Face Doctor Piedade combines Facebook Reels with ads that click to WhatsApp for 35% business growth

Face Doctor Piedade is an independently owned and operated franchise location for facial and body rejuvenation services in Piedade, a neighborhood in the city of Recife, the capital of the Brazilian state of Pernambuco. A recent success story showcased the clinic’s 35% business growth since combining Facebook Reels with ads that click to WhatsApp.

Renato Steponovicius, Owner of Face Doctor Piedade, runs three clinics in state capitals across northeastern Brazil. We recently spoke with Steponovicius and his expert marketing partner, Uriel Gonçalves, Head of Performance Marketing at YouGo, about how savvy social media marketing helps Face Doctor Piedade stand out from the crowd.

Tell us about your aesthetic services clinic. Why do people choose Face Doctor Piedade instead of alternatives?

Steponovicius: At Face Doctor Piedade, we really believe in providing high-quality care. The wonderful people who work at our clinic help us achieve that elevated service.

Staff training is a top priority. We strive to understand our clients as much as possible. We create a positive organization so our team members are happy and serve our clients well. We strongly support professional training and certifications in aesthetic procedures that will attract new clients and foster loyalty.

We even have clients who live 60 km away. While there may be other clinics that are closer to their homes, they choose Face Doctor Piedade because they like our service.

How important are digital marketing and social media for Face Doctor Piedade?

Steponovicius: Social media is extremely important. It’s our main channel for new customer acquisition. Among new clients who come to our clinic, 70% originate from social media.

Gonçalves: From the agency's side, we understand that creating a relationship between the clinic and a new customer requires a lot of work. The clinic needs a conduit for providing a little more information to engage customers in an interesting conversation. We work with Face Doctor Piedade to recommend strategies for using Meta channels like Facebook and WhatsApp for lead gen conversations and promoting new aesthetic services available at the clinic.

We pride ourselves in helping Face Doctor Piedade continually identify and evaluate which types of advertising are working well. We regularly harvest insights to share with the clinic along with new opportunities for social media and marketing personalization.

What challenges did you have with marketing prior to adopting Facebook Reels ads that click to WhatsApp? How have things changed since then?

Gonçalves: Our main challenge was our volume of leads. We had reach, but it wasn’t very broad. Although our campaigns were successful, they didn’t bring in a lot of people.

Then we took a new approach and started using Reels within the clinic’s Facebook campaigns, which helped us lower our cost per lead by a lot while increasing volume. The results were much better, even with the same level of investment we used in the past.

That’s when we started paying more attention to Reels. It's not that we stopped doing Facebook campaigns with static cards and carousels, but we started prioritizing more focused Reels ads that click to WhatsApp. This has helped us hone in on 11 ways to address top questions from potential clients.

By the end of last year, we doubled our new customers after logging nearly 1,200 WhatsApp conversations per month. In fact, in 2024 revenue grew more than 35%.

What other results have you achieved since focusing your marketing around Facebook Reels with ads that click to WhatsApp?

Gonçalves: The new marketing campaigns generated an impressive lead database. We implemented a new CRM in August 2024 and that has helped us improve our follow-ups with people who started conversations with us on WhatsApp but never followed through with a clinic visit or purchase. Now we’re doing a better job at leveraging those valuable leads. We’re re-engaging prospects in conversations and getting them into targeted customer journey funnels.

We’ve moved away from a traditional single sales funnel and instead we have a pre-booking funnel, a booked appointment / pre-visit funnel, and an after-sales funnel. We’ve created branches in customer journeys so that we can optimize communication with each customer and lose as few as possible along the way.

In the past, 35% to 45% of prospects from WhatsApp converted into appointments at the clinic. I was really bothered by the other 55% to 65% that didn’t convert. So we created a re-targeting strategy, planning for each stage of the customer journey. That helped us achieve 50% conversion among those that previously had not visited the clinic.

Steponovicius: We like being able to better control the customer journey and more confidently project conversion rates. Ads using Facebook Reels and WhatsApp give us new ways to deliver our message to larger audiences so we can serve more clients. We’ve gained very important capabilities for unlocking new business opportunities.

What impact do Reels and WhatsApp have on your customer experience? What do customers think of the videos?

Steponovicius: Our Reels have a very natural, casual feel. Because they feature our staff, they bring a level of humanity and emotional connection to our marketing. That helps us connect with prospective clients. They feel seen. Using Reels in combination with conversations on WhatsApp encourages prospective clients to believe we can provide a solution to their issue.

