If you’re searching for a dental marketing plan that works, you came to the right place. Dental marketing has come a long way since the days when phone book ads were the way to go.
Today, a good dental marketing plan includes both offline and online marketing strategies. But many dental practices struggle to choose dental marketing plans that work with so many options. Here are three proven dental marketing strategies that work today.
1. Serve your patients well.
Many times, dental practices that put together a dental marketing plan focus solely on marketing to new clients. While that’s natural, a practice’s best and fastest path to higher profits is often by serving patients well.
One way to serve patients well is to implement a monthly newsletter to stay top of mind. Include in your newsletter what you have done that month to serve your community. Include a featured service. Highlight continuing education, new services, and exciting team members and practice accomplishments. Your newsletter demonstrates your commitment to the community and serving patients well in a way that gives patients a gentle reminder to schedule their next appointment.
In addition to a newsletter, look for ways to add excitement to your practice. For example, you can start a kid's club. We implemented one in my practice and kids love it. Each kid gets a t-shirt. When they come in, they get a printed kids’ newsletter that we produce every three months or so that includes a special deal at a local business, which we arrange with other businesses. We also include a few dental tips for kids. The kids love it and feel very special.
Finally, make sure your patients feel like VIPs when they’re in your practice. One thing we do in my practice is bring out warm peppermint scented towels on a silver platter at the end of the treatment, so people can wipe their hands, or even freshen up their face. Patients love it.
There are lots of things that you can do for existing patients to make them feel like VIPs. By doing so, you generate loyalty and raving fans that will start referring you to their family, friends, and coworkers.
2. Build community engagement.
Another dental marketing strategy that works is to invest in getting your community to talk about you. This is an area I'm really excited about because it works so well while improving your local community. I’ve helped a number of practices implement these campaigns in their community, too, and it works incredibly well.
One of the best things about community engagement campaigns is their simplicity. For example, one community engagement campaign that works well is a clothing drive. In my practice, one successful campaign we conducted was a post-Christmas clothing drive. We encouraged people to clear out their drawers and drop off clothes at our office. We then randomly selected someone to win a gift card toward services in our practice who dropped off clothes.
Other examples of community engagement campaigns include having a free kid's dental day or doing coloring contests for kids. You can promote and implement these types of campaigns easily by sharing on social media and even build an email marketing list by having people submit their email to be able to download the coloring sheet.
Finally, one of the most impactful and successful campaigns you can do is to conduct a Project Smile competition, where you ask people to nominate someone for a chance to receive a new smile. Project Smile campaigns are extremely powerful, very fulfilling, and it's really great for your team health and culture.
3. Create a consistent presence and strategy.
The third strategy that works is to be simple and consistent with your marketing. Way too many practices market in piecemeal. They have one look, feel, and messaging on their website but their marketing campaigns look completely different. Others only market online but not offline. Others market only offline.
As simple as it sounds, the most successful practices maintain a clear, consistent, presence and marketing strategy both online and offline. They market online but don’t forget about serving their patients and investing in their community. They have a professional, modern website but also brochures that patients can pick up. They market to patients but also other businesses, dropping off brochures at pediatricians and other medical providers in their area. They go out of their way to thank people who refer patients to the practice and strike deals with local businesses to give their customers or employees special treatment or a special deal.
If your marketing plan doesn’t seem to work very well, it might be that you are investing too much time and attention on only one type of marketing. A simple, consistent, balanced approach to dental marketing helps maintain a more consistent, professional message throughout your potential patient pool.
Do you need a dental marketing plan that works?
With so many dental marketing plans available, it’s easy to get stuck spending money on marketing that doesn’t work. If you’ve struggled to build momentum with your marketing, three strategies can help.
When you’re looking for information, what’s the first thing you do? You pull out your phone or pull up a web browser and go straight to Google. Well, guess what? Your potential patients do exactly the same thing when they’re looking for dental information or to find a new dentist.
Google is the number one search engine, but it’s so much more than that. It’s the default we all turn to when we need information. That’s why I’m going to tell you how you can turn all of those Google searches into an amazing marketing tool for your business, and it’s only going to take you about five minutes to set up using Google My Business. Here’s how.
Update and customize your Google My Business page.
You might already have a Google My Business page set up for your practice, but many practices are not making the most of their pages. If you’ve never taken the time to customize your business page, you definitely want to do that. Start by updating your business hours, adding an online scheduling link, and verifying your location so people can pop it right into their GPS or navigation app and find you.
But if you want to really get the most out of Google My Business, you’ll want to take things one step further and add some real, live video testimonials to your page. That way, when potential patients land there, they’ll be able to see your happy patients talking about their amazing experiences in your office.
If you don’t already have video testimonials, the next step will be to start collecting them. If you do, here’s how you can easily collect even more.
Ask patients about their experience at the end of each visit.
If you’re already a part of the Dental Boss Movement, you know I’m a big believer in the importance of asking your patients about their experience at the end of each visit. This is really important information to have, in general, because it helps you and your team focus on consistently providing an exceptional experience every single time.
And when you are focusing on delivering that WOW factor with every single patient, it’s a good bet that your patient will say, “Yeah, this was a great visit.” Utilize any constructive feedback to improve.
Ask your happy patients to record a short video testimonial.
When a patient raves about their experience, ask them to record a short testimonial on the spot. Keep it simple. You can say, “Well, you know, we’d really love it if you’d let us record a quick video with you to talk about how things went today.”
Emphasize that there are a lot of people who are afraid to go to the dentist, and hearing from real people like them might just change someone’s life. More often than you might expect, patients will spare two or three minutes to film it quickly.
Upload the video to your Facebook and Google My Business pages.
Once you record that video, start sharing it on social media. Get it uploaded to your Facebook page, maybe repurpose it for an ad. You can target the people who watch it with a special ad campaign.
Also, take that same video and upload it directly to Google so anytime someone lands on your listing, that video review pops up. You don’t need to edit it at all. Just use the same video. It is very reassuring for potential patients to see a real patient talking about the incredible experience they had at your practice.
Even better, if you get into the habit of uploading videos to your Google My Business page regularly, your listing will really stand out from others. Very few people realize that Google even offers this option. So while other practices might have an ordinary listing with practice hours and maybe a map, you’ll have a page that really establishes you as an authority.
Add other videos to your Google My Business page so patients get to know you better.
You can add all kinds of videos to your page so don’t stop with only testimonials. Anytime you’re running a community campaign, if you’re helping raise funds for a local charity, or if you go live on your Facebook page to talk about dental care, you can download that video and re-upload it directly to your Google My Business page. You can download any video you record live on Facebook with just a couple of clicks. Uploading them directly to your Google My Business page gets you double the exposure and traffic without any additional work.
What's especially great is that you can then add buttons to your page, so people can schedule an appointment or call the practice with a single click. That’s very helpful when someone’s on mobile.
Are you using Google My Business to grow your dental practice?
If you build out your Google My Business page the right way and make it easy for patients to find your practice when they search on Google, you can start to see a regular flow of patients come from Google searches.
If you want more help, check out my marketing and practice growth challenge where we help you put together and execute a plan to get more patients and build a WOW dental practice. And if you want to join a community of Dental Bosses just like you, I have a Facebook group where over 1000 Dental Bosses are already learning and growing. Join us in the Dental Boss Movement Facebook group.
If you’re just starting your dental practice, how long do you think it will take you to fill your chairs? One month? Two? Six? What if I told you that you could book out your start-up dental practice on a budget of less than $1,000?
Starting up a dental practice is an expensive project. Between equipment, supplies, team members, and your office space and build-out, many start-up practice owners become stretched financially.
So, how does anybody have enough money to get a start-up dental practice off the ground? If you follow these steps, you only need a little bit of money left. You just need to be willing to step outside your comfort zone and use Facebook to do things differently. Here’s all you need to do.
1. Start early and go live on Facebook.
If you want results—patients in your chairs, a profitable practice, people in your community talking about you and referring patients to you—you’re going to have to get out there and do things that might be a little bit scary at first.
The best way to start building your audience is to start early and go live on Facebook. Set up a Facebook page for your dental practice. This is new for many dentists, but it’s important. Most dentists aren’t very comfortable going live on Facebook. I wasn’t when I got started, but I knew it was important. So don’t wait until you build your audience. I still get nervous when I go live, but I’m much more comfortable now than when I began. But I knew you and other dentists needed to hear my message in order to build a better, more fulfilling practice.
I also know that your future patients need to hear your heart for changing lives through your practice. There’s a mom with kids who hate going to the dentist. There’s a mom who hates going to the dentist for herself! And you’re the person who can change that—but that can only happen if your patients know about you. Your community needs you, and they’re all on Facebook.
2. Speak from the heart.
Facebook provides you with an absolutely incredible opportunity to share your heart with thousands of people in your community. I’ve seen hundreds of start-ups tap into the power of Facebook to get new patients extremely quickly. So what do they do? They speak from the heart.
Go live, and share your excitement about your practice. Tell them your vision for your practice. Talk about why you went to dental school. Tell people why you’re launching your start-up, what your practice will look like when it’s open, and how your patients will feel when they come into your practice.
It won’t be perfect—and that’s okay. This video will show your community that you’re a real person, and that you’re building a practice to serve your community. Plus, once you’ve done your first Facebook Live video, you’ll never have to do your first Facebook Live video again.
3. Go live regularly.
After your first video, continue to build that momentum by going live once a week to talk about dental topics and updates on your practice. When you do this, you’ll position yourself as an expert while you’re building your video views and audience engagement.
The more videos you make, the more people will start to comment and share, and you’ll be able to use Facebook’s amazing tools to retarget those people later on for high-value services like implants and Invisalign.
If you have trouble thinking of what to talk about every time you go live, here are some ideas to get you started:
How can I have a cavity if my tooth doesn’t hurt?
Why do I need a crown—can’t I just have another filling done?
The options to replace a missing tooth: denture vs. bridge vs. implant.
Why do I need a root canal, and what does it mean to have a root canal?
Why do my gums bleed? What is periodontal disease, and how can I treat it?
There are whitening options for every mouth.
Why do we get our teeth cleaned at the dentist vs. just brushing at home?
That’s nearly two months of Tooth Talk Topics, which will give you plenty of time to come up with more ideas on your own. And, you can ask the people who watch your videos to let you know in the comments what other topics they’d like you to cover.
4. Start running community engagement campaigns.
One you have begun to set yourself up as a trustworthy and reliable expert, you’re ready to start running what’s called community engagement campaigns.
Simply put, community engagement campaigns are promotions you host on Facebook to build relationships with people in your community. This gives you an opportunity to network in your area while attracting only potential patients to your promotion. For example, you could run a gift card giveaway with prizes donated by other local businesses. You could run a smile makeover competition to coincide with your grand opening. You could give away a $1,000 gift card or free tooth whitening for life, a 30-day floss challenge—the possibilities are truly endless.
Make sure the promotion involves local businesses or services in your office. If you give away an iPad or Amazon gift card, anyone around the world will sign up. Local businesses or in-office service focuses on potential patients in your area. Community engagement promotions help get positive attention on your practice and often fill up your schedule before you even open your doors. They are incredibly effective.
5. Set up custom Facebook audiences for future promotions.
Once you have started filling your chairs, be sure to set up Facebook ad targeting audiences for your dental practice. Setting up these audiences allows you to spend a few dollars promoting your videos to warm, engaged audiences.
It’s not hard to do, and with the right training, you can make sure that your videos are getting out in front of exactly the right people—the people who are going to start filling those chairs in your practice in the present and the future, and telling their friends to come, too.
Are you ready to fill your schedule even before you open the doors to your practice?
If you like the idea of getting all your spots booked out before you open the door, jump on Facebook, go live, and run community engagement campaigns. It’ll get people talking about you online and offline and help your phone start ringing with patients excited to get in your chair.
If you want help, join me for the Marketing and Practice Growth challenge, where you’ll learn exactly how to get your practice up and running the right way. And if you want to join a community of Dental Bosses just like you, I have a Facebook group where more than 1,000 Dental Bosses are already learning and growing. Join us in the Dental Boss Movement Facebook group if you want support and training as you grow your dental practice.
Social media marketing has transformed dental practices in an almost unprecedented fashion. My team and I have spent years studying, testing, and analyzing the best strategies for using social media for dental practices.
At first, we used Facebook to build an audience of over 50,000 raving fans for my dental practice and turn those leads into dozens of new patients every month, all by utilizing the best dental social media marketing techniques available on Facebook to share our story and build great connections with our Facebook fans and others who had never heard of us.
After testing and refining those strategies, we started helping other dentists and dental practices utilize dental social media marketing strategies to grow their practices, too.
We found the most powerful social media site for dental social media marketing to be Facebook.
Facebook gives the most robust ad-targeting capabilities out of all dental social media marketing options.
Dental Facebook marketing costs less than traditional marketing and other social media for dentists.
Facebook makes available to everyone the same tools that only big companies used to be able to afford.
Facebook allows you to act fast to fill last-minute cancellations or promote an event or special offer, getting organic and paid posts up in minutes.
Facebook gives dentists sophisticated performance data for all Facebook ads they post so you can know your exact return on investment.
Facebook allows you to change different variations of the same dental Facebook ad to split test ads against each other.
And more…
Because of how powerful Facebook can be to build a dental practice, my team and I now use the same strategies we used to grow my practice to help other dentists and dental practices as part of our dental-marketing services. The strategies we use for our dental-marketing clients are the same strategies I share in this guide to Facebook for dentists and can help dental practices of all shapes, sizes, locations, and specialties. They can help you create a dental Facebook marketing and organic presence that is effective, efficient, and predictable—no matter what your practice looks like.
Don’t worry if you’ve tried using Facebook to promote your dental practice before, don’t understand how Facebook can help grow a dental practice, don’t think you have the time for dental Facebook marketing, or think Facebook is expensive. You’re not alone. Many dentists feel this way about using Facebook for dentists. I assure you, each of those objections isn’t true, and I’ll show you exactly what to do to help you get reliable, affordable, and consistent using Facebook to grow your dental practice.
Whether your dental practice has been open for decades, is still months from opening, or anything in between, you can use dental Facebook marketing to grow your practice and get patients in your chair for a fraction of what you’d have to spend on traditional dental-marketing techniques.
