If you own an orthopedic practice or administer a surgeon group, a marketing budget needs a written scope and a way to review outcomes. Compare the agency fee, media, project work, software and your team’s time together. A retainer alone does not tell you what the engagement will cost or whether it fits the practice.
I run Sprout Sage Solutions’ orthopedic marketing service. I review the public website, local visibility and enquiry path, then discuss priorities with the practice’s decision maker. This guide helps you prepare that discussion without treating an advertised package or another practice’s results as your forecast.
Request my free orthopedic website review →. Share your public practice URL and one priority service or location. A call is optional.
Start with the practice’s priorities and capacity
List the real locations and service lines you want to support, the work already being done and the appointment capacity available. Identify the person who approves the investment and the people responsible for website information, content review and enquiry follow-up.
For a group, separate location needs before assuming one budget fits every office. A new associate, a location with incomplete information and an established service line with an unclear enquiry path may require different work. Marketing does not determine clinical suitability or guarantee consultations or surgical cases.
The cost categories to compare
Agency or specialist work
Ask which technical repairs, existing-page updates, new content, local-profile work and measurement tasks are included. Record the delivery owner, review process, milestones and ongoing reporting responsibilities. Treat advertised capabilities as questions until the proposal identifies the included work.
Media and distribution
Keep advertising management separate from money paid to an advertising platform. If paid directories or other distribution are proposed, identify each cost, purpose, term and account responsibility. Changing spend should follow an agreed approval process rather than an assumption that more spend is always better.
Projects and software
A website rebuild, photography, video or a changed appointment flow can introduce one-time work. State the scope, dependencies and acceptance checks before implementation. Identify hosting, reporting, booking or communication software costs and any additional licenses or integration work.
Practice time
Budget for the administrator’s coordination, the practice’s review of public information and reception or scheduling changes. The actual time depends on the work and the team; there is no universal surgeon-review allowance. Agree who supplies information and how delays will be handled.
What changes an orthopedic marketing scope?
- Locations and surgeons: accurate pages, profile access and review responsibilities need to reflect the practice’s real structure.
- Existing website condition: confirmed technical defects, unclear navigation or broken enquiries may take priority over producing more content.
- Service priorities: work should support services the practice actually offers and has capacity to discuss with prospective patients.
- Content review: the practice supplies and approves clinical information, credentials, images and patient-related material through its own review process.
- Measurement: the scope depends on available aggregate search, enquiry and scheduling evidence, including gaps in call or CRM coverage.
- Implementation dependencies: hosting access, existing suppliers and booking software can affect who can perform a change and when.
Do not assume every website needs rebuilding. Ask the supplier to show the confirmed problem, why the proposed work addresses it and how the result will be checked. Compare a repair or existing-page update with a rebuild against the same documented needs.
A blank scope and budget worksheet
Complete one record for each proposed engagement and reporting period. These are fields for your practice and supplier to fill in, not market rates or a forecast.
- Practice locations, surgeons and priority service lines.
- Available consultation capacity and scheduling contact.
- Current website, local-presence and enquiry issues supported by evidence.
- Included deliverables, exclusions and named delivery owners.
- Setup, recurring agency, media, software and project costs, itemized separately.
- Internal coordination, content approval and reception responsibilities.
- Implementation milestones, prerequisites and acceptance evidence.
- Qualified-enquiry, booking and attendance definitions.
- Duplicate, spam, test and unrelated-contact exclusions.
- Attribution method, data coverage and review dates.
- Finance-approved contribution assumptions and the entity receiving it.
- Account access, content rights, notice terms and handover deliverables.
Measure the enquiry-to-attendance path before assigning value
Keep received enquiries, qualified enquiries, booked consultations and attended consultations separate. Define a qualified enquiry using the practice’s agreed business rule, and record the limitations of that rule. It is not a clinical assessment or proof of a future procedure.
Use the same enquiry cohort and outcome cutoff when comparing stages. Record booking dates, appointment dates, reschedules, cancellations and no-shows consistently. Dividing this week’s bookings by this week’s enquiries can mislead when those bookings originated earlier. The orthopedic intake worksheet helps document that path; the KPI guide provides related measurement questions.
