Creating Brand Awareness for Your Private Practice on TikTok
In this session I'm chatting with Sarah Weiss, a content and marketing strategist who's all about leveraging TikTok to get your brand out there. We'll be covering how TikTok fits into your marketing journey, how to use it for brand awareness, creating content, engaging with your audience, and measuring success. Sarah shows us how TikTok can be a fun and effective tool for growing your business, especially in the health and wellness space.
Takeaways
TikTok is an awareness platform and the top of the marketing funnel, where people can discover and learn about your brand.
To get started on TikTok, set up your profile with relevant keywords and create how-to and tutorial videos.
Engage with others on TikTok, especially those in your niche or adjacent niches, to build relationships and grow your audience.
Soft sell on TikTok by providing valuable content and subtly mentioning your services or products.
Metrics to focus on include comments and engagement, as they indicate the effectiveness of your content in building relationships and converting followers.
Meet the Speaker: Sarah Weiss
Sarah is a content and marketing strategist specializing in short-form video (LIKE TIKTOK!) She gets brands and biz owners visible online using the power of video so they can tell their stories, sell their ish, and feel GOOD while doing it!
When she's not nailing it on TikTok, Sarah loves going to wineries with her hubby, cuddling her dogs, and jamming out to Broadway show tunes!
Transcript
Timestamps
[00:00:00] Welcome to Elevate Your Practice: A Dive into TikTok Marketing
[00:00:40] Understanding TikTok's Role in the Marketing Funnel
[00:02:02] Why TikTok is a Game-Changer for Health and Wellness Businesses
[00:04:53] Setting Up Your TikTok Profile for Success
[00:07:09] Creating Engaging Content: Tips and Strategies
[00:11:35] Maximizing Your Posting Schedule for Growth
[00:14:34] Leveraging Keywords and Engagement for Audience Growth
[00:17:41] Soft Selling on TikTok: How to Convert Viewers into Clients
[00:19:23] Navigating TikTok Without a Business Account: Strategies for Newcomers
[00:21:18] Evaluating Your TikTok Strategy: Metrics That Matter
[00:22:41] Final Thoughts and Resources for TikTok Marketing Success
Full Transcript
Welcome to Elevate Your Practice: A Dive into TikTok Marketing
[00:00:00] Samantha Mabe: Thanks for tuning in to Elevate Your Practice. Today I'm talking with Sarah Weiss.
She is a content and marketing strategist specializing in short form video like TikTok. She gets brands and business owners visible online using the power of video so they can tell their stories, sell their stuff, and feel good while doing it.
When she's not nailing it on TikTok, Sarah loves going to wineries with her husband, cuddling with her dogs, and jamming out to Broadway show tunes. Thank you for joining us, Sarah.
[00:00:30] Sarah Weiss: Thank you so much for having me.
[00:00:33] Samantha Mabe: We're talking all about TikTok, which is what I have learned from you over the last couple of years.
Understanding TikTok's Role in the Marketing Funnel
[00:00:40] Samantha Mabe: But I want to start by talking about where TikTok falls in the marketing journey and what piece of, when we think about marketing, there's like a lot that's incorporated there. So what should we expect TikTok to do for us?
[00:00:56] Sarah Weiss: Yeah, so TikTok is an awareness platform. So it's the very, very top of your funnel if that is too jargony for you, which I totally understand. It is like the first place that somebody will land on to know who you are. And when we create content on the platform, we want to keep that in mind. I like to describe it as It's your place to cast a wide net.
[00:01:22] Samantha Mabe: That makes sense. I think, especially for people who have used TikTok, you're always seeing new stuff and you always tell people like you've got to reintroduce yourself because you never know who's going to find what you're sharing.
[00:01:38] Sarah Weiss: Exactly. I treat every single video, even videos where I'm answering my audience's questions, I treat it like it is going to land on the For You page, which it is, and brand new people are going to see it. So I always give them context as to what I'm talking about, why I'm talking about it so they're not completely lost.
Why TikTok is a Game-Changer for Health and Wellness Businesses
[00:02:02] Samantha Mabe: Okay, so for a lot of Private Practice Owners, In this health and wellness space, which you have worked with in your business. They might not understand why TikTok is even going to be helpful for their business. Can you explain how we use it for brand awareness and why it can be an effective marketing tool for these types of businesses?
