Ever wanted to try Facebook ads for your acupuncture practice but had no idea where to start?

This week we’re covering some Facebook ad basics to help make your ads more effective and get a better return on your investment.

I was recently speaking to a market strategy client and she asked how to get started with Facebook ads. How to structure the ad, what to talk about, what call to action to use, and overall, what’s effective in our industry.

In this episode, we cover:

• Four categories of Facebook ads that I usually identify for acupuncturists
• How knowing your marketing goal helps you decide which category of ad to create 
• The difference between creating a Facebook ad from scratch and hitting the “Boost Post” button
• Why my Facebook ads coach always used to say that hitting the “Boost Post” button is like throwing your money away

Ohhh, controversial. We’re going dig into that.

And before we dive in, a quick PSA:

If you’ve ever wanted to pick my brain about marketing, one-on-one, now is the time!

The price for my 60-Minute Marketing Strategy Session is going up at midnight on March 14.

Currently the price is $197 and the price will be going up to $247. Plus I’m limiting this to the first ten people who sign up at the current price of $197, to keep my schedule balanced. Even though I absolutely adore these Marketing Strategy Sessions with you, there’s only so much time in a day!

>> Click here to save your spot.

What’s the 1:1 Marketing Strategy Session for?

You can use it for ANY marketing discussion that you’d like to have, but it’s often used for:

• Creating an effective marketing strategy that’s the best use of your strengths and your time
• If you have marketing questions and need clarity before taking action
• Reviewing your current marketing (website and/or social media) and providing tips and suggestions
• Help with content planning/brainstorming content creation

You can also use this session regarding marketing or creating online courses, programs or services:

• Guidance on creating an online course, like what to include or how to put it together
• Help with the tech side of things, such as: course platforms, connecting your email marketing platform, etc.
• Help with increasing sales if you already created and launched a course, but don’t make sales very often
• Re-launching an online course or program to bring in revenue
• Reviewing your sales page, launch emails, or other marketing

I’ve been selling online courses, eBooks, programs, coaching, you name it, since 2016 and helping other acupuncturists with this is REALLY something I enjoy.

In fact, online courses and programs provide half my income, so I’m exceited to work with you!

In a nutshell, if you need help with ANY kind of marketing, either for your brick and mortar clinic or your online course or program, definitely consider claiming a Marketing strategy Session!

Okay, enough from me. Let’s get into this episode all about Facebook Ads!

Show Notes:

• 60-Minute Marketing Strategy Session
• Clairepells.com – Claire Pelletreau, Facebook ads coach

🎙️Episode #34: Four Categories of Facebook Ads for Acupuncturists

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Transcript:

Hello there, welcome back. Today I’m excited to talk with you about Facebook ad basics to help make your ads more effective and get a better return on your investment.

I was recently speaking to a market strategy client and one question that she asked was about how to get started with Facebook ads. How to structure the ad, what to talk about, what call to action to use, and overall, what’s effective in our industry.

The first thing that we did was discuss four categories of Facebook ads that I usually identify for acupuncturists. And of course, whenever you start a new marketing campaign or sit down to outline a marketing strategy, you always want to determine your goals. What do you want to be the outcome of your efforts for this marketing campaign?

And it’s no different for Facebook ad, because defining your goal will help you decide which category of ad do you want to create right now.

Today we’re going to go through those four categories and I think that will be really helpful for you getting started.

We’re also going to talk about, briefly, the difference between creating a Facebook ad from scratch and hitting the “Boost Post” button. I’m sure you’ve seen this before, when Facebook sends you a little message saying, “This post is doing better than 85% of your other posts! Reach 1000 more people or get 1000 more impressions by hitting the “Boost post” button.” Sound familiar?

But there’s a difference between creating a Facebook ad from scratch, using the Ads Manager, and hitting the “Boost Post” button. And we’re going to talk about why my Facebook ads marketing coach from last year always used to say that hitting the “Boost Post” button is like throwing your money away.

Ohhh, controversial, we’re gonna dig into that.

