Why Your Invisalign Ads Need A Compelling Value Proposition

An Insight Into Facebook’s Algorithm And How It Can Work For Or Against You

The team at Dental Media provides a wide range of social media ad services for dentists and because of this we receive free consultancy services directly from Facebook to assist with our campaign management.

Whilst we already have a lot of experience, Facebook’s consultants have access to information that isn’t directly available to third parties and hence they have better visibility than we do when it comes to assessing the performance of campaigns relative to others. This is particularly useful in competitive environments and helps to give an edge for our dental clients. Of course Facebook won’t directly reference other people’s campaigns by name, but they will give insights to help with incremental improvements – and this can make all the difference between mediocre performance and excellent performance.

One of the key learning points from our discussion with Facebook’s own experts is a clear idea of how Facebook’s ad algorithm works. This is the “hidden” mechanism which works out how your ads will be placed and works in conjunction with the targeting you set up when the campaigns are configured.

Make Facebooks Algorithm Work For You

In simple terms, Facebook’s algorithm rewards success – so if your dental ads are popular and users engage with them, Facebook learns this and preferentially shows them to people most likely to convert i.e. make an enquiry about your services.

Conversely, if your ads are unappealing and users don’t engage, then Facebook will see these as less valuable and will preferentially show other ads to users rather than your own. This doesn’t mean that your ads won’t be shown at all, on the contrary. Indeed Facebook will still be very keen to use your budget. However, your ads will be seen as secondary compared to others which have historically proved more successful. Basically you won’t be first past the post and by that stage, your treatment enquiry will likely have gone elsewhere.

What does this mean for your own dental Facebook ads?

To make sure that Facebook sees your ads as being the most relevant and useful for its users, you need to ensure that they are engaging from the start. Remember that the pixel tracking code Facebook uses to track activity will pick up when an ad actually converts to an enquiry. This information feeds back to Facebook and the algorithm tunes accordingly. If your ads and associated landing pages aren’t converting, then the algorithm can actually start to work against you.

We’ve seen this happen where dentists are reluctant to work on a compelling value proposition for their ads and campaigns, relative to what is being offered by the competition. Users preferentially click on those ads which are more compelling and the less appealing ads get de-prioritised.

A compelling treatment proposition

Like it or not, users are looking for a great deal when it comes to selecting dental services. Irrespective of what some business coaches might suggest, you need to demonstrate that your services are excellent and that they offer great value too. You can’t just expect success on the back of appearing to be the best at what you do in your area – this will get you some business from the most discerning clients, but in a competitive niche such as Invisalign where there is lots of choice, don’t make the mistake of thinking that price doesn’t matter.

I’m not advocating that you need rock bottom prices to get business; what I am illustrating is that if your ads don’t have the same or better overall value proposition as your competitors, then they won’t work nearly as well.

As we’ve discussed in recent blogs, there are ways of developing a great value proposition without eroding the base treatment price too much – please take a look at our recent articles or call the team here at Dental Media for more advice.

Summary

When advertising on Facebook and/or Instagram you need to be aware of how your ads are effectively being graded by the ad algorithm and what effect this can have. As we’ve discussed, if your ads are less appealing than those of your competitors, users won’t click as readily and the algorithm will progressively deprioritise you. Conversely, great ads with good value propositions will convert better and the algorithm tunes to make your ads reach those users more likely to convert.

So please do your competitive research well and get the algorithm on your side!

For more information and to get help with setting up your own Facebook and Instagram campaigns, please call the team at Dental Media on 01332 672548 for more advice and to get you started.