This page explains general principles around medical advertising rules. Regulations change — check current Ministry of Health guidance, or take legal advice, before relying on any specific detail here.
Reviews beat testimonials on every axis
A Google review is written by the patient on a platform you do not control, dated, and visible next to your competitors. That independence is exactly what makes a reader believe it. A testimonial you filmed, edited and published carries the opposite signal, no matter how genuine it is.
So the effort is usually better spent on a steady flow of reviews than on producing testimonial videos — and unlike testimonials, review collection sits on settled ground almost everywhere.
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If you do collect testimonials
Ask at the moment of relief rather than at the till. Let them record on their own phone in their own words — a polished piece filmed by your videographer reads as an advert. Get a written release naming where it may appear. Never offer a discount, a gift or a free follow-up in exchange, and never edit the substance of what they said.
And never solicit only from patients whose outcome was excellent while quietly skipping the others. Selective collection is visible in the pattern and it is the practice regulators care about most.
The proof that needs no patient at all
Case volume stated plainly. Training and where you did it. The technique you use and why. Your complication management protocol. What you decline to treat. A colleague's referral relationship, with their permission. Teaching, publications, a talk on video.
All of that is checkable, none of it needs consent from a patient, and in surgery and aesthetics it persuades a serious patient more reliably than any testimonial — because a serious patient is looking for judgement, not enthusiasm.