DT News - UK - Get pixelated or why online dentistry needs to be more active on Facebook

Naz Haque, UK

Thu. 21 May 2015

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It is commonly accepted that Facebook is one of the largest and most important online platforms in 2015. As it continues to dominate the social media landscape and hold a massive captive audience, the critical question is, are you utilising Facebook and, if not, why not?

Early 2015 statistics from We Are Social established that there were 1.366 billion active Facebook users in January 2015, 83 per cent of whom were accessing Facebook from mobile devices. Consider that the average social media user clocks in 2.2 hours of usage per day (15.4 hours per week), while the average daily TV viewing time for a professional is now reduced to 1.2 hours per day (8.4 hours per week)—you can see how social media is driving and changing people’s habits.

This year, Facebook has been pushing the Facebook pixel, which could loosely be compared to a website cookie. These can be created from your Facebook business page and then placed into the coding back-end of your website. The strength of these pixels is that they recognise visitors from your website and put you in a position to display adverts to this audience via Facebook.The real beauty is when one fully recognises the power of the pixel. Your audience may have found your website via Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Yell or word of mouth. The Facebook pixel tracks them and any pages they visit on your site. If a potential customer visits your tooth whitening page, for example, you can then show them tooth whitening adverts. Or if one looks at an Invisalign page, you can show them your Invisalign offer.

Essentially, you first qualify your audience and then show them adverts relevant to their habits. The data gathered from a pixel can be used to create a lookalike audience. Facebook will monitor habits and trends in the behaviour of visitors to your pages and then duplicate this on a larger scale by identifying users on Facebook who mirror these habits within the parameters you set, such as a 5 km radius of your location.

There is one other trick Facebook pixel has up its sleeve: it allows you to upload e-mail addresses of customers/buyers so you can specifically target them with adverts too—just make sure you have their consent.

Most websites are now mobile friendly and most Facebook users are on mobiles. This increases the chance of your adverts being seen even further. The average cost of a click on Facebook is 27p, you can send targeted adverts to a specific qualified audience and buy data to a mirror audience for next to nothing, and the return on investment (£150+ take-home trays) can be very attractive.

Considering all these points, I would make use of this opportunity as soon as possible in 2015 before everyone else does and drives up the cost of a click to something comparable to Google (a minimum of £2.50+).

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