Facebook Ads & Marketing for Dentists (Getting Started)

This article is part of our series about improving your dental practice. You can find the links to the other articles at the bottom of the page.

Whether you work for a dental office or are a dentist yourself, you know how competitive the dental industry can be – and how challenging it is to drive new patients through your doors and book more dental appointments.

Traditionally, dental practitioners have relied on word-of-mouth marketing, referrals, and traditional advertising channels, like direct mail or radio spots, to convert new dental patients. However, these methods aren’t always the most efficient or cost-effective solution to dental advertising.

Fortunately, social media marketing has made the advertising process more accessible for dental practices nationwide. As a result, you can use a social media platform like Facebook to connect with your current patients and generate new leads for your dental office.

To simplify the process, our team at Weave created this beginner’s guide to Facebook ads for dentists. Below, you’ll learn how to improve your Facebook marketing campaigns, plus eight tried-and-true tips for converting prospective patients who need your services. Then see how our Dental Software can streamline your dental office communication and marketing.

Do Facebook Ads Work for Dentists? And How?

If you’re anything like most dentists, you’re probably wondering, “Do Facebook ads work for dentists, and, most importantly, how do Facebook ads work?”

No matter how doubtful you feel, you’ll quickly determine that a Facebook campaign is one of the most effective social media advertising tools for dentists. Facebook ads target your ideal patient using the Facebook platform, which boasts more than 2 billion users. When you launch a Facebook ad campaign, you can narrow your target audience based on dozens of characteristics, including:

Age
Location
Education
Income level

Further, you can target potential customers who have recently moved into your area, just had a baby, or just graduated. These features make it easy to manage highly targeted paid ads, compare different ad formats, and tailor your marketing strategy to suit your customers.

You can also enjoy other benefits of Facebook ad campaigns, such as:

1. Getting more bang for your buck than using traditional ads.

You’ve likely allocated hundreds or thousands of dollars toward your dental office marketing campaigns. Facebook advertising isn’t free, but the platform’s user-friendly tools enable you to pinpoint your audience and minimize wasted marketing dollars.

For example, instead of paying several hundred dollars for a dental ad on a primetime radio show, you can reallocate the funds toward an ad optimized for your target audience, featuring ad copy that will motivate your ideal patient to contact your dental practice for an appointment.

Depending on how you set up your campaign, a click on your Facebook advertising campaign could cost less than $1. You could possibly place your dental marketing ad in front of approximately 1,000 potential new patients for less than $10, thanks to the platform’s complex algorithm and in-depth advertising dashboard.

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2. Easily target your preferred audience on Facebook.

As mentioned above, Facebook enables you to narrow your target audience more precisely than any other advertising channel. Using your Facebook advertising dashboard, you can ensure that your target audience sees your ad.

For instance, consider potential new patients who have recently moved to your area. After writing your ad copy, determining your ad type, and setting a Facebook marketing budget, you can launch an ad promoting discounted exams and cleanings to new patients.

As a result, you’ll target an untapped market – and potentially improve your bottom line without the hassle or expense of traditional advertising channels.

3. Setting up Facebook ad objectives and metrics for success.

Alongside precise targeting, you can set goals for your Facebook ad campaigns that make sense for your dental practice. In doing so, you’ll direct the outcome of your Facebook marketing efforts and give the algorithm more information to work with.

Depending on your needs, you can determine ad objectives for your Facebook advertisement campaign, such as:

Building awareness of your dental office
Driving more traffic to your dental website
Connecting with new patients looking for a dentist
Getting more inquiries about appointments or services
Converting more leads
Increasing sales

You can also track the success of each ad campaign and enjoy the platform’s powerful metrics, all at your fingertips. Facebook will gather and present all of the data from your campaigns, empowering you to make decisions, tweak copy, and determine what works for your target audience.

You can turn to a customer management platform like Weave Analytics for even easier access to digital marketing campaign analytics. Weave’s user-friendly, centralized dashboard provides you with a real-time look at your patient data, allowing you to refine your digital marketing efforts, connect with your patients, and leverage your expertise to generate new leads.

How to Run the Most Effective Facebook Ads for Dentists

Ready to launch your first Facebook dental marketing campaign? Before you get started, consider the eight following tips to ensure that your digital marketing campaign makes an impact on your target audience.

1. Try teeth whitening Facebook ads.

If you want to get more new patients through the door, consider teeth whitening ads for your Facebook campaign. Teeth whitening ads appeal to a vast audience. At the same time, the dental service is relatively inexpensive, making it an incentivizing way to bring new patients through your door.

Include an exclusive discount in your teeth whitening ad for the best results. For example, you may offer a 25% discount to new patients who book their appointment after seeing the ad. You may even throw in a free examination to sweeten the deal for new leads.

