The Dental Marketer Instagram Ads for Every Budget: Tips to Build Your Dental Brand Ambassadors | Dr. Anissa Holmes | MME
Could Instagram ads be the key to effectively marketing your practice? In this conversation, Dr. Anissa Holmes uncovers the secrets to leveraging Instagram ads to attract new patients and build a thriving practice. With her expert guidance, you'll learn how creating strategic video content, such as showcasing your practice’s unique features and sharing compelling patient testimonials, can drive local traffic and convert viewers into loyal patients. Dr. Holmes makes it clear that with even a minimal ad spend, you can achieve significant results that benefit your practice.
Dr. Holmes also takes you behind the scenes of her marketing agency, Digital Floss, and shares practical advice for dental professionals operating on a tight budget. From building a community of brand ambassadors to utilizing interactive quizzes and landing pages for effective lead generation, this episode is packed with actionable tips. Whether you’re new to digital marketing or looking to refine your existing strategy, Dr. Holmes provides the blueprint for success!
What You'll Learn in This Episode:
- How to use Instagram ads to attract new patients to your dental practice
- Techniques for creating engaging video content that highlights practice differentiators
- The impact of patient testimonials on local traffic and patient conversion
- Budget-friendly strategies for running effective Instagram ads
- How to build a community of loyal brand ambassadors
- Utilizing quizzes and landing pages for effective lead capture
- Practical marketing advice for practices with limited budgets
Don’t miss out on these expert tips – tune in to hear Dr. Holmes' invaluable advice today!
Learn More About the Ground Marketing Course Here:
Website: https://thedentalmarketer.lpages.co/the-ground-marketing-course-open-enrollment/
You can reach out to Dr. Anissa Holmes here:
Website: https://www.digitalfloss.com/
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Episode Transcript (Auto-Generated - Please Excuse Errors)
Michael: Hey, Anissa. So talk to us. What's one piece of advice you can give us this Monday morning?
Anissa: Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, thank you for having me. so one thing that a lot of people are not aware of are the power Of Instagram ads.
this is something that I have been using for quite some time. I do have a marketing agency that focuses on social media, but what's really powerful about Instagram ads is that it's almost like when Facebook just got started and nobody knew about Facebook ads. Like it's literally happening right now.
And many of you early days of Michael's podcast, you know, you've heard me speaking about social media and Facebook, this is better than when I was teaching Facebook guys, the results are insane. what you're able to do If you have videos that you're putting up, so these are going to be.
Reels, where people can go and see that you're an expert or what makes your practice different, or maybe it's going to be a video testimonial, but putting a little bit of ad spend on it, So going in and boosting that video. And again, it's just going in following the prompts. But once you're doing that, a couple things happen, You're able to have people on your team helping you. Thousands and thousands of views. For example, in our agency, Digital Floss, we had a client who was not an extrovert, Very quiet, very humble very, kind, very shy, almost ish. And being able to have those videos. highlight the sweetness of this particular doctor and how they were there to really serve the community and the things that they were working on in terms of Invisalign and those things.
So anyway, you put the Instagram ads in and you can literally spend about 5 a day. And with that over a month, we were able to get about 30, 000 of views on her video of people that were five miles from her practice. Now, this is huge, but it doesn't stop there. All The other powerful thing is that when you're running.
Instagram ads. You have the ability within the ad itself to be able to drive visibility or traffic, if you will, to somewhere else, whether it's going to be your website, whether it's going to be your online booking link. My favorite is actually a digital marketing funnel, So imagine now having a quiz where people can see if they are a candidate.
For clear liners, or they are a candidate for dental implants, or if they qualify or pre qualify for financing right now, all of that traffic can go to that website where you are able to also collect email addresses if you have the right internal processes or team. Or agency and process to be able to call those leads to get them pre qualified to give them book the sky's the limit.
But again, being able to spend, that amount of money, a dollar or less per click to your website is huge. So again, imagine spending, like 5 a day or even committing to, you know, 100 budget. Being able to get a hundred people to click to your website and being able to get, 000 views is huge.
So that's the biggest thing that no one is talking about. There are definitely some people that are talking about Instagram out there that are teaching Instagram. If you go and look at their individual Instagram pages, though, there's typically, you'll see 300 views on their videos or a thousand views on their videos, right?
Maybe. Maybe, that allows me to really understand that that's not being done. it's all about getting people in your local market to see it. Compiling that with what Michael teaches, right? With all the ground marketing. It's really powerful. Google's great. But what can we do on the organic side so that people in our own neighborhoods, in our own communities are talking about us.
