Social Media Advertising: How to Grow Your Edmonton Business by Advertising on Social Media

Are you interested in growing your health and wellness business with new patients?

Have you tried to promote your business in Edmonton using social media advertising?

Social media advertising is one of the best ways to grow your Edmonton business with new clients.

The reason is that social media is very popular and your patients are already using one or more networks.

In fact, according to the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), 67% of all Canadians use social media daily. These social media networks provide digital communities for people to connect and share information, ideas and entertainment.

But, does advertising on social media work in Edmonton?

According to a study published by Curalate, 76% of people surveyed have completed a purchase based on a company’s social media post.

When people use social media, they provide information about themselves to the social media network. Businesses can organize this information and segment people into groups to deliver advertisements that are relevant to them.

Creating a social media advertisement is easy. Turning that advertisement into real clients that book appointments at your practice is more challenging.

We wrote this article to help you learn:

What is social media advertising?

A cost-effective way to promote your business through sponsored ads focused on a segmented audience that are interested in your products and services.

What are the benefits of social media advertising?

1. Powerful analytics
2. Cost-effective
3. Increase website visits
4. Grow visibility
5. New patients

How to create Facebook ads?

Learn how to create Facebook advertising using the Facebook Ads Manager.

How to create Instagram ads?

Learn how to create Instagram advertising using the Facebook Ads Manager.

How to create Twitter ads?

Learn how to create Twitter advertising using Twitter Ads.

How to create LinkedIn ads?

Learn how to create LinkedIn advertising using the LinkedIn Campaign Manager.

Let’s get started!

What is social media advertising?

When people use social media, they provide information about themselves to the social media network. Businesses can organize this information and segment people into groups to deliver advertisements that are relevant to them.

Creating a social media advertisement is easy. Turning that advertisement into real clients that book appointments at your practice is more challenging.

Many small business owners waste their advertising budgets on ineffective social media campaigns that don’t produce any new clients. The reason is that they’re showing the wrong message to their audience, or they’re showing the right message to the wrong audience.

Social media advertising can leverage information to promote your health products and services to a specific audience of people. The key is knowing your audience of clients – their demographics (age, gender, profession) and psychographics (interests, hobbies, lifestyles). This helps you craft the right message, to the right audience, at the right time.

A patient survey is an effective tool to learn more about your clients. The more that you learn about your clients, the easier it is to find more clients just like them by delivering a message that resonates with them.

Social media advertising uses information to focus your campaigns to a specific audience of people that are interested in your health products and services.

What are the benefits of social media advertising?

When people use social media, they provide information about their age, gender, location, interests, profession, relationships, etc. to the social media network, such as Facebook. These social media networks organize this information and provide audience segmentation tools to people and businesses that use their advertising products.

One of the primary benefits of using social media advertising is gaining access to this vast database of information. This allows you to create advertisements that are relevant to your ideal clients and increases the likelihood of achieving your business goals.

For example, if most of the clients at your clinic are seniors, then you don’t want to waste your advertising budget displaying your ads to young families with kids. You can focus your ads to be displayed to seniors living within a short distance to your clinic.

Here are some of the main benefits of advertising on social media:

1. Powerful analytics: most social media networks collect, store and categorize information about their users and provide this information to businesses that use their advertising products. You can create ads that are focused and relevant to your ideal clients, which increases their likelihood to engage with your ad, visit your website, and call your clinic to book an appointment.
2. Cost effective: traditional advertising, such as networking or direct mail flyers, is expensive, costing you time and money. Social media advertising provides better value. The average cost to reach 1,000 people through Canada Post mail flyers is about $150. The average cost to reach 1,000 people through social media ads is less than $10.
3. Increase website visits: according to a report published by Adobe Digital Insights, social media drives 3x more website visits for new customers than for existing customers. In other words, advertising on social media will likely get three-times more potential new patients visiting your website than your existing patients.
4. Grow visibility: billions of people use social media daily. Most of your patients and potential new patients are likely also using one or more social media platforms daily. Since there’s already a large network of people using these platforms, displaying ads to this network of people is an effective way of growing the visibility of your health and wellness practice.
5. New patients: with robust analytics to create relevant ads for your ideal clients, you will likely see an increase in appointments booked by new patients, or an increase in the purchase of your health products and services. According to a study published by Curalate, 76% of people surveyed have completed a purchase based on a company’s social media post.

Now that you know some of the main benefits of social media advertising, let’s review the process for creating effective ads on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.

How to create Facebook ads?

There are two primary ways to create Facebook Ads: using the Facebook Ads Manager, or by creating ads directly inside of your Facebook Business Page. Your Facebook Business Page allows you to create ads quickly using a simplified version of Facebook’s Ads Manager.

You’ll see buttons around your Page that read: “Boost Post”, “Promote Local Business”, “Promote Website”, or “Create Ad”. Any of these buttons will open up a simplified version of Facebook’s Ads Manager.

Although creating ads directly inside of your Facebook Business Page is easy and quick, you sacrifice many benefits in creating more focused ads for your audience.

For example, the Ads Manager allows you to set specific marketing objectives, choose more placement options for each ad, customize your audience with more detail, and gain greater control over your spending strategy and creative options.

The Facebook Ads Manager gives you more options to manage your ad campaigns effectively. Although you’ll likely want to create ads for your Facebook Business Page, the Facebook Ads Manager is found under your personal name. Every personal profile on Facebook has a Facebook Ads account already created.

In order to create ads for your business, you’ll want to create a Facebook Business Page using your personal profile. To learn how to create a Facebook Business Page, read our article: Social Media Marketing.

