TikTok Marketing

[fs-toc-omit]Chapter One

What Is TikTok? 

TikTok is a social media and video sharing platform that focuses solely on short-form video content. They have a unique algorithm that blasts through the creator barriers of other platforms by rewarding content that is engaging, not just content that is produced from people with large followings. This means that, as a medical practice looking to begin your journey into the platform, your content will be served to viewers with a substantial chance of hitting your audience goals.

Unlike other platforms, the culture of TikTok is not one that focuses on presenting the best version of yourself — TikTok can be raw and unfiltered. Cell phone footage and selfie cams are the fabric by which it is woven, and the most successful creators on the platform are those who are not afraid to be a part of that true-to-life culture. Good news if you want an easy entry into the community that TikTok provides access to.

From an active user perspective, you wouldn’t expect TikTok to be the powerhouse that it is. At 1 billion Monthly Active Users (MAUs), it ranks fourth of all social media sites, beat out by platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram. 

But where TikTok shines way brighter than the rest is the amount of time it holds its users while using the app at a time when the attention of the average person is waning. 

According to Statista, the average user spent a total of 45.8 minutes per day on TikTok. By comparison, Facebook, ranked first for MAUs, only holds their users for 30.1 minutes per day on average. YouTube, more of a video sharing platform than a social media one, is close behind TikTok at 45.6 minutes per day on average. YouTube, however, is a platform predominantly focusing on long-form content, often landing at more than 10 minutes a video.

TikTok, on the other hand, found that 50% of its surveyed users found videos longer than 1 minute in length to be stressful. They also found that 25% of the highest performing videos on the platform were between 21 and 34 seconds in length. 

The History of TikTok

• 2012 — Toutiao debuts, finds massive success in China, claims to figure out users within 24 hours
• 2014 — Musical.ly debuts, earns #1 stop on iTunes in 2015, focused on entertainment value over advertisements
• 2016 — ByteDance launches Douyin, finds massive success in China using strategy from both Toutiao and Musical.ly
• 2017 — ByteDance acquires Musical.ly in an attempt to grow outside of Chinese market,
• 2018 —  ByteDance changes Musical.ly into TikTok

The creation of TikTok and its subsequent success was the result of a few events unfolding in the video sharing and social media ecosystem. Those events could be categorized as launches, and the first of the three launches in Toutiao. Before debuting in the U.S., Toutiao became a massive success in China. Toutiao’s full name is actually Jinri Toutiao, which means “today’s headlines” in Chinese. The news-aggregation platform launched in 2012 and made headlines due to the remarkable success of its smartphone app, which claims to “figure out” users within 24 hours.

It was here that this powerful algorithm, similar to what TikTok uses, was tested. The result was virtually unprecedented: The average user spends more than 74 minutes each day on Toutiao, an astronomically large number considering the average time someone spends across all platforms is between 120 and 140 minutes per day. 

After Toutiao found success, Musical.ly, a similar app,  launched in the U.S. in July of 2014. The platform saw steady growth and earned the title of Number 1 App on the iTunes store after a year of operation. Musical.ly made two choices that TikTok still emulates years later: first, they focused on the fun aspect of their product instead of finding ways to immediately turn a profit, and second, they branded every piece of Musical.ly content with their logo in the bottom corner.

Ultimately, though, TikTok would be born from a company called Bytedance which coupled the use of a powerful content-serving algorithm piloted by Toutiao with the fun and entertaining elements of Musical.ly into a single app that they called Douyin. The formula worked, and within the first year of release, 100 million users signed up for the platform. After finding success in the Chinese market, ByteDance started positioning themselves to move into the global market. 

But the original iteration of the app had to adhere to the Chinese government’s strict regulations. To be successful elsewhere, ByteDance knew they needed to make changes to the new platform, but they didn’t want to disrupt the formula that was already bringing them success. In November 2017, ByteDance acquired an undiscovered app that was quietly gaining popularity in their target market called Musical.ly. 

