Short answer
Ask specifically how an agency handles AHPRA compliance, what they report on beyond traffic and rankings, whether they can show real attribution from enquiry to booking, and how many healthcare clients they currently work with in your specific category. Vague or evasive answers to any of these are a warning sign. A little diligence upfront saves considerable frustration later.
Ask about compliance before anything else
A genuinely experienced healthcare marketing agency should be able to explain, without hesitation, how AHPRA advertising guidance affects testimonials, before-and-after imagery, and outcome claims. If an agency seems unfamiliar with this or treats it as a minor detail, that's a meaningful signal they're applying general marketing knowledge to your industry rather than genuine healthcare-specific experience.
Check what they actually report on
An agency that reports purely on traffic and keyword rankings is measuring proxies, not outcomes. Ask specifically whether they track enquiries, calls and bookings, and whether they can show you what that reporting actually looks like before you sign anything. If the honest answer is that they only measure visibility, ask how you're supposed to know whether visibility is translating into patients.
Ask about their current healthcare client mix
An agency working with several dental practices in different cities may have genuinely useful category expertise. An agency with one healthcare client among a broad mix of unrelated industries is applying general marketing skill to your situation rather than accumulated, specific pattern recognition. Neither is automatically disqualifying, but it changes what you should reasonably expect from them.
Watch for specific red flags
Guaranteed rankings or a guaranteed number of new patients are promises no legitimate agency can actually make, since neither is within an agency's direct control. A quote that's identical regardless of your specific location, competition or service mix suggests a templated approach rather than genuine assessment. And reluctance to explain pricing clearly, particularly what's included in a management fee versus billed separately for ad spend, is worth pushing back on before committing.
A short list of questions worth asking on the first call
Ask how many active healthcare clients they currently manage and in which categories, what their process looks like for AHPRA compliance review before content goes live, what specifically you will receive in monthly reporting, and what happens if you want to leave after three months. The specificity and confidence of the answers, more than any single answer itself, usually tells you whether you are speaking with a team that genuinely does this work regularly or one that is assembling a pitch on the fly.
Why a written strategy document matters more than a confident sales pitch
A capable agency should be able to produce a written outline of what they would actually do for your specific practice, based on your specific market and current visibility, rather than relying purely on a confident verbal pitch about their general capabilities. If an agency is reluctant to put anything specific in writing before you sign, or the written strategy reads as generic enough to apply to any practice in any location, that is a meaningful signal worth weighing against how persuasive the sales conversation itself felt.