I am amazed at how fast new marketing features and platforms are coming out this year. New features and updates are coming to social media platforms and ad platforms faster than ever! Sometimes I wonder how anyone can possibly keep up with all of these changes, and I love spending time using and testing new things. Since things are changing so rapidly, I always want to make sure to test out features before I encourage you to use them for your veterinary practice. Facebook has recently released 3 new features that I think are important enough to test out for your veterinary practice, and I cover all three in today's podcast episode.

Facebook Live Streaming For Pages Manager

Facebook has been rolling out live streaming for a while now. First, it was just for personal pages and Verified Accounts(like celebrities and people with large followings). Now in the past I've done specific episodes on how to livestream for your veterinary practice with Dr. Cody Creelman, we covered Periscope and Meerkat. There are some pretty significant differences that I think are important to note with Facebook livestreaming. First off, the user interface is definitley different, you can see live viewers, and also respond to comments, which is a good way to interact with your clients and viewers. It is actually pretty simple to get the livestream going, simply open your pages manager app and then hit publish. Once you enter the publish screen you'll see a little icon all the way to the left with a head and circles around the head, hit that button and then it will prompt you with a live stream preview. Check out the image below for the 4 steps to getting to live streaming.

There are tons of applications on how to use live streaming for your veterinary practice. I think it is a great way to engage on a really deep level with people who follow your practice's social media brand. It puts an actual face to the practice and makes it so that your practice is real people and not just a brand. You can do education, cute animals at your practice or just interesting/entertaining content.

Facebook Canvas Mobile Ad Types

Facebook just rolled out a new canvas type of native ad that lets you create ads that are really interesting on mobile devices. The editor for creating the canvas can be found under publisher tools on your facebook page and if you've never created a canvas before it will show you a tutorial canvas. I think there are tons of ways to use this Canvas ad and I go into what I used it for and my experience creating the ads. It is very easy to use and intuitive though, it reminds me of a templated WSYWIG web editor. These ads only show on mobile devices though.

Facebook Lead Ads

Lead ads and native ads in general are my favorite type of ads. I love them because the social platform user doesn't have to leave the platform to engage and opt in. This is huge for marketers because any chance you get to reduce friction, the higher conversion and the lower the cost will be (most of the time). Facebook Lead ads were released back in the Fall of 2015, but they were clunky and there were some continuity problems.

Once a client or prospective client opted in, they wouldn't be clearly guided to the next step. Facebook has since added Cards at the end of the Facebook lead forms which serves as a thank you page and lets your client know what to do next. This is great because now you can help turn that interest into conversion. Setting expectations up front was pretty difficult when someone would opt in and then there was no explanation of how and when they would be contacted or receive content. This combined with other 3rd party integrations like Zapier that let you automate the exporting and integration make this one of my favorite ad types now! Try these ads out.

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