Industries · Allied health
You cannot advertise the thing everyone wants
The GLP-1 medicines are prescription-only, and advertising a prescription-only medicine to the public is prohibited. Your entire demand is for something you are not allowed to name in an advert.
The problem
Paid ads cannot say the word, so everything else has to work harder
Most clinics in this niche discover the constraint after they have spent money. You cannot run an advert for a prescription-only medicine, which removes the most obvious channel for the most in-demand product in private healthcare right now.
What is left is organic search, reputation and referral. That makes a properly built website less of a nice-to-have here than anywhere else on this site: it is the channel, not a support for the channel.
And because the revenue is a monthly programme rather than a one-off appointment, month three retention matters more than month one acquisition. A patient who stops in week six costs you the entire remaining programme.
What actually works
What moves the needle for weight loss clinics.
Rank for the consultation, not the drug
People search for weight loss clinics, for eligibility, for what a programme involves and what it costs. All of that is answerable and none of it advertises a medicine.
Hold people through month three
Check-ins across the programme, automatically. In subscription revenue this is worth more than any amount of new enquiry generation.
Be visibly careful about the rules
A clinic that is obviously careful about prescribing and eligibility reads as safer than one that is not, in a market where patients are rightly wary.
The rules you work inside
What is true of weight loss clinics and nothing else.
This is the part a generic agency does not know, and it is the part that decides whether the marketing is legal, let alone effective.
Who regulates you
Prescribing brings in the GPhC, the CQC and the MHRA together, and the rules here are actively changing. Confirm the current position before publishing anything specific.
What you cannot advertise
Semaglutide and tirzepatide are prescription-only medicines and may not be advertised to the public. This is the sharpest advertising constraint of any niche on this site.
The software you already run
Semble, Heydoc, and bespoke programme platforms.
What an appointment is worth
£150 to £300 a month as a programme subscription. Genuinely recurring, which is rare here, and retention is therefore everything.
When you are busy
January is enormous. Then a pre-summer run.
The one lever
Organic search and retention, precisely because paid advertising of the product is off the table.
Regulatory positions change, and two of these families are changing now. I confirm the current position before writing your pages rather than copying what a competitor has up.
What you get
The same six things, pointed at your problem.
The package does not change by niche. What changes is what it is set up to do: which follow-up runs, on what interval, and what the website is built to be found for.
£297 a month. No build fee, no minimum term, live in 14 days.
- Your website
- Missed call text back
- Review funnel
- Lead follow-up
- All-in-one inbox
- Business phone
Questions
What weight loss clinics ask me.
Can I name the medication on my website?
The rules distinguish between advertising to the public and providing information, and they are being actively tightened. I will build to the current position and I will tell you where the line is rather than guess. This is one area where I would rather be careful than clever.
How do we compete with the big online providers?
Not on price or scale. On being a real clinic with real clinicians in a real place, which is exactly what a patient nervous about an online prescription is looking for.
Is January really that different?
Yes, dramatically, and the mistake is treating it as the whole year. What matters is retaining the January cohort into March, which is what the follow-up is for.
Do you handle the prescribing side?
No. That is entirely yours and it should be. This handles the enquiry, the follow-up and the retention around it.
Thirty minutes, and you will know if it is worth it.
No obligation, and nothing to pay to have the conversation.