The Unexpectedly Simple Secret To Using Video To Market Your Private Practice

How often do you find yourself scrolling through social media - daily, weekly, perhaps hourly? 

Did you know that 78% of people watch videos on the internet every week, and 55% every single day? 

Experts have been seeing online video consumption numbers double each year, and those statistics were reported back in 2019. That percentage was staggeringly high even before a pandemic and quarantine hit and we were all stuck at home on our electronics. 

With the shift of consumers' attention moving towards online media, naturally, marketing has too. Video marketing’s been around for awhile, and now it's safe to say it’s definitely here to stay. 

If you have yet to get on the bandwagon of online marketing, then this is your sign. 

Get ready, we’re going over everything you need to know to get started videos for marketing your private practice. 

What Is Video Marketing?

Whether you’re promoting a brand, product, service, or even a person – video marketing has become the norm. 

You’re probably already used to the traditional TV commercials and radio ads, but now that we’ve gone digital there are even more ways to market yourself. Banner ads, pre or mid-roll ads on videos, and social media are just a few examples. 

Platforms like Youtube, Facebook/Meta, TikTok, and Instagram have become the go-to for creating and delivering content to mass audiences – so we’re going to focus on how therapists can utilize social media to grow their presence.

Benefits of Video Marketing for Therapists

How helpful can video marketing really be for your private practice? What do you stand to gain from investing your time and effort into making, editing, and posting videos? 

Here are just a few of the advantages of video marketing.

Videos Give a Face to Your Practice

Instead of just some branding, no matter how catchy or cool it is, potential clients can have an actual human they correlate to the practice. Videos are a great tool for making a personal connection and this makes the business and you real, rather than a figment of their imagination behind a logo. 

Videos Help Build Relationships

As a therapist, you’re already aware of the importance of the relationship you foster with your client. While the connection with them grows, they begin to build trust and look to you as a source to push them in the right direction. 

The same goes for videos. When a potential client watches a reel on instagram of you – from their end the relationship has already begun. If they like what you’re saying, the seed to building trust has already been planted, and they’ll feel more comfortable coming in to see you. 

Videos Help With SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is what helps your website show up in a Google search and videos can significantly boost these efforts. If you haven’t created a website yet, here’s a quick read on why you need one for your practice. 

When YouTube videos are optimized with keywords and embedded into yours, and others websites, this can help you rank higher in search results. The higher you rank, the more traffic to your site, and potentially more clients to your practice. 

Videos that are embedded into other pages, like in a blog post, can help because of backlinking. When someone comes across the video and looks for more information, they’ll look for the link to your website in the description. 

Videos Easily Grab Attention

Sound and movement, especially of a human face, immediately grabs more attention than a still photo. When a video shows the speaker’s lips and eyes moving and conveying emotions, it adds a layer of nuance and authenticity that keeps the viewer more engaged in the message. 

Videos Are More Persuasive

Viewers feel more connected to the speaker in the video when it features the actual narrator or host themselves, rather than a voice over. Because this helps them process the information with more mindfulness, videos can be a much more efficient and effective marketing tool than written content. 

People Like Watching Videos

The people have spoken, and it's a fact – 69% of people prefer learning about products and services through watching videos.

If you need more proof, check out these other statistics:

• 87% feel more assured about a decision or purchase after watching a YouTube video
• Tweets with videos get 10 times more engagement on Twitter
• 25% of consumers made a purchase after watching an Instagram reel
• Videos are the number one form of media for content strategy today

Therapist Video Marketing You Can Do for Your Practice

If you’re overflowing with potential ideas to post on your social media, that's great. 

On the flipside, if you’re not feeling so creative, it can understandably be a bit overwhelming. You’ll not only want the video to be do-able for you, but create one that maximizes your return. 

So whether you’re brimming with ideas, or a little stuck – How do you know which ones will work best for your therapy practice?

Here are a few ideas for different videos that are proven effective for marketing your private practice.

Introduction to Your Practice

A recorded introduction can be as formal or informal as you’d like. It’s pretty straightforward as the purpose is to introduce yourself and the practice. 

You can talk about your expertise and experience, and even sprinkle in some fun facts about yourself. It doesn’t need to be a super detailed review of your resume and qualifications. Actually it's recommended to keep videos between three to six minutes long, which is the ideal length.

A short tour of the office space can get potential clients to start picturing themselves there. They’ll also be more at ease with knowing the layout and what to expect if they come in for sessions.

Finding a happy medium between being personable, genuine, and informative while confident increases the odds of creating a successful video. 

Videos Discussing Topics in Your Niche Market

Identifying a specialty, or choosing one that you want to attract more clients for can help target a specific market. For example, you might want to work with psychoanalysis and childhood trauma – your videos can focus on this as the main topic. 

You can also choose an entirely different approach that’s still related to mental health professionals. Some therapists choose to create content about how to successfully grow private practices, or act as a business coach. 

Finding a niche market to target can help you stand out from the other videos online. Ideally, this niche would have the ability to be explored endlessly, so you’d have a lot of topics to make content with. 

Some great ideas to get you started:

• Solve a problem or make a how-to video
• Make a reaction video to a popular topic or media that connects to mental health
• Expand on a previously covered topic by another creator
• Motivational insights to encourage viewers

Make Short Videos Based on Your Blog Posts

If you’ve already got information like a few blog posts on your website, you can leverage those into short videos for social media. With a little bit of summarizing and tweaking, you can have enough content for a series of short 15-second Instagram reels or TikToks.

