Health tourism consulting: the marketing-side scope

In Türkiye, health tourism consulting describes three different jobs under one name: corporate consulting for authorisation certificates and accreditation, patient sourcing and intermediation, and the marketing side. This article looks only at the third: when a clinic or hospital buys "marketing consulting", what should be in scope, what should not, and which missing items in a proposal cause trouble later. We separated the intermediary from the marketing agency in what a health tourism agency does; here we draw the boundaries of the service. The aim is not to hand out a proposal template but to gather in one place the headings that belong on the table in a scope conversation, and to tie each one to a deliverable that can be checked.

What the marketing side of health tourism consulting covers

The marketing side of health tourism consulting can be grouped under four headings. First, demand analysis: from which country, in which language, for which treatment people are searching, and how that demand moves with the seasons. We described how a four-language demand map is built in a separate article; what matters in the scope conversation is that the consultant reads demand from measurable sources rather than "sensing" it, and delivers that reading as a written document. Second, positioning and content architecture: which treatments and which markets the clinic will be visible in, which pages will be built in which languages, how doctor profiles and treatment pages will be structured. Third, the channel plan: the split of budget and priority between organic search, paid search, social media, referral partnerships and AI search surfaces; channel weight changes by market, and the share of social and WhatsApp in the GCC differs from the European market. Fourth, measurement: the attribution chain from source to appointment, the patient coordinator's CRM discipline, and a single report for management. If all four headings are not in scope, what is being bought is not consulting but the operation of a single channel.

Regulation: the least discussed and most expensive item in scope

In Türkiye, promotion and information in health services is governed by the regulation published in Official Gazette no. 33075 on 12 November 2025, which repealed the 2023 regulation. If reading the regulation is not part of the marketing consulting scope, every piece of content and every ad becomes a risk carried by the clinic. In practice this does not mean the consultant provides legal services; it means doing three things: knowing which kinds of statement cross the promotion boundary and writing them into the content brief as a banned list, building a rule set together with the clinic's legal adviser for sensitive areas such as before/after images and patient reviews, and reading the ad platforms' healthcare policies and the regulation in the same table. We laid out that table channel by channel in health tourism advertising. It is not enough for a proposal to say "compliant content"; it must say which rule turns into which document, and who approves it.

What should stay out of scope

Some items appearing in a health tourism consulting proposal indicate an unclear boundary rather than a broad scope. First, a patient guarantee or a "this many patients per month" commitment; a marketing consultant generates and measures demand, while the number of patients who go on to treatment depends on the clinic's coordination, pricing, capacity and medical decisions. Second, producing medical claims; which treatment gives which result is for the physician to say, not the marketing team, and the regulation limits how such statements may appear in promotion. Third, intermediation: the list of authorised intermediary organisations is kept on the Ministry of Health's HealthTürkiye portal and intermediation is subject to its own regulation; a marketing consultant positioning itself as an intermediary mixes two different liability regimes. Fourth, "all-inclusive" scope: if website, SEO, ads, social media, CRM, call centre and translation are bundled into one line item, none of them has a defined, measurable output.

Deliverables that make the scope measurable

Scope headings can only be audited once they become deliverables. For demand analysis, the deliverable is a written demand map by market and treatment plus a seasonality calendar; we showed how the content calendar ties to that calendar in medical tourism content calendar. For positioning, the deliverable is a page architecture by language and treatment, and a table showing which search intent each page answers. For the channel plan, the deliverable is a budget, target and stop rule per channel: which indicator, below which threshold, triggers a review of that channel. For measurement, the deliverable is an attribution diagram showing which field is recorded where from source to appointment, plus a one-page monthly report. Every deliverable needs an owner, a date and an acceptance criterion; time-based line items such as "consulting support" should not enter the contract without a defined deliverable.

How scope is divided between consultant, agency and in-house team

Who holds the scope matters as much as what the scope is. The model we see working has three layers. The consultant carries the decision layer: demand analysis, positioning, reading the regulation and designing measurement; these are periodic, written deliverables rather than weekly operations. The agency or specialist team runs channel operations: content production, ad management, technical SEO implementation and translation review. The clinic's in-house team does the two things neither the consultant nor the agency can: patient coordination with CRM records, and physician approval of medical content. The three layers can sit in one contract, but the contract must define them separately; otherwise, when a channel stops, when a piece of content hits the regulation, or when a report does not add up, it is unclear who was responsible, who approved, and who recorded the data. In small clinics the consultant and the agency may be the same team; in large hospital groups, consulting independent of the agency is preferred so that channel decisions are not made by the party selling the channel.

Eight questions to ask when reading a proposal

These questions reveal whether the scope has really been defined. From which sources will you read demand data, and in what form will you deliver it to us? In which markets and languages will we work, and who will handle translation, with what review? Who reads the regulation, which document holds the banned list, and what is the approval flow? On what basis was the channel budget split, and under what condition does it change? Which fields will the patient coordinator record in which system, and who audits that? Who receives the monthly report, with which indicators? Which work is out of scope, and who supports us there? When the contract ends, who keeps the data, the accounts and the content? If the answers are not written in the proposal, the scope conversation is not over. We describe the scope structure we build for clinics on our clinics page; the marketing side of health tourism consulting, with the right boundaries, serves not the clinic's medical decisions but getting those decisions to the right patient in the right language.

Sources

• Regulation on Promotion and Information Activities in Health Services (12.11.2025) — Antalya Provincial Health Directorate
• Health Tourism Legislation — USHAŞ
• Authorised intermediary agencies — HealthTürkiye
• Intermediary organisations holding an International Health Tourism Authorisation Certificate — Health Tourism Department