You really need your marketing spend to be accountable. Facebook is one of the best platforms for getting paid ads working quickly and driving new customers to your door. Here’s how using Facebook ads can help you grow your aesthetics clinic.
this article if you’re curious about the meaning – it’s the most successful social network in the world.
Facebook has 2.96 billion monthly active users. That means roughly 37% of the world’s population is using Facebook every month. Mind boggling doesn’t come close.
Yet in terms of growing your aesthetic clinic’s revenue through Facebook ads, it’s not the audience size that’s impressive – but how Facebook allows you to utilise vast audience data to get your brand in front of the exact people who are highly likely to be interested in your services.
Let’s dive in.
One quick thing, before we begin…
What if we told you that it’s possible to use Facebook ads in a way that practically guarantees a positive return on your ad spend? Let us show you how – it won’t cost you a penny. Interested? Find out more here.
Right, let’s get going.
“Adbetter were able to deliver a consistent flow of new clients at a lead price 25% under what we were achieving with the previous agency managing the campaigns.”
Hamid Jaafri, CEO, One Investments
What are Facebook ads?
Essentially Facebook ads are a vehicle to get your clinic in front of Facebook users who don’t follow you – helping you to reach out to new potential customers. And if variety is the spice of advertising life, Facebook is positively fiery! There’s a vast suite of options at your fingertips – including where your ad appears, what format it’s in and how it helps you hit your desired outcomes.
Let’s take a closer look.
Ad placement: where will your ad appear?
You can find ads right across the Facebook platform – including:
- In-feed
- Stories
- Messenger
- Marketplace
In terms of making cost-effective use of your budget? In-feed ads are one of your smartest options.
Format: what sort of ad will you post?
From static images to long-form videos – your ad can take many different shapes. In-feed ads tend to look similar to normal posts, but include a “sponsored” label to show they’re an ad.
- Image ads: Single image ads. Nice and simple. You can also include a headline, a description and a call to action (CTA). They’re good for campaigns with a single, clear message or strong visual content.
- Carousel ads: With a carousel ad you can show up to ten images in sequence – each with the potential to have its own headline, description and CTA. A great choice for showcasing a series of services or treatments.
- Video ads: Facebook allows you to post videos that are up to four hours long. But these won’t be allowed across ad placements. And just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. Facebook recommends advertisers stick to 15 seconds or less.
Objective: what do you want your ad to achieve?
When creating your ad, Facebook allows you to specify the outcome you are hoping to achieve. There are five core campaign objectives to choose from:
- Conversions
- Impressions
- Reach
- Link clicks
- Lead generation
What type of audience can I reach?
Wild guess: you wouldn’t be able to squeeze all of Facebook’s 2.96 billion users inside your clinic. Even after shifting around some furniture. So while Facebook’s audience reach is impressive, what really matters is Facebook’s audience targeting tools – which give you the power to reach the people who are most likely to be interested in your services.
Audience variables you can work into your targeting include:
- Location
- Age
- Gender
- Interests
- Connections
- Relationship status
- Education
- Online behaviour
…and an awful lot more.
By zeroing in on audience criteria, a crowd of 2.96 billion can quickly dwindle to a few thousand. And that’s a good thing. When you know who your audience is, it’s easier to craft a message that gets their attention.
Now, let’s be real. You run an aesthetics clinic. It goes without saying that you would want to target Facebook users that live relatively close – perhaps with interests in skincare, beauty and cosmetics. Give yourself time to experiment with the audience targeting options. And remember: the more targeted, the better.
What sort of content should you use for your ad?
Think about the way you use Facebook. Chances are you’re not opening the app to look at ads. It’s the same for your audience. You have approximately 1.5 seconds on average – sometimes less – to pique the curiosity of your reader. So keep things short, sharp and punchy – with a clear message that addresses the likely ambitions or doubts of your audience.
The Facebook feed is predominantly a visual place, which lends itself to promoting aesthetic services – and showcasing the results of your expertise. Here are some ideas for the type of content you could produce:
- Walkthroughs of specific treatments explaining the process and the results
- A video compilation that reveals a day in the life of an aesthetic specialist
- Bust some of the myths about certain treatments or call out bad practice
- Interviews where previous customers talk about treatments they have received
Experiment with a mix of image-based ads and video-based ads. Try variants that are less polished and a little rough around the edges. Social media users are becoming blind to polished ads and the trend is towards user generated content that feels a little more real and authentic.
Stay away from stock images. You have a smartphone at your fingertips that has more computational power than the Artemis 1 rocket that sent NASA to the moon. You can use it to create your own photography and video content that is completely unique and authentically yours. Much better.
Finally, keep your ads focused on a specific treatment – rather than a general promotion of your clinic. As we noted in the previous section, keeping things targeted is generally good for conversion.
>> Clinical photography tips for aesthetic professionals
>> How to grow your medical aesthetics business with marketing
A/B split testing: find your best ads by magic. Almost.
If you haven’t yet heard of split testing, get ready to meet the best friend of your ad spend.
Let’s say your ad consists of four elements:
- Image
- Headline
- Description
- CTA
Facebook allows you to create variants for each element. By doing so you can easily create an ad with hundreds of potential variants.
