Facebook for Dentists: The Secret to Growing Your Dental Practice on Facebook
Marketing your dental practice on Facebook is the most effective way to get a regular flow of new patients. In my practice, I frequently get returns of up to 5,000% on my Facebook marketing. Yet many dentists never achieve their full potential. Some never get past four common myths about Facebook and never give it a chance to help them. Others dabble, trying one tactic after another with no real purpose or focus.
No matter what your experience with Facebook for dentists has been, you can attract new patients from Facebook each and every month from this point forward by utilizing this one secret.
Your success with Facebook depends more on posting right type of content to Facebook than it does on simply posting more often or paying more to promote your page or posts. To grow your dental practice on Facebook, you must post shareable content.
There’s a lot of competition for people’s eyes on Facebook. By posting shareable content, you’ll naturally attract people to interact with your post by liking, commenting, or sharing it on their timeline. When that happens, Facebook will see your post as popular and will show it to more people. As those new people like, comment, and share your post, Facebook will continue to show it to more and more people. That’s how posts go viral.
Here are three ways to create shareable content:
1. Post things that tell your practice’s story.
Anyone can fix teeth. People don’t choose dentists because they can fix teeth. They choose dentists because of the people who work at your practice and the experience they expect from a visit.
Post things that make your practice unique. Do you give back to your community? Do you serve an underserved market? Do you provide a VIP, Delivering-WOW experience to everyone that walks through the door? Do you have the latest technology that makes patient experiences better?
Post about whatever makes your practice unique. Post pictures of your staff smiling about the new technology with a note about the benefit to your patients, like “We’re excited to make your next dental experience painless with this!”
Post things that evoke emotions, such as patient testimonials stating how their confidence improved after visiting you. Let people know that your practice is about changing lives, not just caring for teeth.
2. Hold contests and promotions for page likes and post interactions.
A great way to get people excited about your practice in a way that encourages them to share your posts with their friends and family is to create a contest for a free service in a random drawing of everyone who likes your page, and then likes, comments, and shares your post within a certain timeframe.
You can also hold a contest or promotion for people to nominate people to receive a free service. In my practice, we regularly do something we call Project Smile. We do this entirely on Facebook and don’t even tell our patients about it, to reward people who follow our Facebook page. With Project Smile, we announce that we’re going to give away a free smile makeover and ask people to share our content post on Facebook. Our post asks people to send us an email with why they (or someone they nominate) should receive a free smile makeover, along with an image of their smile, so we can see if they’re a candidate. We then narrow down the list to people who we can really help in our office, invite the finalists for a cleaning, so we can take a closer look at their mouths, and then choose a winner for the full smile makeover. (Actually, we pretty much choose all of the finalists every time we do a Project Smile promotion, because we enjoy it so much!). Our Facebook fans love following and sharing our Project Smile promotions. Not only do people interact with the post and participate in the contest or promotion, but they often also see what other services we provide and come to us for an appointment.
3. Congratulate, encourage, and promote your patients.
A third way to create shareable content is to post about all the great things your patients are doing. When you and your team learn about what your patients or their family are doing, take note and post about them on your Facebook page. Are they star athletes? Did they win a creative competition? Do they have a dance recital? Do they run a great business?
Look for the great things your patients are doing in their lives and the community, and tell your Facebook fans about it. Celebrate, encourage, or promote your practice on your Facebook page whenever you can do so without revealing patient confidences! You can even tag your patient in the post, so they know about the post and ask your Facebook fans to congratulate or encourage them in the comments to the post and to share the post on their timeline to further promote their accomplishment. As more people like, comment, and share, Facebook will show the post to more people.
Your patient will feel special because you’ll be showing them you listen to them and care about what they’re doing, not just making small talk during a procedure, and others will interact with your page, post, and practice!
Shareable content doesn’t have to be complicated.
No matter what tactic you use, the secret to explosive growth on Facebook for dentists is to make sure the content you post is shareable. With shareable content, you put your practice in a position to benefit from your Facebook fans liking, commenting, and sharing your content.
A simple image of a smiling patient enjoying a gourmet cup of coffee in your office with a note that you love your patients as much as they love your coffee and a request for people to tag someone who loves coffee tells your practice’s story and encourages your fans to interact with and share your post!
If you want to know more ways to create shareable content and grow your dental practice on Facebook, you can check out my Facebook mastery course, Facebook Bootcamp or sign up for a trial membership to the Delivering WOW U membership community, where I help dentists like you grow their dental practices so they can make more while working less.