And so going into Instagram ads, compiling with that ground marketing guys is like game changer.
Michael: So if we wind a little bit, how can the community, see that they're an expert, for example, the videos that they boost, how do we know post is boost worthy or we're looking at it and we're like, that wasn't the best post.
Anissa: Yeah, so definitely there's some strategy behind it. I've seen lots of things again, just evaluating, but what works really well is utilizing the three opportunities at the top of your reels or your actual posts to be able to pen. Okay. And so what I recommend, whether it's either a photo post or a video is that the first real estate, the first post that you have pinned on the left.
Is going to be, what makes your, practice different? So what makes Glee Dental different, why are our patients choosing us, The middle one should be your focus, So if that quarter you want to focus on clear aligners, so you want to focus on all on four.
What do you want to be known for, Whatever that is, That video needs to be in the middle and the one all the way to the right is going to be a patient testimonial. So now within one quick glance, they're able to see that you're the expert why people are choosing you or what sets you apart.
And at the same time, have an actual patient validating or vouching for your practice. I actually recommend to just have an ongoing budget of five dollars a day. And those will ultimately with that strategy will wind up having before, you know, at 100, 000 views, 200, 000 views.
And again, being very strategic and, putting in the address of your practice location. And that allows you to, again, be able to target people that are five miles for your practice. And then. If you have an ongoing content strategy, which I 100 percent recommend, and you've got a video that's coming out every week or multiple videos, at least one of those videos every week, putting that 5 on.
And so if you've got that ongoing budget in addition to again, once a week, putting a 5 on it for those, I typically say, let's just do 5 for 7 days. And then next week we choose another video and we do it 5 for seven days. And that way you can stay within budget. I know there are different people that are listening to this podcast, a lot of, young practices and a lot of startups I know really listen to this as a huge resource.
And so as you're trying to really, modify or really stay within budget or like really tried to juggle a lot of things that strategy works really well. You know, The three at the top or every day and then once a week choosing one and then pushing it out for seven days and then it'll auto expire and then you just keep boosting the next one.
So there's lots of strategies and again, you can incorporate this in with funnels and call centers and all of the things, but this is something that people can definitely start utilizing where they can see some immediate results.
Michael: Nice. Okay. Great. And so I know you also mentioned.
There's a lot of views that start coming in right when we do this. So out of the views that happen, how many are like cheeks and seats? How many patients actually come in?
Anissa: Yeah. So there's two things that happen here. Okay. So number one is we're building a community of ambassadors. That ultimately you will not be able to turn off. So one of the things that I did for my practice if you remember, Michael was like, how did I get the 50, 000 people follow me? Like when my community started marketing for me, here I am now. 10 years out, 15 years out. I've got three associates and we don't have to do the Google ads and all of the things we just brought the practice in to do the social now.
Cause it's really cool. A lot of things that are happening, but the reality is we don't have to because our entire community now sees that we're an expert. And so if you commit to the strategy, even for a year, it will pay you forever. Imagine now everybody's talking about you. So it's not a short time.
Oh, I need to have five patients tomorrow. More powerful strategy than that, And so that's the 1 thing that happens, The 2nd thing that happens When we attach it to a funnel, is that now we're able to have the ability to collect email addresses to collect phone numbers, and now we can contact those leads immediately. The third thing that happens. Is that we have the ability once people are going to your funnel to actually have a tracking pixel there.
And so if you're looking at doing Facebook ads again, if you're using an agency for that, or you're doing it yourself now, you have the ability for those Facebook ads to now be seen to people first who have visited through either people watching your videos or going to the landing page. And so you're going to have higher convergence as well.
Michael: Interesting, I like that, building a community of ambassadors, you have a marketing engine from that point on. So then I know you mentioned the landing page that we can send them to. What should the quiz look like or do we do this?
Anissa: Yeah, absolutely. So once they are going to The landing page is typically a page that has Information about the service.
So for example, they're coming from an Instagram page Video or even a post, They go to a page and it'll say maybe it's going to be about pediatric dentistry. Is your child at risk for cavities? Take this quiz to find out. Or are you a candidate for dental implants? And so they go ahead and put in their information.
There could be information about the doctor. They could be some Google reviews on there. And again that's one way to be able to build it. But again, the power there is to be able to get the results. Now they put in their phone number, they put in their email, and the beauty of that is that now you have those email addresses.
We have a doctor within digital floss, where we're doing this with Instagram, also doing this with Facebook ads, and they now have an Invisalign day that's actually happening next week. And so what we're able to do for them. Is we're able to build out an email campaign to people who have previously gone in and taken the quiz some of them have become patients. Some have not but giving them that opportunity to come in and participate in this clear aligner day. Some of you guys know Ashley who has her startup Facebook group. This was literally the funnel that I built for her prior to opening.
