Facebook Advertising: How to Get more Patients for Dentists?

Patients for Dentists: Facebook Advertising: Calculations, Cost and Leads

How to get more leads for tooth problems in a Dental Clinic by advertising on Facebook?

People often get scared of visiting a dentist even when they are having a severe toothache. 

This is due to the fear of injections and the cleaning machine (ultrasonic scalar), the dentists use to clean the cavity.

Yet it's up to a dentist on how he convinces the patient to go for the process.

To get a few more people for their clinic it becomes important for them to promote their business.

One of the ways to promote a business is by using Facebook advertising.

Facebook advertising works in 2 ways, the first way goes through creating brand awareness in the nearby area.

For a dentist, it becomes important to make a survey of its customers that include a few points to make their audience data stronger.

If you have a laptop or computer at your clinic or home, I request you to kindly read it on a big screen so you do not get bored scrolling your mobile phone and get serious about the work. So share the link if you have a laptop or PC and start to act.

What are some important data points for a dentist to collect from his walking customers?

1. Age of the Patient

2. Patients Company (With parents, or alone)

3. Patients Gender

4. Patients occupation

5. Patients living place from the clinic (in kilometers or miles)

6. Patients Email adress

7. Patients Phone number

8. What is more area of interest? (Fond of eating more)

Let's say this Audience data as an equation I ----------------[I]

All the above data is used especially the patients living place from the clinic in km or miles. 

For example, anyone would not like to travel more than 5 kilometers to 8 kilometers to have dental treatment.

So this data would be informative to have a deep dive into audience insights when you would start advertising.

One more important thing here a dentist needs to understand is that the clinic location you are about to advertise should be owned.

This is because you would invest a sum in Facebook advertising on a location of your clinic and you would be happier to invest & promote it.

No issue if you rent the clinic it would still be of your benefit if the rent agreement is more than 5 years because this is a long span and one should go with it.

One is able to promote his clinic and work on Facebook in 2 ways, the first way is investing more in advertisements (Brand awareness) and the other is by direct advertisements.

How to create brand awareness on Facebook and how much does it cost?

Coming straight to the point I will show you a step-by-step procedure on how to create your advertisement for clinic and work.

Also, you will get an idea about how much you need to invest in brand awareness considering the traffic that you can handle at your clinic.

Remember all these calculations you can make more perfect than me so you get the right judgment about the number of patients you can handle in a day.

I am taking an example of the place where I live Pune, Maharashtra India. I am assuming that I am a dentist with my clinic at Iskon Temple Chowk, Katraj Kondhwa Road, Pune.

Head on to facebook.com login and open your new Facebook business page.

Creating a business page on Facebook is pretty easy and does not need any rocket calculation.

But if you still do not know how to create a new Facebook business page read the below article and follow simple steps.

How to open a business page on Facebook in simple steps?¹

Now on the Facebook business page scroll down a little and you get several options to create an Ad.

Select "Promote your Page" and you can design the type of profile picture that would more suit your business and attract more audience.

You can start using CANVA banner designing easy to use tool that creates professional banners for your business.

If you don't know how to create a professional cover photo for your Facebook business page please read the below article and proceed.

How to design a Facebook business page cover photo on CANVA? ² --------[II]

Now you have the cover photo for advertisements and after selecting "Promote your Page" you go on a new interface.

In the description you can write text for example - I am Dhiraj Gursale Bachelors of Dental surgery passed out in the year and university so and so.

My checkup fee is only Rs so & so and I have my clinic at the so and so location. If you wish you can also, add all the list of services you offer with the fees.

Trust me doing this in the first place allows the customer to decide to go with you or not depending upon the budget.

Example - Checkup - A Rs, X-ray - Y Rs, Temporary Cement filling - C Rs, Permanent cement filling - D Rs, etc and the list goes so on.

The rates are examples given by me as I am not a dentist so you can put your clinic rates here.

Next, you can select the Edit option for the image and choose the type of banner you desire to promote on your page that would get more likes and shares, refer to equation [II].

Now under the audience section select the option "People you choose through targeting" or "create a new audience" or "People in your area".

How to select the Target audience on Facebook advertising for the Dentists clinic?

Choose the option "Create a new audience", and select the distance in kilometers radius you desire your patient should visit the clinic.

In the audience name, I would like to give it as Business of my Dental clinic located at so and so location.

Remember equation number I from the initial stage of the article, where I told you to collect the walk-in customer's data. 

You need to select the distance in kilometers and I would suggest selecting a 5 to 8 kilometers radius. 

You can select this if you have gathered a large audience data at your clinic and would also sound like a better idea that would save your budget.

Now to save the advertising budget here you need to select the lesser radius of audience depending upon the distance you're large the audience visits your clinic.

In the location section, the city might be written by default and you need to delete it and then drop the pin option that appears on the interface.

In the location, it is easy and better to drop a pin directly at your clinic located in your city.

In this case or my example, I am dropping a pin at my clinic the location that is available at Google selecting 4 kilometers and proceeding further. 

