The question almost always arrives the same way: “Should we be on TikTok?” And underneath it, nearly always, is a different question. why isn't what we're doing working?
Those are not the same problem, and adding a platform rarely solves the second one. Before spending anything on a new channel, it is worth being honest about which one you actually have.
The test that saves you a wasted quarter
Look at last month. Count the enquiries you received. Every form, DM, missed call and WhatsApp message. Then count how many became a booked, attended appointment.
If the gap is large
You do not have a traffic problem. Sending more people into a process that already loses most of them will lose more of them, faster, at a higher cost. A new platform makes this worse, not better, because you are now paying to fill a leaking bucket from two taps instead of one.
If the gap is small and you simply want more of them. Then, and only then, is a second channel a sensible conversation.
In our experience most clinics asking about TikTok are firmly in the first group. That is not a criticism. It is the normal state of a business where the owner is also the person holding the needle, and the phone.
What TikTok is genuinely good at
It is a discovery platform rather than an intent platform. Nobody opens TikTok looking for a clinic. They are shown something and become interested. Which has real consequences for the kind of enquiry you get.
- Reach beyond your existing audience. Content is distributed on interest signals rather than who already follows you, so it puts your clinic in front of people who have never heard of it.
- Treatments that are legible on video. Anything with a visible before and after does better here than anything requiring explanation.
- A younger audience than Meta typically reaches for the same budget, which matters for some treatments and is actively unhelpful for others.
And what it is not good at
Discovery traffic is colder. Someone who was scrolling for entertainment thirty seconds ago is a materially different prospect from someone who searched for your treatment, and the enquiries reflect that. Expect more of them, converting at a lower rate, with more price-shopping.
For a high-value treatment with a long decision cycle, that combination is often worse economics than a smaller number of better-qualified enquiries, even at a higher cost per enquiry. Cheaper leads and better leads are different things, and only one of them pays your rent.
The number that matters is not what an enquiry costs. It is what a booked client costs.
What we would look at before adding any channel
When a clinic asks us about TikTok, this is the order we work in, and the platform question is genuinely the last one.
- How fast does the first reply go out? Not your best day. Your average, including evenings and weekends, which is when most beauty enquiries actually arrive.
- What happens to an enquiry that does not book immediately? For most clinics: nothing. That is usually the single largest recoverable loss in the business.
- Which treatment carries your best margin? Not your most popular. Volume in a low-margin treatment can keep a clinic busy and still broke.
- Is your current channel actually saturated? Most clinics have nowhere near exhausted Meta. Adding a platform to escape a badly-run campaign just gives you two of them.
If those four are in order and you still want more volume, TikTok is a reasonable next step. If any one of them is not, fixing it will almost certainly return more than a new channel would, and it costs nothing in ad spend.
Where we stand
Our published campaign data comes from Meta, where appointment requests have ranged from roughly €6 to €18 each depending on the treatment and the month. We do not publish TikTok figures because we do not have any we would stand behind, and we would rather say that than imply otherwise.
What we will say is that the platform is rarely the reason a clinic is quiet. The reply time usually is.