How TikTok Can Benefit Your Practice

Here are ways in which TikTok can benefit your practice:

1. Exposure to new audiences
2. Conversion of new patients
3. Access to an established aesthetics community
4. Improvement of brand equity

In this Incredible Guide, we will walk you through everything you need to know to find TikTok success, starting with your initial strategy, moving into the intricacies of organic and paid TikTok marketing, and ending with a list of tips and tricks that you can employ to get more views and create better ads.

[fs-toc-omit]Chapter Two

Creating a TikTok Marketing Strategy

Every part of your digital marketing strategy, whether it is social media, email, content, or your website, begins and ends with strategy. If you don’t have a clear path forward, you are setting sail without a map or inkling of where you want to dock at the end of your journey. Spend the extra time in the beginning of your efforts figuring out your strategy and then follow up with intentional steps that move your TikTok presence forward. 

There are four components of being strategic about your TikTok efforts: defining clear and actionable goals, defining your correct audience, performing competitive audits, and sticking to a posting schedule.

1. Define Clear TikTok Goals

If defining clear goals sounds like it’s a broad effort, that’s because it is. Goals can mean a lot of different things, especially when you are considering business vs. marketing goals. Your business goal for this quarter might be to bring in 10% more revenue into your practice. There are a lot of ways to go about achieving this goal and not all of them have to do with your digital marketing program. But your marketing goals should be set up to help you achieve your business goals. Therefore, a good marketing goal might be to increase the amount of facelift procedures you perform by 20% this quarter. 

Business Goal
Marketing Goal
TikTok Goal
‍10% Revenue Increase
20% Increase in Reach
10 Content Conversions

Now, TikTok is only one piece of your marketing plan, but if you were to decide to lean on it as a tool to achieve this 20% increase, you have to figure out what your TikTok goal should be. Here is an example that illustrates a common way to use the TikTok platform: we want to convert a total of five people this month and book them for facelift procedures. 

This goal for TikTok is concrete and actionable. Your content team (or yourself) can now start creating content that discusses facelifts. You can put in ads and create organic content to fan the conversation. These are great ways to use TikTok to your advantage, but there are more ways and more goals that TikTok can help you with.

Brand Awareness

The general number of people who are aware that your practice or brand exists. The more people that can identify your brand, the more implicit trust is built as long as you maintain a positive reputation.

Brand Building

By creating content with a certain theme or voice, you can expand on the values and personality or your practice or brand. This can create new positive associations with your brand, reestablish your personality and values within the community, and even help disassociate you from old preconceptions.

Brand Engagement

The amount of conversation that takes place throughout all of your practice’s communication channels. Likes, comments, messages — these are all ways in which people can engage with you digitally. 

Brand Equity

The amount of value that patients place on using your practice or brand over another. With high amounts of brand equity, your practice will be chosen over others, even if the cost of your services is higher.

Patient Leads

Information or notes on potential patients who would be interested in having treatment performed at your practice. Tiktok ads can help improve the number of leads in your pipeline by putting enticing information and calls to action on their screens.

Channel Traffic

The total number of views and reach that you get from your different marketing channels. TikTok can be used to funnel viewership from its platform to others, if done strategically. 

Community

Creating a supportive and loyal group of customers and followers who will support your practice and brand, expose you to word of mouth references, and help your practice appear active and engaged.

Revenue

The amount of money you make from your practice or business. TikTok can help increase this value in many different ways, such as lead generation, traffic, brand equity, etc.

Social Listening

Being a part of an active TikTok community helps you keep your finger on the shifting sentiments of patients, potential patients and other people who engage in the medical communities. Comments and content in this ecosystem will inform you about what to dive into, what to avoid, and other conversations worth keeping an eye on.

2. Define Your Audience

Figuring out who your messaging should be reaching is a big part of your TikTok marketing strategy and success. Unless your goal is simply TikTok popularity, which for some, is totally fine, you don’t want to waste energy and resources on content outside of your niche. Instead, focus on creating interesting and useful content that is directly relevant to the people who will eventually become patients. 

