Facebook Account Quality – Why It Really Matters
What is account quality and how does it affect how your ad campaigns perform?
It seems that most dentists use Facebook and their sister platform, Instagram for advertising these days; albeit with variable success. Indeed Facebook has made it easier for people with little or no experience to build ads and launch them across both of those platforms.
It’s fair to say that the ‘halcyon’ days of easy Facebook advertising for dentists are over and it tends to be those folk who don’t have a solid grip of the fundamentals who end up wasting a lot of money and disappointed. Quite often this is where we get asked to pick-up the pieces and launch some carefully crafted campaigns after the dentist’s DIY endeavours fell short.
Account Quality Definition
What we often find when we take over the set-up and management of ads for a dentist is that their account has fallen into disrepair and the intrinsic “quality” of the account as Facebook refers to it, has fallen through the floor. This is a serious issue and the implications vary, from under-performing ads through to the whole account being banned.
So what is Facebook account quality and how can you ensure that your own account meets requirements?
Facebook says this in the opening paragraph of their own information about account quality:
“Account Quality provides a centralised place to monitor and improve compliance with our Advertising Policies, Commerce Policies and other Facebook policies and terms. You can also use it to monitor your feedback.”
You can see more in the link to their details here:
They go on to explain how they use a rigorous set of parameters to ensure that advertisements do not contravene standards and policies and to ensure that people are protected from harmful experiences when they are using their platforms.
It should be noted that this is not trivial and since Facebook came under significant scrutiny from governing bodies a few years ago, these standards appear to have been ramped up considerably. So-much-so that it is very easy to fall foul of the various checking algorithms if you have limited experience.
In the world of dental and facial aesthetics advertising it is very easy to contravene the parameters Facebook use for anything they consider to be “body shaming” etc and even things that you may consider to be innocuous may not be allowed. It’s fair to say that Facebook really does err on the side of caution these days and it can be very frustrating for advertisers when ads which appear to be fine then get blocked.
What is even more frustrating is that if you contravene Facebook’s stringent parameters even just a couple of times, particularly where an ad account is fairly new, then you can get the account blocked very quickly indeed. Removing this type of block is not easy and can sometimes be impossible; exacerbated by Facebook having very few public-facing staff you can actually speak to.
It is these types of account blocks which we regularly encounter when taking on new dental clients who come to us for help after they inadvertently tripped the Facebook quality algorithms.
Recommendation
I would always recommend using an experienced ad manager if you want to start advertising your dental practice on Facebook and Instagram – there are just too many parameters to get right if you are trying it DIY.
But whether you do go the DIY route or use an experienced advertiser, I would still highly recommend reading Facebook’s guidelines to understand what is and isn’t allowed – and even then, be prepared for the odd surprises and frustrations when Facebook bins your ads!
If you do get your Facebook ad account blocked, as mentioned above it can be quite a long and convoluted process to get it unblocked. This will often be compounded by not actually knowing what it was about your ads or the way you advertised that got you blocked – in this circumstance it is highly likely that you will need some expert help and even then, in some cases the account may be irretrievable.
If you would like help with advertising dental services on Facebook (now Meta of course) and Instagram, please get in touch with the paid ads team at Dental Media on 01332 672548 and we’ll be pleased to get you safely underway.