Launch checklist template for Healthcare

The launch checklist with the rows a provider needs before a campaign starts: capacity confirmed for every advertised service, every claim cleared by clinical review, the targeting checked against what the platform permits, and the booking path tested end to end.

Everything else is the general checklist, unchanged. One row per check, with an owner by name, a due date relative to the start, an honest blocking flag, a verification method and evidence kept.

Use it before every campaign, including the small ones for a single service. The two failures that matter here — advertising a service with no availability, and running a claim that was never cleared — are both cheap to prevent and expensive to discover.

Use it again whenever a practitioner joins or leaves, because both change what the account should be saying.

A provider's launch list can be short, because two rows carry most of the risk.

The first is capacity. Advertising a service with no availability produces enquiries that are answered late, or answered with a wait the person was not expecting, and the damage outlasts the campaign: those people do not come back, and some of them say so publicly.

The second is a claim that was never cleared. Health advertising is read carefully by platforms and by professional bodies, and a claim that ran before it was reviewed cannot be taken back by pausing the campaign.

Everything else on this list is ordinary diligence. These two block.

The capacity row is verified by opening the appointment book and recording the next available date for each advertised service, with the day it was read.

That is deliberately concrete. A practice manager's impression of availability is usually a week out of date, and availability moves quickly: a cancellation, a practitioner's leave, a busy fortnight. The number that matters is the one visible in the system today.

Where the next available appointment is far enough out that a new patient would be discouraged, the options are to lower the weight, to advertise a different service, or to change the creative so it states the wait honestly. Launching regardless is the one option that costs money and goodwill at the same time.

The verification is a list: every ad that will run, with the claim it carries and the clinical review reference behind it, checked against the review record and its date.

Two failures recur. An ad duplicated from an older campaign carries a claim that was cleared for a service that has since changed. And an ad names a practitioner who has left, which is both a claim and a practical problem.

Keep the list as the evidence, with the reviewer's confirmation, and treat any ad without a reference as not ready rather than as probably fine.

The targeting row confirms that the audience settings are inside what the platform permits for health advertising, and that nothing in the campaign infers a condition.

It is worth checking even when the audience was built carefully, because campaigns get duplicated and duplicated campaigns inherit settings nobody re-reads. It is also worth checking the creative for the same problem: an ad whose copy addresses the reader as though it knows something about their health is making the inference even when the targeting does not.

Open the settings, read the copy, and keep a screenshot. Five minutes.

The booking path row is the one most often assumed and least often tested.

Follow the real ad link, with its parameters, on a phone. Complete an enquiry or a booking as a patient would. Confirm the confirmation arrives, that it is not in a spam folder, that it names the right service and location, and that the record reaches whoever answers it. Then cancel the appointment.

Every step of that has failed somewhere: a form that rejects certain services, a booking system that does not offer the advertised appointment type, a confirmation from an address that looks like a system and is filtered, a record that lands in an inbox nobody has watched since somebody left.

Where the campaign or the page states a waiting time, confirm it against the book on the day of launch.

A stated wait is the most checkable promise in a health campaign and the most likely to have drifted, because pages are written once and books change weekly. A page promising a shorter wait than the clinic can honour produces bookings that are cancelled and reviews that mention it.

If the wait has grown, update the page and let the creative say the new number. A realistic wait converts fewer people into more appointments that are actually attended.

A short row worth carrying: confirm that every practitioner named in any live creative is still working at the practice and is available during the flight.

It sounds obvious and it is missed constantly, because creative naming a clinician outlives the clinician's roster. Where somebody has left, those ads come down before the campaign starts rather than after somebody notices.

The last thing that decides whether a health campaign works is not in the campaign. It is what happens when somebody calls.

A row worth carrying: tell reception the campaign is starting, which service it is for, roughly how many enquiries to expect and what the ad promises. A person who answers the phone knowing what was advertised can confirm the wait, book the right appointment type and answer the question the ad raised. A person who does not will improvise, and the improvisation is where a good campaign turns into a poor conversion rate.

It costs one conversation before the launch, it is the cheapest row in the document, and it is the one that a practice with several sites forgets most often, because the campaign is planned centrally and answered locally.

Seven checks. Every row has an owner by name and a due date relative to the start. Capacity is confirmed for every advertised service, with the date it was read from the book. Every claim in every ad appears in a current clinical review, by reference. Targeting and copy have been re-read against what the platform permits. The booking path has been completed end to end on a phone, following the real link. The wait stated on the page matches the book. And every practitioner named in creative is still here and available.