We have surveyed clinics and hospitals around the world and summarized the results in a comprehensive 10 page report. The report answers these questions: - What percentage of healthcare providers are using online marketing? - How much do they spend on online marketing? - Which are the most popular channels for paid online advertising? As a bonus we created a benchmark where you can evaluate your own online marketing efforts.

1. Online Marketing Benchmark
for Healthcare Providers
Created by
2016 Report

2. Executive summary
Why care about online marketing?
Healthcare is catching up
The new word-of-mouth
A sizeable budget?
Measure your happiness
Benchmark scoring
Contents
Page 2 2016 Report: Online Marketing Benchmark for Healthcare Providers
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3. • We surveyed 62 hospitals and
clinics in 19 countries to assess
trends in online marketing
among healthcare providers
• 86% of surveyed hospitals
and clinics actively use
online marketing, with the
overwhelming goal of increasing
patient acquisition
• The average budget for online
marketing is $4,755 per month.
72% of hospitals and clinics
employ an external agency to
develop and implement their
online marketing campaigns
• Google and Facebook are by
far the most popular preferred
channels for paid marketing
campaigns
• Most hospitals and clinics do
not consistently create ROI+
online marketing campaigns
and underspend relative to best
performers in other industries
ABOUT MEDIGO
Whether you are looking for an oncologist
in Berlin, a dentist in Bangkok, or a
cardiologist in Bangalore, MEDIGO.com
supports individuals and healthcare
organizations everywhere. It is an
easy-to-use platform and service that
helps patients to find and schedule
affordable, high-quality medical treatment
abroad. For hospitals and clinics,
MEDIGO has developed a simple patient
communication and payment platform,
and offers online marketing services
targeted at patients globally. With more
than 700 trusted hospitals and clinics
in 36 countries, and a dedicated 24/7
Care Team, MEDIGO improves access to
healthcare worldwide.
Executive summary
NUMBER OF PROVIDERS SURVEYED
62
NUMBER OF COUNTRIES
19
PROVIDERS ACTIVE WITH ONLINE MARKETING
86%
AVERAGE MONTHLY BUDGET
$4,755
PREFERRED CHANNELS FOR MARKETING CAMPAIGNS
Facebook
Google
OVERVIEW
Page 3 2016 Report: Online Marketing Benchmark for Healthcare Providers

4. Research shows that at least 3 in 4 people
searching for health information online
with search engine like Google or Bing
(Pew Research Center). As a relatively
inexpensive and scalable channel, online
marketing has the potential to reach an
audience of 4.3 billion people connected
through the internet (Internet Live Stats).
That’s why search result page real estate
is so valuable, irrespective whether a good
ranking is achieved through paid search
engine marketing (SEM) orthrough a strong
organic web presence (SEO). Although
companies rely on a combination of the
two, many hospitals and clinics are just
starting to understand how to create a
strong presence online.
Today, hospitals and clinics (or marketing
agencies) launch online marketing
campaigns primarily to acquire more
patients, to create stronger brand
recognition, to improve traditional
customer service, and distribute hospital-
or treatment-specific information.
This is the first global survey to define
the use and success of online marketing
by hospitals and clinics. The Benchmark
Survey (see Appendix #1) includes
questions on the size, type of activity, and
results of marketing campaigns created
by healthcare providers. The survey was
distributed in July 2016 to marketing
departments at 282 clinics and hospitals
and collected 62 responses among
facilities in 19 countries (21% completion
rate). The respondents represented a
broad range of clinics and hospitals, from
private practices with a single doctor
all the way to university hospitals. Each
survey was scored according to the
MEDIGO Benchmark Methodology (see
Appendix #2).
This report should encourage learning
and discussions about the current state
Why care about
online marketing?
of online marketing best practices for
online marketing. The specifc goal of the
hospital and clinic survey was to develop
a benchmark that allows hospitals and
clinics to compare their online marketing
performance with similar organizations
around the world. We hope that this report
summary creates a clearer picture for
the reader of the current state of online
marketing at medical facilities.
Page 4 2016 Report: Online Marketing Benchmark for Healthcare Providers

