Here at MEG, we’re big on continuous education. Always learning and being better than we were yesterday. So recently, when I saw an event hosted by Facebook, the event was geared towards small businesses – so there were some great takeaways to share with our clients and my team. You see, Facebook has a whopping 2 billion monthly users, including 68% of all Americans. If you think that because you have a primarily Medicare patient base, consider this: 41% of American Facebook users are aged 65 and older. It’s an incredible platform with a lot of value to your practice. Additionally, you can bet that every business is utilizing Facebook in some facet. Your private practice probably has a page, and your internal marketer/patient care rep is probably posting regularly but are you really using the platform to the fullest?
Before you scoff, consider these two powerful statistics
- 74% of American users visit Facebook every day. On average, they spend 58 minutes per day on the platform, with each visit clocking in on average 10-12 minutes.
- There are 80 million small and medium-sized business pages on the platform. Of these, 6 million advertise on facebook whether through boosted posts, or targeted advertising campaigns. It is the top platform for both B2B and B2C businesses.
How your internal marketer can enhance your Facebook utilization
Expand your audience
You should be constantly trying to grow your public. You want to be seen. Facebook is an easy platform to do this on, specifically with advertising. As with any marketing activity, it should be tied back to your annual marketing program. What are you trying to get out of your ad?
Video Is Hot
Everyone is into video these days. As they should be, people engage more with videos. How do you get more engagement? Well, for starters make sure the auto-play feature is set to on when you upload your videos, however, 85% of videos are played with sound off. Utilize captions. Keep the videos short, but know that videos have a 135% greater organic reach than photo posts. Hosting an event? Utilize Facebook live – Facebook is clearly favoring videos and the engagement shows.
Optimize for Mobile
88% of Facebook users access the platform via a mobile device. Look out at your waiting room, look at what your patients and their caretakers are doing while they wait, chances are they’re on a mobile device or tablet. So when creating content or videos, make sure it’s optimized for mobile. Same with your website, the information that patients need – mainly your contact information – should be easy to find and the click to call feature should be one that you’re utilizing.
Utilize the Call to Action feature
Did you know, you can create a button with a feature to schedule an appointment? Granted, you probably don’t want patients able to schedule an appointment through Facebook BUT you can create the button so it says “Contact Us” which is great for grabbing new patients. In order for this to perform the way you want, make sure your cover image is amazing, clear and representative of your business. Stop using blurry images of your storefront or nothing at all. They’re not helping your business.
Capture Reviews on Facebook
I can not stress this enough – you NEED to be collecting online reviews. Yes, your patient care representative/internal marketer needs to be getting testimonials, however, every patient that leaves an amazing testimonial should also be asked to leave a review on Google/Facebook. These add a ton of social credibility and pack a great SEO punch, especially for those local search opportunities (think: “Physical Therapy practice near me”).
All things told, Facebook is an incredible platform to showcase your practice, your staff, and your expertise. When looking for an internal marketer, make sure they are well versed in social media and have ideas on how to really showcase your practice on the platform. For other marketing tips, download our free Marketing Tip Sheet for more ideas to implement into your practice.