The Best Dental Facebook-Marketing Techniques to Build Your Practice
This definitive guide to dental Facebook marketing will walk you through the three things my team and I do to build dental Facebook-marketing campaigns for dentists around the world to help you do the same for your dental practice.
First, I’ll share the most important things you can do to build a dental Facebook page. The best dental Facebook pages have a few things in common. We’ll share what makes the best dental Facebook pages so great, and how you can do the same! If your dental office Facebook page is bland and ineffective, this section will help you give it life and get it ready to build fans and convert them to new patients. If you’re a dentist looking to build an individual presence on Facebook, this section will give you tips to build a great dentist Facebook page to build your individual reputation and following.
Second, I’ll share the best strategies for creating great dental Facebook posts. Creating social media posts for dentists is one of the favorite things my team does. I’ll share the best strategies for creating dental Facebook posts that will help you build a group of raving Facebook fans!
Third, I’ll help you plan and prepare the most effective Facebook ads. Facebook advertising for dentists allows you to reach people with unprecedented precision to help you get better and faster results at a fraction of what dentists and dental practices typically spend on dental ads in traditional media and other advertising. I’ll teach you how the best Facebook ads for dentists perform and how you can get the most effective Facebook dental ads strategies working for you.
If you’re ready to have the best social media marketing strategies for dentists working on your behalf to build the best dental Facebook page possible for your practice, the best dental Facebook posts building engagement and raving fans, and the most efficient and effective dental Facebook ads directing people to your special offers and dental marketing funnels, then follow the steps I outline in the rest of this definitive guide to dental Facebook marketing!
How to Build the Best Dental Facebook Pages
Every dentist or dental practice needs a dental Facebook page to act as their home base on Facebook and give them a platform to grow and connect with their patients, prospects, and Facebook fans. Here’s everything you need to know to build and optimize a Facebook page for your practice even if you haven’t opened the doors yet.
How to Build the Best Dental Facebook Page for Your Practice
If you haven’t set up a dental Facebook page for your practice or a dentist Facebook page if you’re a one-person shop, setting up a dental Facebook page for free is a simple five-step process. If you’re just getting started, don’t worry. The best dental Facebook pages all got started by following the same five steps.
To set up the best dental Facebook page for your practice, you first need to go to the Facebook page creation page. Most dental offices will select the “Local Business or Place” option on that page. After choosing the right option for your dental practice, enter your business category and practice contact information. Common options for business categories for dentists include “Dentist & Dental Office,” “General Dentist,” “Cosmetic Dentist,” and “Pediatric Dentist.”
After you set up your dentist Facebook page or dental office Facebook page, whichever is appropriate for your practice, you will next need to upload an appropriate Facebook page profile picture and cover photo. I suggest using a high-resolution, professional close-up of you for a profile if you’re building a dentist Facebook page, or of your logo if you’re building a dental practice Facebook page. Make sure your images are the ideal size for Facebook pages, which change from time to time. Any quality graphic designer or dental-marketing company will know the right size for a Facebook profile picture and cover image.
The best dental Facebook pages also have robust, custom profiles. Specifically, when first setting up your dental Facebook page, Facebook will ask you to enter a short description of your practice. Enter a couple of sentences to tell people what your practice is all about. Let them know why your practice is different. You will also be asked to enter hours of operation, team members, and links to your website. Fill out all the demographic and contact information possible.
You can also customize a button under your Facebook cover photo. By default, this is usually set to read “send message” and lets people message you on Facebook. You can change it to a number of things. For dentists, I usually suggest editing the button to allow people to schedule an appointment, but if you’re building dental-marketing funnels, you can also change it to send people to your dental marketing funnel or to learn more about your practice. You can also include links to your website or a dental marketing funnel in your about section.
How to Optimize a Dental Facebook Page
If you just set up your new dental practice Facebook page through the instructions on this page and the additional dental Facebook page setup tips, your Facebook and the additional dental Facebook page tips, congratulations! You’re ready to begin posting and promoting your page.
If you already have a dental Facebook page, make sure your profile includes all the elements on this page and the additional tips for effectively using Facebook for dentists.
Specifically, to optimize an existing dental Facebook page, make sure:
Your dental Facebook page has complete practice contact information.
Your page has accurate hours of operation.
Your profile picture and cover images are professional, hi-res images that convey your practice culture.
Your about section includes complete and accurate statements about what makes your dental practice different.
You add trusted team members to your dental office Facebook page list of team members.
Your button under your dental Facebook page cover photo directs people to engage with your dental practice how you want them to, such as to send you a message or schedule an appointment.
With these things in place, your dental office Facebook page will be ready for posts and promotion so you can build a loyal audience and attract new patients to your office.
How to Grow Your Dental Office Facebook Page Following
Once your dental office Facebook page is set up and optimized, you’re ready to build your Facebook following and convert strangers into patients. The first thing you can do to start building your dental office Facebook page following is invite your Facebook friends to like your page. To invite your Facebook page to like your dental Facebook page, click the gray button with three dots on it under your Facebook page cover photo, to the left of your blue “Learn More,” “Schedule an Appointment,” or “Send Message” button. Next, click “Invite Friends,” and click the “Invite” button next to all friends you want to invite.
This is a quick and easy way to get your first one hundred or more Facebook fans. Although many of these people won’t be patients, they will be family and friends who know, like, and trust you; and your invitation to like your page might help you get some of them to become patients. Even if it doesn’t encourage them to become your patients, they will be likely to like, comment on, or share your posts when they appear in their timeline, thus increasing the odds of your posts going viral! You can also ask patients to like your dental office Facebook page when they come in.
With family, friends, and patients liking your page, you will be well on your way to growing your impact and reach through creating the best Facebook posts on your dental Facebook page and placing the best dental Facebook ads for specific promotions and additional reach.
In addition to asking friends, family, and patients to like your page, a great way to get people excited about your practice on Facebook is to create a contest where you hold a random drawing to give away a free treatment to one person who likes your page and then likes, comments, and shares a specific post within a certain timeframe. You could even ask your family, friends, and dental Facebook page fans to nominate someone else to receive the free service.
In my practice, we regularly give back through something we call Project Smile. We do everything on Facebook to reward people who follow our Facebook page and don’t even tell our patients. The way Project Smile works is we announce we will give away a free smile makeover and ask people to share our announcement post on their Facebook timelines.
The post we ask them to share asks people to nominate someone who deserves a free smile makeover with an image of their smile, so we can see if they’re a candidate. We narrow down the list, invite the finalists for a cleaning to take a closer look at their mouths, and then choose a winner for the full smile makeover. Our Facebook fans love following and sharing our Project Smile posts and often see what other services we provide and come to us for an appointment.
Between invitations, contests, and community- or giving-based promotions, your dental office Facebook page can build a large audience of raving fans for your dental practice.
In the next section, I’ll teach you how to draft the best dental practice Facebook posts to build raving fans and loyal patients from Facebook.
How to Create the Best Dental Facebook Posts
Many dentists get overwhelmed by the idea of coming up with content to post to their dental office Facebook page. The reality is, creating the best dental Facebook posts for your dental practice doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, if you follow two simple rules, your dentist Facebook page can be full of high-impact posts that position you to build deeper relationships with existing fans and patients while attracting new patients into your chair.
How to Know What to Post About on Your Dental Office Facebook Page
The most important part about creating the best dental Facebook posts is to make sure your posts are interesting and engaging. Interesting and engaging posts by a page with likes from family, friends, and patients make it more likely that people will like, comment on, and share your posts. This is important because the more likes, comments, and shares your Facebook posts get, the more Facebook will show it to other people, and the more chance it has to go viral. Also, people are more likely to like, comment on, or share your dental Facebook post when they see others have liked, commented on, or shared the post, especially others they’re friends with on Facebook.
To make sure your posts are interesting and engaging to encourage people to like, comment on, or share them, it’s important that most of your posts aren’t promotional offers or even dental tips. Although some promotional offers and dental tips are fine, the vast majority of your posts should be about three things:
Facebook posts showing people your dental practice vision and story to let them know why your dental practice is so great
Community-oriented Facebook posts, such as events you’re participating in or hosting at your practice and other local businesses
Facebook posts highlighting great things about your team members and patients (with their permission, of course)
Testimonials from happy patients
These four types of posts help you get people’s attention on Facebook, make connections with the right people to grow your dental practice, and encourage people to like, comment on, and share in order to get better reach for your Facebook posts. They also make the promotions and dental tips types of posts get more attention, because Facebook will view your page as one with posts people want to see. Finally, they make it much easier to regularly come up with great fresh content for your page so your dental Facebook page isn’t inactive or full of promotional posts.
Creating Dental Facebook Posts About Your Practice Story and Vision
The best dental Facebook posts tell your practice’s vision and story so you can let people know why being your patient will be worthwhile. These posts show people the things you’re building toward (your vision) and the things you’re already doing and have done (your story). These posts humanize your practice and build connections.
In my practice, our vision is to have the best dental practice in the country that treats all our patients like the VIPs they are and delivers WOW experiences to everyone from the moment they walk in until they leave. For example, we provide complimentary gourmet coffees and teas, iPads and noise-canceling headphones to use during an appointment, and hand-and-arm massages by our trained staff to make sure our patients leave feeling more like they just visited a luxury spa than a dentist. We also commit to being active in our community and giving back to important causes.
These things are core parts of who we are as a practice, and we want everyone to know it, so we post pictures of our coffees and teas, our patients receiving their relaxing massages (with their permission, of course), of community events, and charitable initiatives. By regularly posting about who we are as a practice, we get many likes, comments, and shares on our posts and build deep relationships with our Facebook fans because they get to know who we are as a practice and will want their dental-office experience to be like our patients’ experiences!
Posts about events, companies, and people in your community are a great way to become known as a practice that’s active and involved in things that matter to your patient pool.
In my practice, we participate in charity runs, host food drives, and have events at our practice. We also form strategic alliances with different local businesses each month to offer special deals to their employees. If you do this, you can create a post announcing how excited you are to team up with the business.
Creating Facebook Posts Highlighting Team Members and Patients
Creating Facebook posts that encourage, congratulate, and promote your patients and team members are a great way to highlight people who often go unnoticed. Your team and patients are doing great things in your office and community. Let people know how excited and proud you are about them (with their permission, of course). These posts build deep relationships and get lots of likes, comments, and shares, too!
Posting Patient Testimonials to Your Dental Office Facebook Page
Testimonials from happy patients make great posts. You’ve earned those testimonials either through online reviews or testimonials given specifically to post to your dentist Facebook page. Like online reviews, patient testimonials allow other people to boast about why your dental practice is so great, which makes it more likely that people will view it as more trustworthy than if you tell people why your practice is so great.
The Best Types of Dental Facebook Posts on Your Dental Office Facebook Page
Once you know what the best dental Facebook posts are about, the next step is to make those posts interesting, varied, and engaging by posting them in different types of posts. Generally, you can and should post a variety of text, image, and video Facebook posts to get more attention and engagement without seeming repetitive and monotonous.
Most dentists are comfortable with text posts, but less are comfortable with video and image Facebook posts, so here’s how you can utilize videos and images on your dental Facebook page.
Creating Video Facebook Posts for Your Dental Facebook Page
Video is powerful on Facebook for three important reasons. First, video gets people’s attention, especially if their page is set to auto-play. Second, video makes better connections with people once you get their attention because it invites them into your practice, lets people make virtual eye contact with you, and allows them to hear your voice and see your expressions. Finally, Facebook loves video and will show your post to more people if it has a video.
Video posts on Facebook for dentists doesn’t have to be complicated or overproduced. In fact, a good cell-phone camera can be even better than a heavily-produced video because it seems more real and not like a stuffy company.
Great uses for video on Facebook posts include Facebook Live video office tours, short recorded video patient testimonials, Facebook Live video Q&A sessions for your patients and the community to ask you what’s important to them, Facebook Live or recorded videos of community events, recorded video highlights, and explainer videos with tips about dental insurance, teeth care, new procedures, and more!
Creating Image-Based Facebook Posts for Your Dental Facebook Page
High-quality image posts get people’s attention on Facebook and encourage more engagement than text posts. Some of our favorite ways to use images for my practice and our dental marketing clients include to show high-quality images of what makes your practice great, like a picture of the iPads we let our patients use and our gourmet-coffee-and-tea station.
Other ways to use image posts with dental Facebook marketing include posting images announcing community events, celebrating patient accomplishments, showing off how great your team is, and highlighting new procedures and equipment.
Like dental Facebook video marketing, dental Facebook marketing with images doesn’t need a professional setup. My two rules for creating the best image-based Facebook posts are that a well-lit image you take with a quality cell phone is the best type of picture, and if you can use a picture you take of real patients, team members, and doctors, that is generally better than using a stock image. You can make great impacts with high-quality stock images, but nothing connects with people on Facebook like well-lit, authentic pictures of real people and your real office.
The Best Facebook Ads for Dentists
The real power of Facebook for dentists is your ability to post highly targeted Facebook ads. Facebook knows more about their users than almost any company in the world. They know their income, net worth, location, interests, behavior, family status, age, and more.
For advertisers like dentists and dental practices, this information is highly valuable, because it allows you to target the right people with your ads and only pay to reach people who are likely to take action on your ad.
Here are three important steps for successful Facebook ads for dentists.
Improving Your Dental Facebook Ads By Improving Your Message
Before placing dental Facebook ads, be sure each post has an objective. Otherwise, you won’t know who to target or what to say, and the people who see your dental Facebook ad are unlikely to take action. Here are eight common goals for dental Facebook ads:
1. Building awareness of your dental practice’s culture 2. Showing people what makes your practice different from other practices 3. Talking about your services and how you can help people 4. Highlighting testimonials of happy patients 5. Attracting people into a dental marketing sales funnel 6. Filling spots left open by last-minute cancellations 7. Promoting a specific procedure you want to highlight 8. Introducing a new dentist or team member
Once you know the purpose of your dental Facebook ad, you will have a better understanding of whom to target and what to say to get people to take action to help you achieve your goal.
