Another week, another change to Facebook’s famously complex news feed algorithm. Fortunately for marketers everywhere, not every announcement from Facebook HQ is bad news.The latest news feed update factors the amount of time users spend looking at individual posts into how the authors of those posts are ranked in the future. If you spend two minutes looking at Friend X’s vacation photos but scroll past Friend Y’s hundredth baby photo this week, Facebook will favor what Friend X has to share going forward. Though the impact of this change is unlikely to be monumental, it continues a trend of minimizing organic page reach that’s pushing page owners towards paid ads.

That’s the bad news. Here’s the good news: Another recent change makes those paid ads much more powerful by allowing you to add a “Call Now” call-to-action button to your promoted posts.

Targeted and convenient

In addition to letting you add a strong call-to-action, the “Call Now” button also improves the user experience for people who see your ads. Instead of having to dial a number contained in the text of an ad, people will now be able to connect directly to one of your offices to get more information or book an appointment with the press of a button that takes them straight to their phone’s dialer application.

The “Call Now” button is part of Facebook’s local awareness objective that targets people when they’re near your hospital, whether they’re at home or on the go. Like other Facebook ads, you can select a radius between 1 and 50 miles (or enter a custom radius) to tailor the size of your audience depending on the resources you have allocated for Facebook ads.

Create ads from your page

You don’t have to leave your page to start running ads with the new call-to-action. Just click on the “Promote” button next to your page’s cover photo, select “Promote Your Local Business,” and then choose “Call Now” from the “Call To Action” dropdown menu.

You can track the success of your ad right from your page as well, including the number of people it’s reached, the number of local impressions, and the number of call-to-action clicks. It’ll also show you all of the info you usually see with Facebook ads like your budget and the amount you’ve spent.

A solid way to calculate ROI

One of the biggest questions marketers have about social media is how to calculate their ROI. After all, there’s no dollar value for a Facebook like, and no matter how many people have liked your page, there’s no guarantee that they’ll see your posts. When you could only pay for people to like your posts or page, there was no easy way to determine how much value you were actually getting.

Now, that’s changed. It’s much easier to attach a value to a call to your hospital from a prospective patient. Calculating ROI on ads with the new call-to-action is as simple as dividing your dollars spent by the number of CTA clicks and comparing your result to that value. That’s good news for you as you plan or adjust your social media strategy and as you report on the success of your social campaigns.