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5 Ways to Use Facebook Ads to Grow Your Practice

With many advertising mediums, you hope your message is getting to the right target audience, but you may never know for sure. Take a 30-second television spot for example. You choose when the ad airs based on general viewer demographics. But think about all the people that don’t fit your target audience that you spend money to reach. These might be people that fall out of your practice’s geographic reach, age range, specialty area, and more.

I’m not suggesting these mediums don’t work, I’m simply suggesting that there might be other more targeted approaches that you may want to consider. For example, Facebook is an amazingly rich source of personal information—and a marketer’s dream!

Advertising on Facebook can be targeted based on hundreds of different demographics—allowing you to reach your exact target patient. Whether you’re a generalist or specialist, you can use Facebook tools to narrow down a very specific list of people to market to.

Here are five ideas for using Facebook ads to grow your practice:

  1. Run general practice awareness ads for people within your geographic market.

    Facebook allows you to target people in a ten-mile radius (or more) of your location. Use these targeting tools to reach people that are more likely to visit your practice.
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  2. Target potential patients based on age/gender.

    If you are a practice that caters to a specific age demographic or gender, you can use these targeting options to only show your ads to people that fit that category.
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  3. Target new people that have moved into the area or highlighted other life events.

    Using Facebook’s “Detailed Targeting” options allows you to identify people that have recently moved to the area. You could also target people that have recently become pregnant or moms of grade school children (Pediatricians) or moms of high school children (practices that appeal to those outgrowing Pediatricians).
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  1. Targeting based on your Facebook page connections.

    Let’s face it, people look to friends and family for advice when choosing a new healthcare practitioner. If you have spent any time building a Facebook page for your practice, put it to use. You can run ads that target the connections of your page followers. This is a great way to increase referral business.
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  2. Target other healthcare practitioners that could be a referral source!

    Use detailed targeting to have your ads display for Physicians or other key referral sources in your geographic market. You could even create a list of all the potential referring practices/medical groups in your market and have your ads keep your name and practice top-of-mind with their staff.

    Segmenting by job title:
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    Segmenting by place of employment:
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Word of Caution – Keep Ads General, Not Specific

As you can see, there is a wealth of opportunity in using Facebook as a tool to reach the right target audience.  While you can clearly define your target audience based on information people freely and openly share on Facebook, you still want to protect yourself from HIPAA concerns. For example, be sure not to run an ad that implies you have knowledge about a sensitive health condition or other medical information. Also, do not collect or share personally identifiable information such as email addresses or phone numbers.  And, always ensure HIPAA compliance before embarking on any marketing endeavor.

If you’re interested in talking with the experts at BARQAR about social media marketing for your medical practice just contact us today at 1-888-576-6100!

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