Social media is a powerful tool for healthcare professionals. Doctors can use it to build an online brand for their practice and reach new patients looking for medical care. It also gives them a way to interact with these patients via comments, likes, shares, and direct messages.

If you’re wondering where to start with social media marketing for your medical practice, consider Facebook. Facebook has over 3 billion active users, making it one of the most popular social media platforms. This allows you to reach a broad audience of potential patients.

Keep reading to learn more about Facebook marketing. In this guide, we explore organic vs. paid advertising on Facebook and compare it to other forms of advertising and other social media channels.

Types of Facebook Marketing

There are two main ways to use Facebook—posting on your page and running paid ads. Your page is where you share health tips, patient testimonials, medical news, and practice updates, while your ads promote your medical services. 

Below is a more detailed breakdown of each type of Facebook marketing.

Organic Posts

Your Facebook page is an extension of your website. It helps build an online brand for your medical practice, telling potential patients who you are. You can use it to talk about what you do, but it’s not necessarily meant to sell your services. Instead, it plants a seed in a potential patient’s mind so that they remember you when they have a medical concern in the future and are looking for a physician to treat it.

Here are some pros and cons of creating a Facebook page.

Pros:

• Shares practice updates: Maybe your office is closed for an upcoming holiday or you have a new doctor joining your practice. You can use your Facebook page to update patients on these operational changes.
• Builds practice credibility: You can position yourself as an expert in your field by posting frequent medical tips related to your area of practice. If followers see you as qualified and experienced, they are more likely to schedule an appointment with you when they have a medical concern.
• Promotes patient testimonials: Potential patients like to get real examples from past or current patients about the quality of care a physician provides. That’s why many medical practices include patient testimonials or before and after photos on their Facebook page.
• Allows for engagement with patients: A big difference between your website and your Facebook page is that Facebook allows for two-way communication. Patients can use comments or direct messages to reach you. This gives you another way to talk to them besides appointments.

Cons:

• Shows posts to just followers: Generally speaking, only people who follow your Facebook page see your posts, which limits your reach. However, there are exceptions to this. For example, someone can visit your page directly to see your posts, though they would need to think to search for your medical practice. You may also appear on the feeds of your followers’ friends if your followers like or comment on your posts.
• Requires a lot of effort: To be successful at building a following on Facebook, you have to post frequently and respond to comments and messages. This requires a lot of time and planning that you may not have the capacity for if you run a small medical practice.

Paid Ads

Unlike organic posts, paid ads actively promote your medical services to reach new patients. Generally speaking, people don’t turn to social media when they have an urgent medical issue; they would most likely use Google to search for healthcare professionals who can see them right away. 

However, you might catch a Facebook user who needs a reminder to schedule a yearly checkup or who has a less critical medical concern that they’ve been putting off addressing. At the very least, you might be able to convince them to leave Facebook and visit your website. Getting them to express this level of interest in what you do is the first step in them actually booking an appointment with you should they need care in your area of practice in the future.

Here are some other advantages and limitations of paid ads on Facebook.

Pros:

• Turns Facebook users into leads: A lead is a marketing term used to describe an individual who has expressed interest in your services. Every Facebook ad has a call to action (CTA), which asks the person seeing it to do something, such as visit your website. When someone completes this action, they are considered a lead. You can compile a list of all your leads and start communicating with them directly—maybe through email marketing campaigns—to see if continued promotion of your services convinces them to schedule an appointment with you.
• Allows for advanced targeting: Ads are shown to a wider audience outside of just your followers. You can get specific with the demographics, interests, and behaviors you want to target to increase your chances of Facebook users responding to your CTA.
• Offers robust performance data: Facebook gives you detailed analytics on how your ads are performing. For example, you can see the copy that is driving the most responses and the demographics of the Facebook users who are responding. This allows you to tweak your ads for better performance.

Cons:

• Adds to your practice expenses: Facebook Ads are usually cheaper than Google Ads, which we discuss in a later section. However, they’re still more expensive than organic posts, which are free. Plus, costs may rise, as more medical practices start using the platform for advertising.
• Contributes to ad blindness: Social media and internet users are exposed to a lot of ads throughout the day, which may lead to them feeling overwhelmed or frustrated. They may even unconsciously ignore ads, a phenomenon known as ad blindness. You want your ads to be valuable and eye-catching so that they don’t get lumped in with the other ones out there.

In sum, both organic posts and paid ads have use cases for physicians, which is why we recommend using a mix of both in your marketing strategy. However, if you only have the resources to invest in one right now, we recommend starting with organic content. It’s free—aside from the cost of your time. It also builds a credible online presence for your medical practice, which is useful when you do start running ads and Facebook users click on your page to see who you are.

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How To Optimize a Facebook Page for Doctors

A Facebook business page is used to promote products or services. Even though you’re not a business, you’re going to use this type of account—as opposed to a regular personal account—because you provide medical services. Here are our tips on how to set up and maintain your Facebook business page.

Choose a Professional Profile Picture & Cover Photo

If your medical practice only has one doctor, you can use a high-resolution headshot of them as your profile picture. You could also use your practice’s logo if you have a larger practice with several doctors. For your cover photo, use a picture of your office, your team, or something else that illustrates your area of practice.

Complete the About Section

The About section provides essential information about your medical practice, including:

• The name of the doctor or practice
• The practice’s address and hours of operation
• The practice’s website, phone number, and other contact information
• A brief description of the practice’s services

Focus on Education

One of the main use cases for your Facebook page is educational content. You can use it to raise awareness for certain illnesses or diseases that relate to your area of practice. If possible, try to post about conditions that relate to the time of year to keep your content relevant. For example, a general practitioner might make a post with tips on how to prevent getting sick during flu season.

