How to Run Your Own Dental Instagram Ads

If you're currently focused on organic dental marketing strategies to promote your practice, you've probably realized it's a time-consuming process that takes longer to yield results. With the ever-changing algorithms that determine how businesses are ranked in search listings, it's important to incorporate paid ad strategies into your overall dental marketing efforts.

Your audience actively engages with your profile on community platforms like Instagram (IG) due to its visual nature. When you also consider that your audience is bigger (1 billion active users a day), the odds are high that you'll reach your target audience with paid ads before your organic strategy does.

You aren't alone if you're interested in advertising your dental office on IG. With shopping integrations now available, it's never been easier to introduce prospective patients to your latest oral healthcare products and help them become familiar with your brand. But, where do you begin?

Basics of Creating Ads on Social Media Platforms

One of the convenient aspects of Instagram is that Facebook owns it. So, you can run your ads one of two ways:

• Through Facebook Ad Manager
• Directly through your Instagram business account

Facebook's Ad Manager is much more comprehensive than the marketing platform on Instagram, so it's recommended you log in through that account. You may even decide to run the ad on both platforms by finishing this quick overview!

Pick an Objective in Your Facebook Ads Manager Account

You'll choose to create a new campaign when you get into the manager, and from there, you will need to decide what your ad objective is. Facebook has three categories for you to choose from:

• Awareness
• Consideration
• Conversion

From this point, you'll need to pick the type of ad you want to use:

Brand Awareness is best if you want to increase knowledge of your brand to the general public.

Engagement ads are ideal if your primary goal is to engage with users so they will share, like, or comment on your content.

Reach objectives can plaster your ad in front of as many viewers as possible.

Lead generation is just like it sounds. You want to find people that you can get interested in learning more about your brand, product, or dental services.

Conversion advertisements create direct sales based on your ads. There are usually details on making the purchase or having a place to put in their payment information to complete a purchase to convert the viewer to a sale.

Traffic ads are about getting more visitors to your landing page, dental website, or downloadable oral healthcare application.

Application Installation campaigns will encourage viewers to go to the app store and download your app.

Video Views is just how it sounds, too. If you have a special video for music videos you've produced or a training course you're offering, for example, then these ads will play a teaser to encourage viewers to click through and watch your media.

Message advertisements engage with users to encourage interest in your brand and to send inquiries about your products/services, including purchases.

Store Traffic If you have a store you recently opened, this ad type is excellent for driving more visitors to your establishment online or brick and mortar.

Catalog Sales feature select products your audience may be interested in buying. Then, users can click through to your store page to complete a purchase.

When choosing which objective you want to use, remember that the category needs to line up with the ad type you choose. For example, you wouldn't want to create a store traffic advertisement if your objective is to build brand awareness about your dental practice. Or, you chose conversion as the category, but the ad type is application installation.

Any campaign you create gets reviewed by Facebook, and it could get denied if mismatched.

Title Your IG Ad Campaign

The next step in creating a dental Instagram Ad is to name your campaign. This is a helpful feature to keep things organized when you are running multiple ads, conducting A/B testing, or want to compare past dental marketing results.

It's recommended that you include the month you are running your campaign as part of the title, but make sure that whatever naming protocols you use will be easy to understand.

Decide to Split Test Your Ad or Not

Another essential step to consider is whether you want to split test your dental ads and see how different variations of your campaign perform. You can also determine your budget across these sets or not.

Split testing, also called A/B testing, will run your different advertisements against each other. Facebook Ad Manager will award the most significant part of your budget to the version with the best overall performance.

This optimization is automatic, but you can still manually program how much of your budget should be spent on the ad sets based on your own testing if you wish.

Choosing Your Placements

Ensure that your social media ads are only running on Instagram before selecting your demographics. Simply deselect Facebook and the Audience Network options in the platform options so that only Instagram is chosen. You mustn't forget this step since campaigns on Facebook have slightly different features available than IG.

Identifying Your Target Audience

Time to dig into the demographics of your audience. This is the fun part of Instagram advertising because you can drill down and specifically set up your campaign to get in front of the dental patients you want to serve.

