Why Your Practice’s Facebook Ads Are Not Working

The Health & Wellness Practitioners Podcast

Welcome to the Health and Wellness Practitioners Podcast. I am your host, Dr. Danielle Angela. In this show, I and my guest experts will talk about everything from getting your practice started to developing your clinical skills, growing your practice your way, and of course, dealing with the real stuff like burnout and work-life balance. Whether you've been practicing for decades or just started your journey, you'll find something here for you. So take a deep breath and enjoy the show.

Hey there and welcome to the Health and Wellness Practitioners Podcast, episode 237. I'm your host, Dr. Danielle Angela, and in today's episode, we are going to be talking about why Facebook ads are not bringing you your ideal patients or clients. It's just gonna be you and I chatting about this today on the podcast, similar to the last couple of episodes, but I am going to be having some new guests coming onto the podcast over the next few weeks and months, so just know that. you'll have some new people to hear from coming up soon.

In the meantime, I want to share with you more about how to get new patients or clients into your practice because I want you to be able to help more people. And that's the whole reason why I started my online business. Okay, maybe not the whole reason. I mean, part of the reason that I started my online business was because I saw so many health and wellness practitioners, specifically at that time, female chiropractors struggling to grow their practice. But I saw growing a practice and getting new patients as the easy parts and the work-life balance, if you will, as the hard parts. And it was my own struggle with work-life balance, as you probably know from listening to this podcast, that led me to taking time off from practice and being able to really reevaluate what my definition of success was in practice.

Well, long story short, one thing led to another. And here we are now. I help one of those practitioners who have grown busy businesses and who are feeling burned out to regain some control over their lives and take back their time and their energy. I help health and wellness practitioners get more new clients and new patients into their practices without screenings, health fairs, and ads. And I help them, wellness practitioners, start brand new practices.

Okay, so in today's episode, we're going to talk specifically about why Facebook ads are not working for you. And when I say not working for you, I don't mean like Facebook's not approving your ad, but more so that they're not working for you. A couple of other things are happening. The ads are running and you're getting new patients or clients, but it's not working out so well or

they're just not coming at all.

So let's talk more about why that is happening, okay? Listen, I am not a Facebook ads expert, so I have to give you that disclaimer. I am not saying to never use Facebook ads either in this conversation, but I am just showing you the other side of the story, showing you what, you know, someone that wants to sell you Facebook ads, management is probably not telling you.

The truth is that for most people who are running Facebook ads to get new patients or clients, one of two things are happening. They're either getting new patients or clients booked for an initial exam or a consultation, whatever that first appointment is. And they're getting quite a few bookings, maybe 20, 30 or more a month, but very, very few of those people are actually showing up for that initial appointment.

Or, like I said before, they're just not converting. In other words, the ads are not actually getting new clients or patients booked. So, if your Facebook ads are actually getting new client or patient booked I want to propose to you this idea that...They are actually working, even if very few of the people show up. Because what happens when you run Facebook ads. and you're inviting people to schedule a consultation or a new patient appointment or whatever that first visit is with you. You're playing a numbers game.

And the beauty of this is that, you know, the whole reason that people are attracted to Facebook ads to begin with is that you can automate your marketing, right? That's our hope at least. You can automate your marketing so then you don't have to do it. And so many health and wellness practitioners don't actually want to have to do that part of running a business, so it's very attractive to set up Facebook ads and get them running for you.

So if your Facebook ads are bringing in or getting booked, a lot of new patients or clients for that first visit, the first appointment, but very few of them are showing up, that's just the nature of the game. It's just how the numbers work. So you might get, like I said, 20 to 30 bookings for each month and maybe only three to four of them actually show up out of that 30. That's about 10%.

That generally means that it's working pretty reasonably. I don't want to say it's working well, but it's working somewhat as expected.

Now, of course, yes, in the ideal scenario, you can be running ads and getting that many bookings and also improving the show up rate of people coming to those first appointments.

But it can really take some testing and some tweaking to make that happen, which also means continuing to spend money on the ads to get that to happen. So if you've got a lot of money to invest or in other words, waste on Facebook ads, go for it. Keep testing them. Keep running the ads, keep getting the bookings and keep figuring out what needs to change to improve the show up rates.

But if you don't have the money to spend or usually waste on Facebook ads when you're only getting maybe three to four people to actually show up to their first appointment, then stop running the ads, stop wasting your money.

I never want to see someone put themselves in a position where they are hurting because they're holding on to things that are not working. Hurting meaning like you're not able to pay rent because you're running Facebook ads instead. That's not a healthy situation for you to be in. And ironically, I was just looking back at some of my reels for the last couple of years today. And I saw one from maybe 2021 or 2022 where I said, never need the patience more than they need you.

And what I mean by that is never put yourself in a situation where you're so desperate for money to pay your bills that you need people to need you. It's not a healthy relationship. And those of you that study relationship dynamics, you know it's codependency. So let's not do that if we can avoid it. If you find yourself in that situation right now, my heart goes out to you. I know how hard it is. I have talked to hundreds of people over the last 15 years who have been in that situation. But you've got to figure out a way to make changes so that you don't need people more than they need the service that you provide. Never need the money more than they need you, okay?

All right, so if the ads are running and you're getting plenty of bookings, but only maybe 10% of those people are actually showing up for the appointments, they're working as expected. But as you and I both know, it's really annoying to have all those cancellations and no shows. It's really annoying because it leaves so many gaps in your schedule. It creates a lot of context switching. In other words, like multitasking where you're like, okay, I'm going to have this new client and then you're sitting and waiting for them to show up and they don't. So you've wasted time or now you've got to switch to another task to utilize the time that you would have be...