How many hours a day do you spend on Facebook? Probably too many, are we right?
Facebook is one of the greatest ways to waste time ever created. You can go onto your Facebook feed and interact with your friends and family for hours, watching cat videos and commenting on statuses. Because of this, Facebook has also become one of the most popular advertising platforms available today.
Not only are there millions of eyes on Facebook at any given time, you can also customize your Facebook ads with a degree of specificity that you won’t find on any other platform. Despite this, some companies and plastic surgery practices just never seem to see a return on their Facebook advertising.
Never fear though, there are a few simple tweaks you can make that will get you a better response from your Facebook ads. All you need to do is take a few extra steps and pay a little closer attention, and you are likely to see more leads coming in from Facebook than ever before.
Highlight Your Ad Color Scheme
As Facebook’s brand colors are white and blue, any ad that also uses white and blue is likely to blend into someone’s Facebook page, rather than stand out. If your goal is an eye-catching ad, this is the last thing you want.
Thankfully, this might not be a huge problem unless your brand or practice’s colors are also blue and white. If your brand does use these colors, try adding some accents to the ad, like oranges or reds, to make it stand apart from the newsfeed. Another great way to combat this is by adding a colored border to your Facebook ad, helping it to stand out from the general Facebook color scheme.
Create Better Images
The image you chose for your ad is going to be dominating about 80% of the space, so you should make sure that it is an eye-catching and interesting image.
Yes, you could just go and get a public domain photo of a plastic surgery, but these will rarely stand out. What you want are professionally taken, high-quality photos that will speak to your brand and your patients. These could be shots of you performing a procedure, great quality before-and-after photos, or action shots of you talking to your patients. They should be unique – you are your personality!
Improve Your Ad Copy
Generic ad copy and copy-and-paste promises are the death of Facebook ads. If your ad doesn’t stand out with a great call to action or description of your practice, no one is going to click it.
To help your ad copy stand out, use action words, add urgency, and ask questions that will prompt your Facebook audience to want to “respond” by clicking the ad. You want them to feel like you are addressing them personally. Be direct, as you only have a few words to get your message across. An effective one-sentence piece of Facebook ad copy can be far more difficult than writing an entire paragraph for any other platform.
Target Your Ads
You don’t just want to release your ad out into the wild, to be seen by everyone. Facebook isn’t just a newspaper that is released to the entire population; everyone has their own unique newsfeed. This gives you the opportunity to target audiences that are more likely to want plastic surgery-related content.
Facebook offers literally thousands of targeting options, some of the most basic being age, gender and interests. Look at your traditional marketing research and decide which groups would be the most valuable to target on Facebook.
Test Your Ads
Facebook has some incredibly effective testing tools that it puts at your disposal. You just need to know how to use them.
The Conversion Lift Measurement feature allows you to look at your ads to see which are getting the most clicks to help you to get new patients. Create several different versions of an ad, each with slightly different ad copy or picture, and allow those advertisements to run until you have some solid data. You can then look at which ad worked the best, and start to tailor new ads based on it. Think of it as a Facebook ad survival of the fittest.
Use Time-Sensitive Offers
People are more likely to take you up on an offer if there is a ticking clock attached. Seeing “only available for 24 more hours!” will get them clicking to take advantage while they still can.
This can be very useful if you are running any kind of promotion for plastic surgery services. Don’t just say that you’re offering 20% off a procedure, tell them it is only for a very limited time. This will greatly increase the likelihood they will immediately act and get clicking.
Get More People to “Like” Your Facebook Page
When people like your Facebook page, the stories that you add to it will organically show up in their newsfeed. These technically aren’t “ads” – but they function in much the same way, giving you the opportunity to better connect with your patients and share your content.
Newsfeed stories are far less intrusive than traditional ads, and are much more likely to be clicked on by those who see them. So, make sure that you have a steady stream of content (blog posts, photos, etc.) coming from your Facebook page to keep your Facebook audience engaged.
Choose Between Newsfeed Placements or Right Side Ads
You need to figure out where to allocate your advertising budget and which ads will give you the best bang for your buck.
Ads along the righthand side of the Facebook screens tend to be cheaper, while ads that are incorporated into someone’s newsfeed as a promoted post are more expensive. So why should you go for the newsfeed ads? Because ads that are incorporated into the newsfeed of a prospective patient are clicked on far more often. That’s only natural. When people are on Facebook, they are on their newsfeed, consuming content. If your content/ad is provided there, odds are greater that they will click on it. It takes more effort to look over to the righthand side of the screen and decide to click an ad to see where it will take you.
Use the New Facebook Ad Type – Lead Ads
Facebook is one of the most popular advertising platforms out there, and for a reason: they’re constantly coming up with new ways to let advertisers reach their customers. A new type of Facebook ad debuted just a few months ago and has already been showing fantastic returns for those who use them: lead ads.
One of the problems with getting people to sign up for newsletters and other online offers is that they need to spend time filling out forms. With lead ads, however, they don’t have to worry about it. Once they click on a lead ad, their information (such as email address and name) will already be there. All they have to do is click “submit” and their contact information is now in your hands. They can then choose to continue to your landing page to download whatever offer they’ve opted into. Simple, easy, and very effective.
Keep an Eye Out for the Latest Facebook Trends
Lead ads are just one example of the cutting-edge ad techniques Facebook utilizes. They are constantly updating and coming up with new features for both users and advertisers.
For example, Facebook video has been on a huge upswing in the last year, and more people are sharing video than ever, so you can expect auto-play videos to be the norm rather than the exception.
Facebook will likely create new opportunities for advertisers in 2017, with new ad categories allowing you to reach your audience better. The only way you can take advantage of this, though, is to keep updated on news about Facebook.
