Private Practice Marketing Questions, Answered Honestly
Meet Tony Gnau
Tony Gnau is the Founder and Chief Storytelling Officer at T60 Health, the healthcare video specialists.
A 3x Emmy Award–winning journalist and 18-time Telly Award winner, Tony has spent more than 20 years helping healthcare organizations use strategic, human-centered video to build trust, simplify complex care topics, and meaningfully connect with patients.
He is the author of the Amazon #1 Bestseller “Lights, Camera, Impact,” and a sought-after speaker at leading industry events including Content Marketing World, MarketingProfs B2B Forum, and HIMSS.
How do I get more patients without depending on referrals?
Referrals are great when they're flowing. The problem is you can't control them. You’re not always top of mind for your patients, a referring doc retires, a hospital system shifts priorities, or a colleague starts sending patients somewhere else… and suddenly you're scrambling.
The practices that grow predictably aren't waiting on referrals. They're building something that works whether or not the phone rings from another doctor's office. The key is getting in front of patients… before they need you.
Think about how patients actually make decisions today. They don't just take a referral and call. They go home, they search, they watch. They look you up on social media, they check your website, they read reviews. What they're really asking is: "Can I trust this person?"
That's where a strategic video content plan changes everything. Video lets you answer that question at scale, before a patient ever sets foot in your office. When someone sees you on camera, hears your voice, watches you explain what you do and how you care for patients… you've already started building a relationship. And when they do need a doctor, they're not comparing you to every other practice in town. They already feel like they know you.
That's how you stop depending on referrals and start building a patient flow you actually control.
What actually works for marketing a small medical practice?
Let's talk about what doesn't work first, because you've probably already tried some of it.
Google ads alone don't work the way most agencies pitch them. Here's the reality… only a tiny slice of your market is actively searching for a doctor at any given moment. Every practice in your area is fighting over that same small group with the same tactics: ads, SEO, stock photos, generic taglines. It's expensive, it's competitive, and even when it works, patients who find you that way haven't built any trust with you yet. They're still comparing you to everyone else.
Sporadic social media posts don't work either. Not because social media is bad, but because random content without a strategy behind it doesn't move patients to action. It just fills a feed.
What does work is a consistent approach that builds trust over time. The practices that grow steadily are the ones that show up regularly with content that helps patients feel connected to them before they ever book an appointment. That means video that shows who you are. Educational content that answers the questions patients are already asking. A presence that makes you feel familiar even to someone who's never met you.
It's not complicated. But it does require consistency, strategy, and a system that actually gets executed… not just planned.
How much should a private practice spend on marketing?
Fair question, and one most agencies dodge. Let's just answer it directly.
The honest answer is it depends on your revenue, your growth goals, and what a new patient is actually worth to your practice. Those three numbers tell you everything, and they're different for every practice, which is why a one-size-fits-all answer isn't very useful.
That's exactly why we built our Private Practice Marketing ROI Calculator. You plug in your annual gross revenue, your patient lifetime value, and your revenue goal for next year, and it shows you what a reasonable marketing investment looks like for a practice like yours… along with how many new patients you'd need each month to break even.
Try our Private Practice Marketing ROI Calculator.
Most practices are surprised by that last number. When you see that you only need 3 to 5 new patients per month to cover the cost of a well-run marketing program, the investment looks a lot different than it did as a line item in your budget.
One thing worth saying regardless of what the calculator shows you… marketing you can't measure isn't really marketing. If an agency can't tell you your cost per new patient and show you exactly where your results are coming from, that's a problem… no matter what they charge.
Is video marketing worth it for a small medical practice?
Short answer: yes. But let me explain why, because the reason matters.
Patients don't choose doctors the way they used to. Credentials matter, sure. Location matters. Insurance matters. But what drives the final decision is something more emotional: "Do I feel like I can trust this person?" And trust is built through familiarity. Through seeing someone's face. Hearing their voice. Getting a sense of how they actually think and communicate.
Video does that faster than anything else in marketing. Research shows that 77% of people look for visual content before choosing a healthcare provider. And 87% of marketers across industries report that video has a direct positive impact on their results.
For private practices specifically, video levels a playing field that has been tilted against you. Large health systems spend millions making themselves visible and familiar. You can't outspend them. But you can out-connect them. A doctor who shows up on video consistently… answering patient questions, explaining procedures, sharing their approach to care… builds more genuine trust than any corporate campaign ever could.
Small practices actually have an advantage here. Patients can see the real you. Not a brand. Not a system. A person who cares about them. That's exactly what video captures… if it's done right.
How do I know if a marketing agency understands healthcare?
Great question to ask before you hire anyone. Here are the things worth checking.
First, ask whether they've worked specifically with healthcare providers… not just "health and wellness" companies, but actual medical practices. There's a big difference between someone who's marketed a gym and someone who understands physician culture, patient privacy, compliance requirements, and what it actually takes to earn a doctor's trust.
Second, ask about HIPAA. Any agency working in healthcare should be able to explain specifically how they protect patient information in everything they produce… from shoot day protocols to how content is stored and distributed. If they give you a vague answer, that's a red flag.
Third, ask how they measure ROI. Not "what metrics do you track,” but specifically how they connect their marketing activity to actual patient appointments and revenue. Generic analytics reports are not the same thing as knowing your cost per new patient.
And fourth, ask for examples from practices like yours. Specialty-specific and size-specific examples. A healthcare marketing agency should be able to show you what results looked like for a practice in a similar situation, not just name drop large health systems to impress you.