This will require a fair amount of market research, which means spending some time sifting through aesthetics content on the platform, getting an idea of the demographics that buy the treatments you want to promote, noting useful hashtags or formats that are already popular in the niche, and possibly even doing some informal or formal surveys. 

3. Perform Your Audits

Part of your market research is conducting audits, both on yourself and your competition. If you are just starting out with TikTok, you don’t need to worry about analyzing your backlog of content, but if you have been doing it for a while, you should take note of what has and has not worked, what outperformed expectations, any potential trends or patterns to your content — anything that you can use to inform your future marketing efforts.

Additionally, competitive analysis means picking two, three, four or even five other practices similar to yours and what you are hoping to grow into and figuring out what they are doing that you aren’t. What procedures are they talking about? What content of theirs flopped? Did they attempt anything new? How did it work? What can we emulate and improve on? What do we know to avoid based on their performances?

From a strategic perspective, having these questions answered as you move into your ideation and planning sessions is invaluable. It can directly inform your content and creative direction while sparking ideas and creativity as well. A good TikTok strategy will perform audits regularly throughout the year; weekly, monthly, quarterly — whatever your team is able to realistically achieve.

4. Stick to a Schedule

You’ll hear a lot of people who are successful on TikTok and other social media and video sharing sites talk about how consistency is one of the most important factors when trying to build your presence on any platform. When you produce regular content on TikTok, the people who see the videos will become familiar with your practice and brand. After a few videos, that familiarity could elevate to trust. When that happens, you’ve now established a relationship with that viewer who at some point may turn to you for information or clarity about a treatment they are interested in.

Not to mention, the more content you are producing regularly, the more likely you are to see growth in that particular niche. If you are popping up on viewers’ feeds regularly with good content, then TikTok will reward your ability to engage an audience with more views. That increases your exposure, your follower count, and your ability to create consistent and steady viewership organically.

[fs-toc-omit]Chapter Three

Organic TikTok Marketing

Hitting critical mass, or the amount of engagement and viewership that makes your TikTok content net positive, is a huge achievement for your digital marketing. It allows you to continually grow your audience and the reputation of your practice without having to invest ad dollars on each post to actually reach that community. Hitting critical mass on TikTok is even better — the raw amount of viewership and brand equity that you can develop with a single successful post is well worth whatever investment you made into the production of that content. The benefits that TikTok provides are plentiful, but there are three in particular that allow this video sharing platform to stand above the rest.

The Benefits of Organic TikTok Content

Benefit Number 1 - Access to a Powerful Algorithm. One of the most important parts of social media marketing is getting your messaging directly to the audience that actually cares about and will engage with your practice and content. By virtue of creating an account, you suddenly have access to millions and millions of users, but the users who are interested in medical aesthetics are a little more difficult to nail down.

TikTok’s algorithm does a lot of this heavy lifting. People who care about Botox will be fed Botox content — great for keeping users engaged on the app, but also great for content creators looking to break into or grow their reach. 

The algorithm identifies other users with similar interests and profiles. If users in this “bucket” find a video interesting, it will feed that content to more users in that bucket. If those users then engage with that content, it is fed to even more of those users. The cycle continues until viewership hits critical mass and exhausts its audience members. 

Here are all of the variables verified by TikTok that it uses to assign viewer profiles to its users:

User Interactions
Video Information
Device and Account Settings
‍Videos Likes
Hashtags Used
Device Used
Accounts Followed
Captions Used
Country Lived
Comments Made
Audio Used
Language(s) Spoken
Content Created
Sounds Used
Videos Favorites
Videos Flagged
Creators Hidden

Benefit Number 2 - High Discoverability. As we mentioned previously, TikTok takes a unique approach to content curation. It does not automatically provide bias toward content creators with large followings, nor does it concern itself with previous viewership. Each video is judged by one simple metric: how well that specific video is engaging its audience. While this does mean that creators with notoriety have the advantage of recognition, it also means that new creators have a much higher chance of having their content perform well. This is good news for your practice if you are just starting out with TikTok or social media marketing.

