What should happen in the first 90 days with a new marketing agency for a fertility clinic?
In the first 90 days, a new fertility marketing agency should sign a BAA, audit tracking on every inquiry and intake path, fix your Google Business Profile listings, launch a few measured campaigns and report consults booked by source every week. By day 90 you should know which channels produce new-patient consults, not just form fills. If you cannot see that, onboarding is not done.
- Month one is paperwork and plumbing: a signed Business Associate Agreement, shared access, and an audit of every pixel, form and call path that touches a prospective patient.
- Month two is listings, pages and first campaigns: location profiles, service-line pages for IVF, egg freezing and other priorities, and one or two paid campaigns on clean tracking.
- Month three is proof: consults booked and held by channel, a first optimization round and a written plan for the next quarter.
- Your clinic carries part of the load: a named owner for new-patient follow-up, timely approvals on claims, and a standing weekly call.
- Every practice welcome — retainers from $499/mo, Goals-Driven engagements, Performance-Linked Payout Models available.
- Dallas, Texas LLC
- US client team · Central Time (CST)
- 25+ US healthcare clients
- BAA signed with every client
- HIPAA compliance training across client and delivery teams
- Contracts and invoices in USD
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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.”
What does a good 90-day onboarding with a fertility marketing agency look like?
A good onboarding has three phases. Days 1–30 secure access, sign the BAA and audit tracking. Days 31–60 fix listings and pages and start the first campaigns. Days 61–90 show consults by channel and set the next quarter's plan. Each phase ends with something you can check.
Fertility marketing has a longer and more sensitive path than most specialties. A prospective patient may read for weeks, attend a webinar, call twice, and only then book a new-patient consult. Testing, financial counseling and insurance checks often come before any treatment decision. An agency that measures only clicks or form fills will report activity that has little to do with your clinic's real pipeline.
That is why the order of work matters. Ads launched before the intake path is audited can leak health information to ad platforms. Campaigns launched before your coordinators can answer calls quickly waste the budget. A disciplined agency fixes the plumbing first, then spends. This is the sequence we follow on fertility and IVF marketing engagements in the US, and it is a fair standard to hold any agency to.
Agree these points before day 1
- Which service lines matter most this year: IVF, egg freezing, IUI, donor programs, male fertility, or fertility preservation.
- Which locations are in scope, including satellite offices.
- What counts as a result: inquiries, consults booked, consults held, or treatment starts.
- Who at the clinic approves ad copy and any statement about outcomes.
The legal terms behind this plan, such as data ownership, notice periods and account access if you part ways, belong in the contract. Our fertility marketing agency contract checklist lists what to put in writing first.
What should the agency do week by week in days 1–90?
Weeks one to four cover the BAA, access, a tracking audit and a baseline of where consults come from today. Weeks five to eight cover listings, service-line pages, call handling and first campaigns. Weeks nine to thirteen cover optimization, a quarterly review and the next plan. Use the table as your weekly-call checklist.
| Weeks | What the agency does | What you should see |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | Kickoff; signs a Business Associate Agreement; collects logins for the website, analytics, ad accounts and Google Business Profile; confirms priority service lines and locations | Signed BAA, an access list and a named account owner |
| Week 2 | Tracking audit of every inquiry path: contact forms, consult request forms, patient portal links, chat, phone numbers and any pixels or tags on those pages | A written audit naming each risk and each fix, including anything that may pass health details to ad platforms |
| Weeks 3–4 | Baseline: inquiries, consults booked and consults held by source for recent months; review of the website, location listings and how success-rate data is presented | A one-page baseline both sides sign off, so later results are compared fairly |
| Weeks 5–6 | Listing and page fixes: categories, hours, services and photos for each location; gaps in IVF, egg freezing or donor pages; clear consult and call buttons; a cost and financing page if missing | A dated change log |
| Weeks 7–8 | First campaigns, usually paid search on one or two priority services, plus a review of how the front desk and coordinators handle new inquiries | Campaigns live with budgets and goals you approved in writing |
| Weeks 9–10 | First optimization: search terms, landing pages, call outcomes, speed to first contact, cost per consult booked | Notes on what changed and why |
| Weeks 11–12 | Content and SEO plan for the next quarter; review-request routine running; nurture emails for people not ready to book, sent only with consent | A draft plan for days 91–180 |
| Week 13 | Quarterly review against the baseline | Consults booked and held by channel, spend, and agreed goals for next quarter |
Expect some slippage. Logins take time to locate, and claims reviews can stall pages. A good agency names the blocker, says what it is waiting for, and moves other work forward. What should not slip is the order: no meaningful ad spend before the tracking audit is done and its fixes are live.
