There is no fixed price for cardiology practice marketing in Australia, because the right spend depends on how referral-dependent the practice is, how many consulting locations it runs, and how much of the digital foundation already exists. This guide sets out the cost drivers, how to think about budget at different practice sizes, and how to read a proposal without being swayed by numbers that mean little on their own.
Why cardiology marketing is priced differently to general practice marketing
Cardiology sits in an unusual position. Most new patients arrive through a GP referral rather than a Google search, which means a meaningful share of the marketing budget is spent on referrer-facing communication rather than consumer advertising. A practice that only builds a slick public website while ignoring correspondence quality and referral turnaround is spending on the wrong half of the funnel. The cost structure has to reflect that split.
What actually drives the cost
Several factors move the number more than anything else.
Referral-pathway work versus patient-facing work. Building GP-facing content, referral forms, and correspondence systems is a different workstream to consumer search visibility, and both cost money. A practice that is well referred already may need less of the second and more of the first.
Number of consulting locations and hospital affiliations. Cardiologists often consult across several rooms and hold appointments at more than one hospital. Each location needs its own accurate Google Business Profile and consistent listing details, which adds to setup and maintenance cost.
Named-specialist search volume. Where a cardiologist has an established reputation, patients and GPs search by name. Protecting and building that visibility is comparatively low-cost. Where the practice is newer, more work goes into building condition and investigation content from scratch.
The starting point. A slow, thin, or unmanaged website means the first months of any engagement are repair rather than growth, which changes what an initial budget should be spent on.
How to think about budget by practice size and referral mix
Rather than quoting figures that would be wrong for most readers, it helps to think in proportions.
- Solo cardiologist, heavily referral-based. Prioritise referrer-facing content, a clean referral form, and fast, well-written correspondence. Patient-facing search work can start small.
- Established practice with mixed referral and self-referred demand. Split the budget between referral-pathway improvements and search visibility for condition and investigation queries, since both groups now find cardiologists this way.
- Multi-site or multi-cardiologist group. Budget needs to cover per-location profile management and reporting that separates referral source and enquiry volume by site and by named cardiologist, otherwise a strong performer hides weaker ones in the averages.
A useful discipline is to work out what a new patient relationship is worth to the practice over time, including follow-up consultations and procedures, then work backwards from that figure rather than picking a marketing number in isolation.
What the first 90 days should look like
The first quarter is largely foundation work. Expect the Google Business Profile for each consulting location to be corrected and completed, referral forms and GP-facing pages to be reviewed for clarity and turnaround commitments, tracking put in place so enquiries and referral sources are actually attributed, and any paid search campaigns launched with a tight keyword set.
What you should see inside 90 days is movement in leading indicators: profile views, referral form completions, call volume, and a growing review count. What you should not expect is a settled organic ranking position on competitive condition terms, since that takes longer than a single quarter. Any proposal promising a ranking by a fixed date deserves a follow-up question about what happens if it does not land.
How to judge an agency quote
Look past the deliverables list for four things.
- Separated media and management costs. You should see exactly what goes to Google and what goes to the agency.
- Named KPIs with dates. "Improve visibility" is not a KPI. Referral form completions, calls, and rankings on named queries are.
- Ownership. The website, ad account, analytics property, and Google Business Profile listings should sit in the practice's name.
- Compliance literacy. A cardiology practice advertising under the National Law has obligations most generalist agencies have never read. If nobody in the proposal mentions testimonials or claim substantiation, assume the risk sits with the practice.
Ask what happens if agreed numbers are missed. Our answer is a 90-day KPI guarantee and no lock-in contract, which shares the risk rather than leaving it entirely with the practice, and is one of the reasons practices choose a cardiologist marketing agency with sector experience over a general provider.
Where the money is usually wasted
The most common waste is patient-facing ad spend pointed at a homepage rather than a condition-specific page, so a person searching for palpitations lands on a page about the practice's history and leaves. The second is treating referrer communication as an afterthought while spending heavily on consumer channels, which weakens the referral relationships that still deliver most new patients. The third is a Google Business Profile set up once for the main location and never extended or updated for the others.
None of these are strictly budget problems. They are structural problems that a larger budget makes more expensive rather than more effective.
In-house, freelance or agency, and setup versus ongoing costs
Some practices consider hiring an in-house marketing coordinator instead of engaging a cardiologist marketing agency. An in-house hire can be useful for day-to-day content and coordination, but a single generalist employee rarely covers technical SEO, paid search platform management, and compliance review to the standard a specialist agency provides across many accounts. Freelancers sit in between: often cheaper per hour than an agency, but the practice absorbs the coordination work of managing several specialists and the risk if one freelancer is unavailable.
A useful test is to ask what happens if the person doing the work leaves or is unwell for a month. An agency has redundancy built in; a single in-house or freelance arrangement usually does not. Weigh that operational risk against the headline cost difference before deciding.
Separately, cardiology marketing budgets typically include a one-off setup component and a recurring management component, and conflating the two makes quotes hard to compare. Setup costs cover work such as building or repairing a website, correcting Google Business Profile listings across every consulting location, and establishing tracking and reporting. Ongoing fees cover the recurring work of managing campaigns, producing content, monitoring rankings, and reporting on results month to month. A practice with an already-adequate website and correctly configured profiles should expect a lighter setup phase and a quote weighted toward ongoing management; a practice starting from an outdated or broken website should expect the opposite, and should query any quote that skips setup work altogether, since campaigns built on a poor foundation rarely perform regardless of ongoing spend.
Getting a number for your practice
The honest way to price this work is to audit first: the website, the referral pathway, current visibility on named-cardiologist and condition queries, and what comparable practices are doing, then quote against what is actually there. That is the approach behind our medical SEO agency work generally. Before signing anything, run existing website claims and ad copy through the free AHPRA advertising compliance checker, and review the principles set out in our guide to AHPRA-compliant marketing.
If you are deciding where to spend the first dollar, read the profile checklist in Google Business Profile for cardiologists, then look at how a referral-led practice should structure paid search in Google Ads for cardiologists.