Benefit Number 3 - Highly Engaged Audience. TikTok users are deeply invested in the platform’s ecosystem. It has its own set of best practices and customs that are expected by the community even if they don’t follow requirements from the app itself. When content that interests TikTok users hits their For You page, they are not afraid to engage with it. Whether it is dropping a joke or emoji in the comments or stitching your video with a video of their own, people want to discuss content that is useful or entertaining to them. This unique opportunity to build a highly engaged community of your own, even within the medical aesthetics community specifically, is substantial. 

How to Create Incredible Organic TikTok Content

Nothing is more paramount to the success of a video than the hook you provide in the very beginning to convince people to stick around. Even if after 15 seconds the content becomes the pinnacle of TikTok content, a weak introductory five or 10 seconds is enough for your video to be buried in the “deemed not good” content cemetery. This hook can be anything: a powerful image, an interesting thought or fact, a promise to deliver something — the options are virtually endless.

When it comes to grabbing or holding attention, strong visuals can definitely help. There is an entire side of TikTok just dedicated to “aesthetics,” or the depiction of images that meet a certain visual genre in a pleasing way. But it is also important to understand that strong visuals are not a requirement to make your content successful. Again, TikTok has a “come as you are” culture; plenty of creators are filming with the front side of their camera with disheveled hair and noise in the background to great success. Pleasing aesthetics can be a benefit, but are not as necessary as they are on other platforms like YouTube or Instagram. 

What is more important than visuals, however, are the sounds that you are using in your videos. New trending sounds pop up almost daily, amass huge popularity, and then fade into irrelevance even more quickly. Choosing a captivating song or sound for your TikTok videos that are still relevant and are entertaining and well developed can nearly guarantee you a certain amount of viewership from your target audience, just by virtue of being part of the trend.

Every TikTok has a story. Sometimes that story is about a patient who found a ton of confidence from their aesthetic treatments, and other times, that story is about someone on your office staff explaining Botox for the thousandth time that day. Storytelling is important, but your stories don’t need to be profound film critiques about the human condition — it's OK, especially on TikTok, to just post something you think is funny. 

You should definitely include videos about your patient results or before and after comparisons to be the golden ticket to TikTok success since potential patients (and even current ones) are overwhelmingly interested in seeing those types of transformations. Don’t be afraid to throw in an occasional call to action, either. “Follow for part two” or “Let me know in the comments” are the “Please like and subscribe” of the TikTok world, and they are expected parts of the platform’s content. 

How to Post Organic TikTok Content

In this section, we will walk you through each step you will need to take to post a video to TikTok, from opening the app to hitting the “post” button.

1. The For You Page (FYP) is the first thing you see when you open the app, and yours will always have new and fresh content just for you.

2. Once the app is open, you will need to push the “+” button on the bottom center of the screen to get to the posting interface. You can find the arrow pointing to it below.

3. After clicking the “+” button, you will be brought to a new screen that brings up your camera by default. If you want to record a video from the TikTok app, you can just push the red record button (arrow below) and get started. There are tools on the right hand side you can use to add to your video content. (We recommend exploring each of them before you get started to figure out what they do.)

4. If you want to post a video that you took outside of the TikTok app, then just click the “Upload” option on the bottom right of the screen (arrow below). You will be brought to a screen with all of your media. Select the video you want to post.

5. Once selected, you will be brought to the editing screen. You can see our video of a cool pen featured here, but your video will be here playing in the background when you are at this step. From here, you can explore any of the editing options (arrow below). Again, we recommend browsing through all of these tools so you know what is at your disposal.

6. Once you are happy with the final product, you can hit the “Next” button on the bottom right (arrow below).

7. You will then be brought to the final posting screen. This will be familiar if you have ever made an Instagram or Facebook post. We will break down the important parts of this screen below, but for now, just know once everything is properly filled out, all you have to do is push the “Post” button on the bottom right (arrow below) and your video will be posted for all to see.

‍Final Posting Screen Options

Caption

This is where you will write your standard social media caption. TikTok creators often use this space to make a joke about the comments or provide some additional context to the story.