I also want to say before we get too far into this that I do not consider myself a Facebook ads expert by any means. I did a wonderful Facebook ads coaching program with someone I consider one of the best Facebook ads coaches on the internet, Claire Pelletreau. Her website is clairepells.com. I’ll put a link in the show notes.

And I learned so much throughout that program. But someone like Claire is truly an expert. She’s been managing FB ads for small and medium sized businesses, and teaching them to other people, for over a decade. It’s her entire career – that’s expertise.

Whereas I feel relatively comfortable with Facebook ads, and have a strong basic knowledge.

If you’ve ever been in the backend of Facebook ads, in the Ads Manager you know that it’s a little complex. There’s a lot of options and it changes often.

If you’re a beginner in Facebook ads or if you have run ads in the past and you like. “Where the heck did my money go? I didn’t see any new patients or any significant outcome from that ad,” then I think this episode will be really helpful.

And before we dive in, a quick PSA. If you have ever wanted to pick my brain about marketing, one-on-one, now is the time. I don’t talk about this service nearly enough, but did you know that I offer a 60-minute Marketing Strategy Session? Basically we hop on a Zoom call and get into the nitty-gritty details and planning for YOUR specific marketing.

And the price for this 60 minute Marketing Strategy Session will be going up at midnight on March 14. Right now the price is $197 and the price will be going up to $247. And I’m limiting this to the first ten people who sign up at the current price of 197, because of course I still have to have time to go to clinic and see my patients. Even though I absolutely adore these Marketing Strategy Sessions with you, there’s only so much time in a day.

So really quickly, what might you use this 1:1 strategy session for?

If you’ve always wanted to pick my brain about marketing or if you need help creating a strategy that is effective and is the best use of your strengths and your time, then definitely consider signing up.

I always let the client tell me what they need most from the session, naturally. But the format that most people end up asking for is thirty minutes of Q&A, the opportunity to ask me their marketing questions and get clarity on anything that feels not quite right to them, or to move through that stagnation so they can finally take action with their marketing.

And then we usually spend 30 minutes outlining a marketing strategy for them for the next month, based on their goals, their target market, the kinds of marketing they want to do or where their strengths lie. Sometimes people want me to review the marketing that they already have in place – so beforehand I’ll look at their website or social media, and then together on the call we’ll go through my recommendations for making their marketing stronger and more effective, next steps to take, etc.

I also absolutely love helping people create and market online courses, programs or services. Of course in 2020 and 2021, a lot of acupuncturists got behind the idea that creating an online course or program is a great way to diversify their income. But creating an online course, or learning how to market it effectively, it’s sort of it’s own specialty. I’ve been selling online courses, eBooks, programs, coaching, you name it, since 2016 and helping other acupuncturists with this is REALLY something I enjoy.

So if you need help with fleshing out the idea for an online course, or with the tech aspects, for example, how do you set up your course in an online platform like Thinkific, which is what I use, so that you can sell it? Then I can absolutely help with that. Or if you’ve already created an online course and released it on your website, but you’re getting exactly zero sales, then we can also create an effective marketing strategy to generate income with your online program. Whether that’s reviewing your sales page, driving more traffic to your website, setting up an evergreen webinar or an email funnel, I would love to help you.

Even just re-launching the course to your email list of patients, and doing it in a splashy, fun, and effective way – I’m happy to get into the nitty gritty with you and help you write and edit those emails for maximum sales. All of that is my jam AND it results in half my income, so, long story short, if you need help with any kind of marketing, either for your brick and mortar clinic or your online course, program, or service, definitely consider grabbing one of those Marketing strategy Sessions before the price goes up. I’ll put the link in the show notes.

Okay, enough from me. Let’s talk about the four categories that most Facebook ads fall into for acupuncturists and other wellness practitioners.

The four categories are:

1. Brand awareness
2. A call to action to get people on your schedule, with no special offer
3. A special offer with has a specific deadline or expiration
4. Ads created to help grow your email list.

Let’s talk about the first type, brand awareness. A classic example of a brand awareness Facebook ad would be an ad directing people to click a link to read a blog post that you wrote on your website. So driving traffic to your website.

