What should a fertility clinic check in a marketing agency contract?
A fertility clinic should check ten things in a marketing agency contract: term and notice, scope, fees, ad-spend billing, ownership of accounts and content, the Business Associate Agreement, who approves success-rate and clinical claims, reporting, performance terms, and termination and handover. Data handling and claims approval carry more weight here than in most specialties, because fertility data is highly sensitive.
- The clinic should own everything it pays for: domain, website, Google Business Profile, ad accounts, analytics, call-tracking numbers, nurture emails and creative.
- A signed BAA comes before any patient data moves. Call recordings, consult requests and CRM records from a fertility clinic are protected health information.
- Every success-rate or clinical claim needs written clinic approval, with the data source named, before it runs in an ad or on a page.
- Performance terms should cover leads and booked consults, never pregnancy or live-birth outcomes, which no agency controls.
- Every practice welcome — retainers from $499/mo, Goals-Driven engagements, Performance-Linked Payout Models available.
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“They were able to get all my ideas and work with me over a period of three to four months and create this amazing website. It's super customized, very modern, and it incorporates all the elements that I had wanted — the patient portal, nice pictures, a very interactive website, patient reviews. I would highly recommend their company to anyone who wants to make an excellent website.”
Which clauses matter most in a fertility marketing contract?
Ten clauses decide how much risk a fertility clinic takes on: term, scope, fees, ad-spend billing, ownership, the BAA, claims approval, reporting, performance terms and exit. Read the draft against the table below. Where a clause is missing, ask for it in writing. A silent contract usually favors whoever drafted it.
This is a buyer's checklist, not legal advice. Ask a healthcare attorney to review the final contract and the BAA, especially if you run several sites, a donor program or a network of partner physicians.
| Clause | What good looks like | Red flag |
|---|---|---|
| Term and notice | Month-to-month, or a short first term with a clear written notice period | Long lock-in that renews automatically unless you cancel in a narrow window |
| Scope and deliverables | A monthly list by service line: IVF, egg freezing, IUI, LGBTQ+ family building, donor recruitment, second opinions | "Full-service fertility marketing" with no list of outputs |
| Fees | Fixed management fee, any setup fee and what triggers a price change, all written down | Fees that climb with ad spend and no cap, or vague "technology" charges |
| Ad-spend billing | Spend charged to the clinic's card in its own ad accounts, or a separate pass-through line | One blended invoice where you cannot see what reached Google or Meta |
| Ownership | Clinic owns domain, site, content, profiles, ad and analytics accounts, tracking numbers, email lists and data | Agency holds the ad account or domain in its own name |
| BAA and data handling | BAA signed first; named tools and subcontractors; no ad pixels on consult-request, intake or portal pages | "You don't need a BAA for marketing" |
| Claims approval | Clinic signs off every success-rate, cost and clinical claim; source of each figure recorded | Agency writes and publishes claims without medical review |
| Reporting | Set cadence; inquiries, booked new-patient consults and cost per consult by service line | Reports that stop at clicks, impressions and rankings |
| Performance terms | Lead and consult goals, how they are measured, and what happens if they are missed | Promises tied to pregnancies, births or guaranteed rankings |
| Termination and handover | Written handover list, fixed handover period, access transferred, files and lists exported | Handover "on request" for an extra fee |
If you are still comparing agencies, the questions in how to choose a fertility marketing agency help you test these clauses during the sales process, before a draft arrives.
Why does the BAA matter more for a fertility clinic?
A fertility clinic needs a Business Associate Agreement whenever its agency will create, receive, maintain or transmit protected health information for it. In fertility marketing that is almost unavoidable. Consult requests, call recordings, nurture email lists and CRM stages all reveal that a named person is seeking fertility care.
HIPAA sets the minimum contents of a business associate contract. Under 45 CFR § 164.504(e) it must limit how the agency uses and discloses the information, require it to report uses or disclosures the contract does not allow, bind its subcontractors to the same limits, return or destroy the information at termination where feasible, and let the clinic end the contract for a material violation.