5. Instagram, Pinterest and Youtube), and
through content marketing (newsletters,
blog posts). And they don’t have to start
from scratch: the relatively established
online marketing industry has some
good ways to measure performance and
improve user engagement. But there
is one major learning that is unique to
the healthcare industry: that the best
healthcare marketing includes patient
education.
Online marketing has completely
reshaped the way we make decisions
every day: from cheap flights to unique
shoes, well-placed advertisements
and content pieces influence the way
we make decisions. And why should
healthcare be any different? According
to our survey, 86% of hospitals are using
online marketing actively and about 10%
of hospitals are looking to launch their
first online marketing campaigns.
Today’s forward-thinking hospitals and
clinics are attracting users and converting
them into patients through a number
of online channels: paid advertising on
search engines (Google, Bing), engagement
on social media (Facebook, Twitter,
Healthcare is
catching up
FURTHER READING
• 4 Ways Healthcare Marketers Should Utilize Social
Media
• How to Create a Profitable Google AdWords
Campaign (from Scratch)
• A Beginner’s Guide: How to Advertise on Facebook
Page 5 2016 Report: Online Marketing Benchmark for Healthcare Providers

6. Social media is the place to be: more than
40% of consumers say that information
found through social media affects the
way they deal with their health, and
affects their choice of a specific doctor,
hospital, or medical facility (Mediabistro,
The Spark Report).
Online communities form the new
meeting space for doctors, nurses,
patients, and caregivers. More than half
(53% to be exact) of all the paid channels,
are social media platforms and at 34%,
Facebook clocks in as the most popular
social channel for hospital marketers.
However, Google paid marketing remains
the largest single channel with over 35%
of hospitals and clinics purchasing paid
advertisement there.
Which campaigns work best on social
media? If you feel lucky, you might
create viral campaign1
. A more pragmatic
marketing strategy is to become a trusted
source for genuinely useful content for an
engaged following2
.
FURTHER READING
• Social Media for Health Care: Who’s doing it right?
• Understanding Word of Mouth in the Social Media
Age
• Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media
Social media
is the new
word of mouth
1 - The Ice Bucket Challenge was a viral campaign to promote awareness of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and generated more than
$100 million in donations to the ALS Association
2 - The Mayo Clinic boasts more than 1.3 million Twitter followers and posts content 7 to 10 times per day
Respondents could answer more than once. Thus the
percentage on each channel represents the number of
hospitals using that channel divided by all responses.
Page 6 2016 Report: Online Marketing Benchmark for Healthcare Providers

7. Hospitals and clinics spend anywhere
from $1,000 to $50,000 per month on
their online marketing, with a majority
keeping their marketing budget under
$5,000 per month. The average spend
varies largely by type of facility; healthcare
providers with patient volumes between
10,000 and 50,000 tend to spend more
than four times the amount that providers
with fewer than 1,000 patients annually.
As an industry, healthcare is one of the
most conservative digital marketing
spenders, allocating only 2.2% of each
company’s revenue to the marketing
budget (Gartner). A large marketing
budget does not necessarily indicate
a strong marketing strategy; rather,
healthcare providers who spend their
budget efficiently follow best practices
and deliver ROI positive results.
Interestingly, 72% of hospitals and
clinics use a marketing agency, which
are paid a 18% average commission.
(The commission ranged from 5% to
A sizeable budget?
35%). When is a marketing agency a
good solution? If a hospital or clinic
does not have an established marketing
department, an experienced agency
can quickly build up a solid campaign
framework and test various channels for
performance. Oftentimes, such agency
work requires a flexible budget to test
various messaging and channels.
For those organizations with a solid in
house marketing team, an agency can be
used to lead one-off campaigns or to try
out a new marketing channels.
For those organizations not interested
in investing in a marketing agency, it is
possible to build and train a solid inhouse
team. Seeing results will take longer than
with an agency because of the learning
curve.
FURTHER READING
• Defining Digital Health ROI: 5 elements that might
actually make sense
• Top 25 Medical Practice Marketing Ideas
• Seven Low-Cost Marketing Ideas
The frequency of response for larger patient organizations was not high enough to be considered in this analysis
Page 7 2016 Report: Online Marketing Benchmark for Healthcare Providers

