Off the Chart: A Business of Medicine Podcast · Medical Economics

How to market an independent practice in 2026, with Carl White of MarketVisory Group

·30 min·1 clip

Clinical excellence is table stakes—since all competitors are supposedly good, patients cannot differentiate on quality alone

Chris Mazzolini sits down with Carl White to talk about the marketing realities facing doctors and medical practices. White starts with the basic problem: the market is not standing still. He says the patient pool is slowly shrinking year by year. That leaves practices competing for fewer people while still facing the same, or greater, level of competition. The conversation quickly moves to differentiation. White says a practice needs to be both valuable and different. If it is valuable but indistinguishable, it gives patients no real reason to choose it. If it is different but not useful, it does not matter much either. He points to where that difference can come from, including unique treatments, specialized expertise, or simply a practice that runs better than others. The goal is not to invent a gimmick. It is to give people a reason to notice the practice and remember it. White contrasts that with the expensive habit of trying to win by being louder than everybody else. In his view, shouting is the least efficient way to market. The discussion then turns to consistency. He stresses that the message has to be repeated again and again. A practice cannot keep changing the wording every time the team gets bored with it. That repetition is part of how recognition gets built. They also spend time on the role of AI in marketing. White does not treat AI as a substitute for a real voice. He suggests it can be trained over time to reflect how a practice actually speaks. Without that work, it can still produce something fast that feels generic. The larger theme is that practices need to sound like themselves, not like a template. The episode keeps returning to the same operational question: what, exactly, should a patient understand about this practice that they would not understand about another one? That question shapes the rest of the advice. The result is a steady, business-minded conversation about how medical practices can define themselves in a crowded market.

As heard by us

A clear case for standing out with a repeatable public message and steady discipline.

The episode makes a plain case for branding as a survival skill in independent practice. Carl White argues that good care is not enough on its own when the patient pool is shrinking and competition is tighter.

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Why you'd press play

Need a sharper way to stand out when your patient pool is getting smaller and everyone sounds the same?

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