Marketing for Doctors

The short answer

Marketing for doctors starts with controlling the first page of results for the physician's own name. A patient gets a referral, searches the name, and decides on reviews, third-party profiles, and photos the practice does not control. New patients after that come from local search for the conditions and procedures the practice treats. Physician advertising is regulated by state medical boards, which restrict specialist and board-certified claims, and by the FTC, which assesses civil penalties for fake or incentivized reviews. The count that matters at the end of it is booked appointments.

physician practices under management — verify with Tim

Private practices on retainer

typical number of unclaimed third-party profiles found per physician in an audit — verify

Unclaimed profiles found in a name-search audit

You do not own the first page for your own name

Search a physician's name and the practice site is rarely first. Healthgrades, Vitals, WebMD, Zocdoc, US News, and a payer directory all rank above it, most carrying stale credentials, a wrong address, and a rating built from four reviews left in 2019.

Those profiles were never claimed because nobody in the practice knew they existed. Meanwhile the referral you worked ten years to earn goes to whoever looked better on that page.

Claiming and correcting them is a weekend of work that most practices never do, and it books more patients than any ad campaign we could run for the same money.

Specialists are marketing to two audiences with one website

A specialty practice needs patients and it needs referring physicians, and those two visitors want opposite things. The patient wants plain language about what hurts and how fast you can be seen. The referring PCP wants your fax number, your referral form, and how quickly you send a consult note back.

One homepage cannot serve both. The practices that grow build a separate referring provider section with a real form and a stated turnaround, and treat the patient side as a local search problem.

Nobody measures the referral side, which is why it stays broken. A tracked number on the referral page tells you within a month which referring offices use it.

Marketing for Doctors: how we run it for physicians and medical practices

Name-search cleanup

Claim and correct every third-party profile that ranks for the physician's name. Credentials, hospital affiliations, accepted plans, current photo, and a link back to the practice. This is always the first project.

Condition and procedure pages

Patients search symptoms and procedure names, not specialty names. One page per condition treated, written at a reading level a worried person can process on a phone.

Practitioner and practice listings on Google

A practice listing plus a separate practitioner listing per physician per specialty per location, configured to Google's rules so they reinforce each other instead of competing.

A review system that survives a busy clinic

Automated requests after the visit, routed so complaints reach the practice manager first. Response templates that never confirm anyone was a patient.

A referring provider path with its own tracking

A referral page, a form that reaches a monitored inbox, a stated consult-note turnaround, and a tracked phone number so you know which referring offices send.

Services

What we would run here

Online reputation management

One angry post on a thin profile costs you calls you will never know you lost. We build the review volume that absorbs it and write the responses that will not get you fined.

Local search marketing

Families search for help close to home, and the map pack sits above every organic result on that search. Ranking your locations there is a different job than ranking a website, and for treatment providers it carries rules nobody else deals with.

Search engine optimization

Other agencies report positions; we report phone calls. Every keyword we chase is one a family types when they are ready to place someone, and every call traces back to the page that earned it.

Web design and development

Structure first, then speed, then the part that looks good. Most facility sites lose rankings to their own URL map and lose calls to a phone number buried in a hamburger menu.

Call tracking and analytics

Every page, every campaign, and every listing gets its own number. When admissions picks up, we already know what made the phone ring.

Design and branding

A mother comparing four facilities at 1am is deciding who to trust with her son before she reads a full sentence. Stock beaches and a logo made in 2011 answer that question for you, badly.

Free audit

Want to see where your calls are going?

We audit your rankings, ads, and call tracking against the programs you compete with, then show you what is leaking. Yours to keep either way.

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Compliance

The rules that apply to this category

This is the part that catches agencies who have not worked in this category before.

State medical board advertising rules

Physician advertising is regulated at the state level, and the rules are not uniform. Most boards prohibit claims of superiority that cannot be substantiated, restrict use of the word specialist to recognized specialties, and limit board certified claims to boards recognized by ABMS or the AOA. Several states require the physician's name in the ad, and states with cosmetic advertising rules regulate before-and-after photos, including whether the images may be retouched or must disclose that results vary. states where the practice is licensed — confirm board advertising rules for each

FTC endorsement rules and the fake review rule

The FTC's 2023 endorsement guides require disclosure of any material connection behind a testimonial, including staff and family reviews. The 2024 rule on consumer reviews and testimonials goes further and carries civil penalties for buying reviews, suppressing negative ones, or using review-gating that only routes happy patients to a public platform. Gating is the violation practices commit most often, usually on an agency's advice.

Google Business Profile rules for practitioners

Google allows one practitioner listing per physician, per specialty, per location, in addition to the practice listing. Practitioners who leave must have their listing removed or transferred, and a physician practicing at multiple sites needs the listing at the primary location only. Duplicate practitioner listings are the most common reason a practice cannot rank in the map pack, and they are almost always left behind by a former partner or a prior agency.

HIPAA authorization for patient stories and clinical photos

A patient testimonial, case photo, or before-and-after image requires written HIPAA authorization that names the specific use, not a verbal yes at discharge or a signature on a general consent form. Authorizations are revocable, which means the marketing team needs a process for pulling an image off a website and out of an ad account when one is withdrawn.

Sources

FAQ

Questions we get asked

I get all my patients from referrals. Why would I market?

Because referred patients still search your name before they book, and a stale profile with a two-star average loses some of them silently. Holding onto the referrals you already earn is usually worth more to a specialist than new demand.

Can we ask patients for reviews?

Yes. You cannot pay for them, write them, or filter who gets asked based on how the visit went. The FTC's 2024 rule made review gating enforceable with civil penalties, and it is still the most common thing agencies quietly build into a review tool.

How do I respond to a negative review without violating HIPAA?

Do not confirm the person was ever a patient and do not mention anything about a visit. A safe response acknowledges the concern, states your standard, and gives an office number to call. It is boring on purpose. Anything more specific is a disclosure.

Should each doctor have their own website?

Almost never. Splitting authority across sites weakens all of them. What each physician needs is a real profile page on the practice site, a claimed practitioner listing, and corrected third-party profiles.

What does this cost for a single-physician practice?

Less than a multi-location group. Our best-fit clients run $10,000 a month in SEO or $50,000 to $100,000 a month in paid media, and a single-physician practice usually sits under both. Name-search cleanup is often a one-time project rather than a retainer. The free audit tells you whether you need ongoing work at all.

Can you guarantee first-page rankings?

No, and anyone who does is telling you something about themselves. What we commit to is a baseline of tracked calls before we start and a report every month showing what changed.

Free audit

Find out where your calls are leaking.

We take apart your rankings, your ads, and your call tracking, then show you where the calls are going instead of to you. The audit is yours to keep whether we work together or not.

Prefer the phone? (561) 269-2833