[00:02:24] Sarah Weiss: Yeah, so I, I want to preface this, I'm actually a speech therapist. So I totally know the world of everybody that is listening a hundred percent. I've worked in a school. I've worked in a private practice. So I totally get that world.
But It's important to market on some kind of awareness platform. If you are not getting every single client from referrals or every single client from paid advertising, you have to find a way to continuously put yourself in front of new people. And TikTok lets us do that for free.
[00:03:00] Samantha Mabe: That's so key. We generally start our businesses, we depend on referrals to grow, but at some point we can't always have referrals coming in, so we want to get beyond that.
[00:03:14] Sarah Weiss: And I find that even referrals that come to me, and I don't know if this is just a me thing, but I feel like it's an everybody thing, they will always creep on my social media first. They were referred, but they want to confirm for themselves that you are the person, which I totally understand because the online space in general is so loud.
And so giving your audience that bank of content to be able to binge and be like, Oh yeah, you are the person that I want to say yes to is only going to be of advantage to.
[00:03:51] Samantha Mabe: In this space, it's so helpful for the people that are coming to you, whether it's for their child or for themselves, they want to know what it's going to look like, what it's going to feel like.
I don't want to take my son to an OT and have it be this really boring office and they don't work with kids. I want to know that it's going to engage with him, that it's going to be a personality fit and you can get a lot of that from an awareness platform like TikTok.
[00:04:19] Sarah Weiss: Absolutely, and we have to think about there are thousands, if not millions of people that do exactly what we do.
So by putting ourselves out there, by letting people see us, hear our voice, hear our personality, maybe a little bit of our humor, it's going to make that yes so much easier for them.
[00:04:41] Samantha Mabe: How do you tell people to get started on TikTok and think about building a following? And is a following even important on a platform like this?
[00:04:52] Sarah Weiss: Yeah.
Setting Up Your TikTok Profile for Success
[00:04:53] Sarah Weiss: So the first thing I want people to do when they get on TikTok is to make sure that they're setting up their profiles in the right way.
And what I mean by that is TikTok is a search engine now. It is very keyword sensitive. So I want you to think about like when you guys search for something on like Google or Pinterest. Now if you type topics into Google, especially questions or how tos, TikTok videos start populating.
So I want you to make sure that you have lots of juicy keywords in your profile. And I'm going to give some examples right now. So the first thing I want you to do is I want to, I want you to edit your name section. Your name section does not need to be the name of your business, and it shouldn't be the name of your business. It should say something like, Sarah, Pediatric Speech Therapy. Jim, a New Jersey Chiropractor. It should be full of keywords that your audience would be searching for.
Your username, which is the name with the at symbol in front of it, that should be your business name.
And then your bio should be filled with lots of other keywords about what your audience is going to get when they land on your page. So for example, I don't want you to say Sarah, coffee lover, dog mom, speech therapist. No, I want you to say Let's get your kid talking and ditch that frustration and then maybe a call to action towards the link in your bio that says download the free language checklist.
I want it to be simple, clear as pie. What people get when they land on your page. So that's the very first thing I always recommend people do.
[00:06:38] Samantha Mabe: Yeah, that's so helpful. I have looked up a lot of people in this space and their videos will pop up. But then I go to their profile. I'm like, wait, are you actually in practice? Are you a student? Are you just somebody who randomly had one video talking about this?
And so it's not very clear when you're listing off. I'm a coffee lover, and I like to watch movies, and I'm also a Pediatric OT. It's not clear to the people who are looking unless you're specifically calling that out.
Creating Engaging Content: Tips and Strategies
[00:07:09] Samantha Mabe: Once you have your profile set up, What are our next steps on TikTok? How do we figure out what we need to do as far as creating and sharing things that are going to reach our audience?
[00:07:22] Sarah Weiss: Yeah, so I love this question and I'm going to tell you something that you'll probably be like, What is that answer even? But people always ask me what should my first video be? And the true answer is it literally doesn't matter because TikTok is one, a search engine, and two, a slow push platform.
So I could post three videos back to back, and you might see the third one, and then the first one, and then the second one. Or that third one might not pick up traction until Three months later when the keywords that I use are actually, trending on the platform. And so I want you to take a breath, lower your shoulders, not put so much pressure on that first video.
