More Shenanigans From Invisalign Marketers

More Shenanigans From Invisalign Marketers

More about those “guaranteed” leads….

Several months ago I blogged about some of the tricks and stunts being used by marketers in the social media advertising space to entice dentists who are seeking new Invisalign leads.

Over the last few months the number of agencies advertising their services has increased dramatically, names you’ve never heard of but all claiming to deliver “excellent” high-value leads for their clients. What’s more, the “guarantees” they are offering appear too good to be true and I’ll explain more about that in a moment. As one provider ups the ante and offers yet more guaranteed leads, then other providers come along with even more outlandish claims and promises.

Those of us working in the paid ads space for a long time know that such claims are ridiculous and that new agencies will try anything to try to secure new work. The claims and guarantees might make us chuckle, but to a dentist, it looks very tempting and almost too good to resist. However, more often than not, the promises are never delivered and the dentist is left disappointed and out of pocket.

So what’s going on here? How are dentists being pulled in to these contracts and why are they very often being left disappointed? First let’s take a look at how the ads are worded and what some of the weasel words actually mean. Here are two of the main claims and “guarantees”….

“30 guaranteed Invisalign leads per month or we work for free….”

“30 guaranteed leads or we pay you ad spend….”

It’s very common for advertising agencies to charge well in excess of £1500 per month for their services and consequently they will do pretty much anything to deliver the 30 leads they promised. However, they don’t guarantee the quality of the leads or how many enquiries will actually lead to treatment. They will often try to take over every element of the dentist’s web presence, including the practice website, so that any enquiry, however tenuous; can be claimed as one of the promised target.

Bumping your ad spend

The agencies also fail to mention what they expect you to spend on ad budget and if response looks slow, they will simply pressure you to increase it. Getting lots of poor leads with a big budget is relatively simple, so the agencies will be fairly comfortable with this – however you probably won’t!

Diluting your ad targeting

Another tactic an agency can use to meet their leads guarantee is by loosening the ad criteria and exclusively using “lead gen” forms directly on Facebook. These forms pre-populate and make it very easy for anyone to make an enquiry – but with very loose ad targeting, i.e. where your ads are presented to pretty much anyone, those enquiries will very often be useless.

I’ve discussed this very situation with two new clients this week alone. Both had subscribed to 6 month contracts with “guaranteed” leads but the return had been dismal, including lots of email contacts with foreign domain extensions!

The speculative nature of Facebook and Instagram leads

Social media ads can be very successful when set up and used properly but the user does need to understand the speculative nature of an enquiry from social media platforms. Here we are placing ads in front of a user who is interacting socially, rather than searching with pre-determined intent, for example on Google. However, we can introduce targeting on all sorts of levels to increase the likelihood that those people who see your ads are more likely to interact with them.

When an advertiser deliberately dilutes targeting simply to get leads, then you can see the effect. In this scenario, your practice manager or TCO will likely be left chasing up people who actually had no interest in the first place. If you’re tied into a long-term contract, then unfortunately you’re stuck!

How do these agencies continue in business?

You may wonder how these types of agencies actually survive if they continue to disappointment their dental clients? Well the simple answer is that many of them don’t. As word gets round, those businesses demise but unfortunately it’s way too easy for them to rise again under a different name and using the same dodgy techniques.

It’s easy enough to fabricate a track record and reach lots of dentists with targeted ads – and unfortunately a lot easier for them to hook-in unsuspecting dentists than you might imagine.

Hopefully this blog will illustrate some of the pitfalls from working with some social media advertising agencies and why guarantees which look too good to be true, very often are. Forewarned is forearmed so at least you’ll know the questions to ask if you are investigating these types of services.

Are all social media ad agencies bad guys? Absolutely not, but the hugely increased competition in the market and influx of new businesses, has caused a lot of unsavoury practices to appear.

Here at Dental Media we’ve offered social media advertising services for the last 5 years and acknowledge that it’s harder to achieve the same results as even a couple of years ago. However we don’t tie clients into long-term contracts, we don’t charge thousands of pounds as a service cost and we don’t give guarantees. We keep business based on delivering success for our clients.

If you have any questions about advertising your dental practice on Facebook and Instagram and feel lost in the minefield that’s out there at the moment, please get in touch with our team on 01332 672548 for a no-obligation discussion.