For independent practices
The systems buying up practices in your market have a marketing department. Now you do too.
Acclaro gives independent physician practices what they’ve never been able to buy: a senior chief marketing officer, a full agency of resources and the same ad channels the consolidators use — at a fraction of the cost of a single in-house hire.
Founded in 2003 · Clients in 8 countries · A senior leader on every account · In-market in North Carolina
You didn’t get into medicine to run a marketing department or an ad agency.
You already know something is off. The practice down the road doubled its patient volume and you’re not sure how. A patient mentions they “asked ChatGPT” and got a name that wasn’t yours. Your website is three years old and nobody has time to fix it. You’re paying someone for SEO and nobody can tell you what it bought.
Meanwhile the PE-backed group in the next county has fourteen people doing nothing but marketing.
That gap is real, and it’s widening. But it isn’t a talent gap or a budget gap — it’s a leverage gap. They have senior strategy plus the capacity to execute. You are looking to have a full patient schedule and an office manager already doing three jobs.
That’s the gap we close.
Why this is different
Four things that make this different.
A real CMO, not an account manager
Every Acclaro engagement is led by Michael Thuerk — 40 years of healthcare marketing leadership, including senior marketing leadership at ChenMed. The person who diagnoses your growth problem is the person who owns the strategy after you sign. No handoff to a junior.
Three decades of experience behind him
You’re not hiring a two-person shop. Acclaro has run marketing programs across industries and continents for more than two decades, with full-time specialists in search, paid media, programmatic, creative, web, and content. You get the playbooks without paying to build them.
Creative that doesn’t look like everyone else’s
Our creative leadership brings 30 years of agency work, including Richards Group pedigree and Super Bowl spots. In a market where every aesthetics ad looks identical, that’s not vanity — it’s the difference between being noticed and being scrolled past.
The channels nobody local is running yet
AI search optimization. Connected TV to specific households. Cross-platform identity matching. These aren’t experiments for us — they’re staffed capabilities, in market today.
What changed
Patients aren’t finding you the way they did three years ago.
Three shifts have quietly rewritten how a practice gets discovered — and how clearly you show up the moment a patient is choosing. Most agencies serving independent practices haven’t caught up to any of them.
Search became conversation
Shift one
Patients now ask; they don’t query. “Best place near me for a laser treatment on dark spots” goes into ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or a Google AI Overview — and comes back with three names and reasons. Ranking #4 on a results page nobody reads isn’t visibility anymore.
What we do about it: Generative Engine Optimization. We research the specific questions your patients are actually asking AI, monitor whether you show up in the answers, fix the technical structure those AI crawlers read, and go after the third-party sources the models cite when they recommend someone.
Television became affordable and precise
Shift two
A 30-second spot no longer requires a broadcast budget. Connected TV places your ad inside streaming content — Hulu, Roku, and the like — targeted to specific households in your service area. Affluent, evening hours, in your ZIP codes. Almost nobody serving independent practices in this market is delivering it.
Attribution stopped being optional
Shift three
“Impressions are up” is not an answer. Whether you plan to grow, hold, or eventually sell, you need to know which channel produced which new patient and what that patient is worth. We build the measurement first, then spend the money — which is also exactly what a buyer’s diligence team asks for, if a sale is ever in your future.
The offer
Start with a free digital presence review.
No pitch deck, no obligation. We look at exactly what a prospective patient encounters when they go searching for a practice like yours — and we show you the specific gaps, ranked by what they’re costing you.
- AI visibility check whether you appear when patients ask ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity for a practice like yours, and who appears instead
- Local search and Google Business Profile audit accuracy, completeness, review velocity, and how you stack up against the three closest competitors
- Website conversion review whether your site turns a visitor into a booked appointment, and where it leaks
- Competitive spend snapshot what the practices and platforms in your market appear to be running
- Reputation position review volume, ratings, and response gaps versus local benchmarks
- Prioritized findings what to fix first, what can wait, and what it would take to close each gap
It takes about 15 minutes of your time. You’ll get the findings whether or not you ever work with us.
Who this is for.
A good fit
- Independent practices — solo through mid-size groups — not owned by a PE platform or hospital system
- Owners who want to grow without selling, or who want to be worth more if they do
- Practices with meaningful cash-pay or elective revenue, or the ambition to build it
- Anyone spending on marketing today without a clear answer on what it produced
- In-house teams that need senior strategy or specialist execution alongside them
Probably not a fit
- Practices looking for the lowest-cost vendor rather than a growth partner
- Anyone who wants activity reports instead of accountability for outcomes
- Organizations that already have a full internal marketing function operating at scale
Questions you’re probably already asking.
How is this different from hiring a marketing director?
A competent in-house marketing director runs $150,000–$200,000-plus fully loaded, before tools, media budget, or contractors — and one person can’t be a strategist, an SEO specialist, a media buyer, a designer, and a developer at once. Acclaro gives you senior leadership plus an entire specialist bench, and you can start well below the cost of a single hire.
We already have someone doing marketing internally.
Good — we work alongside in-house teams regularly, either as the senior strategic layer above them or as the specialist execution they can’t staff for. That’s a common engagement, not an exception.
How long before we see anything?
Onboarding is measured in days, not quarters, and awareness campaigns launch inside the first few weeks. Compounding channels like search and AI visibility build over months. We’ll be direct about which is which before you sign anything.
Do you understand healthcare advertising rules?
Yes. Medical claims, before-and-after imagery, patient privacy, and platform-specific health advertising restrictions are handled as part of the work, not discovered later.
What does it cost?
Engagements are structured in tiers based on how much of the market you’re trying to reach and how much strategic leadership you need. We’ll walk you through the options on the call — but the review itself is free, with no commitment attached.
Find out what patients see before your competitors do.
Fifteen minutes and a clear look at your digital presence. You’ll leave the conversation knowing exactly where you stand — and with a specific, prioritized list of what to fix.
We’ll respond within one business day. We don’t sell or share your information, and you won’t be added to a drip campaign you didn’t ask for.
Prefer to just call?
Michael Thuerk
Managing Director, Provider Market
678.576.7425
mthuerk@acclaroinc.com