Flixel. Creating a quick cinemagraph is easy and fun, but what’s the point, right? I mean, yeah you could share this cool living photo with your social network and get a few “Likes” or “Shares” but then what? Maybe that’s enough for you––maybe it’s simply a hobby and a unique work of art. I think there is more.
The Future of Cinemagraphs
Video is here and it’s here to stay in a big way. Facebook and Instagram boast billions of viewers and most are uploading video, creating live video, and viewing hours upon hours of video. The problem is that the average person shoots long video clips without editing capability. In this age of quick information and short attention spans, people prefer shorter video clips that get right to the point. Cinemagraphs blend the magic and composition of photographs with the interesting movements that we appreciate in a video. While Vines and Boomerang clips are fun to create and share, the timelessness and creativity of a well-composed cinemagraph has lasting qualities appreciated both by viewer, creator, advertiser, and consumer. Cinemagraphs are here to stay.
Cinemagraphs in Advertising
Brands are always on the lookout for new ways to stand out and capture awareness. The Internet killed printed newspapers and most magazines. The DVR has hindered television commercials as viewers can simply press the fast forward button on their remote. YouTube has disrupted the way we consume entertainment and even video commercials. Social media outlets like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter have billions of eyeballs fixed on their feeds all day long. Companies are plastering social media feeds with sponsored ads, videos, and other messaging. Consumers are adapting and looking past the obvious ad in search of the next vacation photo of their ex-boyfriend/girlfriend. Enter the cinemagraph. This new medium is interesting and has the power to capture the eye and attention for a longer period of time than the average photo or ad. Take Pepsi for instance.
The PepsiCo Digital Team identified close to 1.1 million individuals in the United States that fit their target demographic profile and served ads on desktop and mobile news feeds on Facebook. To setup a control and treatment group, the campaign budget was evenly split among a cinemagraph and a still frame from the same video with identical targeting parameters.
The campaign spanned a combined 5.62 million impressions over the course of eight days, resulting in cinemagraphs coming out on top — and us wiping our glasses to see if we misread the decimal place.
CTR and Engagement Go Up; Video Engagement Stands Out
As it turned out, our vision was great. PepsiCo saw incredible lifts as a result of their cinemagraph ad, including:
Increased click through rates: Ads using cinemagraphs saw a 75% lift in overall click through rates over image based ads. The still photo ad saw a 0.27% CTR vs a 0.47% CTR on the cinemagraph.
Increased Engagement: Facebook measures engagement in way that also accounts for video views on top of likes, comments and shares, and cinemagraphs saw a phenomenal 51X lift in engagement owing to it.
Of the people who chose to watch the video, 22% of them chose to stay and watch the whole 12 second cinemagraph loop, pointing to the other big advantage of longer dwell times found in living photos.
Engaging Ad Formats that People Love
