So how did I set up my Facebook advertising campaign? I’ll walk you through it right now.
In Part 1 of this series, I explained the top 4 reasons Facebook is a superior form of advertising. Check it out if you haven’t already to gain some background.
So I recommend that you set up a Page (not a Group) for your practice. You can learn more about that here.
However this is not essential to setting up an advertising campaign with Facebook. The ad that will sit on the right side of your market’s Facebook screen can link to your own website or your practice’s Facebook page. More on that later.
Let’s get started! Click on the Ads button on the left hand side of the screen and fill out the forms. Don’t worry about getting it perfect; you can always change it later.
As you can see, I’m currently running two campaigns in the city of Melville. I’m not aware of any limitations that exist about the number of campaigns that you can have. This is the key to allowing you to make specific, targeted advertisements to your market! So here are my campaigns:
(1) Melville Business -Targeting almost 1,200 people who list on Facebook that they work at one of 7 businesses that I selected and are over the age of 18.
(2) Melville Residents – Targeting almost 200,000 people who list on Facebook that they live within 10 miles of Melville and are over the age of 18.
How do you cater each campaign to such parameters? Go to the Edit Page and you can design your ad based upon age, gender, workplace, marital status, education level, and more.For each campaign you’ll want different wording, called “copy” in advertising lingo.
I have nice, family-friendly copy written for the Melville Residents campaign. As you can see above, the Melville Business campaign states: “State-of-the-art dental care that fits your busy schedule, right here in Melville.” Target acquired!
Okay, so you’ve set up your campaigns, now how do you know if they’re working? Unlike advertising in traditional media, you have highly accurate and detailed stats at your disposal on the Advertising Report page.
As you can see, I started the campaign on 6/29/11 and printed this report on 7/5/11. In 6 days, over a holiday weekend, my Melville Residents campaign reached over 39,000 people and generated 6 clicks.
I love a click. It’s much stronger than an impression. Impressions are when your ad shows up on the side, just like a billboard. Granted this is a highly targeted billboard, but I’m still paying for people to not show interest. A click, on the other hand, means someone actually took the time to check me out. I’ll pay for that privilege very happily.
Bonus: you can have the click bring your market to your Facebook page or to your own website. Your choice. I have it link to my website directly. I paid money to make it look nice and I think it’s a better, more professional first impression for the market. I still have a Facebook Page for my office, but that’s used more for developing my community presence. So technically I use Facebook in two different ways to enhance my practice.
How much does this all cost? If no one click on your ad, it will cost you nothing. Let me say that again: absolutely nothing.
As I said in Part 1 of this series, I was pretty tired of paying to advertise in a local newspaper and getting zero patients. Here, I pay $1.11 for each Melville Resident to click me. I pay 88 cents for each Melville Business to click me.
What if 100,000 people click my link in a day? Do I owe Facebook $100,000? No. You can set a cap on how much to spend in a day. I set mine at $20 and can change it whenever I want.
Here’s some updated stats as of this writing, 7/11/11. I’ve had a total of 18 clicks from the Melville Residents campaign and no clicks yet from Melville Business. That’s fine with me since the Business campaign targets and reaches a much smaller group. All advertising campaigns take time to gain momentum. The difference with Facebook is that I don’t have to pay unnecessarily for that time.
I’ll write Part 3 of this series in 2 months after I’ve generated more data on how it’s worked for me.
Probably the best source of information about social media and dentistry is Dr. Jason Lipscomb, who’s website is here. I saw him speak at the ADA New Dentist Conference last month and he blew my mind.
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