What do you want your practice to be known for? What do you want your community to say about you?

If you know the questions to this already, AWESOME! If not, don’t fret. I want for you to start dreaming about what you have to offer others.

Brainstorm:

What three things come to mind when you think about your practice? What sets you apart?

1)

2)

3)

**Are you stuck? Don’t worry, it's a lot simpler than you think. Maybe you’re office is known for always being on time with appointments, specializing in a certain field of audiology, or providing services in your community. For example, at our location we are known for giving an impact in our community, providing solutions for hearing loss in a stress free environment, and having nurse practitioners and physicians on staff.

If you ask me Facebook is the most popular digital media tool for our target demographic. It also provides a space for us to nurture people over time. Right now it is very likely that people in your community don’t know who you are. Facebook allows you to build a brand reputation in your community that frankly print ads can’t do!

Take a minute to jot down your social media stats, so you can remember where you started!

Step 1: When you are logged in as the administrator go to your practice's page and locate (on the top) “insights."

Step 2: Change your "Page Summary" to display “28 days." Fill in your stats below.

Actions On Page:

Page Views:

Page Previews:

Page Likes:

Post Reach:

Story Reach:

Post Engagements:

Videos:

Page Followers:

Facebook marketing is present in every business to some degree. However, not many people know how to grab the attention of their potential patient. Find three different businesses that are serving a similar patient and follow them on Facebook. Chances are you may already be following them but now it’s time to pay attention to how and what they are saying!

Take notes on this for one week, so you can start to understand their strategy! A good place to start is dentists, florists, vision center, assisted living, YMCA or local hospital.

Company #1

Was it easy to find them on Facebook?

Did you notice it was them right away by the picture on their page?

What is your first impression of their business page?

Is it easy to figure out where they are located?

Do they have their website address listed?

When you click on their post where does it take you?

How is their engagement on their posts? Is anyone replying?

Company #2

Was it easy to find them on Facebook?

Did you notice it was them right away by the picture on their page?

What is your first impression of their business page?

Is it easy to figure out where they are located?

Do they have their website address listed?

When you click on their post where does it take you?

How is their engagement on their posts? Is anyone replying?

Company #3

Was it easy to find them on Facebook?

Did you notice it was them right away by the picture on their page?

What is your first impression of their business page?

Is it easy to figure out where they are located?

Do they have their website address listed?

When you click on their post where does it take you?

How is their engagement on their posts? Is anyone replying?

A couple hours after looking at their business pages what stood out to you? What do you still remember about their page?

When you are on the homepage of Facebook on the left hand side under “Explore” click on “Pages.”

At the top of the page you will see “Liked Pages.” Click on it to view all the pages you are following. The most recent pages you liked will show at the top.

• • What was the last LOCAL page that you liked or followed?

• • Why did you follow it? What made you search for it or like it?

• • How often do you see them in your social media? Were you happy with the content shared or disappointed?

• • Did you UN-FOLLOW any of them? If so, why?

It is important to think about what made you follow a business online. Chances are, the things that enticed you will help entice your ideal patient! Was it a discount code? Free promotion? Giveaway? Or just something you enjoy participating with and keeping up-to-date with?

As an audiologist you have already interacted with your ideal client - probably a million times! This is such an important part of marketing and we truly have so much market research already in our brains that we are not utilizing.

What's important to understand, when it comes to marketing, is that people will follow you for a particular reason. Let's think of one of your favorite patients and how you can solve their problems related to the field of audiology that you practice. The first step in scheduling your ideal patients is knowing them, the second step is effectively marketing to them! Let’s break it down…

Below I want you to write down as much as you know about your ideal client: what they do for work, where they live, what television shows they watch, what hobbies they like to participate in, what you would define their style as, if they have already accepted their hearing loss, how they value other people’s time, etc.

Think of your all time favorite patient, what qualities did they have that made you LOVE them!?

What are three things you can customize to reach out to your ideal patients today through your current messaging?

Think of your patients, what are some of the things that could be considered “pain points?” What things they are struggling with right now? How can you, or hearing aids make their life easier/more enjoyable? Make a list of three of the main pain points your ideal clients might be facing? If you need help and you have some COSI’s on file pull from their information.

Let’s get into the right mindset: strategy + serving = engaged community which will yield you a specific geographical audience to market to.