At T60 Health, we've spent 20 years producing content for healthcare organizations including Walgreens, CommonSpirit Health, and Kerlan Jobe Orthopaedics. That background isn't a vanity credential. It's just experience that means you're not our learning curve.
Can video marketing be HIPAA compliant?
Yes… and if anyone tells you otherwise, they don't know healthcare.
HIPAA compliance in video marketing comes down to following a clear set of protocols on every project. Here's what that actually looks like in practice.
Signed patient consent before anyone appears on camera. No patient faces, names, records, or identifiable information used without explicit written authorization. Secure file storage with proper access controls throughout the production process. A compliance review before anything goes live. And nothing… nothing… gets published without the practice's final approval.
These aren't complicated rules, but they require someone who knows to follow them. A general marketing agency that doesn't specialize in healthcare may not even know what questions to ask, let alone have systems in place to answer them correctly.
For us, this is built into every step of our process. Healthcare is all we do. We understand the regulatory environment. And frankly, protecting your reputation matters to us as much as it matters to you.
I'm uncomfortable on camera. Can video marketing still work for my practice?
Every doctor we've ever worked with has said some version of this.
You went to school for 10-plus years to master medicine. Nobody taught you how to be comfortable on camera. Of course it feels awkward. That's completely normal, and it doesn't mean video won't work for you.
Here's what we've learned after producing hundreds of healthcare videos: the doctors who look most natural on camera are almost never the ones who think they're good at it. They're the ones who forget the camera is there because someone drew out their genuine expertise through a real conversation. That's exactly what our process is designed to do.
Now, every video producer is different, but here’s how we handle this issue.
You don't prepare a script. You don't memorize anything. We sit down, ask you the questions your patients actually want answered, and you just talk… the same way you'd talk to a patient who asked you how a procedure works. The whole thing typically takes about 30 minutes. We handle everything else.
The result is video that looks professional, sounds credible, and feels authentic… because it is. Your comfort on camera grows over time, too. By the third or fourth shoot, most of our clients wonder what they were so worried about.
How long does it take to see results from healthcare video marketing?
Longer than most agencies will tell you, and shorter than most doctors fear.
Here's the honest answer: meaningful, measurable growth from a video content strategy typically takes 3 to 6 months. Sometimes a little sooner depending on your market, your specialty, and how consistently the content is distributed. Rarely overnight.
The reason is simple. Video marketing builds trust, and trust isn't built in a week. You're not running a one-time ad campaign that spikes and disappears. You're creating a library of content that works for you continuously… showing up when a prospective patient searches for a doctor in your specialty, when they scroll through social media, when they land on your website trying to decide if you're the right fit.
That content compounds over time. A video you produce in month one is still working for you in month six and beyond.
The practices that get frustrated and quit at month two almost always miss the results that were coming in month four. The ones that stay consistent are the ones who end up with predictable patient flow they don't have to stress over.
If anyone promises you 15 new patients in your first month, that's a red flag. Not because growth isn't possible, but because that kind of promise usually means someone is telling you what you want to hear instead of what's actually true.
What should I look for in a healthcare marketing contract?
This is smart to think through before you sign anything.
The most important thing is the length of the initial commitment. Long-term contracts that lock you in for 12 to 24 months without any performance benchmarks are a problem. Look for an agency that offers shorter initial terms… 3 to 6 months is reasonable… so you can evaluate whether it's actually working before you're in deeper. Once you've had 3 to 6 months of results and you trust the relationship, a longer term makes more sense. At that point you're extending something that's working, not betting on something you haven't tested yet.
Second, look for explicit deliverables. What exactly are you getting each month? How many videos, how much strategy time, what distribution support, what reporting? Vague retainers where you're not sure what you're paying for is one of the most common frustrations we hear from doctors who've worked with other agencies.
Third, ask about reporting. You should receive regular updates that show you exactly what's happening, not just vanity metrics like views and likes, but actual data you can connect to patient appointments. Cost per lead, website traffic trends, which content is driving inquiries. If an agency can't tell you what's working and what isn't, you have no way to know whether your investment is worthwhile.
Fourth, make sure you own your content. The final edited videos produced for your practice should belong to your practice once you've paid for them. Always ask this question directly and make sure the answer is written into the contract.
And fifth, look for a performance guarantee with real teeth. Not a vague promise… an actual written commitment that if you don't see measurable improvement in patient acquisition or audience engagement by the end of your term, the agency continues working for you at no additional cost until you do. That kind of guarantee tells you a lot about how confident an agency is in its own work.
How do I measure ROI from marketing my medical practice?
You track it the same way you track everything else in your practice: with actual numbers.
Here's a simple framework. Start with what a new patient is worth to your practice over their lifetime, let's call it $2,500 as a rough example. Then figure out how many new patients per month you'd need from your marketing to cover the cost of the program. If you're investing $5,000 per month in marketing and each new patient is worth $2,500, you need exactly two attributed new patients to break even. Everything beyond that is growth.
From there, you track where new patients are coming from. This means asking during the intake process how patients found you, tracking which website pages they visited before calling, monitoring which videos are generating the most watch time and follow-up clicks, and reviewing inquiry volume trends month over month.
A good marketing partner should provide you with a dashboard or regular report that makes this visible in plain language… not a spreadsheet full of marketing jargon, but a clear picture of what's happening and what it means for your practice.
The data also helps you make better decisions over time. If one type of video consistently drives appointment requests and another doesn't, you do more of the first and less of the second. That's how marketing stops being a mystery and starts being a system you can actually manage.
If your current marketing investment doesn't come with clear, measurable ROI reporting, that's worth addressing before you spend another dollar.