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May, 2023
On Thursday, October 28, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced during the 2021 Facebook Connect livestream event that the company would be rebranded and renamed as Meta.
Zuckerberg now owns the website meta.com, which redirects to a welcome page on Facebook that outlines these changes.
Facebook is being rebranded as an attempt to shift gears away from being best known as a social media company and look toward Zuckerberg’s plans for building the metaverse.
Notably, Facebook has been under a great deal of scrutiny recently after the release of internal documents by a Facebook whistleblower and former employee. These documents, dubbed the Facebook Papers, show many serious problems the company was allegedly aware of but chose to ignore for the sake of profit.
Some suspect this rebranding was timed to divert attention away from the Facebook Papers, although Zuckerberg denied this in an interview with The Verge, saying, “…this is not the environment you would want to introduce a new brand in.”
The metaverse is a concept that originates from the 1992 dystopian novel Snow Crash, in which people escape the real world and enter a virtual one. A more recent fictional example of a metaverse is Ernest Cline’s novel Ready Player One.
Despite the negative connotation associated with the word, Zuckerberg wants to create a fully immersive version of the internet that would let you show up in a virtual space as an avatar or a hologram in the real-world home of a friend across the globe.
The idea, if it is able to come to fruition, would likely change the scope of the internet and how we use it.
It depends on which Facebook you’re talking about. In the case of the social media platform, no, Facebook will still be called Facebook. What is changing is the name of the parent company, which owns Facebook, Messenger, Instagram, WhatsApp, Onavo, Beluga, and Oculus VR (the Oculus Quest line, however, will be rebranding to Meta Quest, and the Oculus App will become the Meta Quest app).
It’s similar to how Google changed its parent company name to Alphabet. Google is still Google, but the company that owns it is called Alphabet.
As of right now, this announcement will not affect Facebook advertising and marketing efforts on any of Meta’s platforms. Its corporate structure will remain the same, but how it reports financial results will be changing, with reporting on 2 operating segments: Family of Apps and Reality Labs. This announcement does not affect how the company shares or uses data, either.
Should there be any changes to advertising on any of Meta’s platforms, OppGen will be prepared to pivot as need be. For now, we’ll just have to wait and see what happens with Meta and the possibility of a metaverse.
Social media marketing is a great way to generate leads and grow your practice. One of the best social media platforms that allows advertising available is Facebook.
With Facebook’s 2.7 billion active users, you’re sure to reach people in need of your cosmetic surgery clinic’s services — and at a reasonable price point. The medical industry’s average cost per click (CPC) on Facebook is $1.32 per click, making it a very affordable and flexible option for most clinics’ marketing budget.
Facebook is one of the best places for you to generate cosmetic surgery leads for your practice. If you haven’t been utilizing it already, now’s the time to get started — schedule a complimentary strategy session with OppGen today.
Before you can start generating leads through either of these means, you need to have a Facebook business page and account set up. Creating a Facebook business page is a very simple process that doesn’t require a whole lot of effort.
You’ll need:
You’ll input all of that information on this page, select the most relevant business category (you can choose up to 3, though “plastic surgeon” should suffice), and that’s it! You officially have a Facebook business page for your cosmetic surgery practice or clinic.
Don’t have time to set up a page? Contact OppGen Marketing to see what we can do for you.
Once your Facebook business page is up and running, you can start sharing content on it. Content can be links to your most recent blogs, photos, videos, podcasts, and other information that you feel is important to share with your patients, both current and prospective.
Sharing original content without boosting it or advertising it through Facebook Ads is free, and it’s a great way to share information about your clinic.
Having a Facebook business page also gives you a useful tool for communicating directly with prospective patients: Facebook Messenger.
If you want to advertise your services to a wider audience, that’s where Facebook Ads comes into play. You can pay to promote posts you intended for organic lead generation or create an ad from scratch.
With a wide variety of audience targeting tools and options at your fingertips, you’ll be certain to find your target audience and start generating more leads.
Before you start advertising on Facebook, it would be wise to review Facebook’s ad policies. Having an understanding of how to submit ads and avoiding Facebook rejecting them is a key part of the process.
And if an ad you submitted is rejected, it’s not the end of the world. Take it as a learning opportunity to improve your advertisements, which will help you generate more leads in the long run.