Improving Your Dental Facebook Ads By Improving Your Targeting
Once you know the goal for your dental Facebook ad, make sure you target each of your dental Facebook ads to the people who are most likely to resonate with it and take action. Here are a few examples of how to match your dental Facebook ad targeting to your goals:
If you want to build awareness of your dental practice culture, you might not want to target current patients, because they will know your culture, but you might target an audience Facebook can generate that is similar to your patient population. This is called targeting lookalike audiences.
If you want to fill spots left open by last-minute cancellations, your current patient population is likely going to be your best bet at achieving your goal, perhaps by offering a free upgraded service or discount to the first person who takes action.
If you want to advertise dental savings plans, you might consider targeting retired people who no longer have dental insurance.
If you want to promote a new service, targeting current patients will be more likely to lead to people taking action.
If you want to get people into a dental marketing sales funnel, you can target people who have been to your website (called “retargeting” in the Facebook marketing world) with an ad that gives them a call to action to download a free guide or come in for a consult based on the pages they viewed on your site.
Improving Your Dental Facebook Ads By Choosing the Best Images, Videos, and Copy
Certain words drive people to take action more than others, especially across audiences. The same is true with images and videos. Once you know what you want to accomplish and who you want to target, test different versions of your copy, images, and video. You can do this by creating a split test in Facebook’s ad manager.
Split-testing dental Facebook ads is one of the most powerful ways to lower your advertising costs and getting better results, because it’s not always possible to know what words, image, or video will resonate at any given time.
Split-testing Facebook ads is also easier than you think. In its basic form, to split-test a dental Facebook ad, all you need to do is create an ad, duplicate the ad, replace the text, image, or video, and submit. Here are detailed instructions on how to create a split test in Facebook.
When my team runs dental Facebook advertising campaigns for our dental-marketing clients, we always split-test the dental Facebook ads we set up. By doing so, we lower costs and get better results. To achieve these results, we set up the split-test with a small budget of $3 to $10 per day until we learn which version of the dental Facebook ads is performing the best. Once we choose the winner or winners, we shut off the underperforming ads and let the winners run with an appropriate budget.
Are You Ready to Have the Best Dental Office Facebook Marketing Working for You?
Social media marketing for dentists can be the most powerful way to grow your dental practice, or it can be a complete waste of time or money. By far, the best way to get the highest return on your time and money is Facebook for dentists.
My team has helped hundreds of dentists increase profits, attract new patients, improve social media presence, and lower their advertising costs using Facebook.
If you’re comfortable doing it yourself or having your team do it with (or for) you, I’ve created a full Facebook Mastery course as part of Platinum Mastermind, my online learning center with full step-by-step instructions on everything you need to run and grow your dental practice.
The Training in Platinum Mastermind covers:
Facebook for Dentists
Facebook Marketing for Dental Offices
Email Marketing for Dentists
Online Reviews for Dentists
Dental Office SEO
Facebook Messenger Bots Marketing
How to create a 12-Month Marketing Plan
How to create an In-House Dental Plan
How to set up Strategic Alliances
How to recruit and train a R-O-C-K-S-T-A-R Team
How to get your TEAM aligned to your vision
How to create consistent systems and KPI’s
How to get your patients to say “YES”
How to reverse engineer your production goals
How to set your fees based on margins
How to save on dental supplies
How to decrease overhead
How to create a practice that can run without you
And more!
If you want to know more ways to create shareable content and grow your dental practice on Facebook, you can check out our Signature Marketing Program program or join us in our Platinum Mastermind, where I help dentists like you grow their dental practices so they can make more while working less.
Are you spending a fortune on slow, inexpensive, and ineffective marketing for your dental practice? If so, Facebook marketing might be your solution.
Using Facebook to market a dental practice can help you stop mailing flyers and overpaying for TV and radio spots that don’t bring the right people in the door. Instead, you will be able to get a steady flow of patients with a fraction of the marketing budget.
Facebook has turned the marketing world upside down. You don’t have to have a huge budget or spend a lot of money on overpriced designers anymore. Here are five tips to help you use Facebook marketing to grow your practice.
1. Make sure you’re targeting the right people.
The level of control you have over who sees your ads on Facebook is unprecedented. You can build audiences based on age, location, interests, income, and other key information, and even a combination of a number of qualities.
Unlike traditional dental advertising, you no longer have to spend a lot of money and hope to get the right results. Instead, you’ll spend less money and get your ads directly in front of exactly the right people.
Even better, targeting the right people is really easy to do. I walk dental bosses through it during my growth and marketing challenges and they all catch on right away.
2. Take advantage of retargeting.
We all know the phrase that it takes multiple touchpoints to build any relationship. It’s no different in dentistry. Retargeting is using Facebook ads to create multiple touchpoints with people.
With Facebook retargeting, you identify people who looked at your ad but didn’t sign up. Then, you send special content directly to those people.
Retargeting is one of the most powerful ways to promote your practice because it allows you to target people who are already both familiar with you and interested in your offer. All you need to do is create content that addresses common objections to moving forward.
For example, sometimes people click on your ad, get distracted, and move on. They just need you to pop up again so that they can reconnect. However, other people might click and then think, “I don’t want to go to the dentist, it’s scary and it might hurt.” A retargeting ad that speaks to pain-free dentistry and shows how calm the process can be could help you convert that person to a patient.
3. Take control of your Facebook budget.
What’s so amazing about marketing on Facebook is that you can decide exactly how much to spend. You’re already saving money by using Facebook marketing to target a very specific group of people and because Facebook charges far less than other forms of advertising.
But you can also set a fixed budget so you can calculate exactly how much you’re spending on each lead — and exactly how much you’re spending to get a new patient in the door.
In fact, a lot of the dental bosses who go through my training reach leads for 1-3 cents each. In other words, for every dollar they put into Facebook advertising, they’re reaching between 30 and 100 potential new patients. We’ve seen cases where dentists put in as little as $4 to get new patients booked for high-end cosmetic dentistry procedures, too. You can’t get that kind of ROI with traditional marketing.
4. Move quickly.
Facebook marketing is much faster than traditional media platforms.Takedirect-mail campaigns, for example. You need to design a mailing, hire someone to write it, and get it proofed, printed, and delivered before anyone even sees it. That could take weeks.
Radio and TV are the same. You need to write, record, edit, buy the ad space, and get it played. All of that takes weeks — and then you have to wait even longer to see how people respond to your ad.
With Facebook marketing, you can have an ad up and running to a highly-targeted audience with a compelling offer within minutes. And you can have new patients in the chair within days, long before traditional campaigns were even designed.
5. Embrace the flexibility that Facebook marketing offers you.
With traditional marketing, after you’ve waited weeks to get your ad in front of people, it takes even more time to gauge the response. And if something isn’t working, you need to go back to the drawing board for another expensive and time-consuming round of edits.
With Facebook, you can see right away whether a campaign is working the way you want. If it’s not, you can edit and improve it with a few clicks.
You can even test multiple versions of Facebook ads at the same time. Split-testing, as this is called, helps you test alternate copy, images, offers, colors, target audiences and more. Facebook allows you to split your budget to test multiple versions of an ad and then tell you which ads are performing the best. Once you find the winners, direct your budget to those ads and enjoy even better results.
Are you using Facebook to grow your dental practice?
If you’re still marketing your dental practice like it’s 1999, you’re likely spending way too much money and getting lackluster results. Save some money and improve your results by using Facebook to market your dental practice.
If you want help, join my growth and marketing challenge where I’ll walk you through exactly what you need to do, step by step.
And if you want to join a community of Dental Bosses just like you, I have a Facebook group where over 1000 Dental Bosses are already learning and growing together. Join us in the Dental Boss Movement Facebook group if you want support and training as you grow your dental practice.
If you’re ready to get new patients using social media but don’t know how, these four simple tips can help. Before social media, marketing a dental practice was slow, expensive, and inefficient. A single ad would take days to create and weeks to reach your audience. If you needed to make a change, you’d have to start over, spending days more creating the ad and weeks more waiting for the new ad to reach people.
With social media you can move much faster and more efficiently. You can create an ad that reaches people within minutes. And if you need to create a change, you can do it in minutes, too.
Even better, the cost to reach people using social media marketing is much more cost-effective than in traditional platforms. With my practice, I get more patients using a $500 per month social media budget than I was getting spending thousands on traditional marketing methods.
If you want to use social media in your dental marketing plan, these four tips can help. Tip four, alone, is a gamechanger.
1. Set a strong foundation.
Too many dental practices sign up for social media accounts and immediately start blasting marketing messages to the world. They move forward without a plan, goal, or foundation in place. That’s a surefire way to get frustrated. Within days, they run out of things to say, begin to think social media doesn’t work, and give up.
To avoid this, plan a few ideas for how you will create content that dental patients are likely to connect with. What is your practice story? What is your practice known for? What can patients expect when they come to your office and what do you do differently? Do you give hand and arm massages like we do in my practice? Do you provide gourmet coffees and teas?
Write down the answers to all of those questions. Be as specific as you can. Then, for each question, write down why that item is important to potential patients.
For example, if you give back to your community, write down all the ways you give back. Then, write down why you give back. Did you grow up in the area? Do you want to make a special impact on the neighborhood? Or, do you want to help advance a cause or solve a local problem? Write those down. Soon you will have a long list of content about what your practice does differently than others and the reasons why those are important to you.
The answers to those questions give you a strong database of content that builds relationships with potential patients.
2. Regularly create sharable content.
Take a look at your social media accounts. How much engagement do you get? Do a lot of people like or love your posts? Do they comment or share? If not, begin to focus on making emotional connections with your social media following.
Ask yourself why someone would want to share your content. If you only post about dental care, nobody will share that. But what if you post about how you impact your community or all the amazing things your patients are doing in their business and personal lives? How much more likely will people be to share those posts?
You can also share video testimonials and office tours explaining all the things your patients experience and why you do it. Think of all the things that make your practice unique. For example, one thing that makes my practice different is that we have the kids go to the toy box before their appointment. This allows us to make friends first. Kids and parents love it! When we share about this on Facebook we get strong engagements from parents who know the difference this small change can make to their kids’ dental experience.
3. Run community engagement campaigns.
One of the best social campaigns you can run is what I call community engagement campaigns.
Examples of community engagement campaigns include Project Smile Makeover competitions and gift card giveaways donated from local businesses in your community. They also include things like Tooth Talk Thursdays, and even crowdfunding campaigns to raise money for local charities.
Community engagement campaigns work well because people will want to share them. When done well, hundreds or even thousands of people in your community will see them.
4. Always offer people the next logical step.
With a strong foundation, shareable content, and community engagement campaigns in place, you will be ready to achieve incredible growth and connection. You will grow your followers and build trust and familiarity with people in your community. That level of following and trust will position you to convert social media fans to patients at a much greater clip than before.
With social media, however, it’s critical to actively offer people the next logical step to moving forward if you want to convert followers to patients. People will rarely take the next step without you asking them to do so.
While there are several ways to call people to action, one of the best ways to do so while achieving a high return on your investment is to place targeted ads for high-dollar services, such as dental implants. Your ads can direct people to a dental marketing funnel, to schedule an appointment online, or even to take an online quiz to qualify for a free consultation.
Are you ready to get more patients using social media?
Now that you've gained clarity about how to use social media in your dental marketing plan, it's time to take action.
Using social media well can help you grow your dental practice with a fraction of the marketing budget you would need for traditional dental marketing. Despite that, many dental practices struggle to use social media well. They might post for a few days and quit after not seeing results. Some spend months, still with no results.
If you’ve struggled to grow your dental practice using social media, you might only need a few small tweaks to your plan. Here are four simple steps you can use to achieve massive results using social media.
1. Set a strong foundation.
Too many dental practices sign up for social media accounts without a plan, goal, or foundation in place for achieving success. Without a plan, they end up becoming frustrated fast. They quickly run out of things to say and end up losing momentum.
To avoid this, plan a few ideas for how you will create content that dental patients are likely to connect with. What is your practice story? What are your core values? Why should they choose your practice instead of another? What can patients expect when they come to your office? What do you do differently? Are you committed to spa-like experiences? Do you give hand and arm massages like we do in my practice? Do you provide gourmet coffees and teas? Are you involved in your community?
Write down the answers to all of those questions. Be as specific as you can. Then, for each question, write down why that item is important to you and potential patients. For example, do you give back to your community? If so, write down all the ways you give back. Then, write down why you give back. Did you grow up in the area? Do you want to make a special impact on the neighborhood? Or, do you want to help advance a cause or solve a local problem? Write those down.
Soon enough you will have a long list of the things your practice does differently and the reasons why those are important to you. You’ll be ready to start posting, warming up your audience to get them engaged with, talking about, and interested in your practice. Many will start looking forward to your next post, even. And you will start building a group of raving fans online.
Way too many practices skip setting the foundation and creating content that builds relationships with potential patients. They jump right into sharing posts without any plan or focus. When that happens, performance suffers.
2. Regularly create sharable content.
With the strong foundation in place, you’ll be well on your way to sharing content people engage with, liking, commenting, and even sharing your posts on their feeds. Take a look at your social media accounts. How much engagement do you get? Do a lot of people like or love your posts? Do they comment or share?
If you can consistently create content other people share on their timelines, everything you do on social media will become easier and more effective.
To do so, focus on telling stories about your practice and how you’re impacting your community and patients. How are you serving your community? Share videos of you talking about what you’re doing and why. What experiences are your patients having? Share video testimonials and office tours explaining all the things your patients experience and why you do it. How is your practice different?
For example, one thing that makes my practice different is we have the kids go to the toy box before their appointment. This helps us gain trust with kids and gives the kids something to hold during their appointment. Kida love going to the toybox and enjoy coming to our practice because they get a toy right away.
When we talk about this on our social media pages, we share videos of us talking out what we do and why. These posts are highly engaging. If you have a similar policy, share a video of you talking about it and why. Do a video demonstration of your toybox showing all the cool toys you have. Ask a parent or two who you think would be open to it to record a short video talking about why they love your toy box first policy.
These types of post create emotional connections in parents who love the idea or who have experienced it themselves. They might share the post with “what a great idea!” or “my child loves going to Dr. Holmes and getting her toy first.”
3. Run social campaigns.
One of the best social campaigns you can run is a giveaway. Giveaways help you give back to your fans, patients, and oftentimes other local businesses.