And what I want you to do is I actually want you to go in with some how to type videos, some tutorial type videos. And let me tell you why. How to videos have gotten a bad name in the marketing space, but when you are using a platform for awareness, where people are going to be searching, it is like the best thing in the world to make that how to and tutorial type content part of your strategy.
So let me give you some examples. Oh my God, an industry in the healthcare space that does such a good job with this are chiropractors. I look up lower back exercises. I look up glute loosening exercises. And these videos are, like, less than a minute. And they're just showing me how to do these different stretches.
Another one is product in action videos with speech therapists. They just have the camera on themselves and they're either pretending to do a session or actually doing a session, totally up to what you have permissions for. We want to definitely remember HIPAA when we're talking about content creation, but if you have permission from family, it's amazing. But you could always just have the camera towards yourself and either do a mock session or maybe it's a real session. You're just not showing your client. Those videos hit so well.
You want people to see you in action and you also want to create videos that are going to be easily found in search.
[00:09:44] Samantha Mabe: I think that's so helpful and you're right that we have been told don't post a how to video if you tell people how to do things then they're not going to hire you. Where especially in the health and wellness space, but even with what you do and what I do, if I tell you how to update something on your website That doesn't mean you're going to actually do it, or you might do it, and then you're going to realize that you don't want to do everything else.
A lot of times my videos that I look up are like, how do I help my child regulate himself? And I learn from that, it helps him, but I'm not an expert. And so I'm going to go back to that person that's been really helpful over and over again, and eventually I might hire them, or purchase a course, or do something else because I can see that what they are sharing actually works.
[00:10:33] Sarah Weiss: Absolutely. And you want to keep in mind too, especially for private practice owners, if you are, like working one on one with clients, you're going to want some kind of home carryover. Always. No matter if you're a chiropractor, a speech therapist OT, a mental health counselor, there needs to be some kind of home carryover.
And so how amazing would it be to be able to just point to this bank of content and say, Oh, you know what? I did a video about my best regulation tools for kids under 10. Here it is. Or, oh, I just did a video about how to carry over language during bath time. Here it is. Again, it is only going to serve you and your clients or future clients better.
[00:11:27] Samantha Mabe: If somebody's looking at this and they're like, okay, it doesn't matter what videos I share, but I've got to do, I've got to film myself and I've got to do editing and all that.
Maximizing Your Posting Schedule for Growth
[00:11:35] Samantha Mabe: What kind of posting schedule do you recommend for people who are getting started?
[00:11:41] Sarah Weiss: Yes. So I'm going to give my transparent answer and then I'm going to give my mental health first answer. So I recommend posting at least twice a day, Monday to Friday when you are first starting out on tick tock. And the reason is 1, it's going to make you a better content creator. It's going to make you better content. It's going to make you faster at all of the steps, filming, editing, posting. And that's fabulous. If we want to make this a sustainable journey.
Two, it's going to tell TikTok who to push your content out to, and vice versa, what kind of content to serve you. If we are only posting one video every other day, I'm sorry, but it is going to take a long time for TikTok to figure out Who you are, what you do, who to serve you who they should serve you to. And we don't want that if we're actually putting time and effort into a marketing strategy like this, we want to see results in anywhere from one to three months.
So that's why I recommend twice a day, Monday to Friday. .If you cannot swing that, I understand. And I would at least stick to once a day, Monday to Friday.
Now, what I want to tell you about TikTok videos is they do not need to be heavily edited. All of the editing can and should be done in the TikTok platform. These are very casual videos. Videos where you are just talking or showing behind the scenes works beautifully. You do not need to come up with any kind of fancy transitions, trending audios. It is just Capture yourself as you are, and so I think it does also take some of the pressure off of that heavy curation that we might be used to on Instagram.
And again, the only way to get better and faster at this is to do it, and so that's why I recommend the twice, twice a day.
[00:13:32] Samantha Mabe: I think it makes a lot of sense when you think about show up as you are, especially if you are serving people in person, you're gonna look like the person they saw on the internet when they walk into your office. It's not gonna be like you were all dressed up in your designer gown with your hair and makeup done and now you're in scrubs with your hair in a messy bun and there's a disconnect. If you are showing up just in your office on a video, It's going to feel really real, and it's going to feel comfortable when somebody comes to see you.
