Independent medical practices are fighting a two-front war for attention: more local competitors offering convenient access, and a marketing landscape being reshaped by generative AI.
For many physician practices, competitors are no longer limited to the other physician groups across town. Patients can choose urgent care centers, retail clinics and hospital-owned networks with strong local footprints, not to mention physicians who are setting up direct pay and concierge style practices to boost the service and doctor-patient relationship that so many patients feel are missing from traditional health care.
And patients are increasingly using AI, online reviews and social media when deciding where they should seek care. According to rater8’s 2025 report, “The Next Evolution of Patient Choice: The Rise of AI in Healthcare Search,” about 70% of patients are open to or are already using AI tools to research physicians. Among patients, 26% said AI recommendations directly influenced their decision, nearly equal to primary care referrals (28%) and health care review sites (29%).
So what can a small practice do to stand out? Practice marketing experts interviewed by Medical Economics said there are a number of practical strategies that physicians can incorporate. It starts with standing out.
“One of the first things we work on is trying to figure out something that is valuable to patients and different from your competition,” said Carl White, president and founder of MarketVisory Group, a health care marketing firm in the Chicago area that specializes in working with independent practices. “It must be both.”
Personal branding is key as well, said Scott Bartnick, co-founder and CEO of Otter Public Relations, said in an interview with Medical Economics for the brand’s “Off the Chart: A Business of Medicine Podcast.”
Physicians must cultivate an online presence that is authentic, honest and shows what makes you a physician patients will want to forge a relationship with.
“Personal branding is so critical,” Barnick said. “Building trust and communicating who you are is critical. … There's more opportunity for patients to search and research than there has ever been.”
Making a good (digital) first impression
As the rater8 survey suggests, patients are judging practices long before the first visit. A 2025 Press Ganey report found 80% of consumers say online scheduling influences their choice of provider, and “nearly a quarter” will walk away if booking is not easy.
White frames the first strategic decision as understanding how patients enter the practice: “front door” practices, such as primary care, tend to rely more on patients finding them directly, while referral-heavy specialties may not need to “win” search in the same way — but still need to look compelling once a referred patient checks them out online.
Either way, the stakes are rising because patients are quicker to abandon friction.
2026 marketing checklist: Be findable, be specific, be friction-free
The marketing challenge for independent practices in 2026 is not choosing the perfect channel. It is executing the fundamentals in a discovery environment that is faster, more crowded and increasingly mediated by AI:
- Reduce friction in booking and communication. Your patients will notice.
- Focus on cultivating positive, 5-stay reviews. When you get bad reviews, address them personally with the patient, and be specific and professional in any online responses.
- Good clinical care is not marketing, its expected.
- Differentiate with a patient-relevant “why chose you,” and repeat it consistently.
- Use AI as a tool, but protect clinical accuracy your own voice.
- Audit vendors for HIPAA readiness when patient data touches marketing efforts.
Press Ganey found about 48% of patients reported pre-appointment roadblocks such as cumbersome scheduling, long waits and poor communication. Those early frustrations lowered “Likelihood to Recommend.”
The details that practices often treat as administrative — hours, phone numbers, insurance accepted, whether the office is reachable — are now part of marketing. Press Ganey reported 89% of consumers say up-to-date online information influences their choice of provider. It also found 29% would be deterred by incomplete listing details, and 46% would reconsider booking if they struggle to reach the main office.
Practices that are worried about competition should start by looking at what patients do in the research phase, especially reviews. In rater8’s report, 84% of patients said they check online reviews before choosing a new provider, and 51% read at least six reviews.
Reviews can also, somewhat surprisingly, override personal recommendations. rater8 found 40% of patients have canceled or avoided booking because of negative reviews, and 61% said friends and family recommendations would not sway them if they saw negative reviews online.
Focus on reviews
Online reviews have become a key marketing challenge for medical practices — and not just because a handful of one-star posts can drag down a rating.
Bartnick said physicians should treat reviews as a direct extension of the patient experience and a signal system for operational issues that quietly drive churn.
“A strong personal brand starts with reviews,” Bartnick said.
