Ellie Bakker
Ellie is the entrepreneur behind three businesses – Splice Marketing (Marketing Agency), Telehealth Mastery (Medical Education) and Splice Consulting (Business Consultancy). Whilst all businesses serve a different purpose, they all align to the one vision – helping improve patient outcomes by supporting health businesses in Australia.
Her contribution to growing businesses in the healthcare sector has led to her being awarded as a finalist across multiple awards including: Business Woman 2019 and 2021, Entrepreneur of the Year 2020 and 2021 and Marketer of the Year 2021.
What were your initial years of growing up like? Tell us about your life before starting your corporate journey/venture/initiative.
I grew up watching my parents run successful businesses, so I naturally imbibed certain skills from them. I set a goal of owning my own business before I was 30.
I set my path to help me gain all the necessary skills required to be a successful and resilient business owner. I completed a university degree, gained experience in marketing roles for various start-ups to established companies and took on a range of volunteering roles.
Then, at the age of 29, I launched Splice Marketing – Healthcare Marketing agency. A marketing agency that spliced together my dream of owning a business (a life goal since I was a child) and my passion for marketing and the healthcare sector.
Tell us something about your initiative or current role. What is it about, and what impact are you trying to make?
There are plenty of marketing agencies locally and in Australia. But there are over half a million registered healthcare professionals in Australia. And, as I learned when working as a legal assistant/marketer in medical negligence cases, very few healthcare professionals market their services due to fear of unintentionally breaching healthcare advertising regulations.
Health professionals could see all too clearly the risk of getting marketing wrong and losing their license to practice. But I could see the risks faced by any business that failed to engage in marketing. How would they attract new patients? How would they foster loyalty among existing patients?
These questions are what led to my innovative idea of launching a specialized marketing agency focused on Australian healthcare businesses: Splice Marketing – Healthcare Marketing Agency.
Splice Marketing is a full-service healthcare marketing agency offering branding, websites, PR, communications and marketing activities.
Your journey and your vision are very inspiring, but are there any achievements or accomplishments you would like to mention?
Thank you!
I’d say one of my greatest achievements is the commitment to offering high-quality marketing to healthcare businesses through to medical device companies. We’ve achieved this by:
– Obtaining nationally recognised accreditations for compliant and ethical marketing in healthcare.
– Offer robust use of data analytics to inform our advice to clients.
– Instilling professional development as one of our key values to remain up to date with marketing trends.
The other would be growing a business. I feel a lot of people underestimate just how much resilience, endurance and passion it takes to own and grow a business. However, it’s a huge accomplishment and one I’m proud of.
Would you like to share with our young budding women entrepreneurs the change you would like to see in the world if given an opportunity?
Yes, we need to keep nurturing and celebrating our women entrepreneurs. We can make change together by offering mentorship, knowledge sharing and recognising the great achievements no matter how big or how small.
What would you want to say to our young women leaders/audience reading this?
Be the leader others aspire to be – that’s one of the main gifts we can offer as a business owner.