Why should the BAA and tracking audit come before any ads?
Fertility inquiries reveal sensitive health information. If a tracking pixel fires on a consult request form or portal page, details can reach an ad platform without the protections HIPAA requires. Signing a BAA and auditing every tag first limits that risk before money is spent driving traffic into the forms.
HHS's Office for Civil Rights issued guidance on online tracking technologies in December 2022 and updated it in March 2024. In June 2024 a federal court in American Hospital Association v. Becerra vacated the part covering certain unauthenticated public web pages. Tracking on authenticated pages, such as patient portals, remains covered. Booking and intake flows are where clinics most often take on risk. Read the official HHS tracking technologies guidance and confirm your setup with counsel.
What the tracking audit should check
- Every tag and pixel on consult forms, portal logins, scheduling pages and thank-you pages.
- Whether form fields such as diagnosis, treatment interest or age are sent to any third party.
- Whether call tracking records or transcribes calls, and where that data is stored.
- Whether each vendor that handles patient data has signed a BAA with the clinic.
- Whether ad platforms receive only the minimum conversion signal needed.
Ad platforms add their own limits. Meta restricts targeting based on health conditions, and Google restricts personalized ads on sensitive health topics. A competent agency plans around those limits from the start rather than finding them out after a campaign is rejected. Our guides to HIPAA-safe Meta ads for fertility clinics and call tracking for fertility clinics go deeper.
Claims need the same care. Clinics report assisted reproductive technology data to the CDC under the Fertility Clinic Success Rate and Certification Act of 1992, and ASRM expects success-rate claims to be accurate and not misleading. The FTC's rule banning fake reviews and testimonials took effect in October 2024. Early in onboarding, the agency should list every outcome claim and testimonial on your site for your team to check. Our page on success-rate advertising rules explains the details.
What must the fertility clinic provide to the agency?
The clinic must provide access, decisions and a working follow-up process. That means logins, a signed BAA, a named approver for claims and creative, priority service lines, and a person who owns new-patient inquiries. Without these, even a strong agency will stall in the first month.
Access
- Website admin or developer contact, and the domain registrar.
- Analytics, tag manager, ad accounts and Google Business Profile for every location, with the clinic as owner.
- Phone system or call-tracking settings, and the email tool used for patient education.
Decisions
- Which services to grow first, and which locations have consult capacity.
- Which physicians and coordinators can be featured, with their approval.
- Who reviews claims about outcomes, pricing and financing before anything goes live.
- A rough monthly ad budget range you are comfortable testing.
Operations
- One person who owns speed to first contact and logs consult outcomes.
- A short report from your scheduling system, by source, so the agency can tie leads to consults held.
- Thirty minutes a week for a standing call with a clinic decision-maker present.
The operations list matters most. Many fertility clinics lose prospective patients between the first inquiry and the first consult: calls go to voicemail, callbacks come days later, or financial questions go unanswered. An agency can surface those gaps in the data. Only the clinic can staff them.
What reporting cadence should a fertility clinic expect?
Expect a short weekly update, a monthly report with spend and consults by channel, and a quarterly review against the baseline. The weekly note covers what changed and what is blocked. The monthly report shows inquiries, consults booked, consults held and cost per consult. The quarterly review resets goals.
| Cadence | What it covers | Who should attend |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly | Work completed, blockers, campaign changes, any tracking or compliance issue | Agency account owner and the clinic's marketing or practice lead |
| Monthly | Spend, inquiries, consults booked and held by channel, call answer rate, new reviews, next month's plan | Add the medical or business decision-maker |
| Quarterly | Results against the baseline, treatment starts where the clinic can share them in aggregate, budget and goals for next quarter | Clinic leadership and agency lead |
Reports should never include identifiable patient information. Aggregate counts by source are enough to judge performance. On our engagements, monthly goals are agreed with the clinic and tracked live on Ichelon Agency OS, with a report every Monday. For a fuller view of which numbers belong in a report, see our guide to fertility clinic lead reporting.
