What to Look For When Hiring a Medical Marketing Company for Your Practice

 

Hiring a medical marketing company to help your healthcare clinic grow and reach new heights can be a smart move. But before you make that decision, it’s important to understand both the pros and cons of choosing such an agency, what to look for, and how to best optimize your agency relationship. 
 

Learning from the mistakes of others and knowing what to expect from a medical marketing firm can add value to an informed decision that will best serve your clinic needs.

 

The Pros of Hiring a Medical Marketing Agency

 

1. Medical Marketing Expertise

One of the biggest advantages of hiring a medical marketing firm is their expertise in the field. Healthcare marketing is a highly specialized skill set, and these companies typically employ trained professionals who are up-to-date on the latest trends, technologies, analytics, and strategies for successful campaigns.

 

With their knowledge at your fingertips, you can trust that they’ll create effective campaigns for your practice or clinic that will help bring in more of the patients you prefer and increased profitability.

 

2. Time Savings

Another great advantage of working with a medical marketing agency is the time savings they offer. Creating an effective healthcare marketing campaign requires research and experience, as well as resources like healthcare SEO experts, graphic designers, copywriters, as well as the entire approval process—it’s no small feat!

 

When you work with an agency, they take care of all this work for you so you can focus on other priorities within your business.

 

3. Major Cost Efficiency

If done right, working with an experienced medical marketing firm can actually save you money in the long run by helping generate better results than if you tried to do everything yourself, in house, or with another type of provider.

 

A good medical marketing agency will be able to target their efforts more specifically while staying within budget—this typically results in higher ROI than when compared to running ads without any strategic direction or optimization standard behind them.

 

4. Big Cost Savings

Every project or campaign has it's nuances. Depending on the marketing needs, hiring internally may be the better fit. If you're evaluating between hiring internally or outsourcing to an agency, the agency model is generally half of the cost. Add on experience, multi-level support, and payroll/PTO savings, hiring an agency is typically the more efficient route.

 

5. High Quality Work

When it comes to SEO, brand strategy, graphic design, etc, medical marketing agencies hire the best. This ensures a higher quality outcome form your medical or healthcare organization.

 

The Cons

 

1. Lack of Control

With an agency that does not have an approval process in place, one potential downside to using an outside agency for healthcare marketing is lack of control over the process—particularly if you don’t have direct access or communication with their staff members handling your account(s).

 

This means it could be difficult (or even impossible) for you to change strategies or adjust messaging on-the-fly should something need tweaking or optimization throughout the course of campaigning—something that could affect results down the line depending on what changes need made.

 

Keeping connected throughout the important steps is key to developing and implementing a great medical marketing campaign. This is the exact reason why a fractional marketing manager plan works so well for hospitals and clinics.

 

2. Hidden Costs

Fees can be rampant. In addition to lower ROI, some practice managers and doctors alike worry about hidden fees associated with working with medical marketers since most firms charge some type of additional fee (such as setup fees or additional charges based on performance).

 

Before signing any agreements it’s important to read through the fine print so there are no surprises later down the line when it comes time pay bills—and so everyone involved is clear on expected costs associated with services provided by the agency prior and during campaign rollout/management/monitoring phases alike.

 

Partner with a medical marketing company that provides transparent pricing and never operates on hidden costs.

 

3. Risk vs Reward Ratio

Lastly, there always remains a risk/reward ratio when exploring new possibilities within healthcare marketing—especially when using external sources like agencies as opposed to doing everything yourself (or relying solely on internal personnel).

 

It may take extra effort from both parties involved but having regular check-ins throughout campaign life cycles can help ensure everyone stays on track towards achieving desired goals and objectives while also helping minimize risk factors along way too—so it’s important keep communication channels open between both parties whenever possible throughout entire process from start to finish.

 

4. Being Oversold

80% of medical marketing agencies are in it for one thing: their own bottom line. Unfortunately this comes with paying for  marketing strategies that do not have a profitable impact the client's return on advertising spend (ROAS).

 

The other 20% however, focus on client needs, goals and objectives. This mindset, although rarer in the industry, is what fuels successful campaigns over the long-term.

 

5. Reinventing the Wheel

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it." This is a saying that comes from thousands of years of trial and error.

 

With this said, some medical agencies just want to recreate branding, SEO, or web design aspects simply to increase cost. If the data suggests a piece of the marketing mix is performing well, there is no reason to spend the extra cost to recreate.

 

If your agency isn't focused on and/or doesn't calculate a Return on Advertising Spend (ROAS), most likely this means that there is none. WebMarkets Medical is a medical marketing company that focuses on driving successful results, hitting goals, and winning as a team.

 

The Keys to Victory

Partner with a medical marketing agency that puts skin in the game, has the experience, and bandwidth to position your organization on the road to 100x. This involves a few key aspects:

 

• A reliable team who collaborates and sticks to an ongoing task schedule.
• Has proven systems and strategies in place to accomplish your goals.
• Is dedicated to your brand and coordinates biweekly or monthly calls.
• Is focused on hitting KPI goals and can accurately track success.
• Has the tools and strategies available to create a unique brand strategy that is sustainable over the long term.
• The medical marketing agency has a variety of reviews and references.