Healthmark Singapore - SEO for medical

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

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
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
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
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
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
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
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 doctorwritten
articles and is very helpful.

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
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.

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