You dedicated years to becoming an expert in healthcare, but once you open your own practice, you’re faced with new challenges like how to market and run a business. The transition from patient care to practice management can be tough to navigate.
We know that advertising is vital to draw in new clients. But the methods that many of us are used to using don’t work as effectively today. Phone books are a relic of the past, and newspaper circulation is down—that’s two popular methods of advertising your practice that simply don’t work well in the 21st century.
Nowadays, most advertising is done on the Internet. Many practice owners have seen the incredible potential of the internet but don’t know where to start or how to leverage it to get new clients. In this article, we’ll walk you through the basics of two biggest ad platforms (Google and Facebook) so you can get started fast with the right platform for your practice.
Why Use Digital Advertising for Your Practice?
There are so many forms of digital marketing you can do for your practice. You can implement great search engine optimization (SEO) on your website, or even send out email newsletters to your client base each month. Both of these are valid and effective forms of marketing.
So why should you use digital advertising in particular?
Because even though SEO and email marketing are valuable strategies, they often take time to yield results. Digital advertising on the other hand allows you to reach people at a speed that’s unmatched by other forms of online marketing. With just a few clicks, you can target people who are actively searching for your services, or broadly disseminate a message to potential clients online.
Think of digital advertising like a faucet that you can turn on or off at will to attract more leads to your practice. This is a powerful tool that can expand your reach and turbocharge your practice’s growth because it works fast.
Facebook and Google Are the Two Main Digital Ad Platforms
The two main providers of digital ads online are Facebook and Google.
- Facebook ads are great if you want a large influx of leads that may not be the highest quality, but you can nurture those leads with continuous marketing until they become customers. These ads can reach users on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger (since these are all owned by the same company, now called “Meta”). For the purpose of this article, we’ll be focusing on Facebook/Instagram ads only.
- Google ads are great if you care more about the quality of your leads over the quantity, and if you’re willing to pay a little more upfront for leads that are more likely to be immediate customers. These ads can reach users on Google, YouTube, Gmail, the Google Play Store, and other affiliated websites. For the purpose of this article, we’ll be focusing on Google search engine ads only.
The Purpose of Using Facebook Ads
Facebook is one of the most frequented websites in existence. According to Meta’s investor report for the first quarter of 2024, its family of apps (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger) had an average of 3.24 billion daily active users in March of 2024.
Facebook ads are like postcard mailings that you can send out to everyone in your community. You can also set up your Facebook ad campaign to target specific types of customers based on their location, age, gender, and interests. Once your ads are running, you can reach people on Facebook who meet your specifications.
- Benefits: turn on the lead faucet to get in a ton of potential customers at a cost that can be lower than other digital advertising options. This gets the word out broadly about your practice and services.
- Drawbacks: leads can be lower quality than Google because they aren’t actively searching for you, and they tend to require lots of follow-up to turn them into customers. But if properly managed, it can be a great resource to generate tons of leads.
The Anatomy of Facebook Ads
Facebook ads work based on “interruption marketing.” By this, we mean that potential leads aren’t actively searching for your services—they’re just browsing Facebook. Your ad pops up on their feed and essentially interrupts what they were looking at.
The idea is that a potential customer will stumble across your ad on their feed, get interested, and reach out for more information. Once you have their contact information, you can then nurture that lead with follow up messages, emails, or calls to get them to become a customer.
Example of a Facebook Ad
Here’s an example of a Facebook ad for a bookstore:
- Your practice name and logo show up at the top
- Your message comes next where you can advertise your product or service
- You can add an image, graphic, or video to capture people’s attention
Then add a short call-to-action with links to your website, a contact form, or your practice’s phone number encouraging viewers to reach out.
Facebook Ad Leads Require Nurturing and Follow-Up
Once viewers fill out a contact form or call your practice, you’ll have their information. This is a great first step. But if you want to convert that person into a new client, you need to get in contact with them as soon as possible to encourage them to sign up for your services.
Sometimes they don’t convert right away. After all, you were the one who reached out to them with your ad. But once you have their information, you can continue reaching out or marketing to them as many times as needed to get them to sign up for your services and become a customer.
This could be considered a drawback of using Facebook ads: they require more nurturing and follow-up to convert leads into clients. So before you choose Facebook ads, make sure you have a system in place to follow up with leads, otherwise the ads won’t be as effective as they can be.
The Purpose of Using Google Ads
Google is the dominant search engine in the world with an estimated 91.38% of global search engine market share as of March 2024. It’s so popular that “Google it” has become the shorthand term for searching for information online. (Let’s face it, none of us are saying, “You can Bing it” or “Remind me to Yahoo! that later”).
Google is essentially the 21st century phone book because most people use it to search for any product or service they need. When using Google ads, you can target people who are actively searching for the services your practice offers. This means you get higher-quality leads who are currently interested in becoming customers.
- Benefits: reach higher-quality leads who are actively searching for the products or service your practice offers, who are then more likely to become customers.
- Drawbacks: cost-per-lead may be higher than Facebook, and you tend to get fewer leads because you’re limited by how many people are searching for your product or services. But with a properly managed ad campaign, this becomes less of an issue.
The Anatomy of Google Ads
Google has two basic types of ad marketing styles. You can use the Google Display Network to run an “interruption marketing” campaign (where you’re trying to grab someone’s attention away from what they were looking at online, such as YouTube videos or their emails).
Or you can use Google Search Ads to run a “search marketing” campaign and target people actively searching for your products or services.
Here, we’ll just be talking about Google Search Ads.
Example of a Google Search Engine Ad
Google search engine ads are the “sponsored” results that show up when you search for a product or service. They can be at the top of the page or show up between other organic search results as you scroll down. Generally, these sponsored results contain a title, description, and simple call to action.
By using these types of ads, your practice or practice can instantly grab the attention of people actively searching for your services. And by including a special offer or button to call, you can further entice search engine users to reach out (and make it easy to do so).
So Should Your Business Use Google Ads or Facebook Ads?
The answer to whether your practice should use Google Ads or Facebook ads really depends on your overall goals and the setup you have available to handle leads.
If your goal is to reach as many people as possible, you should use Facebook ads. But to do this successfully, you’ll need to have someone who can get on the phone with leads and convert them into new clients. Even better, your sales funnel should include automated SMS (text messages) and emails to continue nurturing your leads until they sign up for a service.
If you want to reach more qualified leads who are actively searching for your services, you should use Google Ads. Now, choosing Google Ads doesn’t mean that you won’t have to follow up with leads. You will. But it will generally take a lot less effort to convert them into new customers because they were searching for your services already.
Reach Out to Uplift Marketing
If you’re considering running a digital advertising campaign but you’re not sure if you should or where to start, reach out to us here at Uplift Marketing. We’ll do a free comprehensive marketing analysis tailored to your practice’s needs.
This analysis includes a deep dive on your digital ads to make sure you’re using the right platform, getting the most out of your ad spend, and taking the right steps towards your practice’s overall success and growth.
Give us a call at (314) 690-1575 to get started today.
