Written by Placing a social media ad can seem like a daunting task. You’ve pooled some money together to put yourself out there in an effort to give your practice more exposure, but there are so many moving parts.
As I mentioned in my last blog article, “5 Reasons Your Practice Needs Social Media Advertising”, your ultimate goal with private practice marketing is not to “sell” or sign up a client directly from your ad, but rather to drive traffic to your website where they can learn more information about you, AND to give them repeated exposure to your practice. Selling directly from your social media ad on the first appearance, is best kept for product related businesses. You are building a long term relationship.
That said, there is an anatomy to a social media ad that can guide you in making some very important decisions that will yield results. So, let’s roll up our sleeves and examine the Anatomy of a Social Media Ad. Although these principles apply to most all social media platforms, we’ll use the Facebook Ad as an example.
Pixel Tracking for Ads
This is specific to Facebook, if your practice currently has business page set up. Pixel tracking amounts to a code that you can set up on Facebook and insert on your website.
What this code will do, is track those individuals who have interacted with your Facebook page and then followed you to your website. This is like gold, in that these are people who have already expressed enough interest in you to go from your Facebook page to your website. This is a terrific audience to advertise to, as they have already shown some level of interest. When placing your ad, you can select them as your specific audience OR you can create a look alike audience that will have similar likes, interests, and demographics to people who are already interacting with your website, helping you expand your potential customer base.
Headline of Ad
Your Headline is basically a snapshot of words that will quickly convey what your ad is about. This should be very carefully thought out, as you only have a few words to determine whether you’re conveying enough interest for people to take an additional second to read your content. There are several tools out there that will help you to generate great headlines like SEO Presser or Tweak Your Biz. Just make sure that you are using a keyword in your title that is specific to your ideal target market and their pain points. This will help convey that you are the industry expert who can help them solve their problem.
Video Ad or Graphic Ad
Whether you choose to run a video ad campaign or a graphic ad campaign, there are some specific points to keep in mind that can make the difference in whether or not people will engage with your ad.
Running a video ad is a great idea and has increased in popularity among all social media platforms. People are often even paying more attention to posts with video, than they are to those that have a standard graphic.
However, keep these simple strategies in mind.
- Unless you have high quality video equipment, it’s a good idea to mount your camera or phone on an inexpensive tri-pod, or use the webcam from your desktop to run your ad. The less shaking there is in the video, the better.
- Avoid a lot of clutter in the back ground, you want them focused on YOU
- Keep your video under 5 minutes to ensure you hold the attention of your audience who may be scrolling through the news feed.
If you are running a graphic ad, make sure that your picture tells the story of your ad. If possible, you’ll want a graphic that is consistent with the words in your headline.
Don’t afraid to be creative however, babies and animals are still attention getters and can also tell that same story when you find just the right image. It may take a little leg work to find the right picture.
Micro Description of Your Ad
This is the section of your ad, either just above or below your headline that has more detail describing what your ad is about. This would be the equivalent of what would be in the text section of one of your posts.
While there are some who argue that this section should be short, sweet and to the point, I would argue that this section can actually boost your engagement.
When someone clicks on the words “See More” in your ad, they are actually helping you to increase your engagement ratings. They are compelled enough by what you have to say that they are willing to click on those words to find out more.
However, you have to be strategic with this approach. You’ll want to make sure that all of the words before “See More” are enticing enough to cause the reader to click.
Demographics of an Ad
This is perhaps my favorite part of ad placement and the very reason why people prefer social media advertising over any other form of advertising.
Social media advertising allows you to market with incredible accuracy. You can select items like, location, age, gender, income level, occupation and habits. Ensuring who your advertisement will reach, goes a long way to ensuring you are reaching the people who care about your services the most.
Social media advertising is an incredible tool for marketing your practice for steady growth when you use all the tools at your disposal.
I’d love to hear how you’re using your ads to reach your ideal target market. Please paste your comments below and share with your colleagues, how you’re navigating YOUR yellow brick road.