I don’t usually recommend this type of ad because you are spending money to get your Facebook business page, and your website, in front of new people. This is not a bad thing, of course. BUT – there’s no direct financial return on this kind of ad. You’re paying for brand awareness. That’s it.

With an ad like this, even though it sends people to your website, and is educational because you’re teaching them about whatever is in the blog post, but the call to action is, “Click here to read the blog post.” Or essentially, Click here to learn more. The call to action is NOT, Click here to make an appointment. And we like to assume that if we’re educating people about how acupuncture can help them, in the blog post, and directing them to your website, that they will naturally click around and find your Schedule Now button and make an appointment. But the likelihood of that occurring is actually pretty low. Some people might do it, occasionally, but if your big goal for your FB ad is to get more patients on your schedule, then this type of ad is not an efficient way to do it. There are other categories of ads, that we’re going to talk about, that would get you much more bang for your buck. They’re a better choice for that goal. Because again, in this case, you’re paying money to send people your website but with no specific direction after that. You’re just hoping they’ll get it, and make an appointment. When you’re paying money for an ad, you want typically want it to be more specific than that. And don’t get me wrong, there are some cases where I can think of the usefulness of brand awareness ads, but those are sort of advanced Facebook marketing ad campaigns, part of a larger digital marketing ecosystem. If your goal is, get more patients on my schedule ASAP, this is probably not the best use of your money, in my humble opinion.

The second category is creating a Facebook ad where you invite people to make an appointment. You can sort of think of this type of ad as introducing you to new local people on Facebook. You’re paying Facebook to show you to new people in your geographic area. You would want to have a strong call to action, for example, “Click here to make an appointment,” or “Call this number for a free consult.”

This kind of ad can be very effective. I personally don’t think it’s the most effective kind of Facebook ad to run in terms of getting people on your schedule. But if you are not comfortable offering a discount or a bonus, something with an expiration date, which is kind of the third category of Facebook ad that we’ll discuss in a moment, then this ad can a good choice and it can certainly be successful. However, if you’re not careful, I’ve seen this type of ad be a flop as well.

The thing here is, you’re not offering a special price or extra bonus, you’re not giving them anything. You’re simply saying, “We’re Seneca Falls Acupuncture. Acupuncture can help you for this. Make an appointment.”

I think the best way to make this type of ad more effective is to get specific with the symptom or condition that you’re calling out, or mentioning in the ad. And then of course, make sure that your call to action is clear and strong. You can’t afford a soft or wishy-washy call to action here. And you can’t afford to be vague or too broad with your ad copy.

Let’s think of a few examples for comparison. An example of a broad, vague ad might be, “Seneca Falls Acupuncture, located in Seneca Falls. Specializing in cosmetic acupuncture, pain management, and digestion. Click here to make an appointment today.”

Now, it’s fine, but super vague. And we mentioned a bunch of things – cosmetic, pain, digestion.

You know I say this all the time, but the more specific you get with your marketing message, the higher rate of action you’re going to get from your audience. That specificity of your message is going to speak to people directly and help them feel seen and help them understand that you are a great fit for what they need. People need to see themselves reflected in your marketing, and that’s hard to do when your message is really broad.

Specificity is usually going to be much more effective than blasting a really vague message out there that doesn’t get the attention of any particular group of people.

I would recommend, if you are going to create this type of Facebook ad, that you pick a specific condition or symptom that you want to focus on for that ad. Make your marketing message all about one symptom or condition that you want more of in your practice.

Don’t try to cover all the bases of all the things you treat. Just pick knee pain, or shoulder pain or carpal tunnel or whatever your specialty is.

An example of a more specific ad could be, Seneca Falls Acupuncture, specializing in pain management, If you’re struggling with arthritis knee pain, did you know acupuncture can help? Can you predict whether changes by your knees? If so, acupuncture may be able to help. We take insurance. Click here to make an appointment or click here to set up a free consult.

With a message like that, certain people are going to sit up and say, “Wow, I have knee pain and I can predict the weather. I didn’t know acupuncture could help me with that. Maybe I’ll at least click the button and look around.”

