Notes for owners · Industry playbooks
How to advertise to doctors without crossing the code
A doctor is reachable between clinics, not during them, and marketing to prescribers is governed. What moves them is a peer's word and a trial on their own patients.
The GullySales team · Updated 21 Sept 2026 · 7 min read
A doctor is not unreachable. They are reachable in narrow windows, and almost never during the hours most campaigns run. Beyond timing, two things separate this audience from every other professional buyer. Marketing to prescribers is governed by a code, and the only persuasion that reliably works is another doctor in the same speciality saying it worked on their patients. Advertising can open a door here. It cannot close a sale on its own.
Say first what you are selling, and to whom
Selling equipment, consumables, software or services to a practice is one job. That is this page. Seeking referrals from a doctor to your lab, imaging centre or super-speciality service is a completely different one. The second is bound by rules on referral fees that the first is not. Marketing a clinic to patients is a third job altogether, and none of this page applies to it.
Two neighbouring pages go further into their own audiences. Dentists buy through the lab and the distributor's representative, on a different weekly rhythm. Healthcare decision makers covers the administrators and committees who sign when the doctor only recommends.
The code sits in the middle of everything
Marketing to those who prescribe is covered in India by a uniform code on pharmaceutical marketing practices. Practitioners also have their own professional conduct regulations about what they may accept and what they may claim. Both have been amended more than once. Neither is a marketing team's document to interpret.
What that means in practice is simple enough. Do not build a plan around gifts, hospitality, travel or anything that could be read as an inducement. Do not write outcome claims your regulatory file cannot support. Do not offer a referral fee. And before any educational sponsorship, get a written view from someone qualified, because the doctor's registration is on the line as well as your licence.
That is not a reason to stay quiet. It is a reason to compete on evidence, service and availability, which is where this market is actually won.
Where they are, and when
| Window | What reaches them |
|---|---|
| Before the morning round, six to eight | A short WhatsApp message, read but rarely answered |
| Eleven to twelve, after the round | A call from a saved number, a rep waiting in the corridor |
| Three to four, between OPD sessions | A ten-minute demonstration, tea, a sample left behind |
| After half past nine | Journals, association groups, video, and long messages finally read |
| Conference weekends | Sessions, stands, and the corridor conversations that matter more |
| During OPD | Nothing. A call here costs you the relationship |
The speciality association is the centre of this audience's professional life. A district IMA branch meeting, a state chapter of a speciality body, a CME evening at a hospital auditorium. Presence there is worth more than any digital campaign, and the terms of that presence are exactly where the code applies.
A consultant will not fill in a lead form
Lead forms and "request a callback". A consultant will not fill one.
Mass email to purchased lists of doctors. The lists are stale, the addresses are shared with a secretary, and the sending itself sits badly with data protection rules.
Cold calling the clinic. You reach the receptionist, who is protecting the doctor's OPD, and you will be remembered as an interruption.
A discount as the opening line. In a clinical purchase, a large discount reads as a quality question.
A salesperson who cannot discuss the clinical detail. A surgeon asks one question about the technique and the meeting is decided in either direction.
What the purchase actually looks like
A solo clinic or a two-doctor practice: the doctor is the buyer, the decision takes one good demonstration, and the delay is the money rather than the choice. Expect payment terms to be the negotiation.
A nursing home or small hospital: the doctor is joined by an administrator and whoever runs the front desk. Service contracts and uptime matter more than features.
A large or corporate hospital: the doctor requests, and a committee decides. A purchase head, a biomedical engineer, finance, and the head of department. There is an empanelled vendor list, often maintained in another city, and being outside it makes the doctor's support irrelevant.
For capital equipment, the deciding argument is patients per day and the payback on it. For consumables, it is the distributor who already delivers to that clinic every week.
For example, a company selling a diagnostic device to orthopaedic practices in Karnataka has perhaps four hundred real accounts. The plan is a trial on the doctor's own patients, and a session at a state orthopaedic association meeting. Then two named users in each city who will take a call from a peer. We work with Kerur Pain Clinic and Nanda Arthritis and Rheumatology Center, and the pattern is the same from the other side: what convinces a doctor is another doctor.
What to measure
Demonstrations arranged, trials started, trials that converted, and reorder rate at ninety days. Also how many of your accounts came from a reference by an existing user. In this market that number tends to be the majority, and it is the one worth increasing. Record it before you spend. Read it every month against what it was.
What to do next
List the ten doctors who already use what you sell and would say so to a peer. If that list is short, your first campaign is not a campaign. It is making those ten happy enough to talk. Book a free audit if you want help building the reference side of this properly, and take the code question to your own compliance adviser first.