With my practice, we love giveaways. We sometimes give away gift cards to local shops. Other times, we give free whitening. Sometimes, we even give away a full smile makeover to someone in need. When running a social campaign, ask people to follow your page and like, comment, or share your post to be entered into the content. Then, at the end of the day, you can pick a person at random to win the prize.
Only include a short statement about your practice in such a way that makes sense with the posts. For example, if you’re giving away a gift card to a local store, you can say, “At my practice, we believe in supporting local businesses in our community. That’s why we’re giving away a gift card to XYZ coffee shop, our favorite place to grab coffee on the way to work.”
By requiring people to engage with your post to enter and making a brief but strong emotional connection in your content, your social campaigns will help you build an even bigger, engaged social following.
4. Offer people the next logical step.
With a strong foundation, shareable content, and social campaigns in place, your audience will grow and the people who follow you will get to know, like, or trust you. That is a great place to be because it means your followers will be much more likely to become patients when you ask them to take the next logical step in the relationship.
While there are several ways to call people to action, one of the best ways to do so while achieving a high return on your investment is to place targeted ads for high-dollar services, such as dental implants.
Your ads can direct people to a landing page with offer details or a quiz to help them learn whether they are a candidate. From there, you can send them through a nurture sequence of call them to make an appointment for a consultation.
Are you ready to get more patients using social media?
If you have struggled to gain traction using social media, these four steps can help you grow your followers, build trust, and promote high-value services. If you want more help, you can find detailed instructions on growing your practice using Facebook. There, you’ll find additional information on growing your following, targeting the right audiences for your ads, and growing your practice using Facebook.
If you want even more help using social media to grow your practice, sign up for the Delivering WOW Platinum Coaching Program to access forms, courses, and coaching from me and other top dental experts.
When I started marketing my dental practice using Facebook, it was as part of a much bigger plan for my practice. I had a big vision for my practice, to make it the best practice in Jamaica.
Even more, I wanted my practice to become known for exceptional community service and patient care. I wanted to deliver WOW experiences to every patient who walked through our door. I wanted every patient who left our practice to feel so great about their experience that they would tell everyone they knew. If that could happen, I knew we’d be well on our way to achieving my big vision.
I didn’t want to wait years for my plan to take place, however. So, instead of relying on traditional dental marketing strategies that were expensive and inefficient, I turned to Facebook marketing for my dental practice.
Using Facebook and investing in my team and other proven online marketing strategies transformed my entire practice. We built a practice experience patients would love. We attracted dozens of new patients every month for very little money using Facebook. And we used the power of social proof to earn referrals from our happy patients and build a Facebook following of more than 58,000 raving fans.
If you want to do the same for your practice, follow these three steps and you, too can build a large, loyal group of new patients and raving fans.
1. Tell Your Story Online
When I first started the Delivering WOW Summit, nobody knew me as a summit leader. Nobody knew I could run a fun, high-quality summit that delivered the best information and strategies available for growing a dental practice. People knew me as a dentist, Facebook marketing specialist, author, and a few other things.
But I knew the type of event I was building. I was committed to having the best dental speakers in the world share their best content. I was committed to hosting the event in a beautiful setting. And I was committed to making sure every attendee left inspired and equipped to make their practice better.
I wanted the Delivering WOW Summit to become known as the ultimate event for dental practices. So, I started talking about it online. I went live in my Facebook group and on my Facebook page. I talked about all the amazing things we were planning. And when I referenced the summit I called it the ultimate event for dental practices in 2018. I said it over and over again. And after several times of saying it myself, other people started saying it, too. The speakers I had booked—the best speakers in the dental industry—started at first. People who my attendees knew, liked, and trusted were telling them my event was the ultimate event for dental practices. Then others said it, too.
By committing to the quality of my event and talking about it online, I started controlling the conversation about the Delivering WOW Summit.
You can do the same with your practice, too. If you want to be known for exceptional customer service, host Facebook live videos during which you talk about your practice. Share your practice story, telling people about your practice and how you are known for exceptional customer service. Show them all the things you have or do at your practice that demonstrates your commitment to exceptional customer service.
Soon enough, people will begin to understand your commitment and talk about your practice as somewhere patients can experience exceptional customer service.
2. Reinforce Your Story Offline
Once you know the story you want people to tell about your practice, reinforce that story offline, too. Make sure your patients’ office experience matches that story. If you want to be known for amazing patient experiences, make sure you provide an amazing patient experience. If you want to be known for giving back to the community, make sure you give back to the community. Post pictures of you and your team giving back. Make sure everything you say is consistent with what you do.
Additionally, train your team to tell your practice story when people call or come in. For example, when a new patient calls, make sure your team members let them know what your practice is known for. When patients come in, have your team give them a tour, describing amenities, images, or other office features within the context of your story. Avoid, “We have coffee here if you’re interested,” for example. Instead, say “We want to make sure all our patients have amazing experiences so we provide gourmet coffee and teas you can enjoy while you wait. Be sure to grab an extra cup on your way out, too.”
Reinforcing your story offline gives you more control about what patients will say about your practice after they leave.
3. Collect and Share Social Proof
One of the best ways to build raving fans for your practice is by using the power of social proof. Simply stated, social proof involves sharing opinions from one person to influence the actions of another person. The most common form of social proof in dentistry is online reviews. When someone posts a five-star review about your practice, other people see that review and become more likely to become your patient.
Another powerful type of social proof is a video testimonial. All you need is a smartphone camera and a happy patient who is willing to share a short statement about their experience at your office. The easiest way to collect video testimonials is to ask every patient about their experience before they leave. Keep an eye out for extroverts who rave about your practice. Ask them if they’d be willing to share a short video for you to share. Simply say, “There are a lot of people who are afraid to go to the dentist, so a video from a patient like you could give them the confidence to do so. And that can change their life!” Many people are more than willing to record a short video on the spot.
After collecting your social proof, share it on social media so your fans and community can see. The more you do, the more likely you are to get new patients from them.
Are you building raving fans for your practice?
If you haven’t built a large group of raving fans for your practice, you are probably making your marketing harder than it needs to be. These three steps combine to tell a consistent story about your practice and share your story with people in a way that influences them to become your patients.
If you want more help building raving fans for your practice, you can access, sign up for the Delivering WOW Platinum Coaching Program where you can find more training and coaching on all aspects of running and growing a high-profit dental practice.
What happens in your office when you leave the country for two weeks?
If you come back to a pile of work, you’re not alone. That’s the reality in most dental practices.
But what would it feel like to come back to $18,000 of new appointments? And what would it feel like if those $18,000 of appointments cost only $50 in ad spend and took only 10 minutes of staff time?
That’s what happened for Dr. Meghna Dassani of Dassani Dentistry in Houston, Texas. While she was traveling, her rock star team took to Facebook and ran an Invisalign promo. By the time Dr. Dassani returned home, her team had scheduled more than $18,000 in Invisalign patients. Needless to say, she was happy.
We can learn a lot about the strategies her team used, and we’ve discussed many of them before. But what’s even more important than the strategies is the initiative her team took. They could have easily wasted much of the time she was away. But they didn’t.
Led by Christina, Dr. Dassani has a small but great team. Christina is not a marketer. She’s not even really outgoing. But she is hardworking and a team player. And the rest of the team supported her.
Give Them the Right Tools and Resources
Hardworking and goal-oriented team members won’t get you results unless they have the right tools and resources.
Dr. Dassani and her team are in my Inner Circle Mastermind. They’ve been trained by me and my team so they know exactly how to use Facebook and funnels to build their practice.
Dr. Dassani also had advertising audiences already built in Facebook. That meant they could promote to people who are more likely to accept their offer with a few clicks.
From being in my Inner Circle Mastermind, Christina knew Facebook Live videos were highly effective. And she knew the types of promotions that work best.
That took a lot of the pressure off her. Again, Christina isn’t a marketer. She’s a great, hardworking team member. She knew what worked and had the tools and resources to create a great promo, put it on Facebook in the right way, and promote it to the right audiences.
Empower Your Team to Succeed
In addition to the tools and resources, be sure to empower your team to take initiative. Dr. Dassani was away on a cruise and was not immediately reachable. But she gave Christina access to a $50 ad budget and what they called their “super audience.” Basically, their super audience includes patients, Facebook followers, Instagram followers, and lookalike audiences.
So, Christina had everything she needed to get her post live and seen by the right people.
Incentivize Your Team to Perform
But what if you already do all that and your team still doesn’t take initiative to help you grow? It’s possible they’re not incentivized to do so. There’s nothing like an awesome incentive to take an already-performing team to the next level.
For Dr. Dassani and her team, the incentives were big. When Dr. Dassani went to the first Delivering WOW Summit in Jamaica, her team was a little jealous.
Dr. Dassini decided to give them the opportunity to go to the next Delivering WOW Summit. She also gave them an opportunity to earn a trip to a Smiles at Sea cruise.
So she set production goals. If they hit the goals, they’d get to go on the Smiles at Sea cruise and the next Delivering WOW Summit in Jamaica. When I talked with Christina, she mentioned this with a big smile on her face.
Incentivizing your team is a powerful strategy. I’ve used it in my practice, and other members of my Inner Circle have as well.
Give Your Team What They Need to Help You Succeed
Christina posted a promotion that brought in $18,000 in appointments in a matter of minutes. And she did it with an ad budget of only $50.
Even better, Dr. Dassani was relaxing on a cruise the whole time. Now that’s what I call a WOW team.
TAKE ACTION TODAY:
To learn more about how we can help your practice to empower your team members and to succeed in their individual roles and make a significant difference in your practice, check out our upcoming Marketing & Practice Growth Challenge. You can learn more here — and get a 20% discount when you use the code CHALLENGE at checkout!
Have you ever wondered if there is a “golden hour” to post on Facebook? In other words, is there a specific time of the day when your posts will get the most engagement?
I get asked this question a lot, and I really wanted to address it in this podcast episode. However, like last week, this episode is a recording of one of my Facebook Live videos, so it’s a little different (but just as good!).
I wanted to share my knowledge with you and provide some useful tips to help you find the best time to post on Facebook for your practice to get the best possible results.
On the podcast I discuss:
Using Insights to track activity on your Facebook page
How to identify the best time of day to publish your posts
Tips for pre-scheduling Facebook posts
Promoting a time-sensitive event or post using Facebook’s Distribution Schedule
Boosting your posts using Ads Manager
Why you should plan your Facebook posts in advance
Working with your team to create a productive posting schedule
Keep up with the Delivering WOW podcast by following us on Facebook.
If you want to find out how to get 30+ new patients per month through the power of Facebook Marketing, head over to my Facebook Bootcamp and join the Bootcamp today!
To watch the video of this recording where you can see my screen as I'm talking you through the best time to post on Facebook, hit play below:
I am super excited to share this podcast episode with you! It’s a little different this week as I am introducing the recording of one of my recent Facebook Live videos. I really wanted to let you guys know about the awesome results from my latest Facebook campaign.
We just created a new dental implant funnel for my practice, as part of my Facebook Bootcamp and the response has been crazy. At the time I recorded my introduction we had been launched for a day and a half and we already had tons of requests for appointments. So many, in fact, that my team are getting nervous!
I wanted to let you know how we set the funnel up, how we are testing it to optimize the results and exactly how much we spent to achieve this growing number of appointment requests.
On the podcast I discuss:
What the dental implant funnel looks like and how it works
Generating email sequences and lists through the funnel’s online quiz
The power of split-testing your Facebook ads between 2 different audiences
Budgeting your ad-spend and how you can monitor your costs-per-click
Data collection using Google Sheets and Facebook Analytics
The benefits of the testing phase and producing content that resonates with the right audience
Targeting and re-targeting your Facebook campaign
How you can create your own funnel quickly and easily at minimal cost
Answers to questions posed by my Facebook Live audience
If you want to find out more about launching your own funnel head over to my Facebook Bootcamp where I’m working with doctors and practice team members to show them how to get their own Facebook campaign up and running.
The entire process takes about an hour and it’s a really cool way to grow your practice without spending a ton of money.
To watch the video recording of the episode where you can see my screen as I explain how the funnel works, hit play below:
One of the best ways to improve Facebook ad results is to improve your targeting. For those who are new to Facebook advertising, targeting is the term used to describe the audiences you want your ads shown to on Facebook. For example, here are three ad targeting audiences every dental office needs.
Today we’re going to talk about a new targeting audience. This is a newer feature on Facebook that can help you improve results on your ads and boosted Facebook posts. Even better, it’s super easy to use it. I’m talking about using Facebook’s new “run promotion to Messenger” feature to send ads to people who have active Facebook Messenger conversations with your practice.
Why Using Facebook Messenger Can Improve Facebook Ad Results
Target audiences work so well because they help you ensure your ads are shown only to the most relevant people. For example, to attract new patients, you’ll get better results on your ads by excluding current patients. After all, you don’t need to direct new patient promotions to current patients. You could even upset current patients if they see a deal only offered to new patients, even if they received a similar deal when they became a patient.
If you wanted to promote Invisalign services, you could target people who visited your Invisalign page on your website. This works well because you know people who would see your ad are already familiar with you and interested in Invisalign.
Facebook’s new “run promotion to Messenger” feature allows you to further improve advertising results by targeting people who have ongoing conversations with your practice using the Facebook Messenger app. This allows you to re-engage people who have existing conversations with your practice on Facebook by offering them something of value. For example, you could target them with a fun contest or special promotion. You could also offer them an opportunity to be seen right away if you have a last-minute cancellation.
These people have already taken steps to reach out directly to your practice. They’ve had conversations with you or your team. They’re familiar with your practice. This makes them a much warmer audience.
How to use Facebook’s Run Promotion to Messenger Feature
Facebook’s “run promotion to Messenger” feature appears when you start an ad or boost a post on your page. When you go to boost a post on your page and set your audience, a checkbox will appear to select “run promotion to Messenger.” Simply select that checkbox, and your promotion will be added as a message to existing Facebook Messenger conversations. Easy!
For example, in May, my practice ran a two-week Father’s Day promotion. Our promotion promised to pick two people at random to receive a gift card or a “griller kit.” To enter the gift card giveaway, people needed to comment on the post with a picture of their father smiling along with how he helped build them into who they were today. To enter the griller kit giveaway, they needed to comment on the post with a picture of their father smiling along with how he warms their heart. Facebook Messenger allowed people to reply to us directly. We could then respond to them with the link to the post so they could add their entry to the competition. That brief exchange is a great opportunity to continue an earlier conversation with people or just act as an additional touchpoint as you build a relationship with them.