Data points to write in beside the BAA
- A named list of every tool that will hold patient data: CRM, call tracking, email, forms, chat and scheduling.
- No advertising pixels or session recording on consult-request, intake, financing or portal pages.
- Server-side or HIPAA-safe conversion tracking, with the setup documented.
- No uploading of patient lists to ad platforms without legal review.
- Breach notice timing that is faster than the legal minimum.
- Extra care for donor and gestational carrier applicants, whose screening data is often as sensitive as patient data.
OCR's guidance on online tracking technologies, issued in December 2022 and revised in March 2024, still applies to authenticated pages such as patient portals. A federal court vacated only the part covering certain unauthenticated public pages in June 2024. Confirm the current position with counsel. For the advertising side, read our HIPAA guide to IVF clinic advertising.
Who should approve success rates and clinical claims in the ads?
The clinic should approve every success-rate, cost, timeline and clinical claim before it is published, and the contract should say so. The agency drafts; a named physician or clinical lead signs off. Each figure used should have its source and date recorded, so the clinic can defend it later.
Success-rate claims are the riskiest copy a fertility clinic runs. Under the Fertility Clinic Success Rate and Certification Act of 1992, clinics that perform assisted reproductive technology report data to the CDC each year through the National ART Surveillance System, and the CDC publishes clinic-level success rates. SART also publishes member clinic data, and ASRM expects advertised rates to be accurate, comparable and not misleading.
Wording to look for
- "Agency will not publish any success-rate, pricing or clinical statement without the Client's written approval."
- "All performance figures will cite their source, reporting year and patient group."
- "Agency will not use patient stories, photos or reviews without documented written authorization held by the Client."
- "Agency will not create, buy or gate reviews."
That last clause matters. The FTC rule banning fake reviews and testimonials took effect in October 2024, and it reaches businesses that buy or procure them. Our page on the rules for advertising IVF success rates covers claims in more depth.
How should fees and ad spend appear in a fertility agency contract?
Fees should be split into three visible parts: a fixed management fee, any one-time setup fee, and the ad budget. Ad spend should sit in ad accounts the clinic owns, charged to the clinic, or appear as a separate pass-through line. You should always be able to check spend against the platform's own billing.
Agency retainers in the US commonly range widely, from a few hundred to many thousands of dollars a month, depending on scope and ad spend. For fertility, scope is driven by the number of service lines, sites and campaigns, whether donor recruitment is included, and how much content needs medical review.
Questions to settle in writing
- Is the management fee fixed, or a percentage of ad spend? If a percentage, is there a cap?
- Are landing pages, call tracking, CRM seats or review tools billed on top?
- Is donor recruitment priced and reported separately from patient acquisition?
- How much notice must the agency give before raising fees?
- Is there any fee to end the contract or to complete the handover?
For pricing models in detail, see how much a fertility marketing agency costs. At Ichelon Consulting US, retainers start from $499/month and are custom-scoped, with ad spend billed in accounts the clinic owns.
What should reporting and performance terms say for a fertility clinic?
Reporting terms should name the metrics, the cadence and the data you can see yourself. For a fertility clinic, the core metrics are inquiries, booked new-patient consults, consults attended and cost per booked consult, split by service line. Performance terms should tie goals to those metrics, never to clinical outcomes.
Fertility has a long decision cycle. A patient may inquire months before a first consult, and longer before starting treatment. So the contract should set an attribution window that fits that cycle, and say where downstream data lives. Treatment-stage data is protected health information, so it should stay in clinic-controlled systems covered by a BAA, not in ad platforms.
| Term | Reasonable | Unreasonable |
|---|---|---|
| Report cadence | Weekly or monthly, on a fixed day | "Quarterly reviews" only |
| Metrics | Inquiries, booked consults, attended consults, cost per consult, by service line | Impressions, clicks and keyword positions |
| Data access | Clinic logins to ad, analytics and call-tracking accounts | Screenshots or PDFs only |
| Goals | Agreed monthly goals with a written plan if missed | Guaranteed pregnancies, guaranteed first-page rankings |
Our engagements are Goals-Driven: monthly goals agreed with the clinic, tracked live on Ichelon Agency OS, with a report every Monday. Performance-Linked Payout Models are available. For metric definitions, see which KPIs a fertility clinic should track.
