Quick answer
Southeast healthcare marketing is the same method applied to 27 metros that behave differently. The build order does not change; what changes is which city pages get written first and how contested each one is.
01 — OverviewHow the Southeast market behaves
A region is not a market. It is a set of metros that share payer mixes and referral patterns but compete separately, which is why a single regional page never ranks for a city query and a city page almost always can. Published guidance from ftc.gov is the reference point here — see ftc.gov.
Practices in this region are generally competing against the same three things: a directory that ranks everywhere at once, a hospital system with a marketing department, and a newer practice that started publishing earlier. None of those is beaten on the head term. All three are beaten on the intersection of condition, city and payer.
The work is covered in depth on our specialties hubs and the services that deliver them.
Metros in this region
27 citiesEach city page carries the specialty and service combinations we build there, with the local evidence verified before publication.
02 — SearchWhat a city page has to do that a region page cannot
Patients do not search by region. They search by city, and increasingly by city plus condition plus payer. A regional page earns its place by routing — it is a directory for the reader and a hub for the crawler — while the city pages do the ranking. This is consistent with what hhs.gov publishes — see hhs.gov.
Local search moves in two to four months, faster than organic, which is why a city build usually shows its first measurable change in the Map Pack rather than in organic traffic.
03 — PricingWhat this costs
Engagements start at $2,000 per month and that floor is published. Local page production runs at roughly 25 pages per city-and-service target for every $1,000 per month of spend, which is the most concrete way to reason about covering a region. The kidney.org material sets the baseline — see kidney.org.
A region is rarely bought whole. Most practices take one metro, prove it, then add the next.
Frequently asked questions
Do you work across the whole of the Southeast region?
We work with independent practices nationwide, and this region has 27 metros with pages built or planned. What decides whether we take an engagement is not geography but whether the practice has capacity for more patients and a twelve-month horizon. If the phone goes unanswered at lunch, marketing spend becomes a leak, and we will say so before the contract rather than after the first report.
How long before a city build produces new patients?
Local search moves in two to four months, organic rankings in three to four, inquiries at six to twelve, and the strongest returns between twelve and eighteen. Those are the timelines we publish and they do not improve when a prospect asks. Anything faster is paid media, which has different economics and stops when the spend stops.
What does covering a region cost?
Engagements start at $2,000 per month and the floor is published. Local page production runs at roughly 25 pages per city-and-service target for every $1,000 per month of spend. Most practices start with one metro rather than a region, prove it, and extend. The number for a specific practice comes on the first call rather than after three meetings.
Do you offer market exclusivity in a metro?
No. An exclusivity promise is a promise to turn away a practice that needs the work, and it prices the second practice in a zip code out of good marketing entirely. What we build instead is an asset a competitor cannot copy, because it is five hundred pages deep in the practice’s voice with its clinicians’ names on it.
What happens to the pages if we stop?
They stay with the practice. The site, the content, the profiles, the analytics and the data. The site is the only asset in a marketing programme that the practice owns outright, that appreciates, and that cannot be removed by an algorithm change, a platform policy or a lapsed subscription.
How we reviewed this page
Regional coverage and the metro roster are verified against public sources before publication, and every statistic carries its source at the point of use. Written and reviewed by Steven Lockhart, founder of Healthcare Marketing, with 25-plus years of marketing experience, 15-plus of it healthcare-exclusive. Healthcare Marketing is a marketing agency and does not employ clinicians, so nothing here is presented as clinical review.
References
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