Cover

The cover image should be selected carefully since it will be what people see when they visit your profile when the video is not playing. 

Hashtags

The hashtags you use are very important, and you want to make sure you are using ones that are relevant to your industry and the community you are trying to reach. Avoid using terms that are high volume that don’t match up with your content because those viewers likely won’t engage with your content anyway — a sign to TikTok that your video isn’t a good one to share.

Add link

This is where you can place a link to a service or product page. This is a good opportunity to provide an access point to your website or other priority location where you have more control of the marketing journey.

Who can watch this video

This should always be set to “Everyone” to ensure your content can be viewed by the masses. Otherwise, your content will be limited to people you follow or some similar highly restricted parameter.

Toggles

You should always allow comments, duets, and stitches on your videos because they foster conversation about the video you produced and the content you covered. Being the genesis point of a big course of dialogue can bring in a lot of exposure for your practice.

Examples of Good Organic TikTok Content

Procedure

Before and After

Before and After

Procedure

Education

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[fs-toc-omit]Chapter Four

Paid TikTok Marketing

Creating organic TikTok content that can highlight a particular treatment or service requires some investment process, and sometimes, using advertisements can be a cost-effective way to grab the attention you need without having to work it into your usual content schedule or worry about the overall content marketing program. Advertisements, especially those on TikTok, have ways to allow you to be hyper-specific in the audiences you are trying to reach, not to mention a robust algorithm that can constantly improve the delivery of your ads to a more effective audience. 

The Benefits of Paid TikTok Content

Benefit 1 - Strong Ad Targeting. One of the most universally powerful tools that TikTok provides for all practices and businesses is its robust ad targeting flexibility. You can define them yourself, down to very specific demographics, but you can also let the TikTok algorithm flex its muscle and determine the best audience for your investment. We recommend giving this a shot unless you are a seasoned veteran when it comes to ad targeting.

Benefit 2 - Advanced Metric Tracking.  There are dozens of different metrics by which TikTok allows you to sift through your campaign results, eliminating a lot of the preliminary work that goes into sorting through social media performance analytics. Whether you are trying to track how many potential patients clicked through to your website or how many people only viewed your content for two seconds, the tools are plentiful. 

Benefit 3 - Highly Engaged Audience. In-Feed ads are great for a variety of reasons, but one of them is that, when done correctly, they can blend very seamlessly into the native For You Page. This makes your ad stick out less like a sore thumb and gives your creative a real chance to shine. As long as you aren’t presenting information like a commercial, there is a good chance that people will still interact with your ads as though it were organic content. This doesn’t mean that you are tricking your audience — ads are still clearly broadcasted as ads — it means that your ad running will be less jarring than other ad platforms.

Types of Paid TikTok Content

Advertisements. There are five main types of TikTok advertisements that you can use to promote your practice. 

1. In-Feed Advertisements — Videos that are integrated into the native news feed as users engage with the “For You” page
2. Brand Takeovers — Popups that “take over” the screen for a few seconds when a user opens the app)
3. Top View Advertisements— Brand Takeovers that show up in the native feed after three seconds of app usage
4. Branded Hashtags — Promoted hashtag tied to a challenge or dance
5. Branded Effects — Video effect featuring your practice

The most popular (and the one we will be focusing on in this guide) is In-Feed Advertising. They blend well into the organic content, making it less obvious that a user is being advertised to, and they can even include likes and comments to help brands capitalize on the TikTok community.

Influencers. These are other users not associated with your practice. It leverages their following to direct traffic to your own and allows you to build brand equity through association. Additionally, when done correctly, the content that influencers produce can be used effectively on most of you channels, especially on TikTok and other social platforms.

Cost of Paid TikTok Content

Advertisements. The first thing to know about your TikTok advertising budget is that you will be obligated from the start to set a desired budget before your ad goes live. From there, TikTok uses different metrics to break down the cost of your ads. Cost Per Mile (CPM), Cost Per Lead (CPL), and Cost Per Conversion (CPC) are three of the most popular.

