THERE’S SOME HOT AIR out there about Facebook… Much of which—as a dentist or dental practice marketer—you can probably just ignore. A few social media pundits, either anxious to make a name for themselves or hedging their bets for publicity’s sake (you can say anything online, right?), are portending the inevitable end of Facebook. Hardly. But having said that, Facebook for dentists as a marketing strategy is definitely changing. Read on…
Facebook’s Reach Is Still Mind Boggling
With stats like 4.75 billion items are shared daily on Facebook, and 66% of TOTAL worldwide social media sharing coming from the Facebook iPhone app, Facebook isn’t going away soon—if ever. The service continues to re-invent itself by adjusting features and functionality. Yes, your teenage daughter may be saying that the cool kids are spending more time on other networks these days like Instagram (which is owned, by the way, by Facebook), but Facebook is still the 800 pound gorilla for dental practice social media marketing.
The Power In Boosting Posts (instead of running ads)
Our My Social Practice team spends a great deal of time working daily with hundreds of dental practices and Facebook. We don’t mean to brag… But we know quite a lot about this topic. Our experience over and over again continues to be that running Facebook ads is minimally effective at best. There’s also potential for serious negative consequences as explained in the second video below.
However, boosting posts can be a powerful, effective strategy when done thoughtfully and correctly.
We’ve Done Some Testing With Boosted Posts
The ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, is attributed with the saying, “The only thing that is constant is change.” He may not have known it at the time, but I think he was referring to marketing, the Internet, and Facebook.
Over the last few months we’ve been testing boosted Facebook posts with some of our client practices (As we sort through and digest the data watch for more details and conclusions in upcoming posts). Our preliminary conclusion is that we will likely start recommending to our client practices that they budget $5 a week to promote certain posts on their Facebook business pages. And, we will be coaching them on which posts to promote and why.
Facebook’s Problem For Individuals ISN’T A Problem For Dental Marketers
Effectively reaching your dental practice’s Facebook audience used to be easier (and cheaper) if you had awesome content. Now, you have to BOTH have awesome content and consider forking out a little cash. BUT DOLLAR FOR DOLLAR IT IS AN AWESOME MARKETING VALUE AND ABSOLUTELY WORTH IT.
Potential Problems With Facebook Ads
Remember that promoting Facebook posts is a completely different thing than running Facebook ads. The following video is insightful if you’re interested in learning more about some of the potential problems with running Facebook ads:
Stay The Course In Your Facebook For Dentists Marketing
We understand… Facebook’s ramped up “pay-to-play” model may be a little frustrating for you at first, but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. You simply cannot afford to abandon the benefits of Facebook dental marketing just because things are changing a little bit. It’s just too important to a sound, comprehensive dental marketing strategy.
And again (please excuse my little pitch here), if you want to really start using Facebook effectively consider becoming one of our valued clients!
What do you think about these Facebook changes? Let us know below…
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About the Author: Jack Hadley is a dental marketing expert and one of the founding members of My Social Practice. My Social Practice is a digital dental marketing company located in Salt Lake City, Utah. Jack is passionate about helping dental practices grow. If you’d like to book Jack or one of the other members of My Social Practice’s speaking team, you can do that HERE. Interested in learning more about the benefits of SEO for dentists, our dental websites service? Learn More Here.
