Are You Looking for a Dental Social Media Ads Service?

Are You Looking for a Dental Social Media Ads Service?

Watch out for these agency tricks designed to hook you in….

Here at Dental Media we have a lot of proven experience in running paid ads for dentists, primarily on Google, Facebook and Instagram. When clients first approach us, we are keen to be as transparent as possible when discussing the pros and cons of this type of advertising. It’s not as easy as some agencies would have you believe and the pitfalls are significant if you get it wrong.

For example, we discuss the speculative nature of enquiries from social media ads and the need to work hard to filter out time-wasters, through to the significant budgets required to gain traction where competition is high. We don’t want clients to be disappointed and consequently it’s important that they understand what they are subscribing to.

No doubt you’ve probably seen the plethora of agency ads on Facebook and Instagram where they appear to claim that ads will be a winner every time and that there is very little effort needed to gain success? Unfortunately this is not always the case and those ads need to be treated with a fair degree of caution – even the ones which claim to offer guarantees as we’ve discussed in more detail in this blog here.

Your personalised ad video

Another clever tool designed to encourage dentists to take up ad services is the ‘personalised video’. This is where the marketer conducts a quick review of the dentist’s web assets, perhaps an overview of their website etc, before launching into facts and figures designed to illustrate how well they’ve done with other client’s ad campaigns.

On face value, this type of video can be very persuasive, particularly so if you don’t really understand the detail. Unfortunately most dentists don’t really understand what they are being told and only see the headline figures – but it’s the data beneath this which tells the true story.

I was recently asked to review one such video on behalf of a dentist who was considering ads to boost enquiries into her practice. An ad agency provided a ‘personalised’ video for her which started out by critiquing her website, claiming that it was poor and needed a full re-build – this was actually incorrect and an obvious attempt at an upsell to a new website along with ad campaigns.

The video then moved on to illustrate how the agency had secured lots of bookings from TikTok – they actually had secured a few Invisalign bookings and some facial aesthetics treatments (at high cost) but they were claiming to be able to do similar for full arch implant treatments – also via TikTok ads!

Not only were the numbers they presented deliberately confusing, but their pitch for using ads for full arch implants on TikTok was way off too – although the dentist didn’t understand the issues with demographics and ad placement at all and thought it all sounded great! What fees did they want for this service? £1500 per month per campaign. Ouch.

My guess is that this agency, along with many others, has a “churn and burn” approach – hooking new clients in with misleading presentations, charging huge sums with onerously long contracts, before moving on to the next unsuspecting dentist – rinse and repeat.

So is using ads a poor tactic for dentists to pursue?

Absolutely not, but you need to understand the pros and cons and work with a good dental ads provider who will be absolutely transparent as I mentioned above.

If you look at the search results on page 1 of Google, you will see 3 or 4 ads at the top of the page. Next comes the local/map results and often you need to scroll down to the lower half of the page before you start seeing the traditional “free” search results. So even where you have really great organic search results, you can still be missing out on over 30% of the potential enquiries if you aren’t placing ads.

Similarly with social ads; these days they are very popular and chances are that your main competitor is already using them and has systems in place to help convert the leads that come via that channel.

Our clients who really understand the power of the web and social media and the payback potential, are not just running SEO, but a range of Google and social ads too. There is a strong element of “in it to win it” here and whilst that’s something you may find unpalatable, unfortunately it’s increasingly what’s required.

Summary

Using ads to acquire dental new patients is increasingly popular and can be very rewarding – but you have to do it right and in conjunction with the right partner. Like many aspects of dental marketing, unfortunately there are too many “chancers” in it for a quick buck, so please be careful with what you are being told. Oh and watch out for the “personalised” video! It’s probably not telling you what you really need to know.

If you’re about to start on your own dental ads journey and need some considered, experienced advice, please get in touch with the team at Dental Media on 01332 672548 or via the website contact form.