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

How often do you find yourself scrolling through social media - daily, weekly, 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. Those statistics were reported back in 2019. That percentage was staggeringly high well before we were quarantined at home during the pandemic.

With the shift of consumers' attention 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 about video for marketing your private practice. 

What Is Video Marketing?

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

You’re probably already used to the traditional TV commercials and radio ads. 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 delivering content to mass audiences. So, we're going to focus on how therapists can use social media to grow their presence.

Benefits of Video Marketing for Therapists

How helpful can video marketing 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 a few of the advantages of video marketing.

Videos Give a Face to Your Practice

Sure, branding and logos are important. It can even be really cool or catchy. Potential clients still want to have an actual human they correlate to the practice. Videos are a great tool for making a personal connection. This connection is what makes the business, and you seem real. Otherwise, you're a figment of their imagination behind a logo or name. 

Videos Help Build Relationships

You’re already aware of the importance of the client-therapist relationship. The connection with a client grows over time. 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 sees a video of you online -- the relationship has already begun. This can be as simple as a reel on Instagram. If they like what you’re saying, the seed of building trust has already been planted. 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. Posting videos can boost these efforts. If you haven’t created a website yet, here’s a quick read on why you need one for your practice. 

YouTube videos can be optimized with keywords. When these videos are embedded into websites, you can rank higher in search results. The higher you rank, the more traffic to your site, and 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 immediately grabs more attention than a still photo. This is especially true of a human face. When a video shows the speaker’s lips and eyes moving and emotions, it adds a layer of authenticity. Small nuances keep 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. This helps them process the information with more mindfulness. Compared to written content, videos can be an efficient and effective marketing tool.

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 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 – these tips will help you. 

How do you know which videos work best for your therapy practice?

Here are a few ideas for different videos that are 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. Feel free to 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 short. Between three to six minutes long is the ideal length.

A short tour of the office space can spark some imagination. Potential clients can 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.

Being both genuine and confident will increase the chances of a successful video. It's all about finding a happy medium between being personable and informative.

Videos Discussing Topics in Your Niche Market

Identifying a specialty, or choosing one that you'd like to work with can help you target a market. Knowing what you want is the key to attracting more clients. 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. Some therapists choose to create content about how to successfully grow private practices. Others go into becoming business coaches. 

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. You'll want to 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 content on your website, you can leverage those into short videos for social media. A good example would be blog posts. All it requires is a 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 material to use, you can still create short clips. Trendy topics include practical tips to for self-esteem, anxiety, and balance at work. 

Q&A or Interview Sessions

It might take you a few passes at making videos to feel comfortable. After awhile, you could bring others onto the screen with you. It could be tempting to do this right away, but if you haven't quite gotten the hang of it, it could feel awkward for you and the guest. 

Interviewing other professionals can help grow your online presence. Guest speakers will often cross-post or share videos on their social media platforms. This way you'll get even more exposure.

If you get really into it, you could even turn these 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 do you 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? 

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 are options. The aren’t usually the highest performing. Reddit and Pinterest are great for SEO, 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 use them on other platforms in the future.

TikTok and Instagram

While TikTok and Instagram are two separate platforms, we’ll group them together. This is because they’re both for hosting short videos. Instead of three to ten minute-long videos, they're only several seconds up to a minute long. 

For a younger audience, the most effective platform for marketing videos is Instagram.

You can also pick one main platform to post on. Instagram, TikTok and YouTube Shorts allow you to crosspost between all three. Your effort can be triple with a click of a button. 

Facebook

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

According to Hubspot, Facebook actually performs better than TikTok and Twitter when generating leads from 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 with no previous experience. You don’t need any special effects or fancy transitions. 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. 

YouTube and Skillshare have a lot of tutorials, if you have time to go through them. Some are even therapist-specific video marketing guides. Digging through all of the resources can be a lot of work. So, we at the Clarity cooperative created resources specifically for you. You can learn all about video editing, search engine optimization, and online marketing. We're here to help you find the right clients and grow your private practice with success. 

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 to draw in more views, likes and shares. But, you should stick to your authentic personality. 

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

3.  Write a Script and Practice It

We went over being yourself, so it might sound contradictory 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 only need an outline and a couple ideas or key phrases. A full script can also be written, 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 affects the way you come across. You don't want to sound fake or stiff. If you're nervous in front of the camera, you could come across this way. Practicing is a good idea to avoid this. 

By having test runs in front of the camera, you can watch the videos back. This allows you to take note of where you need to improve, whether it's the way you move, talk or sound. These are things you wouldn't notice while talking in 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 want a creative way to draw in clients, video marketing is something to consider. You could enjoy spreading the word about yourself this way. 

There are tons of resources to help you learn 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 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. Sign up for our free 30 day trial.