1. CPM — How much you are charged per view, often indicated as a “cost per 1,000 views”
2. CPL — How much you are charged per lead generated, e.g. native TikTok form fills
3. CPC — How much you are charged per conversion, i.e. website contact forms filled

Generally, CPM is good if you are trying to improve brand awareness. CPL generates leads that live on the TikTok platform, which make them more abundant than CPC since they do not have to leave the TikTok ecosystem. CPCs take the user out of the TikTok ecosystem, making the number less abundant, but they also generate higher quality leads, so the opportunity for conversion is higher.

Which metrics you use will depend on what your ad objective was. Here are the options that TikTok provides for advertising objectives:

When planning your budget for paid TikTok content — specifically the in-feed ads — there are two phases of promotion that you need to be aware of. The first is what is known as the “learning phase,” or the period in which TikTok is doing its best to figure out the best way to deliver your content to its users. This is the slowest and most crucial part of your ad campaign. 

TikTok has said that 50 conversions is the most important benchmark to indicate that your content is out of the learning phase. 

Once your advertisement has reached 50 of its desired outcomes, your ad spend will be much more optimized, stable and predictable since TikTok knows what audience your content resonates best with. Hitting this 50-conversion benchmark is very important for successful ad campaigns.

Bar graph showing 100 total conversions, 50 conversions in one color labeled “learning phase”, and then 50 a different color labeled “optimized ad spend”

Unfortunately, knowing exactly how much your Cost Per Conversion will be is difficult in the medical aesthetics industry. For something like laser hair removal, $15 - $40 per conversion is a reasonable estimate. But for facelifts, $50 - $200 is probably closer to what you will be spending. 

Your geographic location also plays into this as well, as it naturally impacts supply and demand.

Influencers. The cost of influencers varies greatly depending on the industry you are in, your goals, and what tier of influencer you are looking to contract. Here is some foundational guidance from Influencer Marketing Hub on the average cost of influencers based on follower counts in 2021.

• Nano influencers (1000 - 10,000 followers): $10 - $100 per post
• Micro influencers (10,000 - 50,000 followers): $100 - $500 per post
• Mid-tier influencers (50,000 - 500,000 followers): $500 - $5,000 per post
• Macro influencers (500,000 - 1,000,000 followers): $5000 - $10,000 per post
• Mega influencers (1,000,000+ followers): $10,000+ per post

(If you need a quick reference point, this math works out to about $.01 per follower per post.)

How to Create Incredible Paid TikTok Content

As a general rule, good paid TikTok content follows all of the same rules as organic content. You need a strong hook, potentially bolstered by strong visuals, relevant and compelling sounds, a storytelling or narrative approach, and, preferably, something that showcases some kind of patient result. 

However, when it comes to advertisements and paid content on TikTok, you will need to make sure your CTA is as strong as possible since you are paying for the opportunity to convert potential patients, not the actual conversions themselves. If your CTA fumbles the close, then there isn’t much you can do about it down the line.

You can follow this simple guide if you need a checklist of steps to take as you develop your TikTok advertisements.

Step 1: Decide what service or treatment you want to promote.
Step 2: Consider your demographics and target audience.
Step 3: Determine the groups your ad will target.
Step 4: Create compelling creative assets, following the advice above.
Step 5: Consider partnering with influencers on that creative is relevant.
Step 6: Run the advertisement and don’t check statistics for at least a few days.
Step 7: Analyze your results and make adjustments to groups as necessary.

How to Post Paid TikTok Content

1. Navigate to the main dashboard. When you are just starting out, yours will likely look something like this:

2. From here, you will want to click the “Create an Ad” option on the top right.

3. That button will bring you to this page:

4. We recommend selecting the “Simplified Mode” if this is your first venture into creating ads. As you get more comfortable with the ecosystem feel free to try out “Custom Mode” which provides a lot more options and control.

5. After selecting “Simplified Mode” you will be brought to the following screen.

6. This is where you will select your goals for the advertisements you are running. In most cases, website conversions are your best options since they generate quality leads to follow up with.