Going too broad with your campaign scope could mean advertising to individuals who have no need or interest in your oral healthcare services. So, take this opportunity to fine-tune the demographics you want to target, including any concerns you believe they might have about dental health, whitening products they might be interested in, and other interests you know they have.

In Facebook Ad Manager, you can target the following categories in your audience:

• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Languages
• Connections
• Detailed Targeting

Can choose demographics to include or not based on users' employment, lifestyles, and education.

Use the Interests category to target users based on related topics they engage with, activities they attend, and pages they've liked.

Drill down further with the Behaviors option, which identifies potential audience members based on their traveling history, purchases, and other activities.

Set Your Campaign Budget and Schedule

One of the best features of setting up an Instagram ad is that you control how much you spend and the length of time your campaign runs. There are never any surprises, so you always know exactly how much it will cost.

When selecting a budget, you have two options to choose from:

• Daily budget: Your ad will run until your set daily budget has been expended for each day you have it active for the campaign's lifecycle.
• Lifetime budget: Your ad runs for a specified timeframe.

It's important to note that lifetime ads can still set specific schedules. For example, if you want your ad to only run on the weekends, you can manually set the time and day you want your audience to see your ads.

Decide What Format You Want to Use

Now that you have the core pieces of your IG ad campaign completed, you will continue to the creative dashboard to upload any media, write, preview, and then publish your ad copy.

You may find that your Instagram Ad preview warns you about image sizing on an infographic or photos you upload for the copy. The media quality required will vary depending on the objective you selected, so make sure to review these requirements carefully and adjust your uploaded assets accordingly.

Below is a basic overview of the different Instagram ad formats available for dental practices:

• Video ads consist of short clips that last anywhere from a few seconds to a minute in length.
• Photo advertisements allow you to upload a single image. Make sure you have a high-quality photo that captures the essence of your product or brand effectively.
• Stories ads are extremely popular because you can use either pictures or videos to run between Stories of users that your audience follows.
• Collection ads act like a catalog and allow viewers to purchase your products within the ad itself.
• Carousel ads are mobile-friendly advertisements where users can check out multi-image ads by scrolling horizontally on their smartphones.

Maximize Your Dental Instagram Ads ROI

Get the most bang for your dental marketing dollars on Instagram feed ads with these tips:

Stop the Scrolling with Quality Imagery

Instagram is filled with gorgeous and inspiring dental media. Competition can be tight on this popular platform, from bright smiles and happy patients to quality product photos of the latest teeth whitening brands. Any ads you create need visually appealing assets that are unique and stand out. Take advantage of carousel displays or leverage a short video. Whatever angle you take, you want to stop their fingers in their tracks and grab their full attention.

Let Your Visual Assets Do the Talking

While IG lets you write up to 2,200 characters in an ad, remember that your audience is focused on the visual aspect of your ad, so keep it short and to the point. The image will sell your objective to your target audience; your words should direct them on what to do next. Save your website link for your Instagram account bio section.

Your Ad Shouldn't Look Like an Ad

Sure, you're advertising your dental practice, but the most engaging ads don't look like ads on social media. Instead, your ads should look like an Instagram post to enhance Instagram engagement with your audience. Use attractive and inspiring scenes, like a relaxed, bright smile on the face of someone at the beach. Educational posts should rely on engaging infographics to share important oral healthcare information.

Don't Forget CTAs

When potential patients see your dental ad, what should they do next? This is what a call-to-action (CTA) button does, and Instagram includes this feature in their ads so users can quickly respond. With a simple click, it can redirect them to a landing page or your primary website.

Let Adit Help You Maximize Your Dental Practice Marketing

If you want to get your dental practice ads noticed, social media marketing on sites like Instagram is definitely a smart and affordable investment. Creating effective ads comes with a bit of a learning curve, though.

Adit understands the importance of creating unique and competitive content on Instagram and similar platforms to attract new patients. Our digital marketers have years of experience helping dental practices maximize their ad campaign results through skillfully crafted copy, high-quality media, and attractive gifts. If you want high click-through rates and improved conversions– trust us to deliver.

Request your free demonstration today to learn more about the SEO services we provide.