Then, visit the Facebook Ads Manager to see your account overview. Near the top of the page, click on the “Campaigns” tab, then click on the “Create” button below it on the left-hand side.

Next, determine if you want to create a “complete campaign” (guided creation) or a “campaign shell” (quick creation).

If this is your first time creating a Facebook Ad, you can select “Create complete campaign”, and the Facebook Ads Manager will provide step-by-step instructions for creating the entire campaign from start to finish.

If you’ve created Facebook Ads before, select “Create campaign shells” and you can build your campaign in any order that works for you.

Facebook organizes your ads into a hierarchy as follows:

1. Campaigns: contains all of your ad sets and advertisements, as well as choosing a marketing objective.
2. Ad sets: you can group or segment your audience into ad sets, as well as choose your budget, schedule, ad placements and price bidding.
3. Ads: the advertisements that an ad set or audience segment will see, as well as choosing an existing post or creating a new one.

To learn about our 5-step process for creating effective Facebook ads using the Facebook Ads Manager, read our article: Facebook Advertising.

How to create Instagram ads?

Since Facebook owns Instagram, the advertising options are almost identical. Just like in Facebook, there are two primary ways to create Instagram ads: using the Facebook Ads Manager, or by creating ads directly inside of your Instagram app.

If you’re inside of your Instagram app and click on any of your existing published posts, you’ll see a button below your image that reads: “Promote”. Although this method to create ads is quick and easy, you have many limitations for creating your Instagram ad.

For example, you have limited options for segmenting your audience and can only display your ad in Instagram, instead of on both networks.

The average cost-per-click on Instagram ads in Canada is about $2, while the average cost-per-click on Facebook ads is about $1. To lower your overall marketing costs, consider advertising on both platforms, instead of just on Instagram.

To create Instagram advertisements using the Facebook Ads Manager, you need to connect your Instagram business account to a Facebook Business Page. To learn how to create an Instagram Business account, read our article: Social Media Marketing.

The Facebook Ads Manager allows you to create ads for both Facebook and Instagram from one place.

In order to connect your Instagram business account to your Facebook Business Page, follow these steps:

1. Login to your Instagram app.
2. Go to your profile and tap on the three lines button (usually on the top-right).
3. Tap on the “Settings” link at the bottom of the list.
4. Tap “Account”, followed by “Linked Accounts”, then select “Facebook”.
5. Enter your Facebook login information. By default, your personal profile on Facebook is selected. To link to your Business Page, tap on “Share to” and choose your Facebook Business Page that you manage (you have to be an administrator on that page).

Once you’ve connected your Instagram business account to your Facebook Business Page, you can use the Facebook Ads Manager to create ads for both networks. This makes it easy for you to create and manage ads on both platforms in one central location.

To learn about our 5-step process for creating effective Instagram ads using the Facebook Ads Manager, read our article: Instagram Advertising.

How to create Twitter ads?

Many online blog articles suggest that there are two primary ways of advertising on Twitter:

1. Twitter Promote: automatically promotes tweets for you
2. Twitter Ads: setup your own advertising campaigns

While this is true in the U.S., Twitter Promote is not currently available in Canada. In other words, although you can register, Twitter Promote will only promote your tweets to people living in the U.S., U.K. or Japan.

Furthermore, many companies, such as Buffer or Agorapulse, have conducted their own research into Twitter Promote and have concluded that the performance is disappointing and the program has too many limitations.

Twitter Ads is an effective way to create and manage advertisements on Twitter to help you grow your business. To setup your Twitter Ads account, all you need is an existing Twitter account for your practice.

To learn how to create a Twitter account, read our article: Social Media Marketing.

Once you’ve created your Twitter account, go to Twitter Ads, select your country and time zone and you’re finished.

You can also create a quick Twitter advertisement using Twitter Quick Promote. After logging into your account, find a tweet that you’ve already created and published.

Then, click on the “Tweet activity” icon on the bottom right of the tweet. This displays your basic tweet analytics, such as your impressions and engagement.

If you scroll to the bottom, you’ll find a section that reads: “Reach a bigger audience. Although this is a quick and easy way to promote your tweet, you have a lot of limitations and less customization options than using the complete Twitter Ads platform.

To learn about our 7-step process for creating effective Twitter ads, read our article: Twitter Advertising.

How to create LinkedIn ads?

To create advertisements on LinkedIn, you need to use the LinkedIn Campaign Manager. This advertising tool will help you create, manage and optimize your advertising on LinkedIn.

It also includes detailed analytics to help you see how your LinkedIn ads are performing and the demographics of the people who interact with your advertisement.

You’ll need a personal profile on LinkedIn in order to access the Campaign Manager. You’ll also need a Company Page created to promote your business content in the Campaign Manager, otherwise, you can promote your personal content.

To learn how to create a LinkedIn Company Page, read our article: Social Media Marketing.

If you don’t create a LinkedIn Company Page, you can still create LinkedIn ads and promote your personal content using your personal profile. This may be confusing to some potential new patients, as they likely won’t know who you are, but may be familiar with your business.

To learn about our 6-step process for creating effective LinkedIn ads, read our article: LinkedIn Advertising.

Conclusion

On average, 2 out of 3 of your patients use social media daily. Many use it for entertainment, to socialize with others, or to learn about new businesses in Edmonton.

People provide information about themselves to the social media network, which organizes this information in large databases. You can leverage this information to promote your health products and services to people that are actively looking for them.

Social media advertising provides a cost-effective way to promote your business using powerful analytics to focus your ads for your audience of patients. The key is knowing about your clients, and the social media networks that they use.

Then, you can focus your campaigns to advertise on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, or any other platform, to reach your unique audience of patients and grow your business.

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