Physicians don’t need hundreds of reviews to change how they look online — but they do need enough recent, positive feedback to build credibility quickly in local search. Get a foundation of strong reviews first, then use that momentum to support broader visibility efforts. The goal, he said, is to create enough “trust” signals that a patient who is comparison-shopping in your area feels comfortable clicking, calling and booking.
“As a doctor, you probably only need 15 to 20 five star reviews to start adding that traction,” Bartnick said. He presented that threshold as an achievable starting point for independent practices, especially those trying to stand out against better-known local competitors.
So what about bad reviews?
He urged practices to start by diagnosing the root cause of complaints — wait time, front-desk interactions, billing surprises — and fixing those workflow breakdowns before they turn into a pattern. “The first thing that I do is try to figure out what happened, and can we solve that?” he said.
When a negative review does land, Bartnick described a measured approach: try to resolve the issue directly, explore whether the post violates a platform’s terms, and only then respond publicly, and with specifics. The mistake he sees often is the cookie-cutter apology that looks automated and tells future patients nothing about how the practice handled the situation.
“There’s tools that will sit in and automate your review responses. I don’t personally recommend that,” he said. “That should be a really custom response.”
A tailored reply, he added, should explain what the practice did to make it right or invite the reviewer to connect so the practice can address the complaint, which signals to prospective patients that the office takes service and trust seriously.
The role of generative AI in marketing
Generative AI did not replace local search, but it is changing how patients look for information. Rater8’s report found 31% of patients use generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews to research and compare providers. That is a meaningful behavioral shift, and it is not limited to early adopters: rater8 reported 73% of patients said they adopted new behaviors or tools in the past year to research providers.
White separates most AI prompts from patients into two buckets. The first are “teach me” questions, which are broad and educational, such as prompts about specific medical conditions. The other is “recommendations,” such as a patient ask who is best physician near them.
“It’s very difficult to win in the ‘teach me’ type prompts,” White said — and even if a practice could, it may not be the best use of limited time. But surfacing your practice on recommendation type prompts might be worth the effort.
The key is that practices that already win locally online are more likely to be surfaced by AI tools because those tools lean on the same credibility signals patients and search engines use. So working with a professional to make sure what you share online, your website and any social media accounts, are optimized.
Generative AI also makes it easy to flood the internet with content: FAQs, blogs, social posts and patient education pages. White cautioned that speed can create sameness and risk.
His warning is about two audiences: patients and search engines. Content still needs clinical quality control — and it needs to sound authentic and like the physician behind it. Otherwise, it is unlikely to build trust or stand out in the recommendation-driven environment rater8 described.
“The key question is: Does this sound like you?” White said. “Just because it can spit something out in 10 seconds doesn't mean it's worth publishing.”
Differentiation beats decibels
The temptation in a crowded market is to “do more marketing.” White’s advice is to do clearer marketing.
If a practice looks and sounds like everyone else, White argued, the fallback strategy is to outspend everyone else — and independent practices rarely win that game. “If you sound and look and feel the same as all of your competition, then the way you win and get noticed is you scream louder than everybody else,” he said. “It’s the most expensive way to promote yourself.”
The other differentiator is consistency — sticking with a small number of patient-relevant messages long enough for the market to absorb them. White said practices often feel repetitive right when they are finally breaking through.
Retention is marketing, too
Patient acquisition gets most of the marketing oxygen. But in 2026, retention is just as important.
White pointed to “service marketing” that reduces friction: easier scheduling and rescheduling, digital forms, reminders and smoother check-in. He described how reliant he has become on automated text reminders as a consumer — a small operational detail that can prevent no-shows and reduce staff burden while improving the patient experience.
That operational focus is echoed in Press Ganey’s consumer findings: the company described “friction” at any stage as a reason consumers seek alternatives, delay care or disengage, and said digital access is now “make-or-break” for many patients.
In a market where patients are scanning reviews and comparing options online — and where AI summaries may reduce website clicks — the day-to-day experience of reaching the office and completing basic steps becomes part of the brand.
