Where is the Best Place on Facebook to Publish Your Ads?
There are a lot of options when it comes to running your ads on Facebook as to where to place them and Facebook doesn’t make it easy for you to understand what each of those options actually are.
Newsfeed, Sidebar, Audience Network, In-app placements, Facebook Stories, Instagram Stories, Instagram Feed, In-Stream, Reels Overlay, Search, Messenger, In-Article… the list goes on and on. There must be about 15 different placements where your ad can appear.
By default, Facebook enables them all for you automatically but the problem is when it comes to new patient marketing 90% of those placements will do nothing more than spend your money and get you low results. I know, because I’ve tested every single one of them!
In doing so, I found that only a couple of placements actually work for attracting new patients. The rest just leak money away from your budget into a black hole that apparently leads to Mark Zuckerberg’s back pocket. If you were selling a product rather than a service some of these other options might work better, but for new patient marketing, it’s down to two placements and only one placement if you aren’t re-marketing to people who already know you. The Facebook News Feed.
Why Where People See Your Ads is Important
You have to take the point of view of the person viewing the ad. Facebook is a social media platform that people browse in their spare time. For example when they are on their lunch break, when they get home from work, or when they are lying in bed and can’t sleep. This is perfect for getting a new message across because their attention is on finding something to read that may interest them.
Ad placements such as the “In-App” or “Messenger” options are advertisements that show up when a person is playing a game like Angry Birds or when they are chatting with friends on Facebook. They have to stop what they are doing to view these types of ads and very few people click on a knee pain ad when there attention is elsewhere.
You want to show the ad where it is most likely to attract attention. Almost every other ad placement option is put in front of the person while they are engaged in an activity. The news feed is not.
There are many other factors that go into creating an ad that generates a consistent flow of qualified new patients, such as targeting, headlines, images and the of course your offer, but knowing where to place your ads for the best result is a first great step. To learn how to get the most out of your ads, I invite you to download and read my e-book Chiropractors: 16 Rules for Facebook Marketing Success.