Preparing your dental practice for a social media advertising campaign

The roles of the practice team and marketing agency

Whilst many agencies still offer “all done for you” social marketing with the promise that no-one at the practice will need to be involved, the truth is that these types of campaigns are nearly always sub-optimal compared to those where the local team is involved.

Today we’ll take a look at why local team involvement always wins out and what you need to consider when preparing your own dental practice for a social media marketing campaign.

Before we begin, here’s a quick example to illustrate why it’s absolutely essential to make sure that preparation is thorough and responsibilities are defined so that new patient enquiries don’t get missed and frustration is avoided.

We are currently running an Invisalign campaign for a large practice where responsibility for monitoring and managing new treatment enquiries had been agreed. In summary, our marketing team looked after the set-up of ads, landing pages and on-line booking systems and the practice was tasked with monitoring the required channels to capture all of the new enquiries. The practice team would then enter all new enquiries into their CRM system for follow-up using their usual procedures.

All was running as expected with enquiries going via the online booking system, but as part of our periodic monitoring, we also checked to see what type of engagement was happening with the ads on Facebook and Instagram. To our surprise (dismay) we found that lots of questions were being asked in the comments but no-one from the practice was responding! This was quickly addressed back to the principal so that staff could be re-aligned accordingly. In the first two weeks alone, we calculated that upwards of eight solid leads may have been lost as a result of this failure to respond. That’s a lot of potential lost revenue and profit and easily enough to cover the running of the campaign for several months.

So what do you need to prepare at the practice to run social media ads successfully?

Assets to make your ads compelling

Whilst your marketing team will undoubtedly have a range of images and possibly even video snippets they can use to build your ads, ideally you will be able to provide the more personalised type of visuals that are known to perform much better than generic ones.

So please try to provide photographs of team members talking to happy patients, practice shots etc that can be used to personalise your ads. Also try to shoot small clips of patient testimonials and provide these to your marketing team for them to use. They don’t have to be shot professionally – a short clip recorded on a decent smart ‘phone can often work very well.

If all that sounds a bit too tricky, please remember that it will make all the difference to the performance of the ads. If you don’t have time, your marketing partner should also have access to a video and photography team who will be able to help produce suitable assets for your ads.

Any decent Facebook marketing professional will advise you that you need to provide a compelling value proposition and also be able to demonstrate proof that you can deliver what you say. So please be prepared to provide patient testimonials outlining how your services have worked for them

Competition is significant at the moment along with patients with less disposable income, so we have to work even harder to generate new enquiries. To assist that, not only will you need to provide patient testimonials but also anything which helps to differentiate the skills of the clinician from all of the other dentists who are advertising. Be prepared to illustrate the number of cases you’ve completed and also qualification/awards where appropriate – it will all help to make you the new patient’s provider of choice!

Your dental marketing partner will be able to collate all of these assets to create compelling ads and landing pages to give you the best chance of beating the competition, so a little bit of hard work and participation is well worth the effort. The key now is to be able to step above the cheesy type of ads that many dental agencies are regurgitating for all of their clients.

Allocating responsibility for monitoring and responding

As we’ve seen from the example above it’s all too easy to lose valuable enquiries simply because someone is not completing the task they have been allocated – or worse, no-one was actually allocated the task in the first place.

Consequently it’s essential to discuss with your marketing partner exactly who is expected to do what. In most cases the practice is best placed to respond quickly to enquiries coming in, whether this is via a ‘phone call, on-line booking system, live chat or messages/comments on social media. Please ensure that someone on the practice team is trained to do this and with suitable cover in place for when they are off work. Oversight is also needed – typically the practice manager but we also recommend that the principal dentist checks in periodically.

The role of the marketing agency will typically be to report periodically to give an overview of the how the social ad campaign is performing – they will not have the clinical knowledge or be immediately available to respond to enquiries in real time, so be cautious of any company offering that service.

Summary

Whilst there are marketing companies which offer a  full “done for you” social media service, as we’ve seen, they will seldom be able to provide the type of material and real-time feedback you need to make your campaigns a success. Experience shows that the campaigns which are by far the most effective, are the ones where the practice team have an active role, not only in helping to provide bespoke material to produce engaging ads, but also to receive and respond to new patient enquiries in real time.

However to do this effectively, the local dental team needs to be appraised of what is happening and roles and responsibilities allocated accordingly, together with management oversight to ensure all stays on track. For certain, some resource is needed but it’s not huge and certainly well-worthwhile to ensure your campaigns are successful.

For more information and guidance in setting up and running effective ad campaigns on Facebook and Instagram at your own practice, please get in touch with the team at Dental Media on 01332 672548 or via the website contact form if you prefer.