We targeted our post to several audiences, including our patient list, website visitors, and several lookalike audiences.
We also selected the “run promotion to Messenger” feature to add the post to messenger conversations. Facebook then took the post’s image and text and sent it as a new message to our active conversations. We plan to use this feature for a number of promotions and even to fill last-minute cancellations.
Getting Started with Facebook Messenger Ads
Facebook’s “run promotion to Messenger” feature is a great way to get started with Facebook Messenger ads for your practice. It’s as simple as checking a box as you boost your post or create your ad.
In this episode of the Delivering WOW podcast, I tackle a question that I’ve been asked countless times – What’s the best promotion you can do to grow your Facebook page and get more likes? The solution is something that I discuss a lot in my Facebook Bootcamp, and that’s Project Smile.
Project Smile has proved time and time again to be one of the fastest ways to grow a following on Facebook. People from all over the world have tried it and voiced their disbelief and gratitude following the remarkable results that this social campaign strategy has helped them achieve. So, in this podcast episode, I dive into this further and share some of my best Facebook marketing strategies with you. So that you can build engagement online, invite new patients to your practice and most importantly – change people’s lives.
Here’s what I discussed on the podcast:
Why you should use the Project Smile competition to help grow your Facebook following
Advantages of promoting a social campaign
Inviting people that have shown interest in your promotion to like your Facebook page
How to use a Project Smile competition to engage with your local community and spread awareness
Advice for creating profitable targeted Facebook ads for your practice
How to lower your social media marketing budget without sacrificing your ROI
Insider knowledge of Facebook’s algorithm and how you can use it to your benefit
Why you should share patient stories with your followers and use it as social proof that your practice genuinely cares about changing people’s lives
Using Facebook Live to elevate revenue, attract new patients and establish your practice within your community
The power of personal stories when it comes to crafting a viral social campaign
If you enjoyed this episode and you’d like to find out more ways that you can grow your social following on Facebook, head over to my Facebook Bootcamp, where you’ll learn how to create high-converting ads and promotions on Facebook!
To watch a short video trailer of the podcast episode where I am discussing launching a viral social campaign on Facebook, hit play below:
This podcast episode was based on a Facebook Live video, to watch the full video head over to the Delivering Wow Facebook page.
What if you have the best copy, images, and offer, but you’re still not getting likes or comments on your Facebook or Instagram posts? The problem might be that you’re still using Facebook like it’s 2015.
I’ve been using Facebook to market my practice for a long time. Back when I first started and was deep in debt, it was the best way to stretch my limited marketing budget. As I got more knowledgeable about it, I realized it was the best way to market a dental practice no matter what your budget.
But Facebook has changed over the years. Years ago, everyone who liked your page would see every post of yours. As people commented, others would see it. You could make a post go viral without spending a penny.
Facebook became concerned that people’s feeds would become too business-focused. To avoid people leaving Facebook because their feeds became a never-ending run of promotions, they slowly started throttling organic reach. Now, it’s not uncommon for a post to reach only a very small percentage of people who like your page.
While that may make it feel like Facebook is no longer effective for promoting a practice, the opposite is true. In fact, Facebook is as effective as it ever has been, and you can stand out even more if you know how to get more engagement on your posts.
But what if you’ve done everything right and you still get no results? I recently had a conversation with a Delivering WOW U member who was having this challenge.
They were frustrated that nobody was liking or commenting on their posts on Facebook (and Instagram, too). I had a look at their Facebook page. I had a look at their Instagram page. Everything was amazing.
Their content was incredible. They had a bunch of videos. Their team was planning out campaigns for holidays and celebrations. Their posts showed people they had an amazing practice culture and were having fun. But they had very little engagement.
Why Facebook (and Instagram) Posts Don’t Get Much Engagement
After looking at their Facebook and Instagram posts, the problem became clear. Their pages weren't the problem. Their posts weren't the problem. Their target audiences (or lack thereof) was the problem.
A few years ago, their posts would be going viral on a regular basis. They’d be growing their pages and getting incredible engagement by doing exactly what they were doing now. But Facebook and Instagram changed their algorithms a few times since then, and their posts sat there without any engagement.
I asked her whether she was boosting her posts. She wasn’t. In fact, she had never boosted a post. She had amazing content, but nobody was seeing it.
How to Look at Facebook (and Instagram) in 2018 and Beyond
Imagine you could find a magazine that was read by thousands of ideal patients every day. You come up with a great promotion with beautiful artwork, copy, and a compelling offer. If you just sent it in to the publisher, nothing would happen. A few people in their office might see it, but they wouldn’t put it in the magazine. It would just stay on the publisher’s desk until you paid them.
Facebook is only slightly better than that today. If you post an amazing post, a few people might see it, but you have no idea if those people are ideal patients. They might be friends from across the country. They could be random people who like your page. For all intents and purposes, nobody will see your post.
How to Get More Engagement on Facebook (and Instagram) Posts
That’s a good thing for two reasons. First, it allows you to be very specific with the type of people who see your posts. You can target people based on behavior, income, wealth, location, and more. This helps you ensure you’re attracting the right people to your practice.
Second, it allows you to reach people who don’t like your page. You can target people who have never heard of you. You can target people who visit your website but don’t like your Facebook page. You can even create “lookalike audiences” full of people who share characteristics of your patients or website visitors. Here are three Facebook ad targeting audiences every dental office needs to set up.
You don’t need to spend thousands of dollars boosting posts to get good results, either. I generally start with a few dollars and increase it from there. To this day, I only spend around $500 per month in Facebook advertising and regularly attract dozens of new patients to my practice each month. Many of these patients come in for high-profit procedures such as Invisalign, dental implants, and crowns.
By boosting your post, you can target people who are more likely to be interested in your practice. They’re more likely to engage with your post. They’re also more likely to become a patient.
If you’re struggling to get engagement on your posts, consider investing a few dollars to boost key posts to targeted audiences.
TAKE ACTION TODAY:
If you want more help growing, running, and marketing your practice, check out the team of expert coaches, training, and resources we offer in our signature Delivering WOW Platinum Mastermind Program.
And if you want to learn ways to improve engagement on your posts, our Marketing & Practice Growth Challenge can help! In one of our previous challenges, practices have increased reach on their posts by up to 38,000%! Sign up for the challenge here if you want to find out how they did it.
Facebook marketing is the BEST way to grow your practice, but many dentists fail to target the right users with their marketing strategy. If you’re investing a lot of time and money into Facebook marketing and not getting the engagement you were hoping for, this podcast episode is for you!
I’m no stranger to marketing on Facebook. After all, I used Facebook to grow my second dental start-up to a multi-million-dollar practice and there’s no reason why you can’t do the same. In this podcast episode, I discuss the power of Facebook marketing and how you can use targeted advertising to get more new patients inside of your practice. Find out what works on Facebook and how you can market your practice as effectively as possible AND at the lowest cost.
Here’s what I discussed on the podcast:
The importance of considering who your target audience are and how you can create content that appeals to them
Why dental practice owners and their team members need to think about Facebook as a marketing platform
How you can get your Facebook posts SEEN by the right people
Understanding that if you cut your marketing budget, you stifle the growth of your practice
What Facebook Audiences is and how you can decide WHO sees your posts
Using Facebook Marketing to boost your customer retention rate by showing ads to people who have previously visited your website
Sharing valuable information with your patients using Facebook
The power of an “engagement audience” and retargeting to people who have interacted with your posts
How to budget for Facebook marketing and finding the right balance for you and your practice
How you can use Facebook marketing to attract new patients and continue increasing your ROI as you gain more experience
If you’re ready to learn how to use Facebook the RIGHT way to grow your practice, join me on my next Facebook Bootcamp! I will teach you and your team how to get 30+ NEW patients from Facebook Marketing while spending less than $500! To learn more, click here.
To watch a short trailer where I'm talking about how to market your dental practice on Facebook hit play below:
SEO is one of the most powerful and confusing dental marketing techniques. Many patients use Google and other search engines to search for dentists. Thus, getting your practice on the first page of search results can help you earn dozens of new patients every month.
At the same time, search engines are an enigma, using a secret algorithm to rank websites based on how relevant they are likely to be to the person performing the search.
Although the tech side of SEO for dental practices is complicated, the concept itself is quite simple.
Understanding what SEO is and how dentists can use it to get more patients is important so you can become a better consumer when hiring an SEO company or delegating SEO to a team member.
What is SEO?
SEO is an acronym that stands for search engine optimization. In simple terms, SEO is the way a company naturally enhances its presence on search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. The goal of SEO for dentists is to put things in place that make your practice more likely to appear on the first page of search results when someone looks for a dentist in your area.
Why is SEO important for dentists?
Enhancing your practice’s presence on search engines is important because of what we know about consumer behavior. In fact, two things we know about how consumers behave when using a search engine demonstrate how important it is for dental practices to enhance their search engine presence.
These two things are what people do with search engine results. First, the majority of consumers stay on the first page of search results and never make it to the second page. This includes searches relating to healthcare and dentistry. Thus, it’s very important to get your practice to appear on the first page of search results when people search for a dentist in your area.
Second, when people are in a buying mindset, they tend to only click on one of the first three results. Thus, getting in the top three results when someone in your area performs a search for a specific procedure, such as “dental implants near me.”
Because many people search for “best dentist in Tampa” or “dental implants near me” when looking for a dentist and most people won’t go beyond the first page when looking for a dentist or the first three results when shopping, it’s important to appear in those top three results. To do that, you must understand how SEO works as part of your dental marketing plan.
SEO is particularly valuable because the people it attracts to your website are people who are actively looking for a dentist. Thus, having good SEO for your dental practice helps you earn free patient referrals from search engines.
What’s the secret to getting to the top of search results?
Although the details can be quite complex, at least with respect to one type of SEO for dental offices, there are essentially two ways to get to the top of search results: paid or unpaid.
Paid search engine marketing is pretty simple. You pay money to Google or another search engine to be listed on the top of their search results. There’s definitely some tricks of the trade, such as identifying the most cost-effective searches to pay for, which a good SEO company for dentists can help with, but overall, it’s a pretty simple concept. You pay a search engine money. In return, they list you atop the search results as a sponsored result when someone performs the search you paid for.
Unpaid, or organic search engine optimization, is more challenging. Essentially, to appear atop the unpaid search results, you need to be seen as authoritative, credible, and relevant to the searches you want to appear for. This includes a number of technical and content-specific things. For example, Google and other search engines measure how people act when they go to your website. They evaluate a number of things, such as how engaging your content is, whether your content answers questions their customers search for, and how long people spend on your site after clicking over. Do you have pictures of dentists, team members, and your office people can click through? Those clicks tell search engines your site is high quality.
Do you have a video office tour or a high-value opt-in offer to get people to subscribe to your newsletter? Those customer actions tell search engines your site is something people interact with.
Activities outside of your website, such as claiming and optimizing your local citations, collecting online reviews, and getting other websites to link to your websites communicate similar authority, credibility, and relevance to search engines.
How do you get more visitors to your website?
In its simplest terms, SEO is about creating a web presence that tells search engines your website is something people will find useful. If you’re considering hiring a dental-marketing company to help with SEO or asking an internal team member to help you, ask yourself if your dental website and overall web presence tells search engines your practice is authoritative, credible, and relevant.
To learn more about these and other ways to improve SEO for your dental office, check out the team of expert coaches, training, and resources we offer in our signature Delivering WOW Platinum Mastermind Program.
I’m delighted to welcome Dr. Leonard Tau to this week’s podcast episode to discuss the importance of a solid reputation to increase patient numbers.
Dr. Leonard Tau is passionate about internet marketing, social media, reputation marketing and its ability to help grow your practice. In his content-rich energizing seminars, Dr. Tau shares his firsthand experience and the tools used to achieve 100% growth in his practice since 2009 in a down economy.
He maintains a full-time fee-for-service practice in Northeast Philadelphia focusing on general, cosmetic, reconstructive and implant dentistry. He received his dental degree from Tufts University School of Dental Medicine in Boston, MA and a Certificate in Advanced Education in General Dentistry at UMDNJ in Somerdale, NJ.
He is an active member of many dental organizations including the ADA, AGD, AACA, DentalTown as well as being the sponsorship chairman for the Eastern Dental Society. He was recently chosen as one of the Top Leaders in Dental consulting by Dentistry Today.
When he is not practicing, Dr. Tau is owner of iSocial Digital and General Manager of the Dental Vertical for Birdeye, a reputation marketing software platform.
He is the author of Reputation Matters Blog and has been published in DentalTown, American Academy of Cosmetic Orthodontics, Dentistry Today, Inside Dentistry and various magazines.
He lectures nationally and internationally to fellow dentists on using the power of the internet to attract new patients, case acceptance and reputation marketing.
On the podcast we discussed…
Dr. Tau's career journey and the decisions that he made along the way that led him from owning a practice to now owning iSocial Digital and working with the software program Birdeye
How the online review world changed and how Dr. Tau weathered the storm
The importance of having strong online reviews posted in the right places in our reputation-based society
How to make sure Google business pages are working efficiently so you don't lose patients
Why reviews are critical to choosing a dentist and how happy patients are trusted and loyal customers
How to create a reputation culture in the office – it’s an entire team effort and you can incentivize staff to encourage patients to leave a review
How reviews will overtake website importance over the next few years as people’s online habits change
The limitations of automated programs and the importance of choosing a system like Birdeye to get reviews in the right places
How text-based automated systems are much more beneficial than email-based ones because of the open rates
The innovative way that Birdeye software encourages patients to write SEO friendly reviews and how it convinces people to choose your practice
The need to repurpose Google reviews across all of your marketing platforms, but not to automate reviews on Facebook because it clogs the feed down with repetition
How Dr. Tau is launching an educational podcast called ‘The Raving Patient’ all about unleashing new ways to get patients into your practice and educating and inspiring others
How focusing on getting happy patients to write reviews on the sites that really matter can make a dramatic difference to your practice
Dr. Tau is one of the speakers at my Delivering WOW live summit in Jamaica which I am extremely excited about. You can find out more about this here.
