Healthcare Marketing · For Functional Medicine & Concierge Practices

How Much Does Marketing Cost for a Medical Practice?

If you run a functional medicine or concierge practice, you didn’t go into medicine to think about meta descriptions and posting calendars. Still, most practice owners eventually ask the same question: what should I expect to pay someone to take care of my website, my social media, and this new thing everyone’s calling AI search? Here’s how we’d answer if you were sitting across the table from us.

The short answer: it depends on how much attention you want

Marketing pricing has a wide range because “marketing” can mean very different things. One agency might update your website twice a year and schedule a few social posts. Another might write your patient education content, manage your Google Business Profile, run your email list, and keep track of whether ChatGPT mentions your practice when someone asks for a functional medicine doctor in your area.

Both get called marketing. They don’t cost the same, and they don’t produce the same results. So the more useful question is what level of service your practice needs right now, and how much it’s worth to you to have someone paying close attention.

What you’re paying for

Your website

For a cash-pay or membership practice, your website does a lot of the work before a patient ever picks up the phone. Maintenance covers updates, security, backups, and speed. Management goes further: someone is improving the site over time, refining service pages, adding content that answers what patients are searching for, and keeping everything accurate as your offerings change.

Social media

This includes content planning, graphics, captions, and posting. The cost moves with how many platforms you want covered and how often you post. A practice that wants educational content several times a week on Instagram and Facebook needs a different budget than one that shares a monthly update.

Showing up in AI search

More patients are asking ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews for recommendations. Getting your practice cited in those answers is called generative engine optimization, or GEO. It builds on good SEO: clear content that answers real questions, structured data on your site, a complete Google Business Profile, consistent directory listings, and a steady flow of reviews.

It’s ongoing work, and no one can guarantee placement. If an agency promises you’ll be the top AI answer in your city, they’re overselling.

Healthcare-specific care

Medical marketing comes with rules that general marketing doesn’t. Tracking tools and contact forms need to be set up so patient information isn’t passed to ad platforms. Testimonials need written consent. Claims about treatments need to stay within what you can support. An agency that works with practices should raise these things before you have to.

Big agency or boutique agency?

Large agencies have deep teams and polished processes. They also have a lot of clients, and a single-location practice rarely sits near the top of the list. You become a small fish in a big tank. Often that shows up as an account manager who changes every year, templated content that could describe any clinic, and monthly reports that tell you what happened without much explanation of why.

A boutique agency works differently. You work with the same small team month after month, and that team learns your practice: your philosophy of care, the patients you want to see more of, and the services you’re building toward. Over time they become part of your business instead of a vendor you check in with now and then. For a functional medicine or concierge practice, where the relationship is the whole point, that tends to be the better fit.

What marketing costs at OverCoffee

Where you land in that range depends on a few things:

• How many channels you want managed (website, social media, email, ads)
• How much content you need each month, such as blog posts and social graphics
• Whether you want paid ads set up and managed
• Whether you want email automations, like a follow-up sequence for new inquiries
• How competitive your local market is
• Whether you want a standing monthly strategy meeting

If your website needs a rebuild before marketing can do its job, that’s a separate project, and we’ll tell you up front.

Questions to ask any agency before you sign

1. Who will I work with every month, and will that change?
2. How will you show me progress, and what do you track for AI search?
3. Who owns my website, content, and ad accounts if we part ways?
4. Is there a minimum commitment? Many agencies, including us, ask for an annual commitment because SEO and GEO take months to build. Ask what happens after the first year.

Frequently asked questions