Facebook will reject ads containing anything that implies personal attributes, such as race, ethnic origin, religion or beliefs, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, medical conditions (either physical or mental health-related), financial status, voting status, membership in a trade union, or name. Using the word “other” when it refers to one of these characteristics is also a no-go.
Starting an ad with a question that sounds like it’s in a bad infomercial is almost certainly going to be considered a personal attribute. In general, avoid using “you” or “your” in the ad copy.
For example, let’s say your clinic has worked with patients who are transgender and wanted a form of top surgery. With Facebook Ads, you’re going to be limited on what you can say. You can’t say you’re targeting these audiences in the text — but you can get creative with getting a message out without saying who you’re targeting.
Here are 2 different sentences you decide to write for this ad. One is less likely to be rejected than the other. Which one is it?
Sentence 1: “Are you questioning your gender identity?”
Sentence 2: “Our clinic does breast implants and breast reduction surgeries!”
If you said Sentence 2 is less likely to be rejected, that’s correct! It does not imply that you’re trying to target transgender patients specifically; in fact, it could be applied to women and men in general.
It’ll take some time and practice — and probably a few rejections — before you get the hang of writing ad copy that doesn’t include personal attributes. Just keep working on it, and before you know it, you’ll have it down in no time.
Landing pages are required for all Facebook ads. A landing page is simply a streamlined web page where potential patients will fill in requested information, such as their email and other contact information, so you can contact them to try to get them to come into your clinic for an appointment.
Having a non-functional landing page is sure to result in Facebook rejecting your advertisement. To avoid this, pay close attention to the guidelines Facebook has published about what makes a landing page a good landing page.
Another step you can take to circumvent landing page issues is to hire a reputable marketing agency to create one-of-a-kind landing pages for your practice.
Though Facebook’s personal health ad policy is more focused on weight loss ads, it can still be applied to cosmetic surgery and plastic surgeon ads. For example, ads cannot contain before-and-after images and cannot generate a negative perception in its target audience. However, you can still (and should) use before-and-after images on your business’s Facebook page.
This means you’ll have to get creative with your visual content, but that’s not a bad thing. This is an opportunity for you to find what exactly it is about your practice that sets it apart from other plastic surgeons and their clinics. Is it the care patients receive? The types of plastic and cosmetic surgeries you offer? The expertise of the doctors there?
Facebook does have a restriction when it comes to advertising cosmetic procedures regarding the target audience. In order for your cosmetic surgery ad to be accepted, it must be targeted to users above the age of 18.
As long as your audience targeting settings are set to target users 18 and older, there should not be much of an issue here.
Now that you’ve gotten some of the Facebook ad policy basics out of the way, you can start creating ads.
Visuals are everything. The text that comes with the images or videos you choose or create will not be what attracts prospects’ attention. It’s the imagery you select. Make sure your images and videos are eye-catching and appealing. Quality matters, and so does the message your chosen images or videos give off. Choose wisely!
Just about every Facebook ad requires written text — even the videos. At the very least, this includes:
Each of these text-based elements should be unique and support the overall advertisement as a whole. The headline should be short and catchy — something that will make prospects scrolling through their newsfeed to stop and read it. The body text should intrigue prospects to click on the ad. The description can be a brief summary of the body text. The CTA button will have text that you select from a dropdown list. Make sure the CTA text you choose is relevant to the action you want prospects to take. For example, if you want prospects to make an appointment, go with Book Now, Request Time, or Contact Us.
One of the advantages of advertising on Facebook is the wide variety of ad mediums you can use. Each ad type has different specifications. Before you create your ad, double-check the specifications in the Facebook Ads Guide. This can save you a lot of time and effort.
Single image ads are advertisements that contain a single still image. They’ll include the text elements mentioned in the prior section. These ads are fantastic because they offer several different placement options at different price points, making them ideal for just about any budget.
Video ads on Facebook can be actual video footage or a moving image such as a GIF. Even if you’re not an expert in video, thankfully Facebook offers in-app editing and video creation options.
Most video ads on Facebook are 15 seconds long, though they can go much, much longer, capping at 241 minutes. Your video should be able to hold viewers’ attention within the first few seconds of footage, so make sure you start strong before they lose interest and begin to scroll through their newsfeed.
Carousel ads can contain up to 10 still images or videos in a slideshow. They display one visual at a time and require prospective leads to either click or swipe through each slide (though you can certainly cut up a very long image and use each part for each slide).
While the single image ad and video options only have one description and link, carousel ads can have descriptions written for each visual used, as well as individual links for each slide.
