Today's marketing landscaping is quickly changing and those changes will make things harder for business owners who don't adapt.
Apple is leading the way with privacy changes that protect the consumer and will hurt all the major advertisers. It's likely you'll see the other tech giants following suit.
This means that old ways of running ads will no longer work. It's going to be harder to track where your leads are coming from and how they're interacting with your online presence.
But there are ways to get around this without using any black hat tricks or doing things that will get your account shut down.
Now more than ever it's imperative to produce content that keeps people on social media and provides value upfront before you ever ask your audience to do something.
One huge advantage of being a service based business is that you can give away all of your best information, knowing that they'll still have to come into your clinic to actually get the benefits.
A few ideas you can test are, case studies or patient testimonials (remember to get consent and the right forms signed), showing how your service is better than over the counter alternatives, or showing how what you do is different than anything else out there.
(Make sure each video ties into a specific result your audience is looking for.)
Put these videos up on your Facebook page without asking for anything in return. Don't hide the good stuff behind a link click or asking for an email, that comes later.
Create a boosted post and spend $1-5 a day with a radius around your clinic that people are willing to drive to. If you're in a smaller city that might be 15-30 miles. If you're in a densely populated area that might be 2 miles.
Then create a custom audience that collects all the people who watch at least 50% of your video. You can drop this down to 25% if your video is over 2 minutes long.
You should be creating at least one of these videos a week and testing them. You're looking to get an average watch time of over 12 seconds. If you can get to 20 seconds, that's really good, keep that video running.
If your average watch time is under 12 seconds then you're not capturing people's attention in the beginning. Start with a more impactful statement that gets people curious to learn more. If you've been doing your audience research you should know what they want to hear about.
The next video ad you're going to create is one that actually invites people to book a consultation. This can be pretty straight forward. If you offer a new patient special, mention that right away. Show them again how the next step to solving their biggest problem is having a conversation with you. And then invite them to book an appointment.
This ad should only be targeting people who have watched your other videos. Depending on your budget spend $1-5 a day on these as well. It'll be a much smaller audience so you can get away with smaller budgets.
If you have a form on your website go ahead and link to that. Make sure you get instant notifications when someone fills it out. You want to be calling these people right away.
You can also use Facebook Lead ads or Messenger ads if you're not good with the tech setup. These are two easy ways to get the conversation started and that's all you're looking to do.
You'll have to follow up with most people several times, probably over a few weeks before they actually book an appointment. This is normal, don't reach out once and then think they aren't interested.
We'll dive deeper into the best ways to follow up next week. This should be enough to get you started. The links above will help guide you in creating these ads but there is a certain amount of figuring this out you'll have to do.
If you want to go deeper, each step in this process is talked about in our courses. Plus we're in the process of expanding those marketing lessons even further with the recent changes.
Check them out here:
Next week we'll go into the one advertising medium that beats every other for return on investment and producing new customers consistently.
Jason Duprat, MBA, MSA, CRNA