For an observed cost per attended consultation, divide the costs of acquiring a defined enquiry cohort by the attended consultations originating from that cohort, using a stated later attendance cutoff when needed. State whether the costs include agency, media, software, projects and internal work. If the denominator is zero or attribution is incomplete, report that limitation rather than inventing a ratio.
Use finance-approved assumptions for planning
Your finance team can estimate contribution retained after the variable costs of delivering care over an agreed horizon. Define whether the model uses consultation-only contribution or expected downstream contribution per attendee. If downstream care is included, incorporate its probability; do not assign a full surgical-case value to every attendee. Billed charges are not automatically collected revenue or contribution. Do not infer the value of a surgical case from a marketing page or another practice’s figures.
An illustrative planning model is: qualified enquiries × enquiry-to-booking share × booking-to-attendance share × contribution per attended consultation. Subtract the defined acquisition costs to estimate contribution after acquisition. Every input comes from your practice’s data or an explicitly labelled assumption. Contribution after acquisition is not net profit: identify fixed overhead and any other costs excluded from the calculation. Apply the same horizon and cost treatment across scenarios. This model is decision support, not a promise of incremental demand or evidence that marketing caused the outcome.
Google’s conversion-value example illustrates downstream conversion and margin assumptions for a fictional business. It does not establish orthopedic fees or expected results. Conversion counts and assigned values are also different measurements. This guide does not recommend importing patient information into advertising platforms.
Separate practice, facility and ancillary economics
If a proposed engagement covers an ambulatory surgery centre or another related entity, identify which entity pays each cost and receives each contribution. A practice’s assumptions cannot automatically be applied to a facility or ancillary service. Record any allocation and avoid counting the same outcome twice.
Clinical priorities, eligibility and treatment decisions remain with the practice. Your designated reviewers and advisers determine the applicable requirements for public claims, patient-related material, account access and data handling. A marketing scope should state those responsibilities rather than promise universal legal or clinical compliance.
Compare proposals on accountability
A flat fee, hourly arrangement or percentage-based fee needs the same scrutiny: work included, billing basis, spending authority, reporting, exclusions and handover. The billing model alone does not prove that a provider will recommend the right work.
Ask for current written terms, including setup commitments, renewal, cancellation notice and ownership or export rights. Confirm what access the practice retains to its domain, website, local profiles, advertising accounts and tracking numbers. Do not assume a month-to-month label settles every exit obligation.
Relevant references should explain the service scope, market, starting position, dates and what was actually measured. Another industry’s project can demonstrate aspects of a method, but it cannot establish the results your orthopedic practice will achieve. Use the agency shortlist to prepare source-backed proposal questions.
Questions owners and administrators ask
What does orthopedic practice marketing cost?
It depends on the documented work, locations, existing systems, media and internal responsibilities. Obtain an itemized proposal against that scope. I do not provide an invented market average or use a low-price package as a substitute for a practice-specific review.
Should we add Google Ads immediately?
First check the services being promoted, capacity, enquiry handling, tracking and approval responsibilities. Paid media has a separate budget and management scope. It does not solve every website or reception problem.
How quickly can we judge SEO work?
Review access, implementation and measurement early, then assess relevant search visibility and enquiry outcomes over an agreed period. Google’s SEO Starter Guide notes that changes take different amounts of time and may not produce a noticeable impact. No fixed consultation or ranking deadline applies to every practice.
What should be agreed before an engagement starts?
Deliverables, exclusions, costs, responsibilities, approvals, measurement access and handover terms should be documented. Work requiring a separate project or license needs an explicit decision rather than an assumed inclusion.
What should I bring to a scope review?
Share your public website, role, locations and the business problem you want to solve. Keep patient records, passwords and confidential financial details out of the website form. Aggregate planning figures can be discussed through an agreed review process when needed.
Check the public pages before agreeing the budget
Not sure which website work belongs in your budget? Start with a free orthopedic website review. Share your public practice URL and one priority service or location. You will receive three prioritized observations, affected page links and practical next checks. Use them to brief your team or compare a proposed scope. A call is optional; implementation and private-account analysis are agreed separately.
Request my free orthopedic website review →
Request an orthopedic marketing scope review
If you own or administer an orthopedic practice and are considering ongoing marketing support, I can review the public website and discuss the priorities with you. The initial conversation identifies questions and possible scope; implementation and ongoing delivery require a separately agreed proposal.
