Facebook revolutionized dental marketing by both lowering costs and improving results. The most powerful part of Facebook and Facebook ads for dentists is your ability to direct your ad to the right people and away from the wrong people using audience targeting.
Before Facebook came along, dentists spent thousands of dollars a month on traditional media ads that would hits thousands of people, but the ads would be relevant to only a small percentage of the people who would see them, and thus ineffective for the dentists. Even worse, because of the limited ad space on traditional media, dentists spent thousands of dollars a month to get even ten new patients a month.
Facebook ads for dentists changes all of that by giving you unlimited control of the audience you want your ad to be presented to. This does two things. First, it lowers your advertising costs because it allows you to target very specific groups of people that other companies don’t want to target. That means less competition for you and more Facebook ads to sell for Facebook. Second, it improves your results, because your Facebook ads are only shown to people you know to be part of a relevant audience.
Advertising copy is important. Your offer is important. And your images or videos are important. But the real power of Facebook ads for dentists is your ability to get your posts in front of the right people.
In fact, it’s so powerful that when my team works with dentists to help them with their Facebook ads, we set up and save the right audiences before we set up the first ads for our dental marketing clients. That allows us to get great results for the dentists and dental practices that hire us to help them with their Facebook ads, because we can select the best audience for each specific Facebook ad campaign or boosted post right from the start.
Here are seven high-impact target audiences that will help you get better results with your Facebook ad campaigns.
Using Facebook Ads to Target Your Current Patient List
Your current patient list is a great target audience for Facebook because they already know, like, and trust you. They can be a high-impact audience for end-of-year “use it or lose it” dental insurance reminder posts, add-on services, or one-time specials for premium services.
Using Facebook Ads to Target Your Email List Newsletter Subscribers
People who subscribe to your newsletter or have signed up to receive a free guide or checklist are a great group of people to target with ads, because they are already familiar with you and have taken action to get on your email list. Thus, they’ll be more likely to take action on your offer again. They can be especially good for targeting people with another high-value download that directs them to a dental marketing funnel.
Using Facebook Ads to Target People Who Visit Your Website
Whether it’s any page or specific pages, people who visit your website are a great group of people to target, because they’ve already been directed to you by something they did. Sometimes, your site will have come up on a web search. Other times, they may have found you in a dental insurance directory or from a friend. Whatever it is, they’ve been connected with you before, and Facebook ads can be a great way to connect with them again.
I recommend you create a custom audience for each specific service page on your site, so you can make sure to present the most relevant Facebook ads and get even better results. For example, if you start developing articles on each of your service areas, you can target the people who have shown an interest in that service by going to that page on your website.
Using Facebook Ads to Target People Who Watch Your Facebook Videos
Videos are a powerful way to connect with people. They allow people to get to know you and your practice. They can hear your voice, look into your eyes, see your enthusiasm, and get a feel for your practice. If you’re doing Facebook Lives or uploading videos, you can create a list of people who have watched a certain percentage of those videos. These people have given you their attention for an extended period of time and will be more likely to take action on a future Facebook ad. I recommend setting up audiences of people who have viewed at least twenty-five percent and at least fifty percent of your videos. This gives you a choice to target only very engaged people who have watched more than half of your videos and a larger but still-engaged audience who have watched more than twenty-five percent.
Using Facebook Ads to Target New People Who Share Important Characteristics with Existing Groups
In the Facebook world, this is called setting up lookalike audiences. Essentially, the way this works is you give Facebook a list of people and ask them to create an additional audience that shares characteristics like living in the same area, making the same purchasing decisions, have similar incomes, like similar Facebook pages, etc. These audiences are powerful, because they are similar to people who already know, like, or trust you in some important way. You can ask Facebook to get people similar to your patient list, website visitors, email newsletter, and more. Lookalike audiences are a powerful way to connect with new people.
Using Facebook Ads to Target People Who Have Relevant Interests on Facebook
A simple way to increase the relevance of audiences targeted at people who aren’t already patents, on your email list, your Facebook fan, or connected in some way to one of those groups of people is to target people by a combination of demographics, interests, or behaviors. There are unlimited combinations of demographics, interests, and behaviors you can target, depending on your dental practice specialty or goal for your Facebook ad. For example, you can target women who live within five miles of your practice and make over $50,000 per year if you want to promote teeth whitening. You can also target parents of kids between ten and sixteen years old who live within five miles of your practice if you want to promote orthodontics. The possibilities are endless.
Using Facebook Ads to Target People Who Like Your Facebook Page Plus Their Family and Friends
Facebook’s algorithm only shows your dental Facebook page posts to a small percentage of your Facebook fans organically; however, you can use Facebook ads to target more fans as well as their family and friends. Because your dental Facebook page fans already took action to like your page, they’re a warm audience, and your costs will be low. Additionally, when their family and friends see your Facebook ad, Facebook adds a note to the top of the post that lets them know which of their Facebook friends like your page. That mini-endorsement helps you and your Facebook ad make a stronger connection and encourages them to take action.
BONUS: Excluding People for Even Better Results
A great way to improve the results of Facebook ads for dentists and dental practices is through exclusion. With exclusion, you tell Facebook to not show your ad to certain people. For example, if you’re using a Facebook ad to send people to a blog post where you talk about the advantages of dental implants and make an offer, you don’t want to show the same ad to the people who have taken you up on the offer, because they’ve already opted in. This way, you don’t spend money targeting people who already opted in and you avoid annoying those people with the same ad.
Whom Do You Need to Reach with Your Facebook Ads?
One of the best ways to improve the results of your Facebook ad campaigns is to make sure you’re targeting the right people for your posts. These target audiences are just some of the groups the dentists and dental offices my team serves use to decrease their lead costs while increasing their impact. The opportunities are truly unlimited.
For more help using Facebook ads to grow your practice, sign up for your 14-day trial to Delivering Wow U and check out my Facebook Mastery course or join my free Dental Marketing and Profits Facebook group, where thousands of dentists and I help each other build better practices.