[00:14:04] Sarah Weiss: Totally! If you are a pediatric speech therapist videos that will feel native to you are like, I want you to sit crisscross applesauce on the floor with toys surrounding you and just talk to the camera. If you are a chiropractor, show up in your scrubs, do a back exercise on the wall, and be done with it.
It does not need to be this big production.
[00:14:24] Samantha Mabe: So do you have any other specific tips or tricks for TikTok that helps people to grow and find their best audience?
[00:14:33] Sarah Weiss: Yes.
Leveraging Keywords and Engagement for Audience Growth
[00:14:34] Sarah Weiss: So first I want to talk about the seven places for keywords on TikTok and then I want to talk about how to grow your audience and get them to engage with you. Pull out a pen and paper if you are listening.
These are the seven places for keywords on TikTok. Let me see if I can remember this off the top of my head. Your name section, your bio section, your text on screen, your closed captions, your hashtags, your written caption, and your TikTok cover. And the TikTok cover is like when you go to someone's profile and you see those like colored rectangles that have the title on it, that's what it is. So those are the seven places for keywords. Those are keywords that are going to be picked up by both TikTok and Google. So make sure you are using all of those places to your advantage.
Now, when it comes to engaging with people and getting people to engage back and growing your community, we have to remember that social media, and relationships in general, need to be reciprocated. And I think that gets lost a lot of the time in the online space. I'm not saying to comment things that just seem fake and not authentic. I love this great post, Susan, but like purposefully interact with people.
And so the best way to do this is to, you can even do searches for niche adjacent people and interact with them and comment on their stuff. I'm going to give an example of what niche adjacent is. So if you're a speech therapist, people that might be niche adjacent to you are like occupational therapists and physical therapists. If you are a chiropractor, people that are niche adjacent to you might be like an acupuncturist and a general practitioner.
When you are commenting on each other's stuff, That target audience is likely to need you too. You do different things, but you have a similar client base.
So Samantha and I are niche adjacent, right? We have a very similar client base, but I don't design websites and she does not do TikTok strategy, but we have a similar client base. So that, that is like one of my main tips about engagement on TikTok is you can't post and ghost. You have to reciprocate these relationships because, why are people going to comment and be active on your stuff if you are nowhere to be found?
[00:17:09] Samantha Mabe: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I feel like sometimes that feels overwhelming, post twice a day and then go and comment. But what I have found is TikTok is really good at its job and so when you go in there, you're going to see stuff that's related to your niche if you do a few searches and you just have to take the time to make the comment instead of scroll to the next video.
[00:17:30] Sarah Weiss: Yes, and that's what I mean by once you post twice a day and you start talking to people that you actually align with, TikTok will serve it to you on a gold platter, but you have to do that initial work.
Soft Selling on TikTok: How to Convert Viewers into Clients
[00:17:41] Samantha Mabe: Because our goal on TikTok is brand awareness, how do we actually get people to inquire about our services or our products or our offers if we're not really hard selling on the platform?
[00:17:55] Sarah Weiss: Yeah, so I have two answers for this. So you could use your TikTok stories, which are very similar to Instagram stories. They expire after 24 hours. You can use that for hard selling. And what I mean by hard selling is you saying I don't know, like acupuncture is saying Oh, like we are so excited. We now offer cupping at the practice, come in and get like a great deal the first week that we're offering this. That's a hard sell.
A soft sell, which is what I recommend for most feed videos, would sound something like this. It might sound like if your child isn't putting two words together by the time they're two years old, this is something we definitely need to work on. If you're in New Jersey, this is something that I absolutely help my clients with, but I'm going to give you some tips right now for you to implement at home.
I'm giving lots of juice in the video. But I slipped in there, hey, I'm a New Jersey speech therapist. And if you need more support with this is what I help my clients with. I'm not saying sign up now, fill out the form. Like I'm just slipping it in there that this is what I do. This is what I can help you with. And I go on and I show more of my expertise.
[00:19:07] Samantha Mabe: And that makes sense too, because you're just letting people know, yeah, I'm available to be hired. Like you can work with me.
So you mentioned earlier to have a call to action to a link in bio and I know For some people If you don't have a business account, you get that at a thousand followers.