This makes them a good option for sharing patients’ testimonials (with a line from a testimonial on each slide), presenting information in a more interactive way, or displaying all of your cosmetic surgery options with a link that will go to a corresponding landing page.
OppGen has generated leads for hundreds of medical clinics, including cosmetic surgery practices just like yours. We recognize that not all practices are the same, which is why our marketing program is custom-made for all of our clients. If you want to start generating Facebook leads for your cosmetic surgery practice, you’ve come to the right place.
Contact OppGen today for more information.
User privacy and data are at the forefront of Apple’s upcoming iOS 14 update, and with this update come some issues with digital advertising.
iOS 14 will give Apple product users the option to opt out of certain types of data tracking. It will prompt users with these two basic options:
Under iOS 14, this prompt will appear on all iOS apps, such as Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and any apps that monetize with Facebook’s Audience Network.
The kinds of data tracking that will result in the approval prompt include:
Apps that fail to comply with the policy following the iOS 14 update will be removed from the App Store — even if it is an issue with the app’s developer(s) and not the business that owns the app in the first place.
Facebook is concerned about how this update will affect businesses and creators who use its advertising service — especially small businesses, as noted in a press release outlining those concerns.
In the press release, Facebook states that they believe this update will hurt small businesses and creators who rely on Facebook’s personalized and highly targeted advertisements to keep their businesses growing. By giving people an option to opt out of data tracking, it will make it harder for Facebook (and other businesses like it) to use its targeting tools as accurately.
It alleges that the drop in personalized ads will make it difficult for small businesses with small budgets to find good leads, which will also limit their growth and competitive abilities against larger companies.
There is no need to panic over these changes.
As noted in Facebook’s press release, this update won’t cause a full loss of ad personalization — though it may begin a push in that direction. Still, this gives Facebook advertisers time to prepare for that shift.
In the meantime, you will still be able to use Facebook’s ad targeting tools and create highly personalized, targeted ads; however, depending on how many people opt out of data tracking under iOS 14, you may not be able to accurately target as many leads as before.
This update may affect the accuracy of your conversions as well, but this can be circumvented to some extent by making sure your website’s Facebook pixel is up to date and will be able to reach mobile devices. In order to do this, you’ll have to verify your website’s domain.
Even with this update, you will be able to push more personalized Facebook ads to people who use Android phones and Windows computers, which are not associated with Apple products.
If you own a small business and oppose this upcoming iOS update, Facebook has created a page for small business owners such as yourself to “add your voice” where you can tell Apple why this update concerns you and a toolkit as well.
This update is a good reminder to avoid becoming too reliant on a single advertising channel and to prepare your business for future changes. Diversify where you’re advertising on both digital and traditional marketing channels.
This upcoming Apple update is a big one, and we understand the concerns advertisers and marketers have. However, we have no doubts that it is one we can continue to work under while creating effective ads on multiple digital marketing channels.
Contact OppGen for guidance or more information today.
There are a lot of different ways for doctors to grow their medical clinics online through digital marketing. Social media advertising platforms, such as Facebook Ads, are a great way for doctors to generate awareness about the services they offer and even acquire new patients.
According to Facebook’s first 2020 quarter report, the social media site had an average of 1.73 billion daily active users using its services — an increase of 11% year over year. Considering that 73% of its users visit the site on a daily basis, Facebook is a great place to reach prospective patients, and Facebook ads make it easy for doctors to do just that. Facebook’s powerful ad targeting tools are some of, if not the, best ones available.
Facebook advertising for doctors is incredibly cost-effective, too: the cost per click (CPC) of healthcare ads on Facebook averages to roughly $1.32 per click with an average conversion rate of 11% — a better average CPC and average conversion rate compared to Google Ads’ healthcare industry averages of $2.62 per click and conversion rate of 3.36%.
Plus, Facebook is easy to use, from creating a professional Facebook page for yourself or your clinic or practice to publishing ads to prospective patients.
In sum: Facebook ads for doctors are well worth the investment, increase online exposure, and help acquire new patients.
Don’t believe us yet? Contact us to request a complimentary strategy session and we’ll show you just how effective Facebook ads can be.
Before you can start advertising on Facebook, you’ll have to create a Facebook page for your clinic. Facebook pages are free to create and use. You can share useful information, business updates, and even make it easier for prospects to contact your clinic via Facebook Messenger. Plus, patients can leave reviews on Facebook pages, so as long as you’re providing the best services possible, positive reviews will be sure to follow.
