Your Private Practice Guide to Facebook Advertising
The very idea of Facebook advertising may have your therapist stomach in nervous knots. However, to serve the clients who need you and boost both your profits and lifestyle, the ugly truth is you need to reach simple advertising mastery of this social media monolith.
And it’s not as hard as it sounds.
In this post, you’ll discover the massive benefits of Facebook for your private practice advertising, how the most popular social media brand is minutely geared to support advertising success, and the ‘must know’ strategies for private practice therapists to powerfully harness Facebook advertising.
Already know about FB Advertising and want to skip right to the good stuff? Download your Private Practice Guide to Facebook Advertising right now.
Cultivate A Love For Facebook
As has been the case for over a decade, Facebook is a popular staple on the social media menu. With 68% of Americans belonging to the Facebook family and 3/4’s reporting daily use, this offers therapists a powerful means of private practice advertising that is not found elsewhere.
Picture credit: Pew Research Center
As people — and potential clients — share their interests and insights, join groups and participate in issues, post and connect, Facebook is collating valuable information that can transform your practice. All you need to do is harness it to reach those who need your help.
But before we get to the how-to, I’m often asked…
Does Facebook Advertising Work for Therapists?
As people scroll through their newsfeeds, advertisements are now an accepted part of the viewing. When someone clicks on an advert of interest, Facebook charges the advertiser. This is called pay per click (PPC) advertising.
And while I’ve heard people mistakenly comment that people don’t click, with Facebook reporting a second-quarter advertising revenue of $9.16 billion this is clearly untrue. What is true is that a good return on investment (ROI) means advertisers stay.
With many therapists holding the false view that Facebook advertising doesn’t work, or having previously attempted this approach without understanding its important intricacies and so failed, fellow therapists may give you a skewed view.
What do these two facts tell us?
Facebook’s doors are open wide for private practice advertising done well, and direct competition is low!
How To Harness Facebook Advertising For Your Private Practice Growth
With its focus on relevance and helpfulness for its users, Facebook doesn’t select its pricing based on bids alone. This is great as a therapist! It means by targeting well and offering something of enticing value — and thus attaining the click — you can keep your costs down while reaping results. As private practices tend to be both local and specific, this is easier to do.
How?
Know What You Want… Specifically
When advertising, you must have a specific response in mind.
Do you want more page ‘likes’, clicks to a certain blog post, or to add potential clients to your database and your consultation books via a coupon?
Understand what you want for each specific campaign. As the saying goes, if you don’t know where you’re going, you will struggle to get there. This is even more important for those being advertised to as any hint of confusion will throw them into the wilderness, maybe never to respond to your Facebook enticements again. Tell them what you want them to do.
Next…
Drill down to Target Your Audience!
Being highly targeted takes some work, but it is well worth the effort… In fact, if you are hoping to throw a broad, undifferentiated net into the Facebook pool, please stay away from this platform and save your money…
The first step is to know your target; who is your ideal client?
The second step is to consider how to find them; where do they spend time on Facebook?
See as we mentioned in our article Paid Advertising – Does It Make Sense for Your Private Practice?…
Facebook is like an overseeing oracle. Because it collects information about everything its users do whilst engaged on its platform, it enables advertisers to uniquely fine-tune who sees their ad. Want to target single 40-year old men who work for the government, live in Kentucky and love dogs? Check.
Use this information, your client demographics and a potential client’s habituates to target well.
For example:
Do they follow other therapists? Wendy Dignan, Dr. Phil, Kelly Brogan.
Do you specialize in a specific mental health issue?
Depression sufferers may also ‘like’ Depression Awareness or Depression and be ‘members’ of groups like Anxiety and Depression Support Group, Depression Support and Depression Support Group.
Is there a certain type of therapy that works well for the condition you treat?
Cognitive Behavior Therapy, NLP or Tapping.
Make note of these so you can add them in the targeting section of your Facebook advertising campaign.
Geographic Targeting
Many therapists consult with their clients via face-to-face attendance in their private practice. You too? Great! Look through your consultation books and guesstimate where the majority of your clients live. Chances are it will likely be within the same town or surrounding suburbs of your practice.
Use this knowledge in your Facebook advertising targeting. It will allow you to easily reach local potential clients at a fraction of the cost of other approaches.
Picture credit: SproutSocial
From Targeting to Retargeting
What? I’ve only just targeted!
Facebook is a great place to get a foothold and begin to connect with new potential clients. However, someone who has never heard of you is unlikely to spend their cold hard cash on therapy with you after a single advert. First-time contacts are known as ‘cold’ leads. I think about this in terms of a stranger giving you the veritable cold shoulder. But…
What happens when they have a number of valuable contacts with you? Ah, then they warm up, they thaw. As Keith Kurlander from HigherPractice.com says, “Essentially, once they’ve read your blog post and visited your website, they are now more likely to recognize you and take interest when you expose them to another ad marketing your counseling services.”
As Keith discusses on his site, retargeting through the use of coding pixels enables your ads to be displayed to those who have shown an interest in your previous advertisements.
Testing Therapist Facebook Ads
Begin By Testing Small
Private practice advertising rarely gives you the small testing ability inherent in Facebook. After following the above steps, set up a campaign with a preset daily limit or a lifetime ad spend.
After a while, you’ll begin to understand which posts will rock and which may fail. You’ll also be able to use the ‘advertising insights’ to further hone in on your ideal client.
And then?
Test. Test. Test.
You must know your private practice advertising why’s and wherefore’s in order to improve your ROI and drive the biggest benefits to your practice’s bottom line.
We recommend a powerful approach called split, or A/B, testing. Adespresso.com defines this as:
A tactic by which you find out which ad headlines, body copy, images, call-to-actions, or a combination of the above work best for your target audience.
For an expansive beginner’s guide to A/B testing, their post is helpful.
And while testing is critical, other factors matter too. In this podcast, Jennifer Sneeden discusses 5 Lessons Learned from $21,572 in Facebook Advertising. I recommend the listen.
Once you’ve become adept at crafting holistic campaigns that reign superior, bringing a great return on investment, you can ramp these up… with slowness, grace, and attention. As with life, there are no guarantees and focus is important.
By understanding how Facebook advertising works and the role it plays in your overall private practice advertising strategy you can maximize your returns and results. This will enable you to serve those who need you and significantly improve your private practice success.
Get The Right Support
At Brighter Vision we realized – Yes, we’ve been asked A LOT! — that one of the most significant problems facing private practices, just like yours, was marketing and the time, skill and will to implement it. You know it matters but it’s tricky with everything else going on.
We put our expert marketing hats on to create our unique Online Marketing for Therapists Made Easy feature, designed to ensure easily shareable, professional content that will drive connection and engagement in conjunction with your Facebook advertising. Want to know more? I thought so! Check it out here.
Grab your Private Practice Guide to FB Advertising right here.
Want the beautiful therapist website you deserve? Then you’re in the perfect place.
Brighter Vision is the ultimate marketing package for therapists, centered around the best therapist website you’ve ever had. Fill out the form below to learn more about our team of professionals who can’t wait to help your practice grow like never before. 🙂
Ready to See How Brighter Vision Can Help You Get More Clients?
