It depends on what you are advertising.
If you are just advertising your basic primary care services, no. My experience is that it is not cost effective. I have actually done it.
If you are advertising a special service, it can be cost effective. Again, I've done it. An example of this would be if you are designated as a Civil Surgeon and perform "Immigration Physicals." A Google-ad with a proper landing page can be very effective to advertise this service.
An initial cost-effective way to begin with is to simply have a nice-looking and helpful website. You don't need to pay someone a ton of money for this. You can probably do it yourself with templates, or pay someone just a few hundred bucks for a basic website. High-school and college students can be a source of cheap labor for this, especially if they are relatives. We have gained quite a few patients over the years who literally told me they came to us because of the web site since still most doctors don't even have one, and many that do have a very poor one. Ours is not the best, it has many deficiencies, but it is OK. But I made it myself and I know little if any HTML.
Personally, I am terrified of trying to intentionally use "social media" for marketing primary care services. It's just the capricious nature of patients these days makes me want to stay away. The yelp and ratemd clowns are bad enough. I don't want to have that same person on my facebook page.