But it was a startup funnel and what we're giving away was a chance to win a thousand dollar gift card or free teeth whitening for life. And so this could actually be put out before you even open up your appointment book. And now the beauty and benefit of that. Is that you have those emails so that when you're ready to actually start taking patients, which is what she did, she's able to email them and say, okay, we're now making appointments, or maybe even in that funnel, having the ability for them to be able to get an online booking link and start prebooking appointments.
If you don't have a back end team or agency to be able to help you. And so definitely, not just creating awareness, but creating that engine where you have the multiple touch points is going to be really powerful.
Michael: Gotcha. Okay. And then one of the last questions. let's just say our budget is like, oof, to the itty bitty.
Right. I know some people say like Instagram is a different type of audience than Facebook and then Google ads is like an overall kind of thing. What would you recommend? Would you just stick with Instagram?
Anissa: somebody has a very little budget. you know, I love to do Google ads and Facebook ads and funnels.
And I just need to start with something. What I would say is just pick up your phone guys, pick up your phone and figure out how to do stories, right? It's not hard. You've just follow the prompts, Because the power of stories is that you're getting into people's feeds.
You can download. The story, you can use it as a real then when it's in storage, you can put captions on there. You don't have to have an external software to do that. Now that can be a real and you can literally boost these videos yourself, an again, small budget. Huge impact, Once you get that going, then now it becomes, okay, great. This is going now. I'm busy you know, or I don't have time for this, or I don't want to be the person having to remember to do this. And at that point, you can look at bringing in a local photographer, a videographer to get videos for you, whether you're going out on Upwork or online jobs, or, finding somebody to be able to edit the videos and all of the things.
Or again, if you want to have an agency that can do for you, I own an agency is, for example, there are people that can literally fly in, do all of that stuff for you and you show up and the posts are there. But again, the thing is just don't not do it because you think that you need to have.
An agency or a big budget or all of those things, like my first website for my dental practice guys, I built it myself on Squarespace. Mm-Hmm. .. Same thing for my coaching program. Like I built it myself, right? And then now, it gave me some insight and when I realized, you know what, it's not as good as somebody else will do it, or, I just put a little bit more money and, and then I had somebody to help me with it.
And that's really the premium where you're gonna get to that point. But the point is like, do something. Don't not do anything. Right?
Michael: I love that. Yeah. And then real quick, digital floss.
Talk to me about that.
Anissa: So I'm pretty excited about digital floss. Many people knew me from teaching Facebook and teaching funnels.
I've worked with Brunson for seven years one on one. He's spoke about my Invisalign bundle and his book, Expert Secrets. And so after so many years about a year ago I was with Russell and I was like, I'm finally going to go ahead and say yes. I actually co founded a marketing agency with my business partner who is a pastoral assistant also agency owner Vemul we formed an agency that did not exist.
And so we literally go out and we film content. You speak with a premium copywriter, my copywriter who gives you really heart centered copy. We do the editing, we post for you, we build the funnels. And then now we can retarget with those Facebook ads. We do Google ads and it's really high touch again, clients saying, Oh, we've got an Invisalign day.
And the very day we're like, okay, here's some flyers that we've designed for you. ahead and print these out and put them at your front desk, right? Or we're going to email your, leads list. And then being able to have that call center that can get people pre approved for financing for you and put them right into your schedule.
So, that's our niche. We are, focusing there, but we're really excited about being able to help practices to do social correctly. And it's not about, followers. It's about actual patients that will come in and building the community to be that marketing engine for you.
Michael: Awesome. That's going to be exciting in this. And I appreciate your time. And if anyone has further questions, you can definitely find her in the dental marketer society, Facebook group, or where can they reach out to you directly?
Anissa: Yeah, absolutely. So digital floss is the best way to connect with us.
And what's really cool is that, we have calls and some people it's just social. Some people, they're like, I don't want to be on social, but I need help. And so we're able to help them on the Google ad side. And sometimes, honestly, it's just telling you strategy and say, you know what?
Let's start first with you doing it on your own and do this and do this well, and then reach out to us. we're just there to be a resource. My partner and I are practitioners first in the dental field, and so we're just really here to try to help give you strategy and help get you so that you can build that impact.
Michael: Awesome. So all the links are going to be in the show notes below if you want to reach out to Anissa. Anissa, thank you for being with me on this Monday morning episode.
Anissa: Thank you so much for having me.