When you can mix consistently serving your community with a touch of strategy, that’s when we start to grow your target audiences. Now lets get to work mapping out your strategy…

Let's start here-

How often can you consistently serve your community? Can you think of a campaign to complete every single month? Maybe every quarter? You need to figure out what a reasonable amount of campaigns you can commit to. List it below:

When you think about serving your community what do you think of? Social campaigns and community campaigns are a great place to start. Something as simple as sharing about the charities you already donate to is something that patients should know about you. THESE TOPICS BECOMES YOUR BRAND’S STORY.

Here is a list of 5 types of social media posts that would be considered serving your audience while growing brand awareness.

Choose one of your charity projects that you brainstormed in part 1 and list ideas and action items to make this happen in the next 30 days. To make this more mandible and less overwhelming search on Pinterest the topic you chose and follow that blog's step by step how to!

Now next to each "to-do" write down a date that you need to have it accomplished by! To all you procrastinators DON"T skip this step! No excuses! 🙂

Once you are ready to share the content you will need to do a Facebook Live! Say something like this:

“ Hi this is Dr. ___ your local audiologist and I am really excited to be here! Today we are actually going to making our community a better place! But before we get started I would love if you could post in the comments where you are from. I think it would be so awesome if we could actually see our community come together in the comments below!

Before we talk about our charity event I want to let you know a little bit about what we are known for here at ___________.  At _____ we are known for ___(include three branding topics from step one )_____. We also do a lot of impact in our community including ____. But today we are here to talk about ___(i.e. Back to School Back Pack Drive)____. The truth is there are families in our community that would greatly appreciate some ___________.  However, not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to afford ________. IF you would do us a favor and share this video so we can better help impact those in our community with _____________. “

Facebook’s main goals is to keep it’s users on it’s platform for as long as possible!

There is data that proves video is the most engaging and keeps their users on the longest. Therefore, it makes more sense for Facebook to put your video in someone’s newsfeeds rather than a post with a picture.

However, the strategy doesn't end there my friends! When people comment on the video that tells Facebook “oh this must be interesting” so then they push it into EVEN MORE news feeds, so make sure to ask them to comment below.

Lastly, if you publish a post with the words “share, comment, like” actually typed in the copy Facebook recognizes that and they know you are just trying to reach a larger audience. So, they will not give your post as big of a reach (put your post in people’s newsfeeds). That is why I was taught to do a Facebook Live and not a text post so you can speak “share this post” and not have to type it.

The strategy doesn't end there! Each person that watches your video is saved. This is what grows your target audience and allows you to boost a post to them in the future! How cool is that!

PRO TIP: You have to be okay with the fact that your fist Facebook Live will suck. Done is better than perfect and done will move the needle further than perfect ever will. You will get better the more you do it. It’s even OK to admit to your audience that you are “not very good at these things but I’m going to give it a try anyways.” Trust me they will find you relatable!

Before we can start targeting we need some content!

_____Create a post highlighting an audiologist.

_____Create a post highlighting what makes your practice different.

_____Do an office tour with Facebook Live.

_____In the next 30 days announce a charity project on Facebook Live.

_____Post your page name inside the community so we can all follow along and help others when doing Facebook Lives.

STEP 1: THE "BACK END" OF FACEBOOK

Before Facebook can start charging you for ads you need to have an account set up with credit card information.

How to set up a business manager: 

If you have never boosted a post or made a Facebook Ad in the past you probably have not set up Business Manager.

• • Make sure that the person that is logged into Facebook is considered the account manager for your business’s Facebook page.

• • Go to business.facebook.com

• • Select your business if you see it listed OR if you don’t already see your business then select “Create Business”

• • Enter a name for your business, select the primary Page and enter your name and work email address.

Once you have an ID number and an account set up in Business Manager start tracking visits by installing the Facebook Pixel!

To start tracking who has gone from your page or blog post to your website you need to install the “FB Pixel” in the header of your business website.

For example, I want to schedule an appointment for my dad to get his hearing tested. I go to your website and as I’m checking you out I get distracted because my child needs me and I set my phone down. You can now use the pixel tracker to re-target me and “remind me” to set up that appointment!

• • Click on “business manager”

• • In the third column under “measure and report” select “pixel”

• • Find your business account top left. You're going to see a button that says set up your pixel.

• • Then there are three different options to choose from. What I did was I clicked “email instructions to your developer” and she had it in there that very same day.

• • Once the pixel is on your website and you have had at least 100 “events” or views while the pixel is installed you can start making audiences centered around those who viewed your website.

• • Want to ensure that it is installed? Google “Facebook Pixel Helper” and add it on as an extension to your Chrome Websites.

