Learn how structuring your Facebook ad campaigns around patient intent and awareness can dramatically decrease cost per acquisition.
What if we told you that 23% of the total world population is active on Facebook every day? It’s overkill, but it’s true: Facebook has more than 1.79 billion daily active users (a number that’s increasing by 10% annually). So when we tell our clients that Facebook advertising is an effective way to engage healthcare consumers, build brand awareness, and drive leads, we really mean it.
We also tell our clients how pointless it is to explode your ad budget at the top-of-funnel if you don’t know how to narrow down your target audience. This is where the all-channel advertising strategy comes in.
Understanding How Patients Move Through the Journey
One of the benefits the full-funnel approach to Facebook ads is its ability to generate an engaged audience of leads who are more likely to convert. It’s really a matter of timeliness and relevance. You are showing the right message at the right time. Done correctly, this approach can effectively reduce cost-per-acquisition (CPA) down while keeping your pipeline full.
Doing so requires a bit of empathy. Meaning, you need to develop a deep understanding of: How your patients perceive health problems Where, when and how they seek solutions
- How they evaluate providers
- What goes into their final decision to proceed
- What kind of content, data and messages do they need every step of the way
- What we’ve found is that you can’t really force actions that don’t correspond to a given patient’s stage. For example, if someone is still considering an elective dental procedure, the appointment notice is not appropriate. They don’t even know what medical services or treatments they need, which means it can be hard to make a conversion.
On the other hand, someone who is ready to pick a provider and move on doesn’t need to see your outreach content, they already know your brand. Instead, they need support data and a solid offering to get them there.
The Full-Funnel Facebook Advertising Strategy
The holistic social advertising funnel approach is designed to reduce the overall cost of lead generation at the bottom of the funnel. In our experience, serving direct-response ads to potential customers who have never interacted with your brand before can increase CPA costs by over 400%. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel here. Healthcare consumers on Facebook typically break down into three categories:
Awareness
Consideration
Decision (ready to convert)
It was essential for us to implement a full-funnel approach to keep the wide reach where ad serving costs are low and only push qualified audiences down the funnel to call to action ( our CTA). That’s why we use a tight ad group structure to better define what stage of the funnel a potential customer is at, then send them a message relevant to their location. in the decision-making process. If they interact with a particular ad, it tells us where they are on the journey. With this information, we can show them ads to which they are more likely to respond.
Here’s what that looks like in practice.
How to Create Ad Campaigns Along the Funnel
Problem Aware
At this point, a person knows they have a problem but is unaware of the potential solutions. In fact, they may not even be actively looking for a solution at all. A person with a chronic back disease, for example, may just want to know more about what they are facing.
At the problem-aware stage, healthcare consumers don’t want to be sold or convinced. Instead, they may be looking for authoritative information on their matter doing one or more of the following:
- Names the condition and symptoms
- Educates patients about what they’re experiencing and why
- Lays out potential complications, considerations, and treatments
- Tells a story they can relate to
At this point, your job is to create ad content that leads to website content that creates value upfront. It could be “pillar” content, an introductory guide, or even an introductory video. Why? Because the patient at the stage of recognizing the problem is not yet ready to choose a provider or to make an appointment. Instead, they need a reason to better understand your practice and begin the relationship-building process. Presenting their problem in clear, authoritative terms that they understand is the best place to start.
From there, you can begin detailing the solution to their particular problem.
Outlining probable causes of back pain allows patients in the beginning stages of the funnel to gain an understanding of why they are experiencing pain. This is a problem-aware Facebook Ad.
Solution Aware
On the other hand, solution-conscious consumers are evaluating different solutions to their problems. They may even be willing to pick up the phone or put their credit card down. In this context, our healthcare client with chronic back pain may be irritated by an announcement from a chiropractor like you who specializes in the treatment of this particular condition.
Remember, they may even know your chiropractic practice exists, even though they may have visited your website in the recent past. Either way, you’ll want to target or retarget them with ads that lead to the presentation of your particular treatment, for example. Perhaps a short video (30-60 seconds) covering the benefits of your approach over other treatments for this condition. Any content that demonstrates why your solution is a viable treatment for their problem.
An important step in addiction recovery is becoming aware that one has a problem and then making the decision to seek help. Creating Facebook ads that help patients identify ways to get better is a solution-aware campaign.
Product Aware
The product-aware must be convinced that one solution is better than another. Chronic back problems are just as painful for them as the next, but they’re not entirely convinced that your treatment is the best. At this point, you’ll want to create content that summarizes your solution more concisely, make the benefits real (probably using testimonials) and strip or overcome any objections. . These objections may include skepticism towards chiropractors, or their ability to achieve the results they are looking for.
Now is also the time to look at another top “products” and discover their pros and cons versus your own. A chiropractor may be in competition with conventional surgery, a physical therapist, or a pharmaceutical solution to treat chronic back pain. Ads and messages that work well at this stage of awareness serve the function of comparing products, “unpacking” each solution, guiding the consumer through the details (goals), and offering pros and cons.
By comparing the Vivera retainers to other clear retainers through the use of statistics, these Facebook Advertisers were using a product-aware campaign.
Most Aware
At the most aware stage, your audience probably knows and trusts your brand. This chronic back pain sufferer has gone through other stages of your advertising funnel and encountered different content and messages. Perhaps they already know about your activity outside of Facebook.
Now it’s time to get them to the finish line with a good offer. In the healthcare world, a good “offer” can be a free 60-minute review, a free video chat, or even a discount for a group of sessions. Something that makes them trigger and choose you.
These ads should be content-focused, detailing the offering, clarifying what consumers expect if they choose to buy, and guiding them to the next step (planning, calling, signing up, etc.). The most aware stage is where the optimized landing page works best as an offer. Once there, address all their motivations and obstacles, and you’ll increase conversions.
Why the Full-Funnel Approach to Facebook Ads Works
This approach to Facebook Advertising tends to generate more high-quality leads, at a lower cost, for a couple of reasons:
- You’re adapting ad creative and messaging as the consumer moves through the patient journey.
- People are less likely to encounter irrelevant ad content (thanks to audience targeting and tailored messaging).
- Custom audiences and campaigns are closely aligned with the consumer’s stage within the awareness cycle .
- You more effectively generate awareness, warm people to your brand and services, then nurture these audiences toward a lower-cost conversion.
- You make full use of the various advertising tools made available by Facebook.
At MYSense, we frequently build full-funnel ad strategies for healthcare brands. We anchor these strategies in a few key areas:
- Optimized keyword strategy, audience targeting and ad creation for purposes
- Refined account structure
- High-value, high-quality content including optimized messaging for conversions, beautiful designs, and videos
- Retargeting campaigns are accurate to attract people who engage but otherwise fall into disrepair
- Deep landing pages and conversion-optimized for each campaign
- Patient Stories and Other Trusted Content
- Strong Promotions and CTAs
