Paid social
Meta ads for the treatments people choose, not the ones they search for
Facebook and Instagram reach somebody before they have decided to do anything, which makes them right for treatments people choose and wrong for most of the rest. We build the campaigns, the page they land on and the enquiry handling behind them, inside UK advertising rules.
The outcome
Search catches a decision. Meta starts one
Nobody scrolling Instagram on a Sunday evening has typed the name of a treatment into anything. They are being reminded that something they have half thought about for a year is actually available near them, at a price they had not expected. That is a genuinely different job from paid search, and it is why the same advert, the same page and the same follow up would be wrong.
What works here, and what does not
- Treatments people choose
- Aesthetics, cosmetic dentistry, elective work where the patient is weighing whether to bother at all. Discovery is doing real work. For a treatment somebody needs urgently, paid search is almost always the better use of the same money.
- Adverts built for the rules
- Prescription only medicines cannot be advertised to the public in the UK, which covers your website, your paid adverts and your social posts. Compliant campaigns are built around the concern somebody wants resolved rather than around a product name, and in practice that converts better anyway.
- A page that asks for one thing
- Somebody arriving from a feed has far less intent than somebody arriving from search, so the page has to make the first step small and obvious. Two fields, built for a phone.
- Answered at nine in the evening
- Which is when most of these enquiries arrive, and when almost nothing is answered. Captured, answered instantly, qualified and routed to the right person.
What it’s worth
Judge it on enquiries answered, not on engagement
Reach, likes and video views are not the product. The only numbers worth reporting are enquiries produced, the share that reached a human, and what they were worth to you. Work it against your own figures for the treatment you are advertising rather than against a blended average across everything you do.
Somebody deciding on treatment at nine in the evening is comparing three clinics on a phone in the same sitting. Whoever replies first with a real answer usually gets the patient, and it is rarely the clinic that replies at nine the following morning.
How it’s built
The account and the audiences are yours
Campaigns run from a business account registered to your clinic, so the pixel data, the audiences and the creative history stay with you. Audience data built over a year is worth real money and is the thing clinics most often discover they cannot take with them.
- Registered to your businessThe numbers, the database, the automations, the website and every call record sit in accounts in your organisation's name.
- We hold access, not ownershipOur route in is a permission you grant, and one you can withdraw without anything stopping.
- If we stop working togetherThe system keeps running and nothing has to be exported, because none of it was ever somewhere else.
What it takes
We will tell you if this is the wrong channel for you
For a lot of clinics it is. If your treatments are ones people search for when they need them, Meta will cost more per patient than paid search and we will say so before you spend anything. The Leak Check reports what is actually happening across your enquiry path, which is usually a more useful place to start than a new advertising channel.
What owners ask first
Do Facebook and Instagram ads work for clinics?
For elective treatments people choose, yes, because discovery is doing real work. For treatments somebody needs urgently, paid search almost always produces cheaper patients from the same budget. The channel is not good or bad, it is right or wrong for the treatment.
Can we advertise botulinum toxin on Meta?
No. Botulinum toxin is a prescription only medicine and prescription only medicines cannot be advertised to the public in the UK. That applies to your website, your paid adverts and your social posts. You can advertise consultations, discuss the concerns you treat and describe what an appointment involves.
How much should we spend to test it?
Enough to reach a useful audience size for one treatment, rather than a small amount spread across everything you offer. We would rather prove or disprove one treatment properly than run an inconclusive test on four.
Why do our ads get lots of likes and no enquiries?
Usually because the advert is asking for interest rather than for the enquiry, and the page behind it is a brochure. Engagement is not a step on the way to a patient, and treating it as one is how clinics spend a year on paid social with nothing in the diary.
Do you write the creative?
Yes, and you approve everything before it runs. We will not use before and after imagery in ways that breach the rules, and we will tell you when something you have been running elsewhere is a problem.
Should we do this before or after fixing the phone?
After. These enquiries arrive in the evening and at weekends more than any other channel, so pointing paid social at a clinic that cannot answer out of hours wastes a higher share of the budget than any other spend you could make.
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Find out what's recoverable in your clinic
We mystery-shop your clinic the way a patient would, by search, phone and web form, then show you the patients you could be winning. Scored on three things: are you found, is the enquiry answered, does anyone chase it.