What Practice Marketing Costs, and Why Almost Nobody Publishes It
From $1,200 a month, published here rather than behind a form. The market mostly sits between $3,000 and $6,000 and will not tell you until you are on a call.
From $1,200 a month, published here rather than behind a form. The market mostly sits between $3,000 and $6,000 and will not tell you until you are on a call.
Search for what healthcare marketing costs and you will find articles that never give a number, and agency sites where the pricing page is a contact form.
That is not an accident. A hidden price adjusts to what the practice looks like it can pay, and it makes comparison between two agencies impossible. You cannot negotiate against a number you were never shown.
So here it is: managed work starts at $1,200 a month, the market mostly sits between $3,000 and $6,000, and the rest of this page explains what sits inside those numbers and what quietly sits outside them.
Three separate things get bundled into one invoice. Separating them is how you compare two quotes that look nothing alike.
What you pay for the work: strategy, execution, reporting. A flat number, because a percentage rewards the agency for spending more of your money.
What the platform charges for the clicks. This should go from your card to Google or Meta directly, with the raw export available whenever you ask.
The website, the pages, the changes. Charged as a project by most agencies, which is why sites stop being updated the day the project closes.
Two quotes at the same number can mean completely different things. These are the four lines that explain the difference.
What you pay for strategy, execution and reporting. It should be flat. A percentage of your ad spend means every recommendation to increase the budget is also a recommendation to increase their invoice, which is a conflict sitting at the centre of the relationship rather than at the edge of it.
What the platform charges for clicks. It should leave your own card and go straight to Google or Meta, with the raw platform export available to you at any time. If an agency pays the platform on your behalf and invoices you a round number, that is where margin hides.
Most healthcare agencies quote $8,000 to $25,000 for a website, then charge again for every change. That model is exactly why so many practice sites look untouched since the day they launched. Ongoing beats project in almost every case.
Not the fee. What a booked patient contributes, and what share of enquiries become patients. Those two figures tell you what you can afford per enquiry, and they turn the whole question from a cost into arithmetic you control. No agency can supply them for you.
Of everything I pay you, how much reaches the ad auction?
One question, and it makes two incomparable quotes comparable. If the answer is not a clean split between a fee and a media spend you can verify in the platform, the difference is the margin you were not told about. I found mine a year too late.
A price that only exists after a discovery call is a price built around what you look like you can pay. There is no other reason to withhold a starting figure.
If you cannot see what reached the ad auction, you cannot know what the management actually cost. Ask for the platform export before you sign, not a year later.
The media goes straight to the platform, the fee does not move with the spend, and the number is visible before anyone talks to you.
I trained as a maxillofacial surgeon, moved into orthodontics, and co-founded a three-clinic group in Paris. I then spent time inside Publicis Health learning how medical marketing actually works at scale.
While running the clinics I hired an agency. I paid them more than 20,000 EUR over a year. They owned my Google and Meta ad accounts, not me. They spent a fraction of the budget, kept the rest, and delivered one patient, who came in for a cleaning, while I was selling orthodontic treatment. I only found out when I pulled the account myself and read the raw numbers.
The gap between what I paid and what reached the auction was never on any invoice. That is why the price is on this page and why the media spend goes from your card to the platform, not through mine.
Most healthcare marketing agencies sit between $3,000 and $6,000 a month and will not show you that number until you are already on a call. Here it is upfront.
I sign this personally. The fee is flat, the media goes straight from you to the platform, and the raw spend is yours to inspect whenever you want. No lock-in and no promised patient count, because what happens once a patient calls is yours, not mine.
Territorial exclusivity: one practice per area per treatment. When yours is taken, your competitor cannot buy it.
The first 90 days
What a case contributes and what share of enquiries convert. Those two numbers decide the budget, and they are yours rather than an agency's.
Fee, media, build. Once separated, two quotes that looked identical stop being comparable in the agency's favour.
The site before the traffic, ads if the schedule is thin now, search underneath for the long term. Every account registered in your name.
Not per click, not per lead. The only number that tells you whether the whole arrangement is worth renewing next month.
Managed work starts at $1,200 per month at Forge. The wider market for healthcare practices mostly sits between $3,000 and $6,000 a month for the management alone, with ad spend on top. Anything under a few hundred a month is either automated reporting or one generalist splitting their week across thirty clients.
Because a hidden price is a negotiating position. It lets the quote adjust to what the practice looks like it can pay, and it makes comparison between agencies impossible. There are legitimate reasons for a range, but there is no legitimate reason for a form standing between you and a starting number.
It varies enough that you have to ask explicitly. The usual extras are the website build, content, landing pages, call tracking software and any change requested after launch. At Forge the site and the changes are inside the monthly fee, because a site nobody updates decays into the brochure you replaced.
It should not be, and if it is, ask to see the platform invoice. Media spend belongs on your own card going directly to Google or Meta. An agency that pays the platform on your behalf and invoices you a round number is a place where margin hides comfortably.
Because it scales their revenue without scaling their work, and it is the industry norm rather than a scandal. The problem is structural: every recommendation to increase spend is also a recommendation to increase their invoice. A flat fee removes that conflict entirely.
Most healthcare agencies quote between $8,000 and $25,000 for a build, then charge separately for changes afterwards. That model is why so many practice sites look untouched since launch. Treating the site as ongoing work rather than a project is usually cheaper over three years and always better maintained.
Cheap is fine, unaccountable is not. The question is not the number, it is what you get and whether anyone is measuring it. A low fee where one person handles thirty accounts with no reporting will cost you more than a higher fee where someone can name the source of every patient.
Work backwards from the case. What a booked patient contributes, what share of enquiries become patients, and therefore what you can pay for an enquiry. That number is yours and no agency can supply it, but it turns marketing from a cost into an arithmetic problem you control.
Month to month, in my view. Long contracts exist to protect the agency from being judged, and they usually appear where results are slow to prove. The honest version is telling you upfront that search takes six to twelve months and then letting you leave whenever you want anyway.
Setup fees, charges per change after launch, software licences billed monthly, the cost of leaving, and whether the accounts are in your name. That last one is not a fee but it is the most expensive item on the list, because it decides whether you keep anything you paid for.
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