When starting online marketing, there is a good chance others have suggested you focus on Facebook advertising. Did we guess right?
Facebook continues to develop and evolve its advertising platform to build a space where you have so many options to choose how you want to advertise. We get that this can be overwhelming for therapists who haven't conquered Facebook yet. We promise that today's focus is on an easy way to start advertising that you, as a therapist, can handle.
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Although Facebook has many ad styles offered on its platform, today's topic is one of the most simple ads to create. Boosted Posts are user-friendly, easy to make, and can get you excellent visibility. As noted, these are less intensive ads; you can't expect an endless amount of leads coming through to your website but what you can expect is for your services out in front of the right audience, which can be the difference for someone seeking help or not. Boosted Posts allow you to create more visibility on your posts and point potential clients towards your page.
At Theory About That, we feel that boosted posts are pretty underrated when it comes to how resourceful they can be for therapists specifically. So let's dive in and dissect how to make the most of a Boosted Post!
Boosted Posts are rapid turnaround style ads built off of pre-existing posts. They are not only easy to create, but it's also easy to see results. That is a win-win in our books! When you post content to your main Facebook Page, it is viewed by those connected to your Facebook Page. Now when you choose to boost a post, you are taking it outside of your current Page's audience and moving it to the audience of your selection. Boosted posts are easy for any practice or center looking to start advertising at a low cost but still effective.
We will be going over our recommendations for getting the most out of the boosted post that you create as a therapist.
Let's start by painting a picture. When your practice is positioning yourself online, you probably chose to focus on different pillar areas and services that your practice wants to reach. These would be the things you have highlighted on your website for users. For example, your practice or center may focus on couples counseling, individual therapy, addiction treatment, family mediation, etc., which are all very different demographics. You may be currently posting content that targets all of those groups, but it is essential to shift this mindset when Boosting Posts.
When it comes to you advertising these posts, focus on how we find these demographics online; here is where your background in psychology comes in handy! As we mentioned before, Facebook Boosted posts allow you to reach a new audience which means you will target a new audience of your choice directly through the Facebook advertising settings. You must take the time to target the ads to the perfect audience for the post intentions. It is crucial to do so because it will make or break how well your ad performs. If you can match your message to the right audience as close as possible, the ad will serve better, it is as simple as that.
Since Facebook allows you to create audiences by Location, Interests, Demographics, Behaviors, even devices used which can help you determine the right users to target.
Guide to Audience Editing
At Theory About That, we suggest a total of $200-$400 a month to start with. We recommend keeping a goal to increase ads overtime to an $800-$1,000 monthly ad budget. If you can afford to do more than this to start, we still recommend starting small to test audiences, and then when you have ads that spend each time entirely, add budget! To break that down further, we think a good starting point is to spend about $25 to $50 per Boosted post. This math works out to 4 - 8 posts Boosted a month. When you implement this strategy, it will allow you to give proportionate advertising in the service directions you need and have unique audiences receiving those ads throughout the month.
We suggest running ads for about a week to two weeks where ads naturally overlap but not running from day one to the last day of the month. We don't want to saturate the audience with the same ad over all month long. Especially for boosted posts, you'll notice better results when applying a budget over a brief period. One to two weeks is the perfect amount of time to allow boosted posts to run. To help ads stagger around each other, you can take a few different strategies.
Any way you chose it, it is great to have a strategy to follow that allows for changes throughout the month. Be sure you're applying a focus on posts that advertise the areas that are most important for your counseling or treatment center.
Boosted posts are effortless to follow and create with Facebook's guided directions and fields to fill out, but there are still ways to make them better.
Something important to note with a boosted post is to remember it is a post! This means there is a group of people who have already interacted and engaged with this post. Use this to your advantage. This is like having a test audience to practice on. When selecting a boosted post, try to choose a post that received decent engagement on your regular Facebook company page. If the post has already gotten good feedback from your current audience, you can assume that it will positively affect others who are offered it as an advertisement.
Be specific about the post you are selecting. Make sure the post matches the messaging the target you are looking for would respond well to. Does it hit their pain points? Do you provide the solution to their concerns? Ensure that you are also reviewing the graphic/visual attached to the post, making sure you have a logo and engaging photos. It is also essential to make sure that the post caption is clear, appropriate, and a good representation of your practice's expertise for the service.
Facebook Advertising has many regulations for ads, whereas its counterpart, regular Facebook posts, really don't. When turning your post into ads, it's imperative to consider the advertising guidelines. For example, ads cannot have the words such as "you" too often, as this will set off a red flag for your ad and will most likely be disapproved. Facebook is trying to protect its users, and "you" statements are typically used to persuade and can be dangerous when being positioned in front of a vulnerable user.
Here is the trick to how we, as advertisers, get past this: instead of staying "Are you okay? After last year, it's ok if you feel down and aren't sure how you can move forward. If you are feeling hopeless, reach out." we rephrase to "It's okay not to feel okay, we understand how lonely that can be. When feelings of hopelessness arise it is important to seek help." When the word "you" is used, it implies that you are making implications towards the individual versus providing information that the user can freely decide whether to connect to it or not. Because of these rules, it is essential to edit your post to make sure it is advertising-friendly before boosting it. During the boosting process, you will not be given the option to edit the caption or post, so you need to do this before booting.
Another tip along the lines of editing the post before boosting is to remove any links in the post caption. When you go to Boost your post it will give you the option to add a button. This is a great option, but if there is a link in the organic caption, this can confuse users on which CTA to continue to. So when you create the boosted post, remove the link before so you can put the link in a button that will be more effective to help get engagement.
When targeting for your boosted post, really imagine that this person is a specific person who has very key life values. Think about their interests, the devices that they use, the locations they can be found, and narrow as far down as you possibly can. Our biggest recommendation is to select the "Browse" area in the Audience Settings and peruse all the different options and groupings they have. We provided some examples of these above and recommend selecting as many as possible without making your total audience too small.
Another great tip regarding client targeting is to think about the zip codes as opportunities to spend only on the sides of town you think are profitable for your business. For example, if you are a private treatment center, you may cater to the top 10-20% of income in that area, so let's not spend on areas of the city that may not have that demographic. Reflect the places you want to reach; for example, if you were to select Orlando, this will be more broadly targeted than if you targeted 32836 specifically.
With this helpful guide to give you the tips you need to know, you will be able to conquer Boosted Posts and get them to work for you! These are a great way to start in Facebook Advertising as this will lay a strong foundation for the more advanced targeting style ads.
We understand as a full-time therapist it can be hard to find the time to take care of marketing tasks but we promise this one is worth your time. If you need to save time, let’s talk about what it looks like to outsource some of your content marketing to our team! Click here to see our full services.