Dr. Tau is passionate about educating people. His main goal is for dentists to understand the value of what Birdeye can offer and the value of what reviews can offer to your practice. You can schedule in a demo directly by heading on over to Calendly.com.
Here is a short video trailer of the podcast episode where Dr.Leonard Tau is discussing patient reviews:
New dental practices face unique marketing challenges.
Financially, due to construction costs, buying equipment and supplies, covering operating expenses, and making payments on their student loans, dentists opening new practices can’t afford to wait very long for patients to come in the door.
On top of that, starting a practice from scratch means starting your marketing from scratch with no existing marketing in place at all.
As scary as it may sound to some people to have high expenses and no patients, starting a new practice presents great opportunities over the long term.
For example, starting a new practice allows you to build your office and culture to match your vision for your practice and then match it with marketing that’s targeted to attract ideal patients who can become raving fans and refer family and friends.
With high expenses and no patients, it’s extremely important for new practices have efficient and effective marketing from the start.
Start a Facebook Page and Email List for Your New Dental Practice
It might seem counterintuitive to start a Facebook page for a practice that doesn’t exist, but it will be your home base for marketing activities in the future, helping you fill last-minute cancellations, promote high-end procedures, and more. The same goes with building an email list.
These will be two of the best tools for marketing your practice when you open the doors, and getting started early is key. Facebook is the most powerful and affordable advertising platform available. Building an email list helps you nurture relationships with patient prospects and build a list for future Facebook ad targeting and funnel marketing efforts.
When you don’t have appointments to fill or procedures to perform, it’s easy to let building a Facebook page for your practice or starting an email list fall behind, but they are key to a successful practice launch, especially when combined with the second dental marketing strategy.
Share Your Vision on Social Media and Invite People to Follow Along
When you first commit to starting a new practice, you have no idea when you’ll be ready for the doors to open, but that doesn’t mean you have nothing to market.
In fact, not having appointments to fill is a good thing. This way, you can build relationships with people and not have anything to sell other than your dream.
As soon as you’re committed to opening your practice, start promoting why you’re starting your practice, what you’re building, and why your practice will be different than others on social media.
Start with a Facebook Live video, and let your family and friends know you’re starting a new practice.
Tell them why you’re starting your practice.
Share your vision.
Tell them about the culture you’re building, what will be unique about your practice, and how excited you are to share your practice journey with them.
At the end of the video, let them know you will be sharing more videos as you build out your practice, put the link to your new Facebook page in the comments of the video, and invite them to like your page.
Invite them to join your email list to be notified about new Facebook Live videos and practice updates.
Then continue to share Facebook Live videos as you sign leases, design the layout, start construction, order equipment, choose furnishings, and more.
When you’re ready to open the doors, you’ll have Facebook fans, email subscribers, family, friends, and community members excited about and invested in the success of your practice!
Have marketing challenges kept you from your dream to launch a new practice?
Although starting a new practice presents many challenges, marketing your practice no longer needs to be one of them thanks to Facebook and email lists. Together, they can help you can get started building an excited, loyal list of patient prospects ready to make appointments as soon as you open the doors.
After your launch, your Facebook page and email contact list will continue to be key marketing assets, allowing you to deliver highly targeted promotions through Facebook ads, email marketing campaigns, and funnel marketing efforts!
To learn more about this and other dental marketing strategies, check out the team of expert coaches, training, and resources we offer in our signature Delivering WOW Platinum Mastermind Program.
Facebook for dentists is one of the most powerful ways to connect with patients and grow your practice. Making your office’s Facebook page more impactful is simpler than many people think. It doesn’t take a tech genius or full-time effort to make your dental Facebook page among the best in the business, so you can build your brand and attract new patients.
Here are six things the best dental Facebook pages do that make them so effective at attracting new patients. If you don’t already have one, follow these steps to set up a Facebook page for your practice and make sure it has these things in place. If you already have one, put these six things in place today to take your Facebook page to new heights!
1. Your dental Facebook page must have complete practice contact information.
Make sure your practice name, address, phone number, website, and any other contact information you want to use are complete and accurate. Having complete and accurate contact information on sites like Facebook helps with local search engine optimization by creating a bigger web presence and gives people multiple ways to reach out to you when you make an offer or if you use Facebook to fill last-minute cancellations.
2. Your page must have accurate hours of operation.
Very little annoys potential patients as much as calling or trying to make an appointment when you say you’re open, only to find out the hours listed on your Facebook page or website are inaccurate.
3. Your profile picture and cover images must be professional, hi-res images that convey your practice’s culture.
These images will be many people’s first impression of your practice. High-quality images that convey your practice’s culture make sure that first impression is a good one and lets potential patients know what makes your practice different and better than others.
4. Your about section must include complete and accurate statements about what makes your dental practice different.
Let people know why your practice is different and better. Tell them about your practice’s culture. Let them know about on-time guarantees, VIP service, and all the other things that make your practice amazing, and fill out your Facebook practice story with another professional, hi-res image to let people learn even more about what makes you great!
5. Add trusted team members to your dental office Facebook page’s list of team members.
Facebook now lets you feature team members on your page. This will link your page to their profile and show their name and profile picture on your page.
6. Your button under your dental Facebook page cover photo must be set how you want it.
Make sure the big blue button under your cover photo encourages people to engage with your dental practice how you want them to, not just how it’s set by default. For example, you can set it to send you a Facebook message, schedule an appointment, or call your office. The big blue button is one of the most prominent features of your page and stays shown even as they scroll down. Make sure it directs people where you want them to go!
How does your dental Facebook page stack up?
With these six simple things in place, your dental office Facebook page will be ready for you to add high-impact dental Facebook posts and start promoting your Facebook page so you can build a loyal audience and attract new patients to your office!
One of the best benefits of growing your Facebook page audience is the social proof it provides when people are looking to choose a new dentist.
When people come across your Facebook page and see that their friends or family members like your page, they become more likely to either call their friend or family member to ask about you or be comforted enough by the fact that their Facebook friend publicly likes your page to make an appointment.
Typically, all of that happens on Facebook and requires people to discover your Facebook page in order to see which of their friends like your page. With the free Facebook Page plugin, however, you can now take advantage of that same powerful social proof right on your website.
The best part is it only takes a few minutes to set up your Facebook Page plugin. Here’s how it works.
What is the Facebook Page Plugin?
The Facebook Page plugin is a piece of code that Facebook will generate for you that allows you to promote your Facebook page right on your website so your web visitors can like your Facebook page without leaving your site.
When you install the code, your website visitors will see a miniature version of your Facebook page in a small box that shows your cover photo, a tab to like your Facebook page, a tab to watch the featured video, and even a list of their friends who like your page, with their friends’ profile images prominently displayed. That is where it gets powerful and can lead to an immediate Facebook page like or appointment.
If you don’t have your practice’s Facebook Page plugin installed, here’s how you can get yours in a matter of minutes.
How to Create Your Custom Facebook Page Plugin
Currently, this is the page to create your Facebook page plugin code, but Facebook changes their pages from time to time, so if this doesn’t work, just Google “Facebook Page plugin,” and it should come right up. When you get to the page, all you need to do is copy and paste your Facebook page URL into the box that says “Facebook Page URL.”
That will create a box using Facebook’s standard dimensions and options. If you like that look and those options, all you need to do is click Get Code and either give it to your web developer or copy and paste it into your website at the appropriate place. Each website platform has a different place, but it’s a simple copy and paste either way. The only difference is where you put it.
Although the standard options are okay, it looks a bit long and doesn’t have all the best social proof elements active by default, so I recommend you customize your code.
How to Customize Your Custom Facebook Page Plugin to Get the Best Results
To get the maximum benefit of the social proof, however, I suggest you customize your Facebook Page plugin for the best results.
The first thing I suggest you do is to improve how the plugin looks. To do so, I suggest you insert 300 in both the height and width fields. This will create a nice-looking square version of your Facebook page. I also suggest you check the box that says “adapt to plugin container width,” which will help you make sure the width of your plugin will fit your site’s column width. This is a good option to make sure your plugin looks good on your page.
I also recommend you check the box that says “Show Friends’ Faces.” This is how you activate the feature to show pictures of people’s Facebook friends who like your page when they land on your site. I always recommend people select this option to take advantage of that potential influence.
Finally, although you can also elect to show only a small version of your header image and remove your cover photo, I suggest leaving those unchecked. Having a large header image and including your cover photo makes the plugin look more familiar and authentic. I suggest you don’t select those two options.
Get Your Custom Code
Once you’ve customized the look of your Facebook Page plugin, click the “Get Code” button.
Facebook will then generate your custom code to paste on your site. Depending on the platform your site is built on, the code you want and the place you will paste it will be different. If you want help finding your code, pasting it on your site, or learning more ways to use Facebook to grow your practice, join our free Facebook group, where thousands of dentists are helping each other grow their practices.
You could also reach out to your web developer to guide you.
Facebook will give you both JavaScript SDK and IFrame options. The IFrame option is an html code you can paste in a WordPress text widget, so if your site is built on WordPress, you can click the IFrame option, copy the code, and paste it into a text widget where you want it on your site, and you’ll be all set.
Don’t let this last step stop you from using this great social proof. If you need help, check out the team of expert coaches, training, and resources we offer in our signature Delivering WOW Platinum Mastermind Program.
Facebook pages are the base for both organic and paid outreach on the best social media platform in the world. Once you set up your dental Facebook page and complete your profile, you’re ready to start posting and engaging with fans, prospects, and patients.
If you’re new to Facebook for dentists or social media marketing, it might be a challenge to know what to post! Many dentists who struggle with that challenge end up posting boring content that doesn’t get attention or earn engagement, or they leave their pages sitting inactive for months. If that’s you, you’re losing a great opportunity!
Facebook posts don’t have to be complex. A well-planned simple post can be just as effective as—if not more effective than—a highly produced one.
If you’re stuck and don’t know what to post to your Facebook page, don’t worry. Here are four simple types of Facebook posts that will help you get started like a pro!
Dental Facebook Posts about Current Promotions
Patients love promotions. They love getting deals. If you’re discounting a procedure or offering a free or low-cost, add-on service, post it to Facebook with a call to action encouraging people to schedule an appointment.
If you haven’t offered a promotion, consider doing so. It’ll give you something that connects well with Facebook fans, and the cost of your discount gets you a new patient and is a marketing investment into a longer-term relationship or add-on services with that patient.
Dental Facebook Posts that Show You Care
Some of our best Facebook posts are ones that highlight the ways we give back to our patients, team members, community, organizations, and individuals.
Make giving back to your patients, team members, community, organizations, and individuals a priority for your practice, and share it on Facebook. People love seeing others making a difference and will notice you doing so in a positive way!
Dental Facebook Posts that Ask Questions
Post an image with a question for your community. One we use asks, “What is the ONE thing preventing you from having the smile of your dreams?” When we asked that in our practice, we earned over 70 engagements and reached thousands of people.
Dental Facebook Posts that Share Excitement
When you get excited about something, record a short video sharing your excitement about it, and post it to your page. Better yet, record the video live on your page.
Some of our best “excitement” posts include big announcements about our practice or one of our team members, announcing charity efforts like a food drive or road race, or giving tours of our office when someone compliments it. You want to share that excitement with more people or show video testimonials.
When you’re excited about something, people will be more drawn to you and the cause you’re posting about. Because of that, they’ll be more likely to pay attention for longer, interact with your post, and take action to schedule an appointment with you!
Are You Running out of Things to Say on Your Dental Facebook Page?
If you struggle to know what to say on your dental Facebook page, you’re not alone. Thousands of dentists struggle to know what to post.
By following these three guidelines, you can always have something to post, whether it’s a promotion, showing you care (or your teammate cares), asking a question, or sharing excitement, you’ll never run out of things to say.
Keep a dozen or so relevant questions in a folder so you always have a question to ask. Rotate your promotions on a monthly basis, and post about the promotion several times that month. Maintain a central database of testimonials you can share over and over again.
TAKE ACTION TODAY:
If you’d like to implement proven marketing processes to increase your visibility and fill up your schedule our 21-day Marketing & Practice Growth Challenge can help! You can join the challenge and we will help you to set the foundation for marketing and practice growth success step by step. By the end of 21 days you will:
Complete your 12-Month Marketing Plan
Launch your first or next successful Marketing Campaign, where you will grow your practice’s presence and build relationships with small business owners in your community.
Successfully implement whiteboards in your practice to reverse-engineer your goals for more success and more profit.
Ready to see a difference in your office in the next 21 days? Over 300 practices have already seen the difference, you’re next! Save your spot in our upcoming challenge by clicking here, and use the code CHALLENGE to save 20% at checkout!
Facebook for dentists is the best social media site to help you reach potential patients for your practice. Although Facebook doesn’t charge you to have a dental Facebook page or to post on your Facebook page, its algorithm limits the reach of posts unless one of two things happens:
You pay Facebook to promote the post as a standalone dental Facebook ad or a boosted dental Facebook post, or
Facebook sees people engaging with a post.
With paid posts, Facebook will generally share it with as many people as you pay to reach. That’s a great option for many dentists. My team and I have received up to 5,000% return on ads we’ve placed for my practice and other dentists we serve through our dental marketing done-for-you services.
To reach more people organically, your post needs to get them to engage with it by liking or otherwise reacting to it, commenting on it, or sharing it on their timeline.
Just like your goal might be to attract as many people as possible to your page and keep them there or get them to your site or your dental marketing funnel, Facebook wants users to stay on its site as long as possible. Thus, it wants to make their experience there as pleasant as possible and reduces the organic reach of business posts until it believes people like it. One of the ways it determines that is through engagement. The more people interact with your post, the more people Facebook will show it to organically.
The Best Dental Facebook Posts for Organic Reach
The best dental Facebook posts to help you increase organic reach are those that capture people’s attention while doing one or more of the following things:
Sharing your practice story
Sharing your core values
Showing what makes your practice unique
Evoking a positive emotion in people on a personal level
For example, in my practice, we stock our office with gourmet coffees and teas, lend iPads and noise-canceling headphones to patients, participate in community events, host charity drives, and regularly run contests and competitions. When we post about those activities—especially with great photos—we take or videos we make, our posts get dozens and even hundreds of likes, comments, and shares, and our posts reach thousands of people.
