New Facebook updates to enhance your dental marketing

Recent Facebook changes to be aware of

Facebook regularly changes how their social media platform functions, often rather badly if user feedback is anything to go by.

However, a couple of recent updates are actually quite positive and worth noting for use in your Facebook dental marketing campaigns.

Improved Ad. targeting

Facebook used to be a front runner with its advert targeting features and allowed quite specific targeting options way ahead of many other ad networks. However, the other networks soon caught up and left Facebook behind with certain features. In the last week, Facebook has revisited its ad targeting parameters and, using the wide selection of user data available to them, has revamped the facilities available to advertisers.

Now you can target most elements of data within a users profile – so for example if you wanted to promote cosmetic dentistry services to women in the age range 18 – 30 whose relationship status had just changed to “single”, then you can. Whilst this is a slightly extreme example, it does show the level of exact targeting available.

There is also improved location targeting which allows you to narrow down to very specific areas if you wish to do so.

So whilst this overhaul does rely on the accuracy of the data entered in the user’s profiles, overall it is extremely positive.

Improved organic reach – pages tagging pages

In the wake of the recent changes whereby Facebook significantly curtailed how many people your posts would reach (unless you pay!), this latest update is a slight positive reversal. Now, brands can potentially show up in the news feed of a person who does not follow them simply by talking about someone or something that person does actually follow. Maybe this is best illustrated by a dental example:

Let’s take a dentist who would like to show up in the feeds of people looking for fast ortho. braces. You could find an image of the system you use and post this up, then in your post tag the page of the ortho. system provider (6MS, Cfast etc) with a comment about their system. Potentially your post might then show up in the feeds of users who have “liked” the page of your ortho. provider. The exposure possibility here is very interesting as it gives access to users who otherwise would have had to find you on their own. However, we don’t yet know just how broad this reach will actually be as it’s still early days. Well worth experimenting though.

Summary

Whilst a number of recent Facebook updates have met with significant user disapproval, these two new ones appear quite positive. Keep in mind that both are still very new and user experience over the next couple of months will allow us to make a much better informed decision as to the actual worth for your dental social media marketing.

If you would like to know more about using Facebook within your practice marketing campaigns, please call the Dental Media team on 01332 672548.