Ten Easy Ways to Get a Better Response from Your Facebook Advertising
How many hours a day do you spend on Facebook? Probably too many, are we right?
Facebook is one of the greatest ways to waste time ever created. You can go onto your Facebook feed and interact with your friends and family for hours, watching cat videos and commenting on statuses. Because of this, Facebook has also become one of the most popular advertising platforms available today.
Not only are there millions of eyes on Facebook at any given time, you can also customize your Facebook ads with a degree of specificity that you won’t find on any other platform. Despite this, some companies and plastic surgery practices just never seem to see a return on their Facebook advertising.
Never fear though, there are a few simple tweaks you can make that will get you a better response from your Facebook ads. All you need to do is take a few extra steps and pay a little closer attention, and you are likely to see more leads coming in from Facebook than ever before.
Highlight Your Ad Color Scheme
As Facebook’s brand colors are white and blue, any ad that also uses white and blue is likely to blend into someone’s Facebook page, rather than stand out. If your goal is an eye-catching ad, this is the last thing you want.
Thankfully, this might not be a huge problem unless your brand or practice’s colors are also blue and white. If your brand does use these colors, try adding some accents to the ad, like oranges or reds, to make it stand apart from the newsfeed. Another great way to combat this is by adding a colored border to your Facebook ad, helping it to stand out from the general Facebook color scheme.
Create Better Images
The image you chose for your ad is going to be dominating about 80% of the space, so you should make sure that it is an eye-catching and interesting image.
Yes, you could just go and get a public domain photo of a plastic surgery, but these will rarely stand out. What you want are professionally taken, high-quality photos that will speak to your brand and your patients. These could be shots of you performing a procedure, great quality before-and-after photos, or action shots of you talking to your patients. They should be unique – you are your personality!
Improve Your Ad Copy
Generic ad copy and copy-and-paste promises are the death of Facebook ads. If your ad doesn’t stand out with a great call to action or description of your practice, no one is going to click it.
To help your ad copy stand out, use action words, add urgency, and ask questions that will prompt your Facebook audience to want to “respond” by clicking the ad. You want them to feel like you are addressing them personally. Be direct, as you only have a few words to get your message across. An effective one-sentence piece of Facebook ad copy can be far more difficult than writing an entire paragraph for any other platform.
Target Your Ads
You don’t just want to release your ad out into the wild, to be seen by everyone. Facebook isn’t just a newspaper that is released to the entire population; everyone has their own unique newsfeed. This gives you the opportunity to target audiences that are more likely to want plastic surgery-related content.
Facebook offers literally thousands of targeting options, some of the most basic being age, gender and interests. Look at your traditional marketing research and decide which groups would be the most valuable to target on Facebook.
Test Your Ads
Facebook has some incredibly effective testing tools that it puts at your disposal. You just need to know how to use them.
The Conversion Lift Measurement feature allows you to look at your ads to see which are getting the most clicks to help you to get new patients. Create several different versions of an ad, each with slightly different ad copy or picture, and allow those advertisements to run until you have some solid data. You can then look at which ad worked the best, and start to tailor new ads based on it. Think of it as a Facebook ad survival of the fittest.
Use Time-Sensitive Offers
People are more likely to take you up on an offer if there is a ticking clock attached. Seeing “only available for 24 more hours!” will get them clicking to take advantage while they still can.
This can be very useful if you are running any kind of promotion for plastic surgery services. Don’t just say that you’re offering 20% off a procedure, tell them it is only for a very limited time. This will greatly increase the likelihood they will immediately act and get clicking.
Get More People to “Like” Your Facebook Page
When people like your Facebook page, the stories that you add to it will organically show up in their newsfeed. These technically aren’t “ads” – but they function in much the same way, giving you the opportunity to better connect with your patients and share your content.
Newsfeed stories are far less intrusive than traditional ads, and are much more likely to be clicked on by those who see them. So, make sure that you have a steady stream of content (blog posts, photos, etc.) coming from your Facebook page to keep your Facebook audience engaged.
Choose Between Newsfeed Placements or Right Side Ads
You need to figure out where to allocate your advertising budget and which ads will give you the best bang for your buck.
Ads along the righthand side of the Facebook screens tend to be cheaper, while ads that are incorporated into someone’s newsfeed as a promoted post are more expensive. So why should you go for the newsfeed ads? Because ads that are incorporated into the newsfeed of a prospective patient are clicked on far more often. That’s only natural. When people are on Facebook, they are on their newsfeed, consuming content. If your content/ad is provided there, odds are greater that they will click on it. It takes more effort to look over to the righthand side of the screen and decide to click an ad to see where it will take you.
Use the New Facebook Ad Type – Lead Ads
Facebook is one of the most popular advertising platforms out there, and for a reason: they’re constantly coming up with new ways to let advertisers reach their customers. A new type of Facebook ad debuted just a few months ago and has already been showing fantastic returns for those who use them: lead ads.
One of the problems with getting people to sign up for newsletters and other online offers is that they need to spend time filling out forms. With lead ads, however, they don’t have to worry about it. Once they click on a lead ad, their information (such as email address and name) will already be there. All they have to do is click “submit” and their contact information is now in your hands. They can then choose to continue to your landing page to download whatever offer they’ve opted into. Simple, easy, and very effective.
Keep an Eye Out for the Latest Facebook Trends
Lead ads are just one example of the cutting-edge ad techniques Facebook utilizes. They are constantly updating and coming up with new features for both users and advertisers.
For example, Facebook video has been on a huge upswing in the last year, and more people are sharing video than ever, so you can expect auto-play videos to be the norm rather than the exception.
Facebook will likely create new opportunities for advertisers in 2017, with new ad categories allowing you to reach your audience better. The only way you can take advantage of this, though, is to keep updated on news about Facebook.
Useful links