Other examples of good posts include those that:
are about a kids’ club program logo you have or a picture of a happy kids’ club member
celebrate with a great team member
show off group perks you give your team members such as the loaded e-readers we give to ours
feature events you host at your office
highlight a team-building event like a night out or baby shower
celebrate local events
show you donating dental services to less fortunate people
share patient testimonials
For my practice, we posted about community impact being one of our core values and included an image of us smiling with the winner of our free smile makeover giveaway competition, which we call Project Smiles. That post got dozens of engagements and reached 5,000 people organically because it got people’s attention and gave them something to connect with emotionally.
Another Project Smiles post reached over 10,000 people organically before we added an additional 45,000 people to our reach with a small paid boost.
Both of those posts had great imagery, shared some of our practice’s story, core values, and what makes us different than other dental practices. They were about building stronger communities and showed how we were making a difference. Thus, we were able to evoke a positive emotion in people and earn their engagement.
The more people engaged, the more people we reached, which helped us:
capture more people’s attention in a positive way
share our practice story with more people
get our practice name seen in more feeds
get people to know, like, and trust us
convert people to patients
get in front of current patients who might need a subtle reminder to schedule another patient
When your dental Facebook page is set up professionally and optimized to build relationships with people, this engagement can help you skyrocket your ability to convert strangers to patients.
The Worst Dental Facebook Posts for Organic Reach
Just like certain types of dental Facebook posts can encourage and increase engagement, other types can restrict engagement for the same reasons. If you’re on Facebook as a user, what posts capture your attention? What posts are you most likely to engage with?
Most users won’t be interested in stock content, boring posts, or negative imagery such as the picture of an in-progress wisdom-tooth extraction I saw on another dentist’s timeline! Those posts can be simple and easy to find, but they’re unlikely to earn any engagement or reach.
When planning your post to maximize engagement, get into the mindset of a Facebook user. Would you be interested in that post if it were in your feed? If your answer is no, don’t post it.
Instead, ask how you can change the post to be more interesting to and evoke emotion in people on Facebook.
Are Your Dental Facebook Posts Not Earning Engagement and Reach?
If you struggle to get people to engage with your dental Facebook posts, it might be that they don’t evoke emotions within people to earn their engagement.
If you want more help with dental Facebook marketing, check out the team of expert coaches, training, and resources we offer in our signature Delivering WOW Platinum Mastermind Program.
This week on the Delivering WOW podcast I've recorded a solo episode where I share with you lots of tips and advice on how to get your Facebook posts to go viral. So many people have asked me in the past how I manage to get 40,000 people watching my videos, and how I manage to get similar results with the doctors that I've been working with. In this podcast episode I share the exact strategies that we use at Delivering WOW.
On the podcast I discuss:
The importance of creating posts that people will want to share
The kind of posts that people want to share and why
Examples of posts that I have shared that went viral and why
Why you should ask people to share your posts
Steps that you should take after you have posted your post with paid ads
Creating audiences in Facebook's advertising platform
Whether it matters what day and time you post and how you can find out
Here's a video trailer of the podcast episode:
If you want help with Facebook marketing you can get access to my full Facebook course, social media images, my Facebook funnel course, and email marketing course, all on the inside of Delivering WOW U. Please also join my free Facebook Group. Also, I would love to see you at the Delivering Wow Summit in Jamaica March 9-10 2018 – click here to find out more. Hope to see you there!
Facebook advertising for dentists is one of the best ways to grow your practice and get people into your sales funnels. To take advantage of powerful Facebook ads and other features, however, you need to first set up your dental Facebook page.
Your dental Facebook page will act as your office’s home base on Facebook to grow an audience of raving fans, show people your practice’s culture, share your best social-media posts, attract new prospects into your funnels, and more.
If you don’t yet have a dental office Facebook page, your first step in mastering the amazing effects of Facebook for dentists is to set up your dental office Facebook page. Here’s how to do that.
1. Create a new Facebook page for your dental office.
2. Choose your business category and enter your practice’s name and address.
Facebook’s Page creation will ask you to select a business type and enter information about your business on the next page. In all likelihood, Local Business or Place will be the right category for your dental office Facebook page.
Once you select your category, enter the name and contact information for your practice.
In the “Page Category” section, start typing “dental” and “dentist” to see what category best fits your practice from among “Dentist & Dental Office,” “General Dentist,” “Cosmetic Dentist,” and “Pediatric Dentist.” Facebook changes the way they do things frequently, so search for and choose the best category for your practice.
Once you enter your information, click “get started.”
3. Upload a Facebook profile picture and cover photo.
When you click the “get started” button, Facebook will ask you to upload a Facebook profile picture and cover photo for your dental office Facebook page. Having high-quality Facebook profile pictures and cover photos help you present a consistent image that captures your practice’s brand and culture.
Your profile picture could be a high-quality photo of you, particularly if you’re a one-doctor dental office, or it could be your logo. Either way, your profile picture should be a high-resolution, square picture. For the tech-savvy dentists: your Facebook picture should be at least 180 x 180 pixels.
Your dental practice Facebook page cover photo could be a picture of your office or your team, or it could be a custom image that demonstrates how great your practice is. The picture itself should be 820 x 312 pixels, but must be at least 399 x 150 pixels.
4. Complete and customize your profile.
Once you complete the Facebook page profile picture and cover photo step, you’ll be taken to your new dental practice Facebook page. Your page will be three columns. The left column will be mostly navigation. You’ll see your image, a “home” link to take you to your main page, a “services” link where you can list the services you offer, and more.
The middle column is where your posts will go. When you first create a page, you’ll see a welcome message in this middle column with page tips below it. If you skipped the step to add a Facebook page profile picture and cover photo, you will be prompted to do that there. In addition, you’ll be prompted to add things like a custom username. That allows you to create a clean, custom url for your dental practice Facebook page that is easier to remember and doesn’t have a long string of numbers. You do this by clicking the “create username” prompt from Facebook.
You will also be asked to enter a short description of your practice, where you can enter a couple of sentences to tell people what your practice is all about. Let them know why your practice is different.
Facebook does a good job of walking you through the steps to complete your dental practice’s Facebook page. Be sure to complete the following extra steps when setting up your dental practice’s Facebook page and keep them up to date if anything changes.
Add your hours of operation. Let people know when you’re open, so they can see how your practice could fit with their schedule.
Add trusted team members as administrators or give them posting privileges, so your team can help you manage your page.
Add a link to your website or contact form. Underneath your cover photo, you will see a blue button with a call to action. This is usually set to “send message” as a default, but if you hover your cursor over the button, it allows you to edit it. If you want to leave it as “send message,” you can click the button and enter a message to automatically reply to someone letting them know you will reply as soon as possible. If you want to change the button, you can edit it to do a number of things by clicking the “other options” button on the bottom of the pop-up window. That opens a window with all of the options for customizing the buttons, including letting people book an appointment, call your office, send you an email, link to a video or page, and more.
5. Add posts and get ready to grow your new dental office’s Facebook page!
Once you finish these steps, you will have a professional dental office Facebook page that’s ready for you and your team to post the best dental practice Facebook posts out there and build a following of raving fans and new patients.
If you’ve been reading my blog or listening to my podcast, you know my favorite way to grow a dental practice is through dental-marketing funnels. I believe every dentist needs at least one dental marketing funnel in their practice. If you want to grow your dental practice into a busy, high-profit dental practice full of patients who rave about you to their friends and family, dental-marketing funnels are your answer!
Dental-marketing funnels are so powerful, they can help you even if you haven’t opened the doors of your practice yet and don’t have a big marketing budget.
For example, in a recent Delivering WOW podcast episode, I shared the story of Dr. Ashley Joves who used a simple funnel to add over 1,000 Facebook fans, grow an email list of almost 300 patient leads for a waiting list, and have 50 people schedule appointments before she even opened the doors.
The best part about it for Dr. Joves was she accomplished all that by spending only $685.00 on advertising. The best part for you is the process she used to get those results is simple and can apply to a number of different situations, such as if you want to expand your office in a different location, add a new doctor, or renovate your building.
Here are three keys to attracting hundreds of new leads before your big opening, expansion, or renovation!
1. Start early.
Announce your new practice, expansion, or renovation as soon as you commit to making it happen. In addition to public accountability, this allows you to share your journey while building a warm, excited audience and having multiple opportunities to get people to opt into your simple dental-marketing funnel.
Dr. Joves started the day she left her associate position by posting a Facebook Live video where she announced she bought a building and would be opening her own practice. She then worked with me and my team to build a practice page and set a goal of having over 1,000 relevant likes by the time her doors opened.
2. Share your journey.
Let people look behind the curtain as you embark on your new journey. With Dr. Joves, this meant sharing pictures, live videos, and other exciting posts about all aspects of her new practice, starting with her vision and what would make her practice different and better (Check out our list of free dental advertising ideas). She shared design choices, construction updates, and more, boosting some of the posts through Facebook to get important updates in front of even more potential patients!
3. Incentivize participation in your new venture and make it a winning situation for prospects.
Give people a big reason to go from social-media contacts to real leads. Dr. Joves did this by offering people a $50 coupon off their first visit just for joining her VIP waiting list and announcing one sign-up would win a choice of $1,000 to spend toward dental care at her office or free teeth whitening for life! She also offered to invite everyone on her VIP waiting list to an in-person celebration!
This made it an easy decision for people in her practice area to join. Her incentive was great because it was all tied to services at her office, so the only people who were incentivized to join were potential patients. If she had given away an iPad, she’d have gotten signups from people around the world who would never come to her office.
4. Add an extra incentive for people who act fast to schedule an appointment.
As your opening, expansion, or renovation is nearing, announce an extra bonus for people who act fast to schedule an appointment. This could be something like a free service for people who make an appointment by a certain date, or even a discount for the first 25 people who schedule an appointment. Whatever it is, tie it to making an appointment and either limit the number of people who can take advantage of it or the time by which they need to take advantage of it to push people to act fast.
Dr. Joves gave an extra bonus for the first 25 people to schedule an appointment.
5. Use a simple funnel to make it easy to implement.
Dr. Joves worked with my team to build her funnel using a ClickFunnels two-step funnel. The first step was setting up a squeeze page to collect names and email addresses. After people opted in, they went to a landing page that reminded them of the benefits of being on the list and let them know they would be receiving their $50 coupon by email. That’s all she needed to manage her funnel. All her online promotion was Facebook ads and boosting some posts, working with my team, and she an ad spend of only $685! Because she didn’t have web traffic or an existing email list or Facebook page when she started, we mostly targeted people who had watched her videos or people who engaged with her posts for paid promotions and let her funnels do the work of collecting email addresses and sending out the incentive coupons and invitations!
6. Open your doors with patients excited and ready!
By starting early, sharing your story, and using smart incentives and a simple funnel to build a warm, excited audience, you have the opportunity to start a practice or kick off an expansion or renovation project with people ready to jump in your chair, just like Dr. Joves had!
Take a peek behind the curtain!
If you want to see exactly how Dr. Joves went from no list, no facebook page, and no patients to over 1,000 raving Facebook fans, almost 300 patients on a VIP waiting list, and more than 50 scheduled appointments in a matter of months, before she even opened her doors, check out the team of expert coaches, training, and resources we offer in our signature Delivering WOW Platinum Mastermind Program.
Dental Marketing has never been as simple or effective as it is today when we can use automated funnels and highly-targeted marketing to attract more patients to our dental practices, instead of the inefficient and expensive marketing options we were stuck with years ago.
The opportunity that dental marketing funnels provide is so much better than anything we’ve seen before, that I highly recommend them to all of my dental coaching and Inner Circle clients, as well as my Delivering WOW Platinum Mastermind members, and have even added done-for-you funnel services to our service mix.
As effective as they can be, however, even the best-planned automated sequence won’t help you grow your practice if you aren’t attracting enough of the right people into the funnel.
Here are three ways to attract more of the right people into your dental marketing funnel, so your automated sequence can guide them to your call to action.
1. Create and promote high-value opt-in content
In my post about how to set up your first dental marketing funnel, I shared that creating a piece of high-value opt-in content was the second step in setting up your funnel. This is because high-value opt-in content like guides, checklists, ebooks, explainer videos, or answers to frequently asked questions have been proven to attract people to your funnel, giving them useful information in exchange for their opting into your automated funnel.
Although it’s important to create high-value opt-in content while you build your funnel, that doesn’t mean you can forget about opt-in content after you create it. To attract more people into your funnel, consider creating multiple pieces of high-value opt-in content for each funnel. For example, you might have a short checklist, pre-recorded video, and a pre-recorded audio interview that align with the goal of your funnel.
Having multiple pieces of high-value opt-in content allows you to attract more people into your funnel because different people have different learning styles. Some people prefer video. Others prefer audio. Others will only consume written content. Also, creating multiple pieces of content on related, but slightly different topics helps you connect with people using multiple messages.
2. Create and recreate multiple Facebook Live events.
Promoting replays of live events is a great way to leverage your time to attract people into your funnel without having to spend additional time doing multiple Facebook Live events. If you’re not attracting as many people to your funnel as you want, consider creating multiple Facebook Live events to lead people into your funnel. The more Facebook Live events you do, the more comfortable you’ll get with them, and the more effective you will be at leading people to download your opt-in content to get them into your funnel. Thus, consider recreating the same Facebook Live events as you get more comfortable with live video and sending people to your opt-in. You can also experiment with hosting Facebook Live events at different times of the day to see if one time is more effective than another.
Finally, as with the opt-in content, you could host Facebook Live events on slightly different topics until you find one that works better than others. By creating and recreating multiple Facebook Live events, you’ll have more touches with people live, better content as you become more comfortable with live video, and multiple video replays to boost on Facebook and promote to your email list.
3. Promote your opt-in content to your patient email list.
If the goal of your funnel is to sell a specific service, rather than to attract new patients to your practice, your existing patient list can be a great place to go to get more people into your funnel.
Because your current patients already know, like, and trust you, they can be much more open to opting in to your funnel for additional services than others who don’t know how great you and your practice are!
Thus, emailing them to let them know about your great new opt-in content or event with a link to your squeeze page can be highly effective at attracting people into your funnel!