When setting up the page, you’ll have to select what kind of business you have. We recommend selecting the “local business or place” option.
You’ll also have to settle on a name and URL. It can be the name of your clinic, your name with credentials, a reference to your specialty, or a combination of all of these. The key here is to keep it simple. Same with the URL — it should be easy for people (and search engines) to find.
There are two About sections on Facebook pages. One of them is a brief text summary about what your clinic does, the services it offers, where it’s located, and so on.
The other one includes your clinic’s contact information — email address, physical address, website, phone number, and Messenger link — and its hours of operation. Provide as much of this information as you can; it’s always a good idea to give prospects multiple ways to reach your clinic.
Your clinic’s Facebook page is an extension of your brand, and everything about it should reflect that. It should be consistent with your overall brand and tone. Any inconsistencies will have prospects fleeing from your page and your clinic as a result, and that’s the last thing you want for lead generation.
Don’t share irrelevant jokes or posts that made you laugh to your Facebook page — save that for your personal profile. Use common sense. Put yourself in prospects’ shoes: If the clinic you go to shared riddles, jokes, or other unrelated content, would you feel comfortable going there?
Put some thought behind your posts. You can share a link to a blog post you’ve written, discuss industry trends or new services you’re starting to offer, and so on. Use good high-quality stock photos from a site like Shutterstock or Pexels to grab prospects’ attention and write good copy with a call to action (or as we marketing professionals call it, a CTA).
Having a Facebook page where you share information and updates can help your clinic gain traction, but it will only go so far without utilizing paid social ads.
Once you’ve got your clinic’s Facebook page set up, you’ll want to add an Ad account to the page. You’ll do this using Business Manager, which is the “back end” tool of your Facebook page. It’s a secure way to manage your Facebook pages and Ad accounts and lets you keep your business profile separate from your personal Facebook profile.
To add an Ad account in Business Manager, go to your page’s Business Settings. There, you’ll click “Accounts” and then “Ad Accounts.” Click “+Add.” Three options will appear: “Add Ad account,” “Request access to an Ad Account,” and “Create a new Ad account.” Click the “Create a new Ad account option and follow Business Manager’s prompts.
Now you can start creating Facebook ads for your clinic.
If you’re struggling to set up your account, don’t be afraid to contact us for assistance.
Two of the best perks about Facebook ads for doctors are the cost and variety of advertisements. Compared to paid search ads on Google, Facebook is a fairly inexpensive option with, well, a lot of ad options for doctors:
It’s often said a picture is worth a thousand words — and that’s a lot of words and a lot of power! Visuals are a big part of pretty much every type of Facebook advertisement. But if you’re using an image ad, you’ll only have one image, so make sure it’s worth those 1,000 words. It needs to grab viewers’ attention.
However, that doesn’t mean you should go textless entirely. You’ll have to write some text to accompany the image in a couple of places:
You can include some text on the image itself, but if there’s too much text on the image, Facebook’s algorithms may display your ad to fewer people in your audience. Facebook specifies this as images that consist of more than 20% text.
The components of a Facebook video ad are the same as those in an image ad. The key difference is that instead of a single static image, you can upload a video from anywhere to 1 second to 240 minutes in length to be placed on the newsfeed.
The best length for a Facebook video in the newsfeed is far from the maximum length — shorter than 15 seconds is considered best practice.
Similar to the image ads, Facebook will push video ads with more than 20% text to fewer people. For the newsfeed ads, the post text, headline, and description character limits are the same.
Slideshow ads are essentially a lighter version of Facebook’s video ads. Rather than putting in the time and money to create, edit, and upload high-quality footage for a video ad, slideshow ads allow you to upload 3 to 7 static images and have Facebook create a slideshow.
The best practices for video ads (15 seconds or less) and character limits for post text, headline, and descriptions apply to slideshow ads, too.
Carousel ads allow you to display 2 to 10 images or videos in a single ad. Prospects can swipe through each individual image or video card. Each of these cards can have separate links that highlight different products or services. Carousel ads are great for sharing reviews (one review on each card), different treatment options, or telling a story.
The requirements for video length and character limits for carousel ads in the newsfeed are the same as single image and video ads.
The variety of ads and the affordability Facebook advertisements offer are hard to beat — and that isn’t even taking how specific Facebook’s ad targeting can be.