For example, if you’ve written a blog on how to be more confident, you can make one short video for each tip.

If you’re just starting your online presence and don’t have previous materials, you can still create short clips. Topics that perform well under current trends include practical life tips that help boost self-esteem, lower anxiety, and achieve good mental health at work. 

Q&A or Interview Sessions

After you’ve made a few passes at making videos and gotten more comfortable, it could be a good idea to bring other people on screen with you. It's probably tempting to do this right away, but if you haven’t gained your sea legs, it might feel awkward for you and the guest. 

Interviewing other professionals can really help grow your online presence. If you have a guest speaker that will also cross-post the video, or share it on their social media, it can bring you even more exposure. 

If you’re interested in going even further with this, you could leverage these types of videos into podcast content. 

Where To Post Your Therapist Videos for Social Media

Now that you’re starting to get ideas on what kinds of videos to make, let’s move on to another important detail — where to post the content.

There are plenty of options to choose from — YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, the list goes on. There are even more niche platforms like Vimeo and Vidyard. With all these options available, how do you decide which will work best for you? 

In general, the best sites to post marketing videos for maximum results and minimal effort are YouTube, Tiktok, Instagram, and Facebook.

Other platforms like Reddit, Tumblr, Snapchat, Pinterest and Twitch aren’t usually the highest performing. These platforms are great for SEO, especially Reddit and Pinterest, but not specifically for videos.

Let’s go over the four platforms that video marketers recommend for going viral. 

YouTube

YouTube is the largest video hosting platform today. While this means that the space can be quite saturated, the potential to reach a group of your target audience is pretty high. That alone makes YouTube one of the best first stops if you want to maximize your video marketing efforts. 

The beauty of YouTube is that it’s optimized for search. Videos are easy to tag with keywords, allowing you to rank in the platform’s search results and through Google, which owns YouTube. 

If you only want to focus on one platform, we highly recommend taking some time to grow your YouTube channel. Once you’ve created content here, you can actually edit and repurpose them for other platforms in the future.

TikTok and Instagram

While TikTok and Instagram Are two separate platforms, we’ll group them together because they’re both mainly for hosting short videos. Instead of three to ten minute-long videos, on these social media apps, they are only several seconds up to a minute long. 

If you want to reach a younger audience, the most effective social media for generating leads is by sharing marketing videos through Instagram reels.

Even if you only want to make the effort of posting to one platform, the beauty of all of these is that you can now crosspost between YouTube Shorts, TikTok and Instagram.

Facebook

Although Facebook may be falling behind other social media platforms, it has millions of users and is still very much active. If your client target is more of the mature crowd, you’re more likely to reach them this way.

According to Hubspot, Facebook actually performs better than TikTok and Twitter when it comes to generating leads from sharing marketing videos. Conveniently, you can also crosspost here from the other platforms. 

Therapist Video Marketing: Practical Tips for Making a Powerful Impact

The technical and human aspect are the two most important pieces of making impactful videos. It’s not only about the content or topic in the video, but how well it's all packaged together. 

A lot of time and effort can go into making these, so here are the top three practical tips for making a successful video. 

1. Learn How To Edit Well

Learning the basics of editing is easy and accessible these days, even if you have no previous experience. You don’t need any special effects or fancy transitions, learning the basic jump cuts or fade transitions work just as well. 

Where could you possibly access tutorials for these things? 

If your answer is videos – you’ve guessed it. 

If you have time to go through YouTube and Skillshare there are tons of tutorials and therapist-specific video marketing guides. Digging through all of the generic resources can be a lot of work, so we at Clarity Cooperative also have resources specifically created for you. You can learn not just all about video editing but even search engine optimization, online marketing, finding the right clients, and much more.

2. Stay True to Who You Are

Creating online personas are best left to the artists, entertainers, and influencers. The whole point of making these videos is to sell your practice, and you. Sure, being compelling and entertaining can draw in more views, likes and shares, but not if it’s not your real personality. 

Authenticity will draw in the clients you want to attract, and they’ll be happy to see you’re the same person they saw online. 

3.  Write a Script and Practice It

We just went over being your true self, so it might seem backwards to write a script for your video, but that’s not the case. A script that is written in your voice, and from the heart will still ring true. 

Depending on your comfort level with speaking into a camera, it can determine how much of a script you need. If you’re very comfortable, you might just need an outline and a couple ideas or key phrases to keep you on topic and get the point across. A full script can also be used if you’d like, but it doesn’t mean you need to stick to it. If you’re recording and remember something off-the-cuff, you can add that in and continue. 

The delivery of your words can also affect whether your script is coming across sounding fake or stiff. It could be due to being nervous in front of the camera – this is why practicing it is a good idea. 

Test runs in front of the camera can help because you can play those videos back and note where you might need to improve in the ways you move, talk or sound. These are things you wouldn’t necessarily notice while talking into a mirror or practicing on your own.  

Master Video Marketing for Therapists Together With Your Peers

Video marketing might be a completely new idea for some, and it does come with a learning curve. If you enjoy sharing ideas and want a creative way to draw in clients, this can be a really enjoyable way to spread the word about yourself. 

There are an endless amount of resources to help you learn more about making, editing, posting, and maximizing your videos online. At Clarity Cooperative, we’re also here to help you with how-to guides, tutorials, and other tools to help you build your practice. Our community is a place where you can share your experiences with other mental health professionals. 

If you’re looking for more help with marketing your practice or finding tools to help optimize your operations, join us today or sign up for our free 30 day trial.