Opening a new practice: the marketing checklist

If you have signed a lease, or you are close to it, marketing is probably somewhere near the bottom of a very long list that starts with equipment, staff and fitout. That is a reasonable place for it to sit on any given day, but the order matters more than the effort. A website built in the last fortnight before opening, on top of a domain name that could not be secured because someone else already had it, is a common and entirely avoidable way to start behind. This guide sets out the order that actually works, roughly what to spend where money is tight, and what a realistic first few months looks like.

The order that actually works

Signage, business cards and a website should all say the same name, and that name should have a domain behind it before any of those things get printed or built. It sounds obvious until a practice discovers, after the sign is ordered, that the exact domain matching its chosen name was registered years ago by an unrelated business. Check domain availability at the same time you are settling on a name, not after. A domain costs very little to hold for a year even if the final decision is still weeks away.

Claim the Google Business Profile the day the lease is signed, not the week before opening. Verification can take time, and a profile that has been sitting quietly for a couple of months, gathering a correct address and category, tends to be treated more favourably than one that appears from nowhere the day the doors open. It is entirely normal to mark it as opening soon and add real details as they firm up.

The website does not need to wait for a finished fitout. A simple page with the practice name, location, opening date, services and a way to make contact can go live well before there is a single professional photo to use, using a generic but honest image in the meantime rather than nothing at all. Once fitout is finished and a proper shoot has happened, that page gets replaced with the real thing. What matters is that something accurate and findable exists from the earliest useful moment, and that it keeps improving rather than sitting untouched once it is live.

Decide on a booking system earlier than feels necessary, because it shapes how the website gets built. A site designed around an embedded booking calendar looks and behaves differently from one designed around a phone-first enquiry form, and retrofitting one approach onto the other later is genuinely more work than building around the right one from the start. This decision does not need to be permanent, but it needs to be made before the website brief is written, not after the site is finished.

What to spend on first when money is tight

A Google Business Profile costs nothing and matters more than almost anything else on this list, because it is often the first thing a nearby patient actually sees before they ever reach a website. Getting the category, address, phone number and opening hours exactly right there earns attention out of proportion to the time it takes. After that, a simple, accurate website with correct contact details and a clear description of what the practice treats matters more than an elaborate one, at least at first. Basic photography of the actual space, even taken on a good phone rather than a professional shoot, beats generic stock images of a practice that is not yours.

What can honestly wait: a large library of blog content written before a single patient has walked through the door, paid advertising switched on before there is capacity to answer the phone calls it generates, and location pages for suburbs the practice does not yet serve. None of these are wrong ideas. They are ideas that pay off once there is a foundation under them, and spending on them before that foundation exists usually means paying twice, once now and once again when the foundation finally gets built properly.

The referral groundwork marketing amplifies

A new practice's earliest patients often come from somewhere marketing did not directly cause: a nearby GP, a specialist, an allied health practice that now knows a new option exists close by. Introducing yourself to those practices, in person where that is practical, is not a marketing task exactly, but marketing does its best work once that groundwork exists rather than instead of it. A website that clearly explains how to refer a patient, with an actual referral pathway spelled out rather than only a generic contact form, gives a referrer somewhere useful to send someone the same afternoon you meet them.

This is also where being findable matters in a quieter way than a patient search. A referrer who has met you once, and later wants to double-check your address or confirm you are still accepting new patients, should find accurate information in a single search. A profile that still says opening soon three months after opening, or a website with the old suburb still in the footer, undoes some of the goodwill from that first conversation.

Compliant launch offers

A new-patient offer is a completely normal way to encourage a first booking, and nothing about opening a practice changes the advertising rules that apply to any other health advertising. If you offer a discount, a free initial consultation or any other inducement, the terms have to be stated in the advertisement itself: what exactly is included, any conditions, and how long the offer runs. What does not belong in a launch campaign is urgency built around a health outcome, phrasing that pushes someone to book now or risk missing out on something clinical. An offer with a plain expiry date is fine. An offer dressed up as a health warning is not.

Realistic timelines: SEO versus ads at launch

A brand-new domain and a brand-new Google Business Profile have no history behind them, and search rankings tend to build gradually over the first six to twelve months rather than arriving in the first few weeks. This is normal and not a sign anything has been done wrong. It means a practice relying purely on organic search in its opening months will likely see a slow start regardless of how good the website is, simply because Google has not yet had time to build confidence in a new listing.

Paid search can produce enquiries from the day it goes live, which makes it a sensible way to bridge that early gap while the organic presence builds underneath it. Cost per enquiry is usually higher at the very start, before the account has any performance history to draw on, and that is worth budgeting for honestly rather than being surprised by it. The sensible approach for most new practices is to run both from day one: paid search for the immediate runway, and the website and Google Business Profile doing the slower, compounding work that eventually carries most of the enquiry volume on its own.

• The opening checklist
• Lock the practice name and secure the matching domainDo this before signage or business cards are ordered
• Create the Google Business Profile the day the lease is signedList it as opening soon with a correct address and category
• Decide on a booking system before the website brief is writtenIt shapes whether the site needs an embedded calendar or a simple enquiry form
• Publish a simple, accurate website well before opening dayName, location, services, opening date and a way to get in touch is enough to start
• Introduce yourself to nearby referrers in personGive them a reason to send someone your way in the first weeks
• Book photography as soon as the space is presentableReal photos replace placeholder images the moment they exist
• Write any launch offer with its terms stated plainlyNo bare asterisks, and no urgency tied to a health outcome
• Budget for paid search alongside SEO in the opening monthsOrganic rankings take time to build; ads can fill the early gap
• Recheck every listing once fitout is finished and doors are openHours, address, photos and the opening-soon flag all need updating

None of this needs to happen perfectly or all at once. It needs to happen roughly in this order, because each step makes the next one easier: the name protects the domain, the domain protects the website, the website supports the referral conversations, and the referral conversations and the paid search runway carry the practice through the months it takes for organic search to catch up. A free growth plan is a straightforward way to get this sequenced properly for your specific opening date, rather than guessing at it from a generic list. If the website is the piece you are least sure how to sequence, that is the conversation worth having first.