Short answer
Start by auditing your own visibility and patient experience honestly, since a genuinely strong existing practice with solid reviews and good local SEO is far less vulnerable to a new entrant than one with weak foundations. Strengthen those foundations first, then consider whether any specific competitive response, like promoting a particular service, is actually warranted. A calm, well-prepared practice usually finds a new competitor has far less impact than the initial announcement made it feel like it would.
Resist the urge to panic-spend on marketing
A sudden, reactive increase in ad spend or a rushed marketing campaign, undertaken purely in response to a competitor announcement, often wastes budget on activity that isn't well planned. It's usually more effective to take a short pause, assess your actual competitive position honestly, and respond deliberately rather than reactively.
Audit your own visibility and patient experience first
Before assuming a new competitor poses a serious threat, honestly assess your own Google Business Profile completeness, review volume and recency, and website conversion path. A practice with strong existing local SEO, a healthy flow of recent reviews, and a smooth booking experience is considerably more resilient to a new entrant than one with weaker foundations in any of these areas, and shoring these up is time well spent regardless of the competitive situation.
Understand what the new competitor actually offers
Not all new practices compete for the same patients; a new competitor offering a narrower or different service mix may overlap with your practice less than the initial alarm suggests. Take time to understand their actual positioning, services and pricing before assuming direct, full competition, since a more accurate picture often reveals the overlap is smaller than it first appeared.
Play to genuine strengths rather than copying the newcomer
A new practice often competes initially on novelty and modern facilities, since that's what's available to differentiate on when there's no history yet. An established practice's genuine advantages, patient history, an existing review base, community relationships, are harder to replicate quickly, and leaning into these rather than trying to out-modern a brand-new competitor usually plays to a stronger hand.
Talking to your own team about the new competitor
How a practice's own staff talk about a new competitor, to patients, to each other, and in casual conversation, matters more than many owners realise. A defensive, anxious tone among staff can inadvertently signal weakness to patients, while a calm, confident approach, acknowledging the new practice exists without treating it as an existential threat, tends to reassure existing patients and prevent unnecessary anxiety from spreading through the team. It's worth having a brief, honest conversation with staff about the situation, including what the practice is actually doing in response, so that front-desk and clinical staff aren't left speculating or repeating uncertain information to curious patients. This also creates an opportunity: staff who feel informed and confident about the practice's competitive position tend to naturally reinforce that confidence in patient interactions, which is a subtle but genuinely useful form of reputation management that costs nothing beyond a short, clear internal conversation.