Regardless of the type of ad you choose, you’ll have to make sure your ad follows Facebook’s advertising policies.
Though Facebook ads are a powerful tool for anyone who uses it, they are one of the best marketing options for specialty clinics. Facebook advertisements allow more targeting options than paid search ads, so you can find members of your target audience in a much more granular fashion.
However, it’s worth noting that as a healthcare professional, there are some things you cannot do even though most other businesses can with Facebook’s custom audience tools due to HIPAA. While a local business can upload a list of clients or customers to push ads to these people, medical and healthcare professionals cannot. Facebook often uses these lists to push relevant ads to the people on said lists and can potentially infer that these people are being treated by you, potentially for a certain condition.
Let’s say you run a men’s clinic that specializes in treating erectile dysfunction (ED), a condition that many men are embarrassed about. If you were to upload a list of your current patients in order to find similar patients or target more ads to these patients, your current patients may start seeing ads for ED medications pop up more often. Their private medical information is now being used in a way that’s accessible for just about any business that wants to advertise products based on that medical information.
To avoid any potential HIPAA violations, work with a HIPAA-trained digital marketing agency like OppGen. These agencies specialize in working with medical clients and ensuring that the advertisements and information do not violate patient privacy or HIPAA.
While you can’t create an audience using a list of your current patients or target an audience by specific ailments or medical conditions on Facebook, you can certainly target prospective audiences by other demographics:
Some health conditions affect people of different ages. You use Facebook’s targeting tools to push ads to people in specific age groups.
Keep in mind that Facebook does have certain limits for what can be advertised depending on what exactly you’re advertising. If you’re in the medical weight loss field or are a plastic surgeon, your ads for a clinic or cosmetic procedure cannot be targeted to anyone below the age of 18 on Facebook.
Just as some conditions may affect certain ages groups more, there are conditions that can affect one sex more than the other or simply affect only one sex. Facebook can allow you to push ads to men or women rather than both at the same time. This can be incredibly useful if you operate a men’s clinic or run weight loss programs specifically for women.
Facebook’s ad targeting tools make it easy to find prospects near a particular location. If you have multiple clinic locations with each offering slightly different services, you can run different ads targeting people nearby.
That Facebook “like” button has more power than you may think — not only does “liking” a page allow users to receive updates and news from that page, but it also tells marketers what their interests are. This may be a bit tricky for finding potential patients, but it’s not impossible. One prospect may follow natural or holistic health pages. That information can be useful for targeting them with natural weight loss or medical spa ads.
Behavior-based targeting takes users’ search history and online purchases into account. If a Facebook user has recently searched for diets or weight loss programs, Facebook can take that information into account and then push relevant weight loss ads to that user.
Most digital advertisements, including those on Facebook, require a landing page to send prospects to after they click on the ad. In the case of marketing your clinic, you’ll want to have a contact form that can be used to schedule a consultation.
The more traffic you have going to the landing page form, the better. Why? It means more people are going to fill out the form to schedule an appointment, and ideally, become your patients.
As the number of patients coming in from your clinic’s Facebook Ads marketing strategy rises, so will your revenue. So, what should you do with that extra cash flow? Well, you could expand what your clinic offers. Maybe you could open a new clinic location.
Regardless of whichever option you may choose, both of them can make for a new marketing opportunity that can help your clinic grow exponentially.
OppGen partnered with Lifelong Metabolic Center, a weight loss clinic in Naperville, Illinois, to increase the clinic’s initial patient lift in a highly competitive market. Using a combination of our paid search and paid social advertising (which included Facebook ads) programs resulted in an 80% lift in revenue, over 40 leads per month, and a 35% increase in total new patients per month for Lifelong Metabolic Center.
We’ve been running paid social campaigns for Spinal Aid, a peripheral neuropathy clinic, since 2018. In that time, OppGen generated over 400 total leads for Spinal Aid — with roughly 50% of them coming from our Facebook ad campaign. We expect to see even more leads as we continue to implement strategies to enhance the campaign’s performance.
At OppGen, we’re experts at running Facebook ads for doctors and helping increase clinic revenue and growth. We’ve worked with a wide variety of clinics that have seen more patients, an increase in revenue, and have gone on to add more services or open up new clinic locations as a result of our medical digital marketing program.
If you’re interested in learning more about our medical digital marketing program, contact us today for more information, or fill out our free digital audit.