How patients decide
Two paths. The urgent one is a symptom or an emergency, searched on a phone, resolved from the map pack and a phone call within minutes. The considered one is a procedure or a condition: IVF, a knee replacement, orthodontics, cardiac screening, researched over weeks, discussed privately, decided on the reputation of a named doctor rather than a hospital brand.
Both paths end in a phone call or a WhatsApp message far more often than a form, which is the single most important thing to know before measuring anything.
Which channels earn their place
- Local search first. For the urgent path, the Google Business Profile is the whole game, and it is where a clinic with an accurate profile beats a larger hospital with a neglected one. See healthcare SEO.
- Condition and procedure pages for the considered path, one per procedure, answering cost, duration, recovery and risk, because those are the questions and nobody wants to ask them out loud.
- Meta Ads for procedures with a decision window. This is the one channel where a Nepali clinic result exists to point at: a Kathmandu fertility clinic produced over 150 qualified leads at about NPR 180 each using doctor-led video and Nepali-language creative, with WhatsApp follow-up. See Facebook and Instagram Ads for healthcare.
- Google Ads for urgent and high-value procedures, where being present at the moment of search is worth the click cost: Google Ads for healthcare.
- Doctor profiles as the trust layer. Patients choose a person. Named pages with qualifications, registration, experience and a photograph outperform any amount of hospital copy.
- Automation for the appointment cycle. Reminders, follow-ups and review requests, which reduce no-shows more reliably than anything in marketing: automation for clinics and hospitals.
What is different about health advertising
Both Google and Meta restrict health advertising, and Meta treats some health categories as special ad categories with reduced targeting. Personalised claims, before-and-after imagery and anything promising an outcome are restricted or prohibited, and remarketing to people who visited a sensitive condition page is limited by design.
Practically, that means the copy describes what a treatment involves, who it suits and what recovery looks like, rather than what it will achieve for a specific patient. It also means creative gets rejected sometimes, and campaigns need building with that in mind rather than treating a rejection as a surprise. Patient privacy applies to tracking too: conversion events must not carry condition or treatment detail.
A sensible first 90 days
- Weeks 1 to 3. Business Profile accuracy, call and WhatsApp tracking installed, and doctor profile pages, because these three change the numbers fastest and cost the least.
- Weeks 4 to 8. Procedure pages for the two or three treatments you actually want more of, written around patient questions rather than clinical description.
- Weeks 6 to 12. One paid channel launched, chosen by whether the procedure is urgent or considered, with doctor-led creative rather than stock imagery.
- Throughout. Appointment reminders and review requests automated, and monthly reporting on appointments by source, not clicks.
What I see most often
- Untracked phone calls, so the clinic concludes the website does not work while the phone rings.
- One “Services” page instead of a page per procedure.
- Stock photography of models instead of the actual doctors and premises.
- Departments listed by clinical name rather than by what a patient would search.
- Paid campaigns rejected for policy and abandoned rather than rebuilt within the rules.
Full stack for this industry
Healthcare is one of the industries where all five silos genuinely apply, because urgent and considered demand need different channels. See healthcare SEO, Google Ads for healthcare, Facebook and Instagram Ads for healthcare, automation for clinics and hospitals, and for dental practices specifically, dental SEO.