With the really broad previous example, it may create more questions instead of answers. A person who sees that ad may feel like, Okay, it says pain management, and I have pain, but I don’t know if it applies to my situation. And they also mentioned a bunch of other stuff like cosmetic acupuncture. I don’t know what that is, and digestion. I’m not worried about that.” You sort of lose them.

So for this category, and any category of ad, specificity is usually going to make it more effective.

Ad category number three is to make your audience a special offer with a deadline. This could be a discount on services or products or it could be limited time registration for a class or webinar you’re teaching. Anything with a deadline or an expiration date. This rapidly improves the opt in rate.

I don’t know how to emphasize this enough: If you’re going to offer a discount, you must have an expiration date or deadline. And I know not everyone can offer a discount on services, like if you take insurance, and a lot of people just aren’t comfortable discounting their services. No problem. In that case you could a bonus or add-on, whatever you like, but that also has to be a limited time offer.

Let’s do an example. If you create an ad that says, $10 off your first treatment, and you don’t put a deadline, it’s almost meaningless for people. The deadline is what helps them make a decision. Get off the fence and decide, do I want to opt in right now or not? And it’s okay if for some people the answer is going to be, not right now. Okay, fine.

But for other people, instead of saying, “I’m gonna come back to this or I’ll remember and decide next week,” they realize they better decide now before they run out of time. An expiration date is really important because it makes people take action. And I think that will get more new patients on your schedule than just saying, get on the schedule. At least that’s been the case in my experience.

The fourth category of Facebook ad is an email list building ad. Now let me back up for a second. There are many different ways you can build your email list but the two most common for acupuncturists are 1) to invite people to join your email newsletter, or 2) invite people to give you their email in exchange for something valuable, typically called a lead magnet.

A lead magnet is anything that you give to someone in exchange for their email. Typically, it’s a PDF, like a single page or a PDF ebook. You’ve probably downloaded a million lead magnets, maybe you didn’t know that’s what they’re often called.

A leadmagnet has to be valuable enough or interesting enough that someone is willing to give you their email in exchange for it. So usually a lead magnet solves a problem or answers a question for the audience.

And lead magnets are a much more efficient way to grow your email list compared to a simple “Join my email newsletter” box, because it is more interesting and perceived as more valuable.

The lead magnet that I have for my practice is “All Natural Skincare Product Recommendations from a Cosmetic Acupuncturist. I love cosmetic acupuncture so my target market is interested in non toxic skincare. So people who are interested in that opt in and give me their email in exchange for this PDF, and then they are put into an email funnel, which is a series of 8 emails sent out over 6 weeks, teaching about TCM’s perspectives on skincare and how cosmetic acupuncture fits into this. Basically educating people about it and lots of calls to action to make an appointment.

You can use Facebook ads to promote your leadmagnet, get it in front of new people in your community, so that they opt in and then they’re on your email list. And then of course you have the opportunity to market to them via email, to nurture them via email so they become your patients.

Obviously the best way for this category of FB ad to give you a result is that you have to be prepared to consistently email the people who opt into your lead magnet. There’s no point in growing your email list if you’re never going to email them.

So you could nurture your list with an email funnel, like the one I just described that I send to my people about cosmetic acupuncture, or you can nurture your list with your regular, consistent email newsletter. So to clarify, an email funnel is an automated series of emails sent out after a specific trigger. In this case, the trigger is the person opting into lead magnet, giving me their email. Usually a funnel has a specific topic or series of topics and everything is written with a specific goal – in this case, to get people to sign up for cosmetic acupuncture. Whereas a newsletter is usually not automated and typically has a variety of topics. But as long as you’re emailing consistently, it’s great.

If you missed last episode, I definitely recommend listening in. I share my philosophy on email marketing, it’s episode number 33. I talk about my top three tips for making your email marketing more effective and really a big part of that is explaining why two emails a month is really important and helpful for effectiveness.