What termination and handover terms protect a fertility clinic?
The contract should list everything the agency hands back at exit, set a fixed handover period, and confirm there is no handover fee. That list should cover admin access to every account, website files, content, creative, nurture sequences, email lists, call-tracking numbers and documentation of how tracking was configured.
A handover list to attach to the contract
- Primary ownership of the Google Business Profile for every site and satellite office.
- Admin access to Google Ads, Meta and Microsoft ad accounts, analytics and tag manager.
- Call-tracking numbers ported to the clinic.
- Exports of nurture emails, landing pages, ad copy and approved claims with their sources.
- Return or destruction of patient data, confirmed in writing, as the BAA requires.
- Donor recruitment assets and applicant pipelines, if the agency ran them.
Non-solicit and IP
A mutual non-solicit for staff is common and fair. Watch for clauses that let the agency reuse your patient stories, photos or physician content for other clients. Your clinic's creative should be yours. Templates and the agency's own tools may stay with the agency, and that is reasonable if it is stated clearly.
If a draft is on your desk now, book a call with the US team. We sign a Business Associate Agreement with every US client, and we will show you how we write our own ownership and exit terms. More detail is on our fertility and IVF marketing agency page.
Related pages from the US team
Fertility & IVF marketing agency USA
How Ichelon Consulting US scopes and runs fertility clinic accounts.
How to choose a fertility agency
Questions to ask before a contract is drafted.
Fertility agency RFP template
Ask agencies for these terms at the proposal stage.
The first 90 days
What should happen once the contract is signed.
Every practice welcome — Goals-Driven engagements from $499/mo
We benchmark your last 90 days, agree monthly goals with you, and track them live on Ichelon Agency OS with a report every Monday. Performance-Linked Payout Models are available. Our US leadership is based in Dallas, and strategy calls run in US business hours.
Common questions
Does a fertility clinic need a BAA with its marketing agency?
In most cases, yes. A fertility clinic needs a Business Associate Agreement when its agency creates, receives, maintains or transmits protected health information for it. Consult requests, call recordings, nurture lists and CRM records all qualify. Fertility data is highly sensitive, so the clinic should sign the BAA before any data moves and confirm the details with healthcare counsel.
Can a marketing agency guarantee IVF patients or pregnancies?
No agency should guarantee pregnancies, births or a set number of IVF patients. Clinical outcomes depend on medicine, not marketing. A fair contract sets goals for things marketing influences, such as inquiries, booked consults and cost per consult, explains how they are measured, and says what happens if a monthly goal is missed. Treat outcome guarantees as a red flag.
Who should approve success rates used in fertility ads?
The clinic should approve every success rate before it runs, ideally through a named physician or clinical lead. The contract should require the agency to record each figure's source, reporting year and patient group. Clinics report ART data to the CDC, and claims should be accurate, comparable and not misleading. Unapproved success-rate copy is one of the biggest contract risks.
Who should own a fertility clinic's Google Ads and Meta ad accounts?
The clinic should own its Google Ads and Meta ad accounts, with the agency added as a manager or user. Owning them keeps ad history, conversion data and billing in the clinic's name. If the agency holds the accounts, that history can be lost when the relationship ends, and the clinic may have to rebuild campaigns and tracking from nothing.
Should a fertility marketing contract be month-to-month?
Month-to-month, or a short first term with a clear notice period, is the safest structure for a fertility clinic. It keeps the agency accountable every month. A website build or tracking rebuild can justify a fixed project fee, but the ongoing retainer should not lock the clinic in for long periods or renew silently. Check the notice window and any exit fees.
A note on this guide: it explains marketing practice, not legal advice. Rules on privacy, advertising and insurance change and vary by state, so confirm anything compliance-related with your own counsel.
Reviewing a fertility marketing contract?
Book a 30-minute call with the US team. We'll walk through the ownership, billing, BAA, claims-approval and exit clauses in the draft you have, and show you how we write our own.