Healthmark Singapore - medical SEO

1. Healthmark.SG From owning clinics to marketing them Singapore's top clinic marketers

2. 2 Anyone who has travelled to Seoul has seen the billboards; amazing juxtapositions of before-and-after photos of plain girls turning into gorgeous bombshells. Plastic surgery is a huge, ultra-competitive $5 billion USD business in South Korea and advertising budgets of the top clinics are just as equally obscene. So why hasn't this phenomenon taken over in affluent Singapore? The answer is just, simply, the law. In Singapore, all medical professionals from general practitioners, specialists to aesthetic practitioners alike are bound by the PHMC (Private Hospitals and Medical Clinics) Publicity Act, a set of strict and highly enforced guidelines preventing doctors from many forms of traditional laudatory marketing. The PHMC guidelines have left many a doctor stumped as to how to promote their services and brand without inadvertently committing a legal infraction. Enter Healthmark – a digital SEO company backed by Thai and Chinese investment, which has the solution to marketing woes faced by Singapore doctors. They've worked with many top surgeons in Singapore and built up their brands without any caterwauling from the government. We had the opportunity to speak to Mr. Nate Wang, founder and CEO of Healthmark and he was more than forthcoming about this particular topic.

3. 3 You've dabbled in many industries before. So what made you start one focused on medical SEO marketing? My partner and I come from digital marketing backgrounds. It was with that skill that we built a base and went into full-time business investing, mostly based in Singapore. So between us, we've owned preschools, childcare centres, a food business, a media company and even things as brick and mortar as pest control and a hardware store. We mostly go in and hire good people to run the business and operations. However, we've also owned a medical clinic before and that was where we discovered there was such a huge skill gap in Singapore. We practically couldn't hire anyone who could market our clinic properly! If we weren't lucky enough to be marketers ourselves, it probably would've dealt us a very painful financial lesson.

4. 4 As a clinic owner yourself in the past, what are some of the biggest marketing challenges you've personally faced? In the past, doctors would commonly make referrals to their peers and the patients would generally be receptive and obedient. “Oh, your blood sugar levels are a little high. My friend specialises in this. Take this note and go see him”. Patients nowadays are much smarter. They research about you on the internet before making any decision. If you can't show any proof your good work or testimonials, how are you going to convince someone who only heard of you 2 days ago? It's tough enough to outsource my marketing work to someone that knows the regulations well. It becomes impossible when I can't even market my doctor's most convincing works because of the law!

5. 5 With so many regulations floating about in Singapore, it's only normal that doctors are afraid to try marketing. How do you reassure new clients? Doctors are conservative by nature. They would rather their business struggle than risk getting a warning from MOH. I think it helps when they know that we've ran a clinic before and the unfortunate experience of having received more of MOH's “love letters” ourselves than they have. It's gotten us to a point where we know how to handle nearly any situation related to medical SEO marketing in Singapore.

6. 6 Seeing how strictly controlled the medical marketing scene in Singapore is, is there truly no way for doctors to show photos and results of their past work? That's a trade secret but it's very possible. It requires a very high level of knowledge in both technical marketing skills and the law, but it is possible. By combining both disciplines, you can create new channels through which the marketing collateral flows, getting all your best materials out while staying compliant with guidelines. For instance, there's a way for clinics to legally use before and after photos on their websites but no doctor I've spoken to is aware of this. The 2019 update of the PHMC Publicity Act also allows patient testimonials on their own websites. I've yet to see clinics take full advantage of this. Digital marketing and SEO in Singapore is still very primitive. There are far better ways to take advantage of this new ruling.

7. 7 At the same time, many private practices in Singapore have already engaged other marketing agencies. If medical marketing requires dual disciplines as you mentioned, how are these agencies able to serve their clients well? Word on the street is there are many unhappy clinics but they don't know who to turn to. We're also limited in our capacity because our staff have to be trained so much longer compared to normal SEO companies. Our limited capacity means we sometimes have to turn clients away. Agencies will just go with the basics because they feel nothing else can be done. Ask those same private practices, “Are potential patients seeing photos and videos of your past work online?” “Are you seen all over the internet as a leadingauthority in your specialization?” “Do patients tell you how they've read so many great stories about you on social media?” Chances are they'd answer negatively to all 3.

8. 8 It does sound like the above violates the PHMC Publicity Act. It's all about creating new channels and information flows and knowing the difference between private and public spaces. It's not something as shady as sponsoring an influencer to blog about you and then deny any knowledge of that when MOH asks. These are doctors. Be ethical. Doctors shouldn't lie nor is there a need to. Are there any other ways for doctors in Singapore to get publicity without expressly marketing themselves? We generally encourage doctors to create educational content and post it up online. There are now very strong platforms for medical knowledge sharing in Singapore. For instance, www.ubiqi.sg lets the public research on topics such as nose thread lifts, eye bag removal and even prices for Botox in Singapore. The site hosts many doctor- written articles and is very helpful.

9. 9 1. What are some of the most common requests you get from clients? There are a number. It often involves competition. A few will ask me to bring other clinics down, which I will always reject. Other times, it's about how to prevent competitors from buying their names as a keyword on Google. If you're “Cardiologist Dr John Tan”, you don't want “Cardiologist Dr James Lim” to appear #1 on Google ads when someone searches for you. That's happening right now in the scene, although we've found a few ways to penalise doctors who buy other names. It won't completely prevent it from happening to our clients, but it will dramatically decrease the occurrence.

10. 10 1. You've been around for a few years now, but the team hasn't grown much. Is staying small a deliberate business strategy? Honestly, it's half and half. On the one hand, we'd like the team to stay lean as it allows us to work quicker. This is also more of our passion now as investment is still my main business. On the other hand, it's really difficult to train someone up to an elite level in marketing and then drill all the law surrounding this industry into them. It's hard to refute that Healthmark has absolute confidence as an SEO marketing company. If Healthmark is truly the only game in town when it comes to digital healthcare marketing, then one troubling reality soon becomes quite apparent – there's only a few top slots per medical niche, which means that Healthmark has only a finite number of clients they can service in Singapore. Only time will tell.

11. Healthmark Private Limited 31F, 9 Temasek Boulevard Suntec City Tower 2 Singapore 038989 Phone : +65 6559 6135 WhatsApp : +65 9007 5432 Email: consult@healthmark.sg WORKING HOURS Mon - Fri: 8:30am - 7:30pm Sat: 8:30am - 3:30pm https://healthmark.sg/contact-us