8. 43%of hospitals and clinics surveyed
reported an increase in patients
acquired through their online
marketing campaigns.
These are called hard metrics because
they follow deliberate user actions.
Soft metrics represent an inferred user
behavior and include bounce rate,
average time on page, number of pages
visited per user. Google Analytics and
Facebook Power Editor
auto-calculate a number of
the most popular metrics,
although some site-specific
conversion rates need to be
calculated in-house.
Overwhelmingly, the
hospitals and clinics
indicated that the explicit goal of their
online marketing is to acquire more
patients (87%). However, only 43% of
hospitals and clinics surveyed reported
an increase in patients acquired through
their online marketing campaigns. The
More than half (57%) of the surveyed
hospitals and clinics were happy with their
current marketing efforts. This group is
actively engaged in creating and evaluating
their online marketing campaigns. The
best way to understand whether your
campaigns perform well is to
establish metrics that follow
your user funnel by channel
and over time.
In the case of a hospital
seeking to increase
the number of patients
scheduling appointments, a
set of KPIs would track the user from the
advertisement, to first visit, to scheduled
appointment. These could include: cost
per click (CPC), click through rate (CTR),
cost per visit, cost per inquiry, conversion
rate to patient, and cost per patient.
Measure
your
happiness
FURTHER READING
• 9 Marketing KPIs that drive performance in the right
direction
• The 16 Marketing KPIs you should be measuring (but
you probably aren’t)
• Top 5 Google Adwords Metrics to Monitor each day
with your breakfast
remaining 57% either don’t see an effect
on patient traffic to their facility… or more
likely, aren’t measuring the effect of their
campaigns correctly!
Running online marketing campaigns
without performance insights is like
driving a car blindfolded -- chances are
high that you will run into a wall sooner or
later. Proper campaign tracking should be
in place. If in-house knowledge is missing
on this part an agency could help you set
this up for a one off small fee.
Page 8 2016 Report: Online Marketing Benchmark for Healthcare Providers

