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.
Create a Facebook Business Page for Your Cosmetic Surgery Practice
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:
- Your practice’s name and a description of your business
- A profile and cover photo
- A call to action (or CTA for short)
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.
Create Original Content and Share It on Your Facebook Page for Organic Leads
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.
Use Facebook Ads to Widen Your Audience
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.
Follow Facebook’s Ad Policies
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.
Personal Attributes
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.
Non-Functional Landing Page
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.
Personal Health
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?
Cosmetic Procedures and Weight Loss
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.
Create Ads
Now that you’ve gotten some of the Facebook ad policy basics out of the way, you can start creating ads.
Select High-Quality Images and Videos
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!
Write Ad Copy
Just about every Facebook ad requires written text — even the videos. At the very least, this includes:
- body text (which is displayed above the visual element of an ad)
- headline or title (displayed in large text below the an ad’s visual element)
- description (a brief summary located below the headline)
- call to action/CTA button (a square button located near the description)
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.
Types of Facebook Ads
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
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
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
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.
Grow Your Cosmetic Surgery Practice with OppGen
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.