Are you ready to fill your funnel?
Because an effective automated funnel cuts your intake time down to nearly nothing, getting people into an automated dental marketing funnel is one of the best uses of your marketing time.
If you’re having trouble getting people into your funnel, these three tips should help you get more people to opt in. If you need more help, check out the team of expert coaches, training, and resources we offer in our signature Delivering WOW Platinum Mastermind Program. You can also join thousands of other dentists helping each other in my Free Dental Marketing and Profits Facebook Group!
Marketing your dental practice on Facebook is the most effective way to get a regular flow of new patients. In my practice, I frequently get returns of up to 5,000% on my Facebook marketing. Yet many dentists never achieve their full potential. Some never get past four common myths about Facebook and never give it a chance to help them. Others dabble, trying one tactic after another with no real purpose or focus.
No matter what your experience with Facebook for dentists has been, you can attract new patients from Facebook each and every month from this point forward by utilizing this one secret.
Your success with Facebook depends more on posting right type of content to Facebook than it does on simply posting more often or paying more to promote your page or posts. To grow your dental practice on Facebook, you must post shareable content.
There’s a lot of competition for people’s eyes on Facebook. By posting shareable content, you’ll naturally attract people to interact with your post by liking, commenting, or sharing it on their timeline. When that happens, Facebook will see your post as popular and will show it to more people. As those new people like, comment, and share your post, Facebook will continue to show it to more and more people. That’s how posts go viral.
Here are three ways to create shareable content:
1. Post things that tell your practice’s story.
Anyone can fix teeth. People don’t choose dentists because they can fix teeth. They choose dentists because of the people who work at your practice and the experience they expect from a visit.
Post things that make your practice unique. Do you give back to your community? Do you serve an underserved market? Do you provide a VIP, Delivering-WOW experience to everyone that walks through the door? Do you have the latest technology that makes patient experiences better?
Post about whatever makes your practice unique. Post pictures of your staff smiling about the new technology with a note about the benefit to your patients, like “We’re excited to make your next dental experience painless with this!”
Post things that evoke emotions, such as patient testimonials stating how their confidence improved after visiting you. Let people know that your practice is about changing lives, not just caring for teeth.
2. Hold contests and promotions for page likes and post interactions.
A great way to get people excited about your practice in a way that encourages them to share your posts with their friends and family is to create a contest for a free service in a random drawing of everyone who likes your page, and then likes, comments, and shares your post within a certain timeframe.
You can also hold a contest or promotion for people to nominate people to receive a free service. In my practice, we regularly do something we call Project Smile. We do this entirely on Facebook and don’t even tell our patients about it, to reward people who follow our Facebook page. With Project Smile, we announce that we’re going to give away a free smile makeover and ask people to share our content post on Facebook. Our post asks people to send us an email with why they (or someone they nominate) should receive a free smile makeover, along with an image of their smile, so we can see if they’re a candidate. We then narrow down the list to people who we can really help in our office, invite the finalists for a cleaning, so we can take a closer look at their mouths, and then choose a winner for the full smile makeover. (Actually, we pretty much choose all of the finalists every time we do a Project Smile promotion, because we enjoy it so much!). Our Facebook fans love following and sharing our Project Smile promotions. Not only do people interact with the post and participate in the contest or promotion, but they often also see what other services we provide and come to us for an appointment.
3. Congratulate, encourage, and promote your patients.
A third way to create shareable content is to post about all the great things your patients are doing. When you and your team learn about what your patients or their family are doing, take note and post about them on your Facebook page. Are they star athletes? Did they win a creative competition? Do they have a dance recital? Do they run a great business?
Look for the great things your patients are doing in their lives and the community, and tell your Facebook fans about it. Celebrate, encourage, or promote your practice on your Facebook page whenever you can do so without revealing patient confidences! You can even tag your patient in the post, so they know about the post and ask your Facebook fans to congratulate or encourage them in the comments to the post and to share the post on their timeline to further promote their accomplishment. As more people like, comment, and share, Facebook will show the post to more people.
Your patient will feel special because you’ll be showing them you listen to them and care about what they’re doing, not just making small talk during a procedure, and others will interact with your page, post, and practice!
Shareable content doesn’t have to be complicated.
No matter what tactic you use, the secret to explosive growth on Facebook for dentists is to make sure the content you post is shareable. With shareable content, you put your practice in a position to benefit from your Facebook fans liking, commenting, and sharing your content.
A simple image of a smiling patient enjoying a gourmet cup of coffee in your office with a note that you love your patients as much as they love your coffee and a request for people to tag someone who loves coffee tells your practice’s story and encourages your fans to interact with and share your post!
If you want to know more ways to create shareable content and grow your dental practice on Facebook, you can check out my Facebook mastery course, Facebook Bootcamp or sign up for a trial membership to the Delivering WOW U membership community, where I help dentists like you grow their dental practices so they can make more while working less.
One of the most important factors for patients when choosing a dentist is trust. When people trust you, not only will they be more likely to choose you to be their dentist, they will also trust your care recommendations and accept your treatment plans more easily once they become patients.
Years ago, trust was built based with word-of-mouth recommendations. Although word-of-mouth referrals still happen today, dentists can build trust with many more patients through effective Facebook marketing. And the single best way to do that is through video.
Video is huge on Facebook. Video shows people who you and your practice are. Videos with you in them allow people to see you and hear your voice. It allows you to show people your personality. It allows people to get to know your staff and your office from the comfort of their own home. It builds trust far more effectively than a written post or even an image.
Additionally, Facebook’s algorithm favors videos, so video posting can get you in front of more people because the time people spend watching videos tells Facebook even more about them than what they like, comment on, or share. Although people sometimes like, comment, or share something because it was posted by a friend—even if they’re not interested in the post—they rarely watch an entire video if they don’t genuinely like it. Because of that, when someone watches a video on Facebook, Facebook sees that video as something people are genuinely interested in and will show it to more people.
If you’re not using video on Facebook, you’re missing a big opportunity. Here are three simple ways to use video to grow your practice on Facebook:
1. Post short video testimonials.
It’s one thing to say or write that you have an amazing practice. It’s even more amazing to post a video of a patient glowing about the incredible experience they just had in your practice. When someone sees and hears an actual patient gushing about how they can’t wait until their next dental appointment with you, viewers will want to be that happy leaving their next dental appointment and will see your practice as the place to go for that feeling!
The video doesn’t have to be professionally produced. In fact, recording it with a cell phone and posting it on your page is the best way to show people the testimonial is real. You can even do it as a live video from your phone if you prefer, which Facebook loves.
In our practice, after treating our patients to a WOW experience, our hygienist will ask patients how their experience was. We do this to get feedback on our practice and constantly improve.
Because we so intentionally treat our patients like the VIPs they are, their response is usually that it was great. We ask about specific parts of their experience, like the hand massages, gourmet coffees and teas, and our commitment to timely service. Again, they almost without fail gush about that. The most common response from our patients is they’ve never had that great an experience at the dentist before. We explain that so many people are fearful of the dentist, so we appreciate that feedback. We then sometimes ask people if they’d be willing to share their experience in a video for us to use on Facebook to let those fearful patients know that our practice is different.
2. Post video tours of your office.
If your office is amazing, take a video tour and let people know. When we do this, people see the iPads, gourmet coffees and teas, towel warmers, and more. It shows viewers how well we treat our patients. It helps them imagine themselves being treated that way at the dentist. It lets them know our practice is different.
You can do the same, too. Grab your cell phone and record videos of your office for your Facebook page. You can do a tour of your entire office, or record multiple videos showing people small parts of your office, talking about one thing that makes your office experience different per video.
3. Post videos about your practice policies and promotions.
Video is a great way to let people know about your business policies or promotions. For example, our practice offers our patients an on-time guarantee that guarantees that our patients will be seated within fifteen minutes of their appointment time or their next exam is free.
In your practice, you or one of your outgoing team members could record videos about policies that make you unique, promotions you’re doing for new patients, payment options to make dental care more affordable, and more. Let your current and future patients connect with your policies and promotions by hearing it straight from you or one of your team members. This creates a personal, emotional connection between your patients and the policies and promotions that make your practice amazing.
Get started with video today!
By posting video content to Facebook, in addition to text and image posts, your content will stand out and make deeper connections to your audience. It also allows you to take advantage of Facebook’s love for video content to build organic momentum in addition to your paid reach.
By posting videos with testimonials, tours, promotions, or policy explanations, you’ll make more emotional connections with your audience, who will see your passion and feel your excitement about dentistry.
TAKE ACTION TODAY:
It’s now amazingly simple, and so convenient, for you to achieve your practice’s marketing targets with just your cell phone and laptop! But maybe you’re feeling like video is way outside your comfort zone. You’re not alone: over 300 dentists felt that way too when they first joined the Marketing & Practice Growth Challenge. But then they received step-by-step support from Team WOW and at the end of 21 days, they got very comfortable with using video in their practice to connect with their patients. If you want this kind of step by step guidance and support, you can save your spot for the challenge here — plus use the code CHALLENGE and save 20% at checkout!
When I was building my latest startup, I tried everything to grow my practice, from the Yellow Pages to coupons, and more. I kept looking for a better way. During my search, I found myself in a lecture about how local businesses could use Facebook to grow, and my life changed forever.
I started experimenting right away, testing different things and seeing amazing results right away. Over the next two years, my practice grew very quickly. In fact, we got so many new patients our revenue tripled, we had to hire another doctor and hygienist, and we outgrew our office in about two years. Personally, the profits from the practice helped my husband and me become debt free, a dream of ours.
After working with thousands of students, I identified the following four myths about Facebook that dentists need to overcome in order to achieve explosive growth using Facebook.
1. They think, “I’ve tried Facebook. It doesn’t work.”
This first myth is that Facebook doesn’t work or won’t work for them. Many dentists and other professionals have played around with Facebook for a few days, weeks, or even months, without any measurable success.
They look at pages like mine, with over 50,000 fans and think Facebook only works when you have a large following. They’ve posted a few pictures, spent a couple dollars boosting some posts, or placed an ad or two promoting their page, but they can’t identify any new patients, so they think Facebook is the problem.
I hear it every time I speak about Facebook. The truth is Facebook does work. I’ve helped everyone from practices that have been around for decades to practices that have been around for less than six months, like one client of mine who started getting 50 patients a month using the techniques I teach—with a six-month-old practice.
Just because Facebook hasn’t worked yet for you, doesn’t mean it doesn’t work at all. I’ve seen the results!
2. They think Facebook might work, but not for a dental practice.
The second myth is that Facebook only works for other types of businesses.
For decades, dental practices placed ads, contracted with insurance plans, and relied heavily on word-of-mouth to build their practices. Because of that, many dentists don’t see Facebook as part of a patient’s decision-process.
The reality is, there’s no better place to connect with patients, build excitement for your practice, and tell your practice’s story in a way that makes people want you to be their dentist.
3. I don’t have the time for Facebook.
Running a dental practice is a lot of work. Because of that, many dentists think it would take too much of their time or their team’s attention to use Facebook to build their practice.
Today, Facebook remains my best referral source with my team handling everything in about 30 minutes a week. Many of my students are seeing the same thing.
I recommend most dentists have their team members learn how to use Facebook well and then have their team members handle it.
With just a few hours of training and less than one hour per week, you, too, can grow your practice on Facebook!
4. It takes a lot of money to profit from Facebook.
Finally, many dentists believe it takes a lot of money to profit from Facebook. I had one dentist come to me who was spending $3,000 per month advertising on Google and another $2,000 advertising on Facebook. Every month, he spent $5,000. That’s way too much money, but those are the figures many dentists are used to seeing for advertising methods.
Facebook is different. In fact, once you know what to post and how to get your posts seen by the right people, you can attract dozens of patients for a fraction of what you might be spending in other places.
Have you tried using Facebook to grow your dental practice?
If so, what’s worked best for you? What hasn’t worked?
If not, why not? What’s keeping you from connecting with your future patients on Facebook?
TAKE ACTION TODAY:
If you want to know how you can use Facebook to grow your business, AND take action on your new knowledge, our upcoming Marketing & Practice Growth Challenge is for you! By the end of 21 days, you will have launched a marketing campaign to increase your visibility in your community AND grow your new patient list. Click here for more details!
And if want us to train you or your team on how to use Facebook to get 30 plus patients a month without discounting and wasting money on Marketing that doesn't work, our Facebook Bootcamp is for you! Click here to learn more.
In this interview with Michael Stelzner, I share why Facebook Marketing is so powerful for local businesses, including dental offices.
Why Local Businesses Need to Go Beyond Review Sites
If your new patients hang out on Facebook, that’s where you need to be. People aren’t hanging out on Yelp or Google. Most people check Facebook first thing in the morning, between daily tasks, and in the evening. That’s why Facebook marketing needs to be your focus.
Creating the right content is important. A lot of businesses post information about how great they are and share a lot of stock content, but that really doesn’t work. Local businesses need to share their story and what makes their business unique. For example, if you have a plumbing company, what are you offering that’s different from everyone else?
To compete with photos of kids, community happenings, and articles, it's important to create engaging posts that connect with people and make them want to click, including content about community impact and what you do to change patients’ lives.
We also discuss the importance of gathering patient testimonials and running video campaigns as well as the importance of knowing your target audience.
It's important to be specific with your targeting.
Even with the right content and target audience, you can’t just put up a post and hope people see it. You need to be strategic. Retarget to people who have been to your website, your existing customers, Facebook lookalikes, and so on. To get conversions, you need to make the most of Facebook’s marketing tools.
Focus your marketing on what sets your business apart from competitors.
To start, determine what makes people want to choose your business and not someplace else.
Anytime you’re marketing on Facebook or elsewhere, you begin by highlighting little features that make your business special. Figure out what makes your business unique and focus on that in your marketing messages.
Your marketing stories can target extremely specific sets of people, especially a very warm audience.
For example, in my practice, I ran a Facebook ad for teeth whitening that has provided a 5,000% ROI. Instead of simply targeting people within 10 miles of the practice, I showed the ad to women who met specific criteria. The teeth whitening ad appeared to women who are engaged, are between the ages of 24 and 55, and have interacted with the dental practice in some way.