And here’s where it gets interesting…
When you publish your ad campaign, Facebook will initially fire out various versions of your ad to a small percentage of your audience – measuring which variants receive the most engagement. Based on that initial test, Facebook will then show the best performing ads more frequently to your remaining audience – and stop showing the ads that don’t receive engagement.
In this way, split testing helps to protect your ad spend and ensure you are getting more bang for your buck.
Rules and regulations for Facebook ads
A marketing wild west Facebook most certainly isn’t. Ads are tightly regulated – and it can be easy to fall foul of the rules. Especially when promoting aesthetic treatments. For instance, before and after shots have long been the hallmark of promoting cosmetic services. But it may surprise you to learn that before and after shots are banned from Facebook ads. Your ad will also be banned if it links to a webpage that displays before and after shots.
Here are some other tips for avoiding a regulatory wrap on the knuckles:
- Make sure your language is as clear as possible
- Make it clear that your cosmetic procedures are not medical procedures
- Don’t make any unrealistic claims – e.g. “it will take 20 years off!”
- Talk about the nuances of each treatment – e.g. there’s more than one type of bum filler procedure
- When editing images of your client following a treatment, you cannot alter the part of the image showing the results of the procedure
For a more detailed explainer:
>> Ad regulations for medical aesthetic clinics
How much do Facebook ads cost?
Your clinic helps people to feel like a million dollars. Unfortunately you don’t get to charge them that. The reality is that your marketing budget is finite – and it needs to drive results.
Facebook’s exact charging policy isn’t public knowledge. However it is possible to get started for less than you’d spend on a coffee each day. Not bad for the opportunity to connect directly with people likely to be interested in your clinic’s services.
Precise cost is determined by many factors – including:
- The type of audience you are targeting
- Where your ad is placed
- The duration of your campaign
- The competitiveness of your industry
- Time of day
- Time of year
Ballpark figures? Research suggests advertisers should expect to pay around $0.94 per click or $12.07 per 1,000 impressions. Whatever happens, Facebook makes it easy to control your budget. For example you can set strict limits for daily spend, cost per click and cost per thousand impressions. You’re in control. No matter what.
Your first ad is just the start…
Facebook puts powerful tools at your fingertips to help you find new leads over the long term. With the right strategy – and a bit of patience – you can expect a steady stream of cosmetics-conscious customers carving a path to the door of your clinic.
Retargeting
Retargeting is about serving new ads to people who have engaged with one of your previous ads. Let’s say they clicked a link or completed a form. They are clearly interested in your services. But they may not be ready to convert and become a customer just yet. With retargeting campaigns, you can serve them new ads that build additional awareness of your brand and nudge them over the line.
Lookalike audiences
Have you heard of the Facebook Pixel? It’s a tracking device that gathers information on how visitors are interacting with your website. It’s a seriously clever piece of tech – and can be invaluable in helping you to find new customers.
Here’s a crude example.
Your Facebook Pixel can look at everyone who has made an enquiry through your website or visited your Contact page over the last twelve months – then crunch their Facebook profile data. It can then create a lookalike audience of Facebook users that share the same characteristics as the people getting in touch with you. A new group of people, ripe for signing up.
For lasting marketing results that are more than skin deep.
Why stop at Facebook?
2.96 billion users not enough to find your ideal audience? No worries. The parent company of Facebook – Meta – owns Instagram too. And certain ads you post on Facebook can also be distributed across Insta (user base: 1.4 billion).
Even better, when you fire a campaign across both platforms, an algorithm shared between platforms tracks ad performance and learns to serve it where it’s receiving the highest engagement.
A little more buck, yes. But plenty more bang in return.
Your ad spend is precious.
Let’s make sure it drives revenue.
It’s exciting: the vast, vast amounts of data that Facebook allows you to tap in to. It means you can target potential customers with laser precision. Yet creating campaigns that consistently drive revenue requires getting analytics in place. Allowing yourself to be driven by data. Doubling down on the ads that work, ditching the ads that don’t.
But what if you wanted to be sure that your ad spend would drive revenue?
You’re in the right place.
At Adbetter we have proven customer generation strategies for Facebook – and we can share them with you. Maybe. You see, we only work with businesses where we are 100% sure we can deliver new customers and revenue growth. You can expect us to handle everything on your behalf. No secretive processes. No confusing marketing terminology. Just fully transparent lead generation. And a live reporting dashboard showing the impact we are making.
Could it work for you? Find out with a no-obligation, fee-free proposal. Let’s go.
Facewhat?
At the start of this article we promised to explain the origins of Facebook’s brand name. So that’s exactly what we’re going to give you.
In short, it’s derived from a slang name for the printed directories that used to be handed to new starters at US universities – directories that featured a headshot of each new student.
After joining Harvard in 2003, Mark Zuckerberg became impatient that Harvard hadn’t created a freshman directory. So he made his own version online – garnering no small amount of controversy at the time.
Yet the seeds of an idea had been sewn. Zuckerberg regrouped and in 2004 created a platform where people would voluntarily share their own photos and status updates. The rest – as they say – is history.
