The Changing Face of Social Media Advertising For Dentists

What you need to know before jumping in.

As a dentist reading this blog, you may already have dipped into social media ads? There’s a chance that it worked well for you but also the strong possibility that it didn’t. Unfortunately, social ad campaigns that don’t work as well as expected are becoming more and more common, so what’s going wrong? In this blog we’ll take a look at what’s changed, together with what you need to do to give yourself the best chances of success when advertising on Facebook and Instagram.

Before looking at specifics, it’s worth noting the changing way that marketing agencies are advertising their own services via social media as this gives a good clue as to what’s going on. A couple of years ago, marketers were running their own basic ads that typically offered “twenty leads per month” and little else. As things got harder, it quickly became 30 leads per month, then 40 and so on. Then around a year ago, marketers started to offer to work for free if they didn’t meet the pre-agreed number of leads delivered.

Now we not only see that, but also lead-qualification services where the agency filters the leads, essentially working for the dentist. I’m even seeing the so-called leading Invisalign marketer offering free services – that evolution is a really good indicator of how things are changing and how everyone is trying to compete, supplier and dentist.

Of course what you also need to understand, particularly as the marketing companies try to avoid mentioning it, is that you need a big daily budget to make any of it happen. Unfortunately the leads from social media ads can be quite speculative, with a high proportion coming to nothing. So for the marketer to achieve the objective, lots and lots of leads have to be generated – hence the ever increasing budgets. I draw the analogy of panning for gold; while there are golden nuggets to be had, there’s a lot of rubbish to be filtered through first.

So what’s driven these significant changes in a relatively short space of time and made the social ads space trickier to navigate and get good returns?

Increasing competition

This is evident from both sides – supplier and dentist alike. New marketing companies are trying their hand in the dental space together with more and more dentists dipping their toes into the social ads space to see if it works. Frankly it’s a bit of a mess and some areas are quite saturated already. We’ll look into that later, including how to step above it and make social ads work for your own practice.

Invisalign reps

That might seem a bit odd but we hear the same story from lots and lots of dental clients – basically that their Invisalign rep is very “pushy” when it comes to getting new patients into the practice. This is all well and good but the number of dentists now following this path is increasing all the time. A few years ago you might have seen one at most two practices in an area advertising for Invisalign patients but now it’s lots more. That’s not a sustainable landscape for everyone unfortunately.

While Invisalign is perhaps the best example of the increased competition and soaring ad budgets, other treatments e.g. implants, are not far behind.

Meta privacy controls

This is another area which has caused a big problem for advertisers and the agencies that represent them. I wrote about this in another blog a few months ago but to quickly recap, Meta (Facebook and Instagram) has significantly restricted the type of user data which can be collected. This has in turn significantly affected the degree of ads targeting that can be done – prompting advertisers to cast a wider net to keep the numbers up.

There are ways to counter some of these restrictions but suffice to say that it’s nowhere as easy as it used to be to land ads in a targeted way in front of social media users. This has also contributed to some of the adverse effects we mentioned earlier e.g. more speculative enquiries, more pre-filtering of leads etc. Some agencies will tell you that they have ways around this (e.g. CAPI implementation) but let me assure you, that’s only a partial help.

How can I still succeed with dental social media ads?

The good news is that it is still possible to be successful; however there are some pre-requisites to understand. We have this conversation with all of our new clients:

• Creative content – gone are the days of simply publishing a few static image ads and hoping for the best. Now you need video snippets, patient testimonials and engaging text to make sure your ads stand out from the rest of the rubbish out there. If you don’t have this, then you’ll likely fail. The good news is that if you have some decent, short video snips, even if filmed on a mobile ‘phone, then a good agency can use this to good effect.
• A compelling value proposition – we’re not here to drive treatment fees down but we do have to be realistic – and we need our clients to be too. While some agencies and dental coaches are still banging on about keeping prices high and attracting high-value clients, unfortunately that’s not the real world. We’ve already discussed the significant increases in competition, particularly treatments like Invisalign, and with this comes the inevitable price competition. We know from experience that the dentists with good value propositions and realistic expectations are the ones that do really well – the others, not so much.
• A realistic budget – unfortunately that is now an increasingly significant factor and it’s easy enough to understand why given what we’ve already discussed.

Summary

• The landscape of social advertising for dentists has changed significantly and continues to evolve.
• More competition, both dentists and marketers, is pushing ad budgets higher, particularly for “big ticket” treatments like Invisalign and implants.
• Basic ads with static images no longer cut it – you need highly engaging content to attract attention and stand above the growing crowd.
• You need a compelling value proposition – like it not people are shopping around and most of them will avoid the dentist who charges a premium. They want good value and most won’t pay elevated prices in a competitive market – it’s easy for them to go elsewhere.

While this blog may be slightly concerning if you are contemplating testing dental social ads, it’s better to be aware of what you’re stepping into rather than simply trusting what the marketing sales guy told you. That way you can prepare thoroughly and give yourself the best chance of success.

If you’d like any additional information regarding the above or perhaps want to get moving with your own social ads under the stewardship of a trusted agency, please call us on 01332 672548 for a no-obligation chat.