Facebook advertising can be a powerful tool to grow your practice when it is used appropriately and in combination with a complete chiropractic marketing plan.
But how do you know if you are doing it correctly?
First, let’s make sure you are following the rules. Then, we’ll share a few actionable tips you can use to jumpstart your chiropractic marketing on Facebook.
Restrictions on Facebook
Navigating Facebook’s ad policies – especially for the healthcare industry – can be difficult. Here are a few chiropractic examples of do’s and don’ts so that you can easily stay within the bounds of Facebook’s policies*:
- Facebook Ad Don’t: “We can help your sciatic pain!”
- Facebook Ad Do: “Help for sciatica available”
When it comes to your Facebook ad text, it can’t directly or indirectly assert that you know something about a person’s personal health issues. The idea is that you are not singling out individuals based on their health and other personal traits (such as age, race, religion, etc.). You can, however, advertise and describe the services your practice offers. Avoid using words like “you”, “your” or “others”.
- Facebook Ad Don’t: Don’t use images or graphics with a lot of text.
- Facebook Ad Do: Do use high-quality images that convey your desired message.
Facebook limits the amount of text you can have on the images in your ads. It’s best to choose nice looking images that relate to your ad message and aren’t too cluttered with text.
- Facebook Ad Don’t: Don’t run ads if your Facebook page isn’t up-to-date.
- Facebook Ad Do: Do post regularly on your Facebook page and engage with your followers.
Make sure your page information is up-to-date and that you’re posting interesting, engaging posts for your followers. If someone sees your ad, they’ll probably take a look around your Facebook page to get to know more about you.
- Facebook Ad Don’t:
- Facebook Ad Do:
The images used in your Facebook ads should promote healthy living through nutrition and exercise without generating a negative self-perception of Facebook users. Essentially, you want to encourage the positive rather than emphasize the negative.
With the basics of Facebook’s advertising policies aside, let’s dive into two of the best ways to use Facebook ads in your chiropractic marketing.
Facebook Advertising as a Branding and Awareness Tool
- Do use Facebook advertising as a branding and awareness tool.
- Don’t stop there.
Facebook’s interest targeting tools are incredibly useful for advertising. They allow you to find the exact type of person who can benefit most from your services. For example, targeting runners for a plantar fasciitis campaign or targeting people interested in gluten free foods, paleo and celiac disease for a functional nutrition program.
However, after going through all of the effort to target the specific person on Facebook, create just the right ad text and image for your offer, don’t let the action steps end at “Learn More”. Once the prospective patient gets to your website they need to know what to do next. This is where having a comprehensive chiropractic marketing plan comes in to play.
Facebook gives us unprecedented opportunities to reach people who may otherwise not know about your practice, but these clicks are only useful when they lead to appointments.
Make sure that your website supports the prospective patient on their journey from Facebook to booking an appointment. Send them to a landing page created specifically to support the ad—it should have similar messaging and a call-to-action to schedule an appointment. Facebook is pointing people toward your practice and your website directs them to your front door.
Remarketing with Facebook Advertising
- Do use Facebook advertising to retarget your website visitors.
- Don’t be creepy.
Consumers typically need to see a brand multiple times before making a purchasing decision. By installing a bit of Facebook code on your website, you can track how many people have visited your site over the past 180 days and target the recent visitors with Facebook ads, giving them another opportunity to interact with your practice online. We recommend targeting visitors from the past 30 days to keep your practice top of mind. This is a simple way to incorporate Facebook advertising as an ongoing aspect of your chiropractic marketing.
It can be easy to get a little too specific in these ads and say things like, “Hey! Remember visiting our website?” That makes people uncomfortable. Instead, view remarketing as an opportunity to show visitors an aspect of your practice or a particular offer they might have missed the first time on your site.
*Facebook’s official stance on advertising policies for personal attributes and personal health:
https://www.facebook.com/policies/ads/prohibited_content/personal_attributes
https://www.facebook.com/policies/ads/prohibited_content/personal_health