According to Facebook, a custom audience can be a list of email addresses, phone numbers, Facebook user IDs or app user IDs to create and save audiences you’d like to show your ads to.

In this step we are going to set four different custom audiences. When you go to set up a custom audience you will have to pick one of the following: Engagment/Page, Video, Website Traffic, Patient List.

In this step you will be asking Facebook to create an audience that looks like the same people that are in your custom audiences. According to Facebook, a lookalike audience is a way to reach new people who are likely to be interested in your business because they're similar to your best existing customers.

***Important!

Lookalike audiences are created to target the entire country. You HAVE to create a "saved audience" to narrow down the lookalike audience to those who are in your community.

Take a minute to look at all those Audience’s you’ve created so far. I want to be the first one to pat you on the back and tell you what an awesome job you’ve done so far.

But ... pssst....we can make it better!

According to Facebook, a saved audience allows you to target people based on their income level, interests, location, age, gender, used devices ...even behaviors.

Let’s create a special audience that only targets High Income Earners. This audience is going to be used for the special offers that you do for potential hearing aid patients.

• • Complete all of the following listed in Step 5. With the exception of the following

• • Audience Name: High Income Earners

• • Age: You may want to narrow the age down to 45-75 if you plan to only market hearing aids.

• • Detailed Targeting: Click Browse > Demographics > Financial > Income > Top 25% - 50% of ZIP

Now that you know how targeted you can get with your advertisements lets think of the main types of patients you see in your office or the types of patients you wish you saw more of.

Do you provide tinnitus therapy? Think about creating an audience that only targets this specific type of patient by using demographics.

Do you provide speech therapy for children? Think about creating an audience that only targets women with children of a certain age.

Do you provide hearing conservation services? Think about creating an audience that only targets men who work in certain fields or locations in your community. If you're lucky Facebook might have that business page available for you to target/select in the demographics location.

Log into Facebook and go to your business’s page.

On the top white bar select Insights > Posts

Here you will see the list of posts on your business’s page

This will give you a good idea of what posts are performing well.

Pick a post that has recently performed well and click on “Boost Post” to the right.

Keep the objective to be “get more people to react”

Next ask yourself “who do I want to see this post?”

Depending on that answer you can select the audience you set up.

Select from “Your Custom Audiences” OR “Master Audience”

Spend $10 for 10 days.

Do not select “Automatic Audience” that is a generic way for people to boost. Since you took the time to set up audiences use them! You will spend less money by targeting the right audience. When you boost the post you will have the option to edit the post with demographics. However, I was taught that you shouldn't use this because you will not have the same reach compared to the audiences you set up.

What is the difference between boosting a post and creating an advertisement? The main difference is when you boost a post that is shown on your page's posts. So it may reach the people who have liked your page organically. However, if you want to run three ads at the same time for hearing evaluations, vestibular testing, and aural rehabilitation you don't want all of those things to hit the people who have liked or are following your page all at once. Therefore, if you create an ad it will not populate as a post on your page.

• After logging into Facebook at the top right hand corner click on Create > Ad
• This will take you to Ads Manager.
• Directly under the words "Ads Manager" select your name to make sure you have the correct account selected. If you have the wrong account selected your audiences will not show up when you are trying to make the advertisement.
• Once you selected the correct account your marketing objective is "Traffic"
• Name the campaign and hit continue
• Ad Set Name refers to the type of people you are marketing to. For example, If you are developing an ad for High Income Earners than label it as that.
• Keep "Website" selected under Traffic
• Jump to Audience
• "Create New" is underlined by default: this is where you will locate your lookalike and custom audiences.
• Select the audiences that you want to use. If you want to use the Master Saved Audience then next select "Use A Saved Audience" to find your Master.
• I usually select "Edit Placements" as I don't always put our ads inside "stories" so select whatever you think you want here.
• Next go to "Budget & Schedule" and select Impressions
• Usually a good place to start is by spending $10 per day (you always have the option to cancel it if it's not performing well)
• Click Continue

Make sure the correct Facebook Page is selected.

• Select "Single Image or Video"
• Select Upload An Image
• Either use an image you created in Canva or one that we have posted for you inside Ascending Audiologists. They also have free stock images. As you can imagine they are pretty underwhelming and gives an inaccurate representation of our field.
• Once you have the image selected you can create up to 6 different ads using different images (same copy/text). Sometimes different pictures will perform better.
• If you want to test out different images you can. Just keep selecting more images.