The reality is that social media has become “pay-to-play,” especially in the medical and dermatologic space, and that means if you want to get new patients, you may find it helpful to pay for advertising in order to get your messaging and content in front of potential patients. Social media is different than traditional advertising or online search. It requires knowledge of your audience and the technology and deployment of a strategy that shows you to be authentic and approachable. Here are three trends you need to consider to make your online advertising an effective tool to grow your practice.
Stay On Target
The vast majority of social media advertising is known as “display” or “pattern interrupt” advertising. This means that the most crucial component of your ads is your targeting. Targeting is how you determine who will see your ad. Facebook and Instagram are very customizable, and you can break down audiences by age, gender, interests and location. You won’t have a considerable amount of control over exactly when your ad will show to a potential user, but you can control who sees it.
Practices have to balance between targeting an audience that is too narrow (usually caused by self-imposed biases or beliefs about your ideal client) or an overly large audience. Consider your desired client, but also their interests. Are you trying to reach a young audience? Perhaps key into local Kardashian fans. What about working moms? Try targeting people who follow “mommy influencers.”
And the good news is that as you learn more about your audience, so will the platforms, meaning that your target audience will only improve over time because of artificial intelligence (AI).
Artificial Intelligence
AI and “machine learning” aren’t the sci-fi future anymore. The time when robots and computers are making big decisions is now. The Facebook / Instagram Ad AI is quite good at identifying correlative components between people as long as your target audience and ad spend are large enough. The AI can analyze 10,000+ data points, including behaviors, characteristics and demographics, allowing it to be significantly more precise in finding a buying audience that a human may not have even considered.
However, the AI’s ability to do this requires a lot of testing, which means it involves ad spending to perform this testing. Prepare a budget that allows you to make medium-size tests so you and the AI can learn where your key audience is. Then when you go big, you can do so with the confidence that you’re reaching a honed-in and precise audience.
Patient-Generated Content
It is more vital than ever that brands be honest and transparent with audiences, stripping away medical jargon and instead focusing on real-results from real people. A great way to do this is by sharing content from your clients or having your clients post right onto your social media. In turn you can promote and advertise these results to gain new followers and leads.
Some of you may already have influencers you use for posting, but the modern patient is smart and can see through influencers a lot of the time. No one likes to be sold to. The key is to use real patients and their real experiences. Considering having a patient visit your clinic and “take over” social media for the day, posting about why they’re visiting and conducting live streams of procedures. Watching someone receive injections or a laser treatment live can help ease some patients who might be afraid of such procedures. But overall, you want to be authentic and true. People on social media are thirsty for content that talks with them, not at them. Facebook and Instagram need to be a place of conversation and exchange. The more open you are, the more patients can trust you.
Overall, social media advertising and marketing is about understanding the technology, your audience and how to engage with them authentically. By paying close attention to targeting, working with the AI by making tester bets and breaking down barriers between you and your patients, you can turn your Instagram and Facebook into a tool that will deliver consistent, high quality leads.