I had a throbbing pain in my left premolar tooth. I looked high and low for a dentist that best suited my needs.
The public healthcare system took too long. I got pushed around from the polyclinic to the National Dental Centre and was scrambling to find information on CHAS card subsidies.
I eventually settled on a specialist dental clinic that put out transparent fees and clearly illustrated why their approach to holistic dentistry and root canal treatment was different from every other dental clinic. I was willing to pay a premium for it.
Healthcare is a lifelong investment after all.
My own customer journey taught me as a marketer: the educated and empowered patient is a sold patient.
I did not find the experience of being pushed from GP doctors in our polyclinic system to long wait times at the National Dental Centre particularly pleasant. It is not their fault as they are swamped with cases.
Yet the general public, like myself, are far from medically trained.
As patients, when in pain, we are constantly searching for solutions and options from the healthcare industry so that we can ease our pain.
That is where healthcare marketing comes in.
I get it. You are a doctor or medical practitioner. You went to medical school, not to write Google Ads copy, deal with WordPress installations, or manage a CRM pipeline.
I understand. After all, I considered getting into the healthcare industry in Singapore and played around with the idea of getting trained as a psychologist (I am solution-focused brief therapy certified!)
That is where we come in. You treat. We get patients through your clinic’s door.
You’ll Get:
However, this means that bids are higher, especially for competitive keywords. For example, the keyword “therapy” as seen on the left costs $10.19 per click for a top of page bid.
The first go-to strategy is to look at your site’s page structure, see if you’re driving traffic to the right service pages, and secondly, see if there are undervalued opportunities that your competitors may not be taking advantage of.
Yet we believe Meta Platforms, Facebook and Instagram are an underleveraged channel in the healthcare industry.
On Facebook and Instagram, you have more creative real estate: a compelling visual, and even a video that shows your service in a way that speaks directly to your patients’ needs.
This is in line with our positioning strategy that aims to differentiate your services even before we spend a dollar on ads.
Today, there are many allied health practitioners, from chiropractors to aesthetic clinics in Singapore, already using creative video advertising on Meta to educate, empower, and reach out to potential clients.
Yes, ranking on page one for keywords such as “cancer treatment” can bring in substantial revenue, patients and visibility for your specialist clinic.
However, SEO, especially with A.I. search engine results being introduced… getting ranked on the top search results or even cited by A.I. LLMs has become more competitive and is a channel that requires long term investment. Gone are the days of simply tweaking title tags and meta descriptions.
It’s recommended to get your positioning down and acquire patients from paid channels first.
Nonetheless, our digital marketing strategy involves a patient-first approach, even when running SEM or Meta ads. This means educating and empowering the client through medically relevant content on your landing pages.
This often can lead to a natural increase in SEO rankings, as seen in our clients too!
Marketing to cold audiences, people who have never heard of you, is completely different from getting referrals from other doctors or word of mouth from existing patients.
To grow online, you need to be perceived as the obvious expert by someone who has never met you.
Most clinics try to market every service to every patient at once. That spreads budget thin and dilutes messaging.
For example, a physiotherapy clinic that tries to reach sports injury patients, elderly rehabilitation patients, and post-surgery recovery patients all at the same time ends up resonating with none of them.
Our team starts by identifying the one patient type or service that gives your clinic the clearest path to growth.
This looks like focusing on ONE campaign, built around ONE ideal patient avatar and getting it right before scaling.
Through understanding who your ideal patient is, what they’re searching for, what they’re afraid of, and what would make them choose you over others, we build a foundation that everything else sits on.
Our approach starts by identifying the right traffic channel for your patient type, or even introducing a mix!
For conditions where patients are actively searching for solutions, Google Ads targets them at the exact moment they are looking.
For elective and aesthetic services where patients need to be educated before they decide, Meta ads open up a blue ocean opportunity that most clinics in Singapore are not fully tapping yet.
Our campaigns are built within PHMC guidelines from day one. Compliance is built into every ad, every landing page, and every piece of copy.
Spending all your time adjusting ad budgets is not a good use of your time. Your landing page is where most of the persuasion happens, not your ads.
Medical terminology can be confusing and even frightening to the average patient. A page full of clinical language and procedure names does not build trust. It builds hesitation.