Select the drop Pin option and drop it at your clinic by zooming in the city your clinic is located. 

Or if your clinic is available on Google maps type the address and select the location. 

Age I am selecting 30 years and 65 + because this is the audience that are grownups and responsible.

The lesser the kilometer you select, the lesser the budget you use to reach that audience as it is obvious no person would travel 10 km unless he is used to that dentist. 

In interest, I would like to suggest the keywords as mentioned in the below paragraph. 

In terms of gender, you can select all men and women depending upon the customer's demographics that visit you remember the equation I that will prove your business more.

In this case, I am keeping gender for all so my advertisement will reach all.

 

Scroll down a bit little and select the interest and demographics of your audience.

In this case of interest, I am selecting health, fitness, and food so these types of people are health conscious and likely to come to your clinic.

In detail targeting for your audience select the browse option, and under interest type for "dental" and select the interests of people as mentioned below.

- Dental assistance

- Dental consonant

- Dental hygienist

- Dental technician

- Dental plaque

- Dental floss

- Toothpaste interests

- Wisdom tooth

- Foodie

- Scroll a bit little and under the options "food and drinks" select "food" and then select "chocolate" -----------------------------------------[III]

After entering all the above keywords also I would like you to suggest more keywords to enter in this and select the one available on the Facebook algorithm.

As I am not a professional dentist but yet I can figure out a few business keywords for you and you can do it better than me. Go back to the previous page and save the audience. 

After entering the location and selecting the radius to 4 km the interested audience size is 120000. 

This is the management for the largest saving of your budget for a Facebook advertisement. 

Now scroll down a bit little select the advertisement duration to 30 days and change the default 5 days duration. 

This is because longer advertisements perform better than short-term ads.

Now we need to reach this 120000 people in the locality and to reach them I need some advertisement budget.

With this budget, the least reach of the audience will be between 1700 to 4900 in a day. 

The ads duration I have made for 30 days so the advertisement will reach some population. This reach depends upon audience interaction and shares.

The estimated page likes will depend upon the quality of content you use to advertise on Facebook.

This also depends upon the quality of the banner you have used for your advertisement, so remember to create the best that would encourage the people to like share, and follow your page.

Remember you are investing this type of budget, so you need to be very dedicated about what quality service you are offering.

Also, if you win the people’s confidence they would approach you no matter even if they go to live a distance longer than where they used to live nearby your clinic. 

Scroll up at the top right corner of the interface and select “See all Previews” and here you are able to see all the various types of previews on various devices and interfaces. 

This was all about brand awareness and it involves budget investment to track the right audience from your locality. 

Also, you can use all the audience nearby the radius of your clinic if you are ready to invest more and promote your service as a brand. 

Now here is the deal, from this stage you can start making bookings at a very low speed which will start to increase gradually after 2 to 3 months when you start to post your work on your business page consistently.  

 

How to promote local business on Facebook and how much does it cost?

Coming straightway to the point facebook local business promotion ads are very cheap and allow the advertiser to reach a large audience at a very low cost. 

Unlike brand awareness promoting the business page, this promotion of local business is very effective as the cost gets reduced as what we invested in the brand awareness stage.

On your Facebook Business Page select “promote your business locally” and you need to select the distance in kilometers, for example, I am selecting 5 kilometers.

Select the audience age between 25 to 65+, gender – all write the description of your advertisement. 

Here one can use various types of the marketing business for advertising, like free dental checkups, etc to get the patient in your marketing funnel.

When he reaches you, after checking you can suggest the required treatment and also offer him the quote for the same. 

For this advertising again use the same keywords that I have mentioned in the equation [III].

Change if your advertising campaign is different for different types of treatment. 

Again in the description, you need to add the type of advertisement you are running.

Few advertisements that a dentist can run areas mentioned below:

 

1.     Free check-up –Book an appointment now

2.     Checkup and X-ray at just Rs X - Book an appointment now

3.     Root canalling treatment at just Rs X - Book an appointment now

4.     Cavity Treatment at Just Rs X - Book an appointment now

 

These advertisements are going to work if the dentist offers value for people through the number of posts they publish on the Facebook pages.

The more the page offers value to the people, the more it gets explored in a large audience.

One needs to provide valuable information to people in terms of winning their confidence, trust for getting new customers.

Change the banner as designed by you on CANVA³ and give a simple headline.

Here I am keeping getting directions like a good option so the audience can follow the maps and visit the clinic. 

Increase the number of days to 15 and select the minimum budget for the advertisement.

In this selected amount you come to know the daily reach and your budget.

When you scroll down you see the options like Instagram and Facebook, select and unselect Instagram to check the audience's reach whether it’s lower or higher.

In this case, when I unselected Instagram the reaches were more, and decide accordingly. 

Add money to your account via PAYTM or any other app and promote the advertisement.

Remember the advertisement goal should match the design banner that you would use for the advertisement. 

Note to remember – Mouth publicity is the best publicity and people prefer anyone who is referred as he has some experience so he is referring.