Google Ads can bring in enquiries quickly. They can also burn a month’s budget on clicks from people who live in another city and wanted a gym. Whether they work for you depends on a few things you can check before you spend anything.
This guide helps you decide, then gives you a small test to run.
What Google Ads do for a clinic
When someone searches “physio near me” or “chiropractor for sciatica”, ads can appear above the map and the normal results. You pay when someone clicks (or in some campaign types, calls). Stop paying and the ads stop.
That is the main difference from the work in our local SEO guide. SEO builds slowly and keeps working. Ads start fast and stop when you stop.
When ads make sense
Ads are a good bet if:
- You have space in the diary. New patients you can’t book in are a waste.
- Your booking path works. If a patient can’t book online from their phone in a minute or two, ads will pay for that problem again and again. Fix your Book button and your homepage first.
- You know what a new patient is worth to you. See the next section.
- You are new, or in a crowded area, and the map results are dominated by clinics with hundreds of reviews.
Hold off if your Google profile is half-finished, your site is slow, or you’re hoping ads will fix a service problem.
Do the maths first
Write down three numbers:
- What a typical new patient brings in over their course of care. Use your own bookings: average visits times average fee.
- How many people who enquire actually book and show up. Count the last twenty enquiries.
- What you can spend and still profit. Take the figure from number 1, subtract your costs of delivering the care, and decide what share you’re willing to invest to win that patient.
Use your own numbers. Work out what a typical new patient brings in, and what you keep after costs. Decide the most you’d be happy to pay to win one patient. If about half of the people who contact you end up booking, you can afford roughly half of that per enquiry. Then the question is simple: can Google Ads produce enquiries at that cost in your area?
Nobody can tell you that in advance, and an agency that promises a figure before seeing your area is guessing. The test below finds out.
Know the health-advertising rules
Google limits how health advertisers can target people. Its personalised advertising policy treats physical and mental health conditions as a sensitive category, and it does not allow advertiser-curated audiences, such as customer lists and lookalike audiences, when you promote in these categories (Google Ads policy).
In plain terms: you can’t upload your patient list to find similar people, or follow a visitor who looked at your “sciatica” page around the internet. Ads shown to people searching for a term, like “physio in [your city]”, are the normal and simplest approach.
There are two more points:
- Patient privacy. Don’t send patient information, or the fact that someone booked, to an advertising platform without checking your privacy obligations first. Rules differ by country and province or state, so ask your regulator or a lawyer. This is general information, not legal advice.
- Your regulator’s advertising rules apply to the ad text. Avoid cure claims, comparisons (“best physio in town”) and anything you can’t back up. See advertising rules for physio and chiro clinics.
A simple test before you commit
Run it for six weeks with a small, fixed budget that you can afford to lose.
Before you start
- Make sure calls and online bookings can be counted. Ask whoever manages your Google Ads account to set up conversion tracking for “booking completed” and “call from ad”. Without it you’re spending blind.
- Decide the area: only the places you actually want patients from. Add a radius or list of suburbs, not a whole province.
- Pick one or two services to advertise first, such as an initial assessment for back pain, not “physiotherapy” in general.
- Send each ad to the matching page on your site, not the homepage. See service pages.
During
- Check weekly for search terms that aren’t what you want, and add them as negative keywords (for example, “jobs”, “courses”, “giveaway”, “gym”).
- Ask every new patient how they found you, and write the answer down. Some will say “Google” and meant the ad. Some will say “my friend” after seeing the ad first.
- Answer every call and form quickly. (Front desk phone script) Slow replies waste the money you already spent.
After six weeks
Count the number of new patients who booked and attended from ads. Divide the amount spent by that number. Compare with the figure you set earlier.
- Under your limit: increase the budget gradually and keep watching.
- Over your limit but close: fix the weak point (the landing page, the booking steps, the search terms) and test again.
- Far over, with good tracking: stop. Put the money into your profile, reviews and website instead.
Mistakes to avoid
- Letting Google choose everything. Automated settings can send ads far outside the area you want. Check the settings.
- Counting clicks instead of patients. Clicks are not the goal.
- Advertising to cover a weak website. Fix the page first.
- Signing a long contract with an agency before you have six weeks of results.
- Ignoring reviews. People compare you with the other clinics before they book. See how to ask for Google reviews.
Check it today
Before spending, book an appointment as a new patient from your phone, starting from a Google search. Time how long it takes. If it takes more than two minutes, or you can’t finish, ads will pay for that problem.
If you’d like a second opinion on your profile and website before you decide on ads, we’ll look at both at no cost.