Sooner or later, the director of a private clinic faces the question. Patients increasingly look up a GP, a physiotherapist, a scan or a specialist online before they phone. The clinic down the road seems to come up everywhere. Something has to be done. But what? Hire a marketing executive, or hand your visibility to a specialist provider?
Both options have their logic. This guide helps you compare what each one really costs, the risks involved, the time it takes from the person running the clinic, and what happens when circumstances change. It is about the decision, not the method.
The full cost of a hire
Salary is only the visible part. A fair comparison adds up everything a hire involves.
- Salary plus employer costs such as payroll taxes, pension contributions and benefits, paid twelve months a year including holidays.
- Recruitment. Finding someone who understands both marketing and the constraints of healthcare takes weeks, sometimes months, and often an agency fee.
- Onboarding. Even a strong candidate has to learn your services, your patient base and the rules that govern healthcare communications.
- Tools and subscriptions needed to do the job, on top of salary.
- Management. Someone has to set objectives, review, approve and track results. More often than not, that is the medical director.
Over a year, a hire is a heavier commitment than it first looks, and the cost starts on day one, before any results.
The risks of keeping it in-house
One person facing a broad job
An in-house marketer usually ends up doing everything: social media, leaflets, relationships with insurers and employers, open days, the website. Online visibility, the thing that makes a patient find your clinic when they search for a paediatrician or an ultrasound, becomes one task among many, and rarely the most urgent on a given day.
A departure resets the clock
When your marketing executive leaves, what they knew leaves with them. You recruit again, onboard again, and meanwhile the clinic's presence stalls. In healthcare, where trust builds slowly, those gaps are expensive.
No benchmark
A lone employee often lacks the perspective to know whether results are good. They have limited insight into what other clinics achieve and what is realistic. You end up judging their work on instinct rather than evidence.
What outsourcing changes
Handing visibility to a specialist shifts the problem. You are no longer paying for a role; you are paying for an outcome defined in a contract. The cost is known in advance, it does not depend on holidays or resignations, and continuity rests on a team rather than one person.
Outsourcing carries its own risks. A poor provider can bill you for months and deliver little, or bury you in reports nobody can read. The answer is to insist on three things: a written commitment on what will be delivered, transparent measurement you can verify yourself, and a review point where results are assessed. Our guide on delegating visibility as a busy owner covers those safeguards.
The medical director's time
This is the most underestimated factor. In many clinics the director is also a practising clinician. Every hour spent briefing, reviewing or correcting is an hour taken from patients, staff management or contracts with insurers.
With a hire, that time is heavy at the start and remains real all year. With well-structured outsourcing, it is concentrated in a few moments: the initial audit, agreeing priorities, reading a weekly report and the review. The rest of the time, visibility moves forward without you.
How to decide
| Factor | Hire | Outsource |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Salary, employer costs, tools, management, from day one | Fixed price known upfront |
| Continuity | Fragile if the person leaves | Carried by a team |
| Director's time | Ongoing throughout the year | A few scheduled touchpoints |
| Measurement | Has to be built yourself | Should be written into the contract |
Hiring makes sense for a large hospital group with an existing communications team and high volumes. For most clinics and medical centres, outsourcing to a specialist, with one person in-house handling reception, reviews and social channels, is the most sensible combination. To size the budget properly, read our guide on setting a visibility budget for a clinic.
Whichever route you lean towards, ask one blunt question before signing anything: if this person or this provider disappeared in six months, what would the clinic still own? With a hire, the answer is often a set of half-finished projects and passwords nobody can find. With a good provider, it should be a presence that keeps working, a history of weekly reports and figures in an account that belongs to you. That test settles more decisions than any spreadsheet.
What Traffic Engine offers a clinic
Traffic Engine is Kolonell's service that makes your clinic appear when a patient searches for a doctor, a specialty or a test nearby, on Google and in the answers of AI assistants. You manage nothing day to day: you receive a dated report every week and follow results in your own Search Console.
The cost is fixed and known from the outset: a Visibility Audit at $750, credited against the setup if you start within 30 days, a one-off setup at $1,650, then a monthly plan from $1,200 for Presence to $3,850 for Flood, on a 12-month commitment with a measured review at 3 months. Over the first year, Momentum comes to $26,850, a figure to set against the full cost of a hire in your market. To pick the right level, see our guide on Presence, Momentum or Flood for a clinic, then explore the offer.