7. Make your selection and then hit the “Continue” button on the bottom right.

8. You are now in TikTok’s second step: Selecting Audience. The first section you are confronted with is setting up your Pixel for tracking. (If you are unsure of how to set this up, give us a call.)

9. Beneath the Pixel set up is where you determine who should see your ads. We always recommend going with “Automatic Audience” if you are just starting out — TikTok’s algorithm is strong enough to provide you with reliable results.

10. Next, you can determine where your ad is placed. There are a couple of other options if you drop down the “Additional placement” selection, but, for the most part, sticking to TikTok is more than sufficient.

11. After that, select the “Continue” button below to move to step three: setting your budget.

12. You have two options on this screen for setting your budget: daily and lifetime. The two are exactly as they sound: daily allows you to control your ad spend per day, and lifetime sets a total cost for this ad regardless of how long it runs.

13. Directly beneath it is the schedule for your campaign. Here, you can select how long it will run and even select the “no end date” option to let it go indefinitely.

14. Navigate to the same “Continue'' button on the bottom right to move the fourth and final step “Create Ad.”

15. You will need to log in to your TikTok account in the first section to actually post it to your TikTok page.

16. Then, you will need to upload a video or image. TikToks ads are generally created beforehand, so go ahead and select your video to upload. Once selected, you will be asked to make one of the following selections:

17. After deciding which option you prefer and making any necessary adjustments, you will be asked to fill out the following form:

18. Complete it to the end, and hit the “Submit” button on the bottom right to push your advertisement live.

Examples of Good Paid TikTok Content

Influencer

Before and After

Procedure

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[fs-toc-omit]Chapter Five

Analyze Metrics for Wins and Losses

Trying out new structures or approaches is entirely pointless if you aren’t taking a close look at your content’s performance. First thing first, though, you need to make sure your account is set up as a business account so that you can have access to the full spectrum of metrics that TikTok offers. Doing this is easy: 

1. Navigate to your profile page
2. Open the “Settings” tab in the top right corner (it looks like three lines)
3. Go to “Manage Account”
4. Near the bottom you will see “Account control,” click “Switch to Business Account”
   

Once your business account is activated, you will be able to see a deep profile of your posts’ performances.  Navigating to the analytics tools can be difficult, though, so here is a step-by-step guide:

1. Navigate to your profile
2. Open the “Settings” tab in the top right corner 
3. Navigate to “Creator Tools” 
4. Navigate to “Analytics”
   

From here, you can find all the data you’ll need to determine the success and failures of your TikTok content program. There are a lot of metrics to look at, but as a general rule, reach, views, likes, comments, and engagement rates are the most important to pay attention to as you try to build an organic audience for your practice. 

Organic Traffic Metric
Definition
Importance
‍Views
The total number of times your video was viewed over a selected period. 
Views will give you a general idea of how popular your content was. The view count includes every time a viewer started the video, so if someone watched the video multiple times, TikTok will register each individual watch as a view.  This makes it a good way to track how entertaining your content was.
Reach
The total number of unique viewers who watched your video over a selected period. 
Reach is the number of individual people that were exposed to your video. This number counts multiple watches as one view, so it is a good way to figure out how many individuals your post made it to — great information as you look to build your TikTok community.
Likes
The total number of likes your content received from viewers.
People like videos that they enjoyed or want to see more of. By liking your video, they are not only more likely to see similar medical content, they are more likely to see you specifically. High like counts signal to TikTok that a piece of content is popular, so it will continue to serve that to audiences it thinks would be interested.
Comments
The total number of comments your content received from viewers.
Comments are similar to likes, but they require more effort from the viewer and provide more value since many comments often begin a conversation within the community. In the TiKTok ecosystem, users treat the comment section as if it were an entity of itself, often making self-referential comments and looking forward to the discourse taking place on the platform.
Shares
The total number of shares that your content prompted from viewers. 
Shares are a direct indication of how many people found your content useful or entertaining enough to send to someone directly or place directly to their own platforms like Instagram or Facebook pages. Shareable content is often informative or educational. When trying to build your reputation in the TikTok medical niche, producing shareable content is a great way to improve practice recognition. 

