Selling a practice is a legal and financial process. This page is not that process. Brokers, associations, and your attorney cover the deal. The gap Egmer can actually help with is narrower: what a buyer sees online before they ever call, and whether that picture is you alone or the practice.
Use this if you own a dental, chiropractic, physical therapy, occupational therapy, veterinary, counseling, or optometry practice. The marketing jobs rhyme. The clinical work does not, and nothing here is clinical advice.
What buyers look at online before they call
Your website, your Google listing, and your reviews are public. A buyer, or the broker helping them, can open all three on a phone in the parking lot.
They can see whether the hours are current, whether more than one provider is named, whether a new patient can tell how to book, and whether every review is a love letter to the owner. They cannot see your payer contracts or your tax returns from the homepage. Do not treat the website as the valuation. Do treat it as the first impression you cannot edit during the tour.
Marketing for healthcare practices is the work of keeping that public picture accurate while you are still seeing patients. If the marketing is still your personal brand, read owner-dependent practice marketing next to this list.
The 12-point marketing readiness checklist
Go down the list with a yes, a no, or a "only I can do this." The last answer is the one to fix first.
- You can log in to the domain registrar, or someone at the practice can.
- You can log in to hosting and to the website editor.
- The Google Business Profile has a primary owner who is not a personal inbox you plan to close.
- The practice phone number and email have a named account holder at the practice.
- Social and ad accounts live in a business account, with a second admin.
- The homepage still makes sense if your name moves from "the doctor" to "founder."
- Every provider who would stay after a sale has a page of their own.
- Recent reviews mention the team or the person who was seen, not only you.
- Someone other than you can publish a correction, such as a holiday closure.
- A written one-page playbook says who asks for reviews and who checks the listing.
- Forms can be finished without a mouse, and you know where the submissions go.
- You have run a first-look accessibility scan and you know it is not a compliance certificate.
Item 11 and item 12 belong together. Read practice website accessibility, then run the free accessibility scanner. The scan is limited to what an automated tool can see on one page. A high score does not mean a site is fully accessible or compliant. An automated scan or a widget is a good starting point. Fixing the issues at the foundation, in the code, is the gold standard.
The account side of items 1 through 5 is spelled out in what happens to your practice website when you sell.
What changes by practice type
The checklist is the same. The place owners get stuck is not.
Dental
Patients often know the hygienists as well as the dentist. A site that hides the hygiene team, and reviews that never say their names, make the practice look like one person. Web design for dentists is written for that first-visit moment: a clear next step on a phone.
On value, do not borrow a single percentage and call it your number. CBIZ, citing the Health Care Group Goodwill Registry, reports average goodwill of about 52% of annual gross revenue for general dentistry sales. The same article reports about 44% for oral and maxillofacial surgery, about 41% for prosthodontics, about 39% for periodontia, and about 50% for orthodontia. CBIZ ties the general-dentistry figure to location and hygiene services, which can transfer more readily than one dentist's personal reputation. Those are database averages CBIZ published in July 2024. They are not your valuation. Talk with a valuator and a CPA before you treat any of them as a price.
Chiropractic
Many chiropractic practices carry the doctor's name, and the care is hands-on, so patients attach it to a person. That loyalty is real. The marketing job is to show associates and the front office too, if they are part of the visit patients will still have. Web design for chiropractors starts from that kind of practice. A rename is optional. Invisible staff is the problem.
Physical and occupational therapy
These practices are often a group. If the site lists one owner and a blurry team photo, a buyer cannot tell who treats knees, hands, or pelvic health, and patients cannot tell either. Give each therapist a page. Web design for physical therapists and web design for occupational therapists are the practice-type pages for that build. The marketing point, separate from the build, is that the byline and the review can name the therapist the patient actually saw.
Veterinary
Egmer does not have a separate veterinary website page. The marketing pattern is still familiar. Clients often ask for "my vet" by name. A clinic that will be sold needs the other doctors visible: names, what they see, and reviews that mention them when that is who handled the visit. The practice name has to be sayable without the founder's last name, even if the founder's name stays on the sign for now. The general page for this kind of work is marketing for healthcare practices. Nothing here is medical or veterinary advice.
Counseling and therapy
Trust in one clinician is often the service. Pretending that trust transfers on closing day would be a false promise, and this article will not make it. What marketing can do is tell the truth in public: who is in the practice, what a first visit is like, and how someone becomes a patient of a specific clinician. If you are the only clinician, say so, and talk with your broker about what a buyer would actually be purchasing. Do not publish clinical claims to make the practice look larger than it is.
Optometry
Patients may come for the exam, the glasses, or both. The site should make those paths obvious, and it should name the doctors who will still be there. Web design for optometrists covers the practice site. For a sale, check that the retail brand and the clinical names are not collapsed into one owner's personal page.
Who does what: broker, CPA, attorney, marketing partner
Keep the lanes straight so nobody is practicing outside them.
- A broker helps you go to market and talk with buyers. Ask them what they want the website and the reviews to show. Do not ask them to be your web host.
- A CPA and a valuator speak to price, goodwill, and taxes. The averages in this article are citations, not their opinion of your books.
- An attorney writes and reviews the agreement, including who receives the domain and the listings. Marketing cannot draft that for you.
- A marketing partner can inventory accounts, build provider pages, set up review requests, and keep the site usable. Egmer does that work. Egmer does not set your sale price, promise a ranking, or tell you that you are compliant.
If you want the longer handoff, including who runs marketing after you step back, read the marketing succession plan.
Start 18 to 24 months out
Eighteen to twenty-four months is enough time for a review habit, a set of provider pages, and a second person who can publish. It is not magic, and it is not a rule from a statute. It is a practical window so you are not rewriting the website the month a buyer asks for a tour.
If you are inside a year, do the checklist anyway. Fix the logins and the "only my name" homepage first. Those two are visible on day one. A new brand system can wait its turn.
When you want that checklist turned into a 90-day plan, see Egmer's Sell-Ready Marketing Snapshot.
No legal, tax, or financial advice. No promised rankings, AI recommendations, compliance, or valuation outcomes.