To start off let’s look at some stats:

• Facebook has 1.84 billion daily active users.
• Facebook is the leading social media platform and reaches 59% of all social media users.
• Facebook brought in $27.2 billion in advertising revenue in the fourth quarter of 2020.
• Facebook has more than 200 million small businesses around the world using its tools.
• 6 out of 10 people in the United States say they use Facebook. 
• 98.3% of Facebook users access Facebook via the app and users spend an average of 19.5 hours on the Facebook app every month.
• 86% of US marketers are using Facebook for advertising.

Now these stats may sound impressive, but what it shows is, if you don’t use Facebook for marketing, you’re doing your veterinary hospital a huge disservice. It’s an incredible source for new leads, and it allows you to engage with your audience that, in turn, builds trust and loyalty.

But how does Facebook marketing work? In this post we’ll deal with this question in more detail and why it’s important to consider Facebook marketing for veterinary hospitals.

What Is Facebook Paid Advertising?

If you want to build awareness around your practice, hospital, your services, provide customer support, and, in the process, generate leads, Facebook paid advertising is definitely an option for you.

With it, you’ll be able to use a variety of advertisements which, in turn, means that you have many possibilities of how you can advertise on the platform. It also allows you to target very specific demographics with a variety of ad types and it’s highly effective in testing out different types of ads and which work the best.

In simple terms, Facebook offers veterinary practices tremendous direct to consumer reach.

 Why Facebook Paid Advertising?

Now you’re probably wondering what using Facebook paid advertising can mean for your veterinary practice. In simple terms, you want to know whether it’s worth it. Here, Facebook paid advertising gives you many benefits.

Content promotion 

You don’t only have to promote products or services on Facebook, you can promote your content too. This means, for example, that if you have a blog or a website and you post content on it, you’ll be able to promote that content with Facebook paid advertising. Once your audience engages with the ad, they’ll go to your website where they’ll find your other content. 

This, in turn, increases your engagement and generates more leads. It is, however, important to remember that you provide relevant and valuable content that your audience can use as a resource when they need answers or advice. In simple terms, you want to add value for your audience, so you might add content relating to common pet illnesses or treatments. 

Targeting

With Facebook paid advertising, you’re able to target specific audiences with your ads. Now, this can be as simple as targeting your audience based on age and gender, but you’re also able to be much more specific than that. 

For instance, you’ll be able to target consumers who are between the ages of 40 and 50 and who own dogs or other pets. In this way you ensure that you’re getting the best quality leads for the best price or, in other words, the best return on investment.

Retargeting ads

Ads can be set up to target those consumers who had previously engaged with your brand or business in some way. This means that, if a consumer has clicked through on your ad at some time, Facebook paid advertising can be set up to retarget that consumer. 

This is a great way to get more quality leads because someone may have looked at your content or ads before but got distracted and left. If you retarget them, you know that the battle is halfway won, and you can give that final push to convince them to contact you.

Achieving your goals

When you advertise with Facebook, you create campaigns where you choose a variety of goals that you’re looking to achieve. For instance, a specific campaign may have brand awareness as a goal, while another campaign’s main goal may be more leads. 

In this way, you can compare the different campaigns and see which works best for your practice and then tailor this strategy even more to improve your lead generation efforts. Remember, that you won’t get the best results straight off the bat, but with this process of testing and improvement, you’ll soon have a very effective strategy.

Customer support

An important part of any business is their customer support. In simple terms, a happy customer is a returning customer. With a Facebook page, your audience and customers can always get the information they’re looking for and you also have the option of setting up Facebook Messenger to answer any questions that customers may have if you don’t have a customer support line. 

For example, for your practice, you can set up Messenger for your account to serve as a messaging service for after-hours emergencies. Keep in mind that this is just one simple example and that there are many more.

Tools

Because Facebook advertising is so popular, there are a lot of other tools out there that can help you to make it even more effective. There are, for instance tools that can help you with your graphic design, analytics tools that can help you track the effectiveness of your strategies, or even scheduling platforms that help you plan your content schedule on Facebook.

Considering all these benefits, there’s no question that Facebook paid advertising is a must-have for any veterinary practice or hospital.

The Bottom Line

Considering the reach you’ll get with Facebook paid advertising and the benefits it gives your practice, there shouldn’t be any question of why you should use it. The only question is when you’ll start using it if you want to find out more about Facebook marketing or what we can do for your practice or hospital, visit our website for more information.