In this 5-minute read:
- Create a Facebook page
- Get customer reviews
- Post regular content
- Build your following
- Boost posts and create ads
More and more people are starting to reach out to medical and dental practices on their Facebook pages. In this digital age, many people feel much more comfortable messaging you than actually dialing your number and calling.
Attract new customers and keep them happy with reputation management software. Learn more, plus get free reputation monitoring and customer insights when you sign up for Womply Free!
In order to exploit every opportunity for you to reach more potential patients, you should promote your dental practice’s Facebook page. You can get your practice in front of a broader audience, and build valuable loyalty with current and potential customers if you have an active social media presence.
Create a Facebook business page for your dental practice
The first thing you need to do is create a Facebook business page for your dental clinic if you don’t already have one.
Check out this quick guide to get started: How to create and claim your Facebook business page
Once your Facebook page is up, you’re more than halfway there and likely ahead of many of your competitors.
Important note: When you are adding your business name, address, and phone number (also known as NAP) to your Facebook page, be sure to keep them consistent with the information you have on your Google Business listing and other online listings. This consistency is super important for ranking well on Google and helping customers get the right information.
Here’s everything you should definitely include on your dental practice’s Facebook page:
- The name of your dental practice
- Business address
- Phone number
- Open hours (including holiday hours)
- Description of your practice and staff
- Website
- Email address
- Profile picture (your logo is great for this)
- Cover photo (a picture of your practice would be perfect here)
- Services and prices (if possible)
Get Facebook recommendations for your dental practice
Once your Facebook page is up and filled out, you can start working on getting recommendations from your patients. Facebook recommendations and reviews can be super powerful because of the social connections that people have (and the almost ubiquitous nature of Facebook).
If someone leaves a review on your Facebook page and one of their “friends” visits your page as they are researching new dentists to go to, Facebook will show them that someone they know recommended you. That friendly connection can provide a lot more value for your practice than several random reviews from strangers.
Try getting more reviews on your Facebook page with these tips:
- Ask for reviews. Provide great service for your patients and then ask them for a review at the right time—when they are happy with their visit and talking about how well it went. Don’t ask for “postitive” reviews; just let people know you value their online feedback.
- Add “Rate us on Facebook” signs throughout your clinic. These are just little reminders that you are on Facebook and would love to hear from your patients.
- Try out reputation management software. Sometimes just asking in person isn’t enough. People tend to forget, so a solution like reputation management software can help you streamline the review invitation process by sending emails and text message reminders to your patients.
When you do get new reviews—whether good or bad (but hopefully all good)—be sure to respond to them quickly. Engagement with your patients on Facebook and other online platforms builds patient retention and helps “convert” potential new patients that read your practice’s reviews and your responses.
Responding to reviews isn’t just a good idea… it correlates with huge increases in revenue. Womply’s research shows that businesses that regularly respond to reviews bring in up to 49% more annual revenue!
Learn more about how to respond to online reviews.
Post regular content to your Facebook page
As you start getting more followers on your Facebook page and patients leaving reviews, it’s important to share content to keep those followers engaged.
You don’t need to bombard your followers with tons of posts each day; in fact, that will likely have a negative effect. But it’s good to aim for 2-3 quality posts from your Facebook page each week.
Here are some great ideas that you can share in Facebook posts on your practice’s page:
- Employee features
- Giveaways
- Community involvement
- Patient features (with permission of course)
- New services/products
- Special deals and promotions
- Holiday posts
- Blog posts
- Dental care tips
Pro tip: Provide content on your website first, like a blog post or video. Then share a teaser and a link to that content on your Facebook page. This will help drive more traffic to your website and can indirectly help improve your online visibility in the search engines if your content gets shared.
Go deeper: learn the Facebook best practices, do’s and don’ts for small business
Boost your Facebook posts
Now you have some awesome posts up on your Facebook page, let’s get them in front of even more people.
If you don’t have a lot of followers on your page, or if you want people who aren’t currently your patients to see you on Facebook, boosting your Facebook posts can be a great tool.
When you create a Facebook post on your page, you’ll be given the opportunity to “boost” that post. This means that you can turn that post into an ad that reaches a targeted audience for a specific budget.
You choose your targeted audience by demographics and specific interests, then you choose how long you want your ad to run for and set a daily budget. You can boost Facebook posts for as little as $1 per day and still reach hundreds of people with them.
After you boost a post, if people start liking that post, you can then easily invite them to like your page so they see your regularly posted content and start to recognize your brand more. Then when they are looking for a new dentist, you’ll be the one they think of!
Set up Facebook Ads Manager for your dental practice
Facebook Ads Manager allows you to do the same things as boosting a post, just on a more customizable level. Ads Manager has its own platform where you can create ads based on specific goals—like increasing conversions or brand awareness—and it has the same targeting capabilities as your boosted posts.
Get help setting up your Ads Manager account with this article.
Managing your Facebook page may seem like a lot of work, but it doesn’t have to be. Solutions like Womply’s reputation management software make managing your listings and reviews super simple. Womply’s solution helps small businesses like your dental practice save an average of 10 hours of work each week! Learn more, plus get free reputation monitoring and customer insights when you sign up for Womply Free!