Choosing a health tourism advertising agency: 10 criteria

A clinic looking for a health tourism advertising agency faces a task that differs from ordinary agency selection in two ways. First, in Türkiye the promotion of health services is restricted by a dedicated regulation, and the advertising platforms' own health policies sit on top of it; a wrong campaign can end in a closed account or an administrative sanction. Second, the audience is abroad: language, payment, travel and trust layers are part of the campaign. This article sets out the 10 criteria we have distilled from agency evaluation conversations with clinics. They are not an agency recommendation; they are a checklist for testing any agency with the same questions. The order is not by importance but by the order in which they come up in a conversation: compliance first, then market, then process.

Compliance and platform criteria

The first criterion is regulatory knowledge. Does the agency know the current version, dated 12 November 2025, of the Regulation on Promotion and Information Activities in Health Services; can it explain with examples which statements are prohibited and which stay within the "information" boundary? An agency that answers "we are advertisers, legal is your side" is not suitable for health tourism advertising, because the party that writes the ad copy is part of the sanction too. The second criterion is platform policy. Google Ads' healthcare and medicines policy requires certification for some service types and applies different restrictions by country; Meta's health category also sets limits on targeting and measurement. Ask in which accounts the agency has experienced these restrictions and how it rewrote a rejected ad. The third criterion is how the clinic's official documents are reflected in the campaign: a facility holding an International Health Tourism Authorisation Certificate must use that fact accurately and without exaggeration; the Ministry of Health's lists of authorised facilities and intermediary organisations are public, and patients can check them. On our clinics industry page we position the compliance layer as the first step of campaign design.

Market and language criteria

The fourth criterion is language capacity. For Arabic and Persian markets the ad copy, the landing page and the first WhatsApp reply must be in the same language and the same register; an Arabic ad written by machine translation may earn clicks but ends in lost trust. Ask whether the agency has a native-speaking editor on its team or among the translators it works with regularly. The fifth criterion is market knowledge: the Gulf states, Iran, the diaspora in Europe and North Africa arrive with different seasons, devices and payment habits. Can the agency explain from its own accounts which channel works in which market? The sixth criterion is channel balance. An agency that sells only Meta or only Google sees just one layer of the health tourism funnel; search, social, remarketing and organic visibility should be handled in a single plan. In our paid media service we set that balance by the stage of the patient journey, not by budget share per channel.

Data, measurement and process criteria

The seventh criterion is the handling of patient data. Personal health data arriving from ad forms, WhatsApp and the website is special-category data under KVKK, Türkiye's data protection law. Does the agency keep it in its own systems, which tools does it move it through, does it sign as a data processor? The eighth criterion is measurement setup. In health tourism the real conversion is not the ad click but the appointment that happens months later; the agency must have experience building that chain across WhatsApp, the CRM and the ad platforms. A setup that reports "lead count" but cannot report conversion to appointment shifts the budget to the wrong channel. We described this chain step by step in our lead quality and attribution article. The ninth criterion is the creative production process: before/after images, patient reviews and doctor footage are subject to the regulation; is there a compliance check step in the agency's creative approval flow? The tenth criterion is account ownership. Ad accounts, pixels and datasets, and the business portfolio must be opened in the clinic's name; the agency only receives access. Losing historical data and learned audiences when you change agency means starting the new agency from zero.

How to score the criteria

Ask the agency for a concrete example on each criterion and score the answer on three levels: no example, a general answer, a documented example from its own account. On the compliance criteria (1, 2, 3, 7, 9) even a "general answer" should count as disqualifying; in these areas approximate knowledge is as risky as wrong knowledge. On the market and measurement criteria, room for growth is acceptable, as long as the agency says what it does not know. At proposal stage compare scope rather than price: does the monthly management fee, the percentage of media budget or the performance component cover which work? Creative production, translation, landing pages and CRM integration are separate line items in most proposals, and no comparison should be made before those items are added.

Red flags

Some phrases are enough to end the meeting: "patient guarantee", "X patients a month", "outcome-based pricing, pay per patient". These contradict both the promotional language the regulation prohibits and the platform policies, and an agency that speaks this way will write campaign copy in the same voice. The second flag is an agency that promotes itself like a clinic on its own website, with before/after images or patient stories. The third flag is answering measurement questions with "the platform report is enough"; in health tourism the platform report shows only the first step of the funnel. A fourth, quieter flag is what you see when you inspect the ads and landing pages of the clinics the agency gives as references yourself: prohibited phrases, translation errors or broken WhatsApp links tell you more than anything written in the proposal. If none of these flags appears and you can get documented examples on most of the ten criteria, starting with a short pilot that includes the measurement setup is a healthier first step than a long contract.

What the pilot should cover

The first contract with the agency you choose should be designed as a three-month pilot, and its deliverables written down in advance: the measurement chain in place (the link between ad form, WhatsApp, CRM and appointment record), a compliant creative set for one market and one service, weekly search-term and review checks, and a month-end report that includes the conversion rate to appointment. During the pilot the clinic has a responsibility of its own too: the patient coordinator must enter incoming enquiries into the CRM the same day; otherwise the agency's report is produced from incomplete data and the budget decision sits on the wrong foundation. At the end of three months the decision is made not on "how many leads came" but on "what share of the enquiries became appointments, and from which channel". A pilot that cannot answer that question should not be extended, however good the agency is; because in health tourism, a campaign that cannot be measured is the most expensive form a budget can take.

Sources

• Regulation on Promotion and Information Activities in Health Services (Official Gazette 12.11.2025, no. 33075) — Antalya Provincial Health Directorate
• Healthcare and medicines — Google Ads policy
• Authorised health facilities and intermediary organisations — Health Tourism Department, Ministry of Health