Navigating TikTok Without a Business Account: Strategies for Newcomers
[00:19:23] Samantha Mabe: Do you have any suggestions for what we should put there?
[00:19:27] Sarah Weiss: Yeah, so if you're not on a business account and you do not have a thousand followers yet, TikTok won't let you put a link in your bio. What I recommend for this Is to bring people over to Instagram. So you could have a little blurb in your bio that says inquire on IG or I'm fun on IG.
Also too we need to sometimes talk about it in our content and give people a specific reason to go there. And so an example of this for an occupational therapist is you can say Oh, I uploaded a movement break ebook. I'm only sharing it to my IG stories. So if you want to grab that for free, make sure we're friends over there. So I know if I want to grab this movement break ebook, I need to go over to Instagram. On Instagram, they're going to be able to DM you, they're going to be able to go to your link in bio, they're going to be able to get into a DM conversation with you if they want to ask more questions before inquiring.
So giving them a very specific reason to go from platform to platform is also very helpful.
[00:20:33] Samantha Mabe: If you're looking at TikTok for brand awareness, Instagram is the next step where you're building more of that conversation and you have said, like most of your sales, you get some directly from TikTok, but a lot of them are people who have come from TikTok to engage with you somewhere else.
[00:20:51] Sarah Weiss: Totally. I'm not saying you cannot get sales off right off of TikTok. I totally have. Most of my people though will find me on TikTok and then come over to Instagram because they need to see some more behind the scenes. They need to have a DM conversation with me, which is totally fine. Instagram is very good for nurturing your people. And being sure to intentionally bring those lurkers over to Instagram is super important.
Evaluating Your TikTok Strategy: Metrics That Matter
[00:21:18] Samantha Mabe: What are some of the metrics or things you might tell people to look at to see if what they're doing on TikTok is working or if they need to try something else?
[00:21:28] Sarah Weiss: I know what's really tempting to look at your likes and your views to justify everything, but the main metric that I look at is comments. Are my people commenting? Because I don't care if I have three likes, if I have 10 people commenting and having great conversation and asking me awesome follow up questions that I will use as a video reply and they're inquiring about what I do. I don't care how many views or likes that I have.
A lot of the time, and this is really important to talk about. I just did a post on this today is a lot of the time. My lower viewed videos are actually the pieces of content that convert to sales. Brand awareness, like getting more followers type thing. But as business owners, our goal is to ultimately convert those people from lurkers. into paying clients, or at least email subscribers. I look at comments. Are my people commenting to me? Are they interacting? And if they're not, then I know I need to tweak something to start making that happen.
Final Thoughts and Resources for TikTok Marketing Success
[00:22:41] Samantha Mabe: Alright, so is there any final tips that you want to share that we missed in this conversation about getting started on TikTok and really building brand awareness in your marketing?
[00:22:52] Sarah Weiss: Yes, and it's a little bit woo, but I'm a woo woo girly through and through. Something that this journey of being on TikTok has taught me is that it is totally safe to take up space and be seen. And I know that as business owners first, that doesn't always come naturally to us. Or maybe we think that we don't love the way that we look, or we're annoying people, or it's embarrassing, or we post too much, but none of that is true. It is all stories that we are telling ourselves. And so I want you to take up as much space as feels good to you because you're ultimately serving your audience that much better.
[00:23:30] Samantha Mabe: So Sarah, where can people connect with you on TikTok and elsewhere? And then can you share the freebie that you have for everybody?
[00:23:40] Sarah Weiss: Yes, so you can connect with me on Tiktok or Instagram at on brand by Sarah. I would love for you to DM me and let me know your aha moments from this. And then I have a free private podcast called the social media sales funnel for coaches and service providers. All of my private practice peeps are service providers. And this walks you through everything from instagram to tech, talk to emails, to collaborations. Again, it's all free. You can listen to it while you're cooking, while you're in the car. And it'll really give you a nice view on like how to market your business totally without paid ads.
[00:24:18] Samantha Mabe: Thank you so much for tuning into this session of Elevate Your Practice. I was so excited to talk with all of the guests in this round of the Summit, and I hope that you'll share it with a colleague or a friend who could use this magnetic marketing magic as well. You can send them to elevateyourpractice. co to register now, and they will get access to the Summit right away.