Let’s review the four categories of Facebook ads:

1. Building brand awareness. So again, I don’t recommend this one too often because I think that you’re spending money just to get your brand in front of people and you want a more concrete and money generating results from your Facebook ads, such as someone signing up for an appointment.
2. Ads where you introduce your business or brand, and your call to action is make an appointment. This can be effective, most effective when you get specific marketing message regarding the symptoms or conditions that you are calling out.
3. Ads with a limited time offer or something with an end date or an expiration date, such as a coupon code, or registering for an event before a certain deadline.
4. Ads that get more people to sign up for your email list. And of course the importance of actually doing your email marketing on the back end of that to nurture those new leads and turn them into patients.

In the beginning of this episode we asked, what is our goal for our Facebook ad? Most people’s goal is, “I want to get more people on my schedule as soon as possible.”

If that’s your goal, then ad categories two and three are really probably what you want to aim for. The types of Facebook ads where your call to action is, “Click here to make an appointment.”

If you are comfortable offering a discount and you are able to offer a discount, I recommend trying out category three, with the special offer and expiration date. I think those types of Facebook ads have the highest return on your investment the fastest, at least in my experience.

Lastly, I said that we would discuss why creating Facebook ads from scratch is different from hitting the “Boost Post” button and why hitting the “Boost Post” button tends to be a waste of money.

I learned this from my Facebook ads coach from last year Claire Pelletreau. So this is her genius, not mine, I’m just sharing really helpful information because FB ads are difficult and the Boost Post button is really tempting.

So, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, raise your hand if you’ve had this experience. I hope you’re by yourself, in your car or something, but raise it anyway if you’re someplace public, like the library or the subway.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever hit the Boost Post button and then felt like, where the heck did my money go? What did I just spend money on?

Facebook loves to say, “This post is doing really well. Get another 1000 impressions by hitting the Boost Post Button.” And then you ended up spending like 60 bucks and you really thought that you’d get some new patients from it. But literally nothing happened. Maybe you got some more likes on the post. But you didn’t get any new followers and that’s it; your $60 is gone. If this has happened to you, zero judgment. It’s super common, across all industries.

If you’ve never dipped your toe into the Facebook ads world, let’s talk really briefly about the difference between creating a Facebook ad from scratch and hitting the “Boost Post” button. When you create an ad from scratch, you get to write the caption and choose an image with a specific marketing goal. With a strong call to action. And you get to define your audience in a nitty-gritty way. You’re paying for Facebook to put this specific ad, with a specific message and call to action, in front of a specific group of people.

Now, if you just hit Boost Post, you are paying for Facebook to increase the visibility of a post that was probably not written with a specific goal in mind. If you wrote a random post for a Tuesday aftnoon and it happens to get a lot of engagement or Facebook says it’s popular, that doesn’t necessarily mean it is crafted with a marketing mindset to achieve a specific goal. And on top of this, Facebook is really just going to share it with people who already follow you. This isn’t a bad thing, there are probably people who follow your page who aren’t yet your patients or aren’t on your email list. But your goal is to get in front of new people and get new email subscribers, this isn’t the best option. Don’t get me wrong, on a Boosted post, you do get some options for your ad audience, who you want FB to show it to. But by and large my experience has been that FB will mostly show it to people who already follow your page.

So these are two reasons why creating a FB ad from scratch is a better way to spend your money. The message and calls to action are more specific for your goals.

Okay, this was a longer episode. Thank you so much for sticking around. Again, if you are interested in working one on one with me, I recommend jumping in signing up for a Marketing Strategy Session before the price goes up on March 14 at midnight. I’d love to work with you on anything that you need help with, whether it’s marketing for your brick and mortar practice or your online courses, programs or services. I would be thrilled to talk about marketing with you specifically. About your practice, your favorite symptoms to treat, the people in your community that you really want to reach, and getting your practice visible so you can help more people. I’d love to talk with you about that.

I’ll put the link in the show notes for the Marketing Strategy Session. It is limited to the first 10 people so that I still have enough time in my schedule for treating patients but I cannot wait to talk to you. Of course if you have questions, feel free to send me an email Michelle@MichelleGrasek.com.

As always, thank you for being here. I can’t wait to talk to you next time.