Splice Marketing’s founder and CEO honoured for her enterprise and business innovation
The Entrepreneur of the Year award, part of the Moreton Bay Business Awards, recognises and celebrates an enterprising individual, either a founder or owner of a business, who adopts new or innovative ideas to generate a new product, service, business process or enter a new market.
In 2022, that award went to Ellie Bakker, founder and CEO of Splice Marketing, a healthcare marketing agency, focused on improving people’s lives by ethically marketing medical devices and technologies, health and wellness businesses, and health non-profits.
Ellie founded Splice in 2017, achieving her childhood dream of launching her first business before her 30th birthday. She achieved a growth rate of 260% in the first two years of business followed by an average growth rate of 50-70% year on year since then, growing from a one-woman band to a team of nearly 20 with an excellent staff and client retention rate. In addition, Ellie has launched two complementary businesses: Splice Consulting (business advisory) and Telehealth Mastery (accredited medical education).
Splice Marketing exists to improve patient outcomes by supporting health businesses in Australia. Healthcare marketing is a niche area requiring creativity and dexterity to deliver results while complying with AHPRA or TGA regulations. The Entrepreneur of the Year award recognises Ellie’s considerable skill in fostering business growth for healthcare organisations both within Australia and overseas.
Splice Marketing’s achievements include:
- Attracting a record 242 new patients in January 2021, followed by 220 in February 2021 and 236 in March 2021 for a physiotherapy practice. Today they average 174-220 new patients a month with the remaining appointments booked with returning patients
- Enabling a speech therapy business to expand from one location with staff working at 40% utilisation to 4 locations with staff at 85% capacity and a 90-person waitlist being serviced by an online course (a new revenue stream)
- Growing a general practice from 50% clinical staff utilisation to being completely booked out and in demand
- Expanding a business offering in-home and disability care from only servicing Brisbane to now servicing all of south-east Queensland and, in the process, growing from a $1.5m business to > $5mil in just 3 years.
Ellie’s innovation continues. Splice Marketing has recently launched its very first Digital Insights Report: Physiotherapy in Australia 2022-23. The report is the first of its kind in the Australian physio space, showcasing insights from both practices and patients in one place to shed light on what contributes to a successful practice.