Post Regularly

Consistency is key to building a following on any social media platform, including Facebook. Try to post a few times per month to keep your social media followers engaged. Creating a content calendar that plans and schedules the entire month in advance can make this task less daunting. 

Keep Patient Privacy in Mind

HIPAA guidelines prevent you from sharing a specific patient’s experience on your Facebook page without their express permission. If you do not have a patient’s consent, you have to remove all personally identifiable information and tell a general story about how you helped an unspecified patient.

Note that paid ads must follow HIPAA guidelines on patient confidentiality as well.

Engage With Your Audience

Social media is about building relationships with your followers. Don’t get so bogged down with creating content that you forget to respond to followers when they send a direct message or comment on a post. Check your Facebook notifications regularly—ideally daily but at least weekly—to make sure nothing slips through the cracks.

Use Visuals

Visual content performs well on Facebook because it is eye-catching and gets your followers to stop scrolling. You can share photos and videos of your office, staff, and procedures to help potential patients visualize their experience with your medical practice. Just remember, visuals of patients are not allowed unless they have given you direct permission to use them.

How To Use Facebook Ads for Healthcare Providers

There are a lot of technical aspects of setting up a successful ad campaign on Facebook, such as budgeting and targeting. Our guide on paid ads for medical practices goes over them in more detail, but here are some general guidelines for the actual content of your ads.

Offer Value to Potential Patients

Ads that address a patient’s medical concern perform better than ads that focus solely on promoting your medical services. You can still talk about your services in your ad copy, but you want to start by acknowledging the patient’s concern and then connecting that back to how you can help them with your services.

Keep Your Copy Concise

Facebook ad copy is usually short and to the point. In fact, Facebook recommends that the meat of your copy—called the primary text—be about 125 characters long, which is about two lines of text. However, this is just a recommendation based on how ads on Facebook generally perform, so it may not be accurate to your specific medical practice. You can test different lengths to see what works best for you.

Include a Related Visual

Every Facebook ad includes a photo, a video, or a carousel with several visuals. The visual should be related to the medical concern or treatment you’re talking about in the ad. You can test different visuals to see what results in more clicks.

Write Multiple Text Options

Facebook has a feature called Multiple Text Options that allows you to write several versions of copy for a single ad. Facebook’s algorithm then automatically tests these different versions to see which performs best with your audience. This feature saves you time because you don’t have to set up multiple ads or run performance testing yourself.

Facebook Ads vs. Google Ads

The other type of paid advertising you have likely heard of is Google Ads. It’s important to know how Google Ads differ from Facebook Ads to make an informed decision about which to use or how much of your budget to allocate to each.

Facebook Ads aren’t as effective as Google Ads at turning leads into patients. Google Ads are shown to Google users who are actively searching for healthcare professionals to diagnose and treat a medical concern, which means they’re ready to book an appointment. On the other hand, social media is used for information gathering, so the leads you get from Facebook Ads are going to be people who are looking to learn about your area of practice or specific services.

Both Facebook and Google use an auction-like bidding process to determine who gets to appear in feeds (Facebook) or search results (Google). Whoever bids the highest amount wins the placement. However, the platforms charge differently. You generally pay per impression with Facebook. This means you pay even if you appear in someone’s feed, but they don’t respond to your CTA. On the flip side, Google only charges you if the person clicks on your ad. This is why Google advertising is also known as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.

You would think that because Facebook charges by the impression, you would spend more advertising on this platform. However, the opposite is actually true because more businesses, organizations, and practices use Google to advertise. Since the ads use auctions, more competition means a higher bid to win.

Here is a table summarizing the main differences between Facebook and Google paid ads.

	Facebook Ads	Google Ads
Purpose	Capture leads for people who may be interested in your medical services in the future	Turn Google users who are actively searching for medical care into patients right away
Audience Size	Smaller available audience	Larger available audience
Audience Targeting	Based on granular interests, behaviors, and demographics	Based on search keywords
Payment Structure	Bidding, pay per impression	Bidding, pay per click
Cost	Cheaper	More expensive
Format	Mix of text and visuals	Traditionally text-based, though some newer types are visual (e.g., shopping)

Facebook vs. Other Social Media Sites

Facebook’s users are on the older side, and they respond best to content that has a mix of text and visuals. Younger people still use Facebook, but they spend more time on other social networking sites.

Facebook may not be the right fit for every medical practice. For example, if you’re looking to bring in younger patients or you prefer to create text-based content, a different social media site may be better for you. 

In that case, here are some other platforms you can consider for your social media strategy:

• Instagram: Instagram has a young audience. It is designed for visual, educational content. For example, you might post an infographic or a video related to your medical specialty.
• TikTok: TikTok also has a young audience. You can use its short videos to provide quick medical tips related to your area of practice. You can also humanize your medical practice by giving behind-the-scenes glimpses of your office and staff.
• YouTube: YouTube is meant for long-form videos. You can use it for educational videos that are too lengthy for Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, such as those demonstrating in-depth procedures.
• LinkedIn: LinkedIn isn’t really useful for reaching new patients. It’s best for building a professional network to connect with other physicians in the medical community. 
• Twitter/X: X is most popular with celebrities and journalists, which means it’s not particularly relevant to doctors. Plus, its usage has been steadily declining since Elon Musk acquired it. For these reasons, we wouldn’t recommend this platform over the other ones, but we included it in this list to give you a complete picture of the social media landscape.

Final Thoughts

In this digital age, having a strong social media presence is a must for physicians to meet potential patients where they spend their time. Out of all the social media platforms out there, Facebook is a good one to start with because it’s so widely used.

If you’re struggling to figure out how to set up Facebook or you simply don’t have the time to run your account, Officite can help. Contact us today to learn about our social media management service.