This is why researching your ideal patient’s fears, questions, and objections before writing a single word of copy is non-negotiable.
Taking the research from Step 1, our team works together with you to craft content, designs, and clear calls to action that speak to your patients in plain language. We address what they are worried about, answer what they are searching for, and make your clinic feel like the safe and obvious choice.
Generic pages that simply list your services are not enough. Patients are not buying a procedure. They are buying confidence that they are in the right hands.
One thing most clinics underestimate is how much is riding on good tracking and analytics.
The goal is simple. Make $2 for every $1 you put in, then scale the spend. This is only possible when you know exactly which campaigns are generating booked appointments, which are generating tyre kickers, and which are burning budget quietly in the background.
Our team tracks every lead, follows up on campaign performance with you regularly, and optimises based on real patient acquisition data. Not impressions. Not clicks. Actual appointments.
Clinic owners we speak to eventually ask about SEO. And yes, SEO is valuable. However, traditional SEO takes 8 to 12 months to show meaningful results.
SEO should come after you already have a paid ads strategy that is working.
Get the foundation right first. Build a campaign that pays for itself. Then layer on SEO as a compounding asset on top of an already profitable system.
| Lion City Digital | Generic Agencies | |
|---|---|---|
| Documented Results and Case Studies | Our results come from real data, from real campaigns, run for real clinics and practices, with documented outcomes. | Many agencies do not specialise in specific industries and tend to go broad. Their case studies may feature service based small businesses that have little relevance to nuances of the healthcare industry. |
| Qualified Leads Process | The leads your clinic gets will follow this ad process. Ad → Landing page with clear positioning → Filtering process → Calendar booking. First of all, this enables your potential patient to be persuaded before he or she even walks into the clinic. Secondly, through the filtering process, only committed patients show up and you don't waste appointment slots and time on uncommitted patients. | Other agencies may continuously ask you to post "more content" on social media. No analytics tracking. No lead filtering. No USP positioning. Just ad spend going out, random content going out, and hoping someone books. The end result? Patients cancel last minute and your appointment slots go to waste. Your clinic's waiting room never fills the way it should. . |
| Singapore Local Market Nunaces | Our Founder is a born and bred Singaporean. Having a local lens helps your campaigns reach out to patients in a language that feels familiar. The common questions: cost, waiting times, MediSave applicability, insurance coverage, polyclinic versus private. | Other agencies may rely on offshore staff or foreign hires unfamiliar with how Singaporeans go about our healthcare system. They don't know what MediSave covers, how Shield Plans work, or why the polyclinic versus private decision matters. |
| Patient First Approach | Our position is simple: the patient comes first. That means honest messaging, educational content and campaigns built for trust. Clinics that operate this manner attract better patients, keep them longer and earn reputations no ad spend can manufacture. | Other agencies focus on what they know best: traffic, leads, and conversions. Healthcare nuance is rarely part of the brief. |
| Medical Industry Specific | Our team works within the legal boundaries of the Healthcare Services Act 2020, the Healthcare Services (Advertisement) Regulations 2021, and the Singapore Medical Council (SMC) Ethical Code and Ethical Guidelines: No before and after imagery implying guaranteed outcomes. No "Best Doctor in Singapore" or "guaranteed results". No discount promotions designed to induce treatment. | Other agencies may not be familiar with healthcare advertising regulations. They default to what works in other industries. This could mean superlative claims, promotional discounts, and before-and-after imagery. While it is not malicious, the compliance risk doesn't sit with them. It sits with you. |
You’ll Get:
This is dependent on budget and existing assets. However, assuming we start from scratch, it'll take around two weeks of planning (no ad spend just yet), and you should be able to see your first lead/ enquiry within 24 hours of ad launch.
No. The cool part about performance marketing is that you can vary the budget to your liking. However we recommend starting with at least $500 at minimal budget, focusing on one patient avatar and service, this will allow for space and time for optimization of the campaign.
We help clinics attract the right patients through search engines, paid advertising, and content that builds trust. Think of us as the team that handles everything between a patient searching for help online and them booking an appointment with you, so that you can focus on being a physician.
First we do not lock you in long term retainers that keep billing regardless of results. Our goal is in patient acquisition, not social media likes or virality. Our case studies span technically complex fields like legal services. Our strength is in taking complicated jargon and making it easy for everyday people to understand.