9. Want to improve your
online marketing?
OUR SERVICES
Facebook
Audience creation
Custom conversion implementation
Ad copy AB testing
Ad copy creation
Remarketing audience creation
Remarketing strategy implementation
Audience optimisation
Campaign type strategy
Adwords
Keyword campaign structure
Keyword market research
SEM strategy
Keyword bidding
Search query optimisation
Targeting optimisation
Ad copy AB testing
Ad copy creation
Sitelink creation
Device strategy
Custom conversion implementation
Negative keyword optimisation
Network strategy
Landing pages
Landing page creation
UX strategy on page
Tracking implementation
Content writing in multiple languages
User journey mapping
Analytics
Analytics implementation
High-level reporting
Detailed channel reporting
Content management
Content creation in multiple languages
Trending content market research
Content outreach
Content performance reporting
Email marketing
Subscriber list growth
Newsletter creation
Open rate AB testing
Email performance reporting
Click through rate AB testing
User experience or usability testing
UX reporting on conversion funnels
Content AB testing
CTA AB testing
Web development or system
integrations
Heatmap tracking
User session recording
External communication integrations
Add conversion increasing widgets
Design
Content design
Website design
Youtube
Video audience creation
Ad copy creation text or video
AB testing ad content
Targeting optimisation
Placement exclusions
Audience optimisation
Twitter
Custom conversion implementation
Remarketing audience creation
Ad content creation
AB testing ad content
Targeting optimisation
Placement exclusions
Banner audience creation
GDN
Remarketing banner creation
Remarketing strategy implementation
Remarketing user segment creation
Banner audience creation
Ad copy creation text or image
Sitelink implementation
AB testing ad content
Targeting optimisation
Placement exclusions
The Money Burners
If you are a Money Burner, then it
is very likely that you are spending
and seeing no return on your
investment. The main points that
are lacking here are no tracking
to visualise the performance
numbers and no online marketing
strategy in place. This results in
heavy ROI negative marketing
campaigns.
The Overspenders
If you are an Overspender, then it
is very likely that although you see
results of your marketing efforts,
your campaigns are very costly.
Your return on investment is not
zero, but a profit is not clearly
demonstrated either. Your main
Where do you stand?
problems are probably not having
clear oversight into performance
numbers (tracking) or not having
a consistent marketing strategy
in place.
The Underspenders
If you are an Underspender, then it
is very likely that your campaigns
are still more expensive than the
cost of implementation. You have
probably covered the basics and
have a clear marketing strategy as
well as tracking in place for your
key outcomes. However, getting
to profitable means significant
testing of new channels and
dramatic optimisation of your
existing campaigns.
The survey respondent were clustered into four groups based on the final score of their survey. Most hospitals
and clinics are not consistently delivering ROI+ online marketing campaigns, they are lacking the tracking
technology to evaluate their online marketing efforts or don’t have a strategy in place. We call them the
Overspenders in our benchmark. You can find the methodology in the appendix.
The Professionals
Well done if you are a Professional,
it is very likely that your campaigns
are doing well, either you are
making a profit or breaking even.
Your marketing strategy consists
of multiple channels. One might
work better than others, and
if you’re really a pro, then all
channels are contributing to your
positive return on investment. You
have robust tracking and reporting
in place to tell you how well each
channel performs. But even you
probably have something to learn!
:) Gurus with ROI++ are constantly
AB-testing, performing extensive
campaign optimisations, and
landing page optimisations.
The Overspenders The ProfessionalsThe Money Burners The Underspenders
HIGH
• Send an email to marketing@medigo.com
• or Give us a call at +49 30 233 206 932
LOW
Page 9 2016 Report: Online Marketing Benchmark for Healthcare Providers
RETURN ON INVESTMENT
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10. 1.What type of hospital do you work for?
Private clinic
Single private practice
Specialised center (<5 specialties)
University hospital
Multi-specialty center (>5 specialties)
Hospital group
2.What is the size of your organisation?
<1,000 patients per year
1,000 to 10,000 patients per year
10,000 to 50,000 patients per year
50,000 to 100,000 patients per year
>100,000 patients per year
3.What percentage of your patients are international
patients?
0%
1-5%
5-10%
10-20%
20-30%
>30%
4.Do you use online marketing for patient acquisition at
your hospital/clinic?
I have no transparency about these numbers
Yes, online marketing is very important for us
Yes, but we just started with online marketing
No, but we are interested to start
No, we don’t use online marketing
6.Which paid marketing channels do you use?
Google
Bing
Facebook
Twitter
Pinterest
Instagram
Remarketing
Other
7.What is your monthly online marketing budget?
0
<$5,000
$5,000 - $10,000
$10,000 - $20,000
$20,000 - $30,000
$30,000 - $40,000
$40,000 - $50,000
>$50,000
8.Are you happy with your current online marketing efforts?
Yes
No
9.Which of the following is most important to your current
online marketing efforts?
Reporting on value delivered
Creating ROI+ marketing campaign
Acquiring more patients
Other
10.Rate this statement: “With the use of online marketing,
we have noticed an increase in the number of patients”
0 - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5
11.Do you use an agency for your online marketing efforts?
Yes
No
12.Please estimate the percentage of your marketing
budget that you spend on your agency?
0-5%
5-10%
10-15%
15-20%
20-25%
25-30%
30-35%
>35%
Appendix #1: Benchmark Survey
If you are doing well at online marketing
then your campaign should have clearly
defined return on investment, this forms
the core of our benchmark score. The
more return on investment you have, the
higher your score. The highest possible
score is set to reflect a high performance
specialist marketing agency, which makes
the scoring more competitive and more
accurately reflect the actual market
standards.
The score is calculated based on the
survey answers and focuses on four
areas described below. If you believe
we’ve made a mistake in analysing your
marketing strategy, we are more than
happy to review, just send us an email!
Spend & Commission The more budget
available to a hospital or clinic, the lower
the commission that an agency demands.
So if you have a high budget and low
commission than you are doing well, no
penalty points will be deducted. Are you a
high spender with a high commission then
you will be penalised because a positive
ROI is harder to achieve. If you don’t use
an agency thus don’t pay commission then
the height of your budget will be evaluated
in combination with your happiness score.
Appendix #2: Benchmark Methodology
Marketing Mix Relying on more online
marketing channels is healthier. The odds
that you find a profitable online marketing
campaigns is higher when you use more
channels. Thus we penalised those users
that have less than 2 channels irrelevant
to spend. Although the higher spenders
should also focus on more than 2
channels if not they will be penalised.
Priorities A combination of all the
available KPIs gave the right mindset to
do Online Marketing. You want to acquire
more patients through successful ROI+
campaigns with full insights so you can
keep this flow going. If one piece of this
puzzle is not in your focus you will be
penalised in our scoring.
Satisfaction We evaluated this statement
on the basis of the questions and the
statement whether you saw an influx of
patients. If you did not answer positive on
either of the questions we think that the
current efforts aren’t running smoothly
and an acceptable ROI is not insight.
We penalised those that showed us that
were most unhappy about their current
performance.
Page 10 2016 Report: Online Marketing Benchmark for Healthcare Providers