Times have changed. We are living in a time where clinics are struggling to fill up their bookings and pay off their expensive machinery. 24/7 access to discount sites such as Groupon have left most clinics exhausted and looking for a way out. 

The top clinic owners though know how to use it to their advantage. As more clients are turning to the internet, guess where they’re marketing? 

In this article, I’m going to explain why most people fail when it comes to Facebook Advertising and the best tips to fix them! Maybe you’ve tried advertising before, or maybe you’re a complete newbie to the online world. The great news is that these tips work if you’re experienced with online advertising or a complete beginner. Why? Because it all starts with the fundamentals… and once you’ve got those sorted, the possibilities are endless. 

What is the use of FB Ads and why are they worth understanding? 

Before we dive in, it’s vital to understand exactly what Facebook Advertisements are. Facebook Advertisements are shown on users news feeds as they’re scrolling through looking at their friend’s posts. Advertisers can choose to place adverts in between these posts, with the aim of capturing the attention of their potential customers. 

This advertising platform is completely different from traditional marketing such as leaflet drops, radio ads, and email marketing. When running Facebook adverts, we only have around 1.7 seconds (Facebook For Business, 2016) to capture the users attention to make them stop! Pretty fast, right? This means our ads need to be short, snappy and intriguing straight away. 

So let’s talk about the top four mistakes I’ve seen clinics make on Facebook, and the easy solutions that you can implement today!

Pressing the ‘Boost’ Button 

Problem: The most common mistake that I see clinics make online is pressing the ‘boost’ button. This is a shiny blue button that appears under most Facebook posts you’ll make on your business page. The idea behind it is to reach more people which sounds like a good plan. However, it’s one of the quickest ways to waste your advertising budget. Why? Because your goal isn’t to just reach more people, it’s about converting people into paying clients. I’d rather my adverts reach 100 people and I generate £3000 in sales than reaching 2500 people and generating £100 in sales. 

The three steps you can tweak when boosting posts are: 

1. Who you want to reach (choose target audience) 
2. Your max budget 
3. How long you want your advert to last 

If you want to start generating new clients, this button isn’t going to help you reach that goal. 

Solution: The way to solve this problem is to load up ‘Ads Manager’ inside of Facebook. This tool allows you to set up adverts that are more tailored towards generating high-quality leads. The benefits of Ads Manager is that it allows you to: – Implement more detailed targeting / customer demographics 

– Split test new ads to find the ‘winner’ 

– Choose new ad ‘placements’ such as messenger ads, Instagram stories… 

With this new tool, you’ll be able to accurately track your adverts and ensure that the money you’re spending is being put to good use. I’ve personally seen clinics switch to ‘ads manager’ and reduce their ‘cost per lead’ by over 50%. 

No Clear Offer 

Problem: As I said previously, we only have 1.7 seconds to capture our potential customers’ attention on Facebook. I regularly see adverts online which have no clear offer and it’s hard to understand what the clinic is offering (without spending a while reading the ad). With any Facebook Adverts, we want to have the offer extremely clear and easy to understand. 

Solution: The best way to do this is to ‘sell the sizzle, not the steak’. We need to sell the transformation and not the ins and outs of the treatment process. Of course, we

want to educate the potential clients, but at first, we want to hook them in so that they book an appointment with you. Choose one treatment that you want to promote per advert. If you try and advertise all of the treatments you offer in one advert, it’ll confuse the potential customer and they’ll just scroll past. Be specific and clear on the treatment you want to promote and the transformation it brings. On the advert, you’ll also want to have ‘real’ images/videos of the treatment in action. This works much better than stock images on Facebook as people online will want to see your team, clinic and, real-life clients being treated. Please ensure that you follow Facebook’s Guidelines on what images/wording you can use on the adverts to make sure your adverts are not banned. 

Not Using A Dedicated Landing Page 

Problem: When running Facebook Advertising, the goal is to convert them into paying clients. For most clinics, their first thought is to send people directly to their website homepage to hook people in. Although this sounds like a good idea, the results it yields are very low. The reason is that your website has lots of buttons, services, menus etc… and it can be overwhelming (too much choice). Our goal is to easily collect the customers information and take payment, and with a normal website, it’s not optimised to achieve this. 

Solution: Introducing, Landing Pages! These are websites (usually one-pagers) that are specifically designed with one goal in mind: conversion. 

If you have a dedicated landing page for your Facebook Advertising pages, you’ll immediately generate more enquiries and be able to qualify them much better. You must also ensure that the landing page is mobile optimised. It’s very common for landing pages to look incredible on a computer screen, but when viewed on a phone, it looks quite messy. 

The most important element on the landing page, when viewed on mobile, is that the ‘opt-in’ button is ‘above the fold’. This means that the user doesn’t have to scroll down on their phone to find the button, it should be visible as soon as they arrive on the landing page. 

The best converting layout that I’ve seen working for clinics is like this: 

– Clear Headline Saying Your Offer 

– Short Paragraph Explaining Offer Details / Price 

– Image Of Treatment In Action

– Large Button To Opt-In (to collect name, email & number) 

If you JUST include these 5 elements on your landing page, you’ll see great results. 

No Follow-Up Strategy 

Problem: Generating enquiries is amazing, but if they don’t convert into paying clients, it’s very frustrating! Before you launch any paid advertising, you need to ensure that you have your follow-up strategy in place. If you don’t, you’ll be losing out on new clients every single day! 

Delegate a member of your team to follow-up with all enquiries, give them a sales script and ensure that they understand the end goal. It’s vital that all of your team know the customer journey that clients will go through on your campaign. These enquiries are in a different buying state compared to warm referrals. You’ll need to warm them up on the phone a bit more and answer more questions, but it’ll be worth it once they walk through your doors. 

Solution: The best formula we’ve seen work for our clinics is to call all enquiries within 5 minutes of them coming through (between working hours). As crazy as that sounds, calling within 5 minutes is 21x more effective than calling after 30 minutes (2007, Elkington). The longer it takes you to phone up the enquiries, the less chance there is to convert them! 

If you’re a solo practitioner or just don’t have the staff power to all enquiries within 5 minutes, there are other ways to get around this. You can text enquiries within 5 minutes using your CRM system or send out emails automatically. However, we have found that calling enquiries and having a real conversation is the best way to build trust and book them in for an appointment. 

If you’ve qualified these enquiries before they get to you, you’ll already know that they’re local, have disposable income and are a good fit for the treatment you’re advertising. All you have to do now is be persistent in following up with the enquiries. Remember, you’ve got the solution to their problem and they have requested a call. Keep going! 

SUMMARY 

Facebook marketing can be extremely confusing and frustrating for many clinics, however, as you’ve seen in this article, a few tweaks can make a huge impact on the results. Test out these tips on your next campaign and you’ll see an uplift in quality enquiries coming through.