What are the red flags in a fertility agency's first 90 days?
The clearest red flags are ads running before a BAA and tracking audit, reports built on clicks and form fills instead of consults, and copy that makes success-rate or outcome claims your team never approved. Any of these by day 30 is reason to pause and ask for a written plan.
- No BAA, or a delayed one. If the agency will touch inquiry data, call recordings or patient email lists, the BAA comes first.
- Pixels left unchanged on intake pages. The audit should name every tag on forms and portal paths, and say what was removed or reconfigured.
- Accounts created in the agency's name. Ad accounts, analytics and listings should be owned by the clinic, with the agency added as a user.
- Outcome claims without sources. Any success-rate statement should trace back to reported data and match the context ASRM expects.
- Activity reports with no pipeline view. Posts published and impressions earned do not show whether consults grew.
- No baseline. Without one, any later result is a guess.
- Silence about blockers. Good agencies say what they are waiting on and from whom.
If several of these appear, act before the quarter ends. Ask for a corrected plan with dates. If that does not arrive, plan an orderly exit with account access and data returned. If you want an outside view of where your current onboarding stands, book a call with our US team.
Related pages from the US team
Fertility & IVF marketing agency USA
How Ichelon Consulting US runs fertility clinic marketing.
Fertility agency contract checklist
Terms to settle in writing before onboarding starts.
Fertility agency RFP template
Ask agencies for an onboarding plan you can compare.
Fertility marketing audit checklist
Check your starting point before day 1.
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
What should a fertility marketing agency deliver in the first 30 days?
In the first 30 days a fertility marketing agency should sign a Business Associate Agreement, collect access to the website, analytics, ad accounts and Google Business Profile, audit tracking on every inquiry and intake page, and agree a written baseline of where consults come from today. Large ad spend should wait until the audit's fixes are live.
How long before a fertility clinic sees results from a new marketing agency?
Most fertility clinics should expect early signals, such as more inquiries and faster follow-up, within the second month, once listings, pages and first campaigns are live. A fair read on consults booked and held by channel usually takes until the end of the first 90 days, because the path from inquiry to consult is long.
Does a fertility clinic need a BAA with its marketing agency?
A fertility clinic should sign a Business Associate Agreement with any marketing agency that will create, receive, keep or send protected health information for it, such as inquiry details, call recordings or patient email lists. Ichelon Consulting US signs a BAA with every US client. Confirm your specific setup with your own counsel.
What should a fertility clinic measure during agency onboarding?
A fertility clinic should measure inquiries, consults booked, consults held and cost per consult booked, broken down by channel and location. Add call answer rate and speed to first contact, because missed or slow follow-up loses prospective patients. Treatment starts can be shared in aggregate at the quarterly review without identifying anyone.
What are warning signs that a fertility marketing agency onboarding is going wrong?
Warning signs include ads launched before a BAA and tracking audit, pixels left unchanged on consult or portal pages, ad accounts created in the agency's name, success-rate claims your team never approved, and reports that show clicks or impressions but not consults. Any of these by day 30 justifies asking for a written corrective plan.
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.
Want a second opinion on your agency's onboarding plan?
A 30-minute call with the US team. Bring your current plan or first report, and we will help you check the order of work, the tracking setup and what your reports should show.
We cover every stage, from first search to repeat visit
- 0Foundations
- 1Demand gen
- 2Capture
- 3Lead quality
- 4Lead mgmt
- 5Scheduling
- 6Show-up
- 7Conversion
- 8Retention
We work across all nine stages, from foundations to past patients, and fix the stage that leaks first. Our own software runs the work, and every stage is reported against a monthly target on Ichelon Agency OS.
See all nine stages and the tool behind each one →