Ad Performance Metric
Definition
Importance
‍Clicks
The number of clicks on your ads. 
This tells you how many people took action on your advertisement by clicking on a specific button.
Conversions 
The number of times your ad achieved an outcome based on the objective and settings you selected. 
This number tells you how many of a certain action were taken based on your objectives. If the objective was to sign up new patients, this metric would analyze how many forms were filled out or phone calls made.
Cost per 1,000 People Reached 
The average cost to reach 1,000 unique users. 
This is the amount of money you spent on average to get your ad in front of 1,000 people. Once you have run a few ads, this metric is useful to figure out how much ad spend you will need to reach a certain exposure level.
Cost Per Click (CPC) 
The average amount of money you've spent on a click. 
This metric can tell you roughly how much you will need to spend to entice a single user to click on your ad.
Conversion Rate % (CVR)
The percentage of results you achieved out of all the clicks on your ads. 
This metric will tell you how many of the clicks you enticed people to make were actually converted into new patients or services. If your click through rate is high, but your conversion rate is low, you can work on improving that final step in the process. 
Impressions 
The number of times your ads were on screen. 
The raw number of people who were exposed to your ad, regardless of engagement or how long they spent on the content. 

[fs-toc-omit]Chapter Six

Quick Tips and Tricks for TikTok Success

Now that you understand the process of creating TikTok content and the benefits it can provide your practice, here are some quick ways you can improve your program to maximize views and make more effective ads.

Organic Tips

1. Do Challenges — Challenges not only increase your potential audience members, they offer you content ideas for free. Use them as they come up and you will have a steady stream of content to produce for your TikTok channel that doesn’t require a lot of ideation. 
2. Participate in Trends — Similarly, trends and trending sounds are also a good way to achieve the same benefits of challenges: increasing your audience and amping up your content idea creation.
3. Stitch Popular Videos — Don’t just be a producer of content, be a commentator as well. Stitch popular videos in the medical space and give your expert opinion. After watching viral videos about aesthetic procedures, people are full of questions, and they will happily ask a trained medical professional to answer these questions for them. 

Paid Tips

1. Be Concise — Video ads can be up to 60 seconds long, but after about 21-34 seconds, most of your audience will look at the next video.
2. Choose Smart Audio — 93% of top-performing videos use audio, and 73% of users would stop and look at ads with audio. TikTok suggests tracks above 120 beats per minute for the highest view-through rate
3. Use Captions — 40% of auction ads with the highest view-through rate include captions allowing users to still engage with the sound off.

General Success Tips

1. Dynamic Camera Movement — Using the camera to your advantage and moving it in compelling ways on a focal point is a great way to improve the visual experience for your viewers. Conversely, though, you also need to make sure you keep it steady when trying to provide a clear view on something interesting. 
2. Use Active Voice — In your lead or in your caption, using the subject of your sentence doing the action, also known as using active voice, is better than having a sentence where the subject is the person being acted on. “I chased the dog up the street” is more compelling than “The dog was chased up the street by me.” 
3. Be Concise — Make sure you are getting to the point of your video quickly, and be careful about providing too much detail about whatever topic you are covering. Many medical professionals make the mistake of throwing around too much jargon and getting too technical in their videos — make sure to keep it simple so the average person not employed in the medical field can understand.

[fs-toc-omit]Conclusion

Closing Thoughts 

TikTok is a, should we say, incredible platform that you can leverage. If you’ve never done content production before, it might feel overwhelming when you are diving in. There are a lot of steps involved in the production or the set up, but, luckily for you, all the information you need to create a successful TikTok page is found in this guide. Back in our day, we had to hike 40 miles in the snow to learn how to post to TikTok…

But no, seriously, if you feel like you need some help, even if it is just to understand the ecosystem, give us a call. We are always here to help.