Gonçalves: Through Reels and WhatsApp conversations, we address many of the common questions and concerns new clients have about a procedure. They arrive at the clinic with a better understanding of the service options we have and what’s involved, and they’re ready to buy.

Tell us about your partnership with YouGo, your marketing agency.

Steponovicius: Our strategic partnership with YouGo has produced strong growth. YouGo analyzes the results of our marketing using Reels and WhatsApp to understand which versions and campaigns achieve the best engagement as well as what types of aesthetic service needs people are interested in.

Our strategy is to create a high volume of prospects, always have a team ready to qualify new clients, and have clinicians ready to treat them. Through the campaigns that YouGo handles for us, we’re always populating our lead funnel by promoting the latest news and innovations in personal care, filling people in on new research, offering suggestions, and providing details about our aesthetic procedures.

How do you develop the content strategy for your Reels videos? Was it difficult to transition your marketing process from one that relied on static ads to one that features Reels?

Gonçalves: It was not too difficult. Clinic staff members are not trained actors and actresses, but they have challenged themselves to talk to our audience in front of a cell phone camera and make Reels videos. When they see the great response, they get excited to film more.

Our agency team at YouGo does all the work on developing scripts with suggested messaging for clinic staff. We provide instructions for adjusting lighting and other filming tips. But the recording is the clinic staff’s own creation. They know best how to adjust their speaking tone and demonstration style to suit the clinic’s audience.

Steponovicius: The clinic staff in our Reels support a stronger, more authentic connection with our audience than if we had an actress playing the character of a clinic staff member. Everyone at the clinic can participate in the filming, from the receptionist to the managers, consultants, and doctors. When we offer content that’s more realistic, the possibilities for engaging consumers flourish.

Gonçalves: The clinic staff members have lots of ideas for Reels. They are very creative. Sometimes they come up with a really cool idea for the agency team to work on and other times our team sends instructions for what we need, based on the agency’s strategic research. We look at market trends and evolving interest levels for various aesthetic services. When we detect a growing volume of searches for acne treatments, for example, we take our insights to the clinic so that the technicians can create or adjust protocols for acne and then we’ll develop a video script about the acne service offerings.

What’s the most successful Reels campaign you've launched for Face Doctor Piedade?

Gonçalves: Our flagship is a campaign we created for a procedure that we offer which is generally quite expensive. We made a Reels video to provide more information about the treatment and show how it’s done. It has turned out to be our best-performing video, with a high lead volume and low cost per lead.

What lessons have you learned that you can share with other businesses?

Gonçalves: When it comes to ad performance, everything revolves around testing. We do A/B tests to see what's working and what's not working. We keep making adjustments to get better results. We’re always continuing to look for improvements to reduce the cost per lead even further. The best tip I can give is to dedicate 20% to 30% of your ad campaign investment for experiments in the form of A/B testing, so you can optimize your future campaigns based on what you learn and drive growth.

Steponovicius: In Brazil, because of the economy, you have to always be seeking growth in order to just maintain your business at a steady pace.

Steponovicius: Additionally, we can’t completely ignore seasonal periods and holidays. Seasonality is important and we have to have a presence, but we don’t exclusively focus our monthly campaigns on the seasonal occasion.

Gonçalves: There are so many ad campaigns from all sorts of companies for Valentine's Day and Saint John's Day (Festa de São João). We prefer calmer ad waters with less competition.

How have your opinions about digital and social media marketing changed thanks to Reels and ads that click to WhatsApp?

Gonçalves: Originally, I wasn't a big believer in ads that click to WhatsApp, mainly because they were quite expensive compared to other channels. Since then, we’ve achieved a very successful synergy between Reels and ads that click to WhatsApp. Today I can’t imagine promoting Face Doctor Piedade without them.

Steponovicius: Reels and ads that click to WhatsApp are a very efficient way to gain new customers. It also helps to work with an agency that’s always offering innovative, new strategies so that our clinic can keep up with the speed of changing market demands.

What are you looking ahead to as far as new marketing initiatives?

Gonçalves: Today, the largest share of our ad investment is with Meta. We are studying channel diversification possibilities, such as new emerging ad options with Instagram Threads. This could boost our possibilities for impacting people in different stages of decision-making.

Steponovicius: We’re also exploring opportunities for using AI to help with prequalifying clients and speeding up the conversion process.