2. Run A/B tests to see which ads are performing best.

Also known as split testing, A/B testing is a digital marketing process in which you use two versions of an ad to determine which works best. While A/B testing, you may experiment with a video ad and a photo-based ad, two different calls-to-action (CTAs), or two versions of a landing page to gauge your audience’s reaction and track your engagement, conversion rates, and other metrics.

A/B testing helps you streamline future Facebook marketing campaigns by understanding what works for each demographic segment. For example, after reviewing your A/B testing data, you may find that Millennial and Gen-Z patients respond best to video ads featuring a catchy song or slogan. Alternatively, older patients may prefer a simple advertisement with a clear call-to-action, like booking an appointment for discounted dental implants.

3. Use the ad to send Facebook users to your website.

Ultimately, you want your dental marketing campaigns to increase conversions and improve your bottom line. Impressions won’t necessarily achieve that goal.

Instead, you need a way to drive leads to your website and collect their information. To do so, you’ll need two tools: An optimized, user-friendly landing page and a Facebook Pixel.

A Facebook Pixel is a type of code used to track website visitors, gather information, and analyze user data. Simply pasting the code into your landing page and activating the software will streamline your dental marketing campaigns and provide you with invaluable data on potential customers that visit your landing page and browse your website.

Your landing page is an essential tool as well. Landing pages typically feature basic information, a single offer, and a contact form, where customers can request more information or book an appointment using Weave’s easily integrated scheduling features.

4. Offer free incentives and discounted rates in your ads.

When it comes to dental marketing, nothing encourages new and existing patients to take action like a freebie or a discount code. Leverage promotional prices and free bonus services, such as a free consultation for new patients, to drive more leads through your door.

Ask leads to submit their email addresses to receive a coupon or discount code for an even more effective campaign. In doing so, you’ll gain access to their contact information for future retargeting and nurturing campaigns.

5. Make your dental practice stand out in your ad copy.

Every social media user has seen more than enough dental marketing ads featuring stock photos and models smiling at the camera from their dental chair. Make your dental practice stand out by pairing the friendly faces of your staff with personalized, warm, and engaging copy.

Remember, your advertisements enable you to connect with your patients. Yet, countless dentist offices forget there’s a person on the opposite end of the ad and write ad copy without any personality or feeling.

Inject your sense of humor, expertise, or warm chair-side manner into your ad copy. While it may take a few tries to refine your voice and establish a consistent tone for your practice, we suspect you’ll see an uptick in engagements – and more new clients in your chair.

6. Find new customers using the “lookalike” ads capability.

Remember the Facebook Pixel we discussed above? When combined with your current customer information, you can use Facebook’s lookalike ad capability to expand your dental ad reach and connect with new leads who look, act, think, and browse like your current patients.

The lookalike feature streamlines the advertising process by eliminating lengthy growing periods. Instead of waiting to expand your reach after gathering 1,000 more email addresses or web visitors, you can do so immediately. As a result, you’ll boost your online growth and engagement while gaining more insight into your client base.

7. Don’t neglect posting on your dental Facebook page.

So far, we’ve discussed Facebook advertising strategies in detail. However, we haven’t mentioned a crucial element of your dental marketing plan: your Facebook page. While you don’t need a business page for your dental office to advertise on the platform, there are countless benefits to having one, including:

Better engagement
Improved customer satisfaction
Increased trust
Personalized interactions

For example, when you integrate your dental practice’s Facebook page into Weave’s communication management platform, you can read, manage, and respond to Facebook comments, answer direct messages, and track user interactions from a single interface. As a result, you’ll have the opportunity to connect with your customers on a personal level while providing superior care.

8. Get familiar with the basics of advertising laws.

Finally, research state-wide dental advertising laws before launching your Facebook marketing plan. As any dentist will tell you, navigating the red tape of the healthcare industry isn’t easy, especially when attempting to generate new leads.

Fortunately, you can advertise online as long as you don’t make false, deceptive, or misleading statements. For example, don’t promise your patients that they’ll receive a free exam or same-day dental implants unless you can fulfill your promise to every patient.

Final Thoughts

Dental marketing can feel like a moving target, especially as online trends change, new platforms emerge, and audience consumption evolves. That doesn’t mean a successful dental marketing campaign is out of reach, though.

With Weave, you can effectively launch, manage, and monitor your Facebook marketing campaigns from a single, user-friendly hub. Rather than searching for client comments or scouring through your campaign dashboard to view updated metrics, Weave consolidates customer information into a usable, digestible, and easily actionable format.

For more information or to schedule a free demo, get in touch with our team at Weave today at 888-579-5668.

Check out the other articles in our “Improving Your Dental Practice” series:

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Facebook Ads for Dentists: How to Get Started in Facebook Marketing