Google Ads for Clinics

There’s no single answer, because the right budget depends on your services, your location and how many new patients you can take on. A practice in a competitive metro suburb usually needs a bigger budget than one in a regional town, simply because more clinics are bidding on the same searches and each click tends to cost more.

Rather than guess, we recommend a starting budget in your audit, based on real search volumes and costs in your area. We look at how many people search for your services locally, what clicks typically cost for those searches and how much room your appointment book has. There’s little point paying for enquiries your team can’t see.

Once campaigns are running, we review spend against the enquiries it produces and tell you whether it makes sense to hold, increase or reduce it. You stay in control of the budget at every stage, and any change is agreed with you first.

Often within the first few weeks. Google Ads works faster than SEO because your ads can appear as soon as campaigns are approved, rather than waiting for your website to build authority in organic results. That said, how quickly enquiries arrive depends on your budget, your services and how competitive your area is.

The first couple of months are about learning. We watch which searches lead to calls and form enquiries, which ones only bring clicks, and which times of day and locations perform best. Some early spend goes towards finding that out, which is normal for any new account.

From there, we refine the campaigns to bring your cost per enquiry down: pausing searches that don’t convert, adjusting bids and improving ad copy and landing pages. We share what we’re learning in your reporting, so you can see how the campaigns are developing rather than just waiting for results.

Yes. Google allows most healthcare advertising, with restrictions on prescription medicines and some treatments. In Australia, prescription-only medicines can’t be promoted to the public, and Google applies its own healthcare and medicines policies on top of that, so some keywords and ad wording simply won’t be approved.

Your ads also count as advertising under the AHPRA guidelines and the National Law. That means no testimonials, no misleading or exaggerated claims, nothing that creates unreasonable expectations of benefit, and no offers or inducements without clear terms. The same standards apply to the landing page the ad sends patients to.

We write every ad to meet both sets of rules, and we check restricted topics before a campaign is built. We’re not lawyers, so if a question is complex or specific to your situation, we’ll suggest you check with a health lawyer or your indemnity insurer before the ad goes live.

We write it and you approve it before anything goes live. Our team drafts each ad against the AHPRA guidelines and Google’s healthcare policies, and you have the final say on anything that represents your practice.

When drafting, we focus on what a patient needs to know to choose you: the services you offer, where you are, who they’ll see and how to book. We avoid testimonials, outcome claims, superlatives and anything that could create unreasonable expectations, even when competitors’ ads take more risks.

We’ll send you the ad copy, along with the landing pages it points to, for review. If something isn’t accurate or doesn’t sound like your practice, tell us and we’ll revise it. Once you’ve approved it, we build it into the campaign. Any new ads we write later, such as when we test fresh wording to improve results, go through the same approval step before they run.

You own the Google Ads account and everything in it. If we part ways, you keep the campaigns, history and data, and we will hand over a summary so the next person can pick up where we left off.

This matters because your account history has real value. Months of data about which searches, suburbs and ads produced enquiries help any future manager make better decisions from day one. Agencies that run campaigns in their own accounts can leave practices starting again from scratch when they move on.

While we work together, we access your account as a manager, and your practice remains the owner. Your billing details stay in your account and ad spend is paid directly to Google. If you decide to move on, we simply remove our access once the handover is complete, and your campaigns can keep running without interruption if you choose. Nothing is held back.

Ad spend goes straight to Google from your own account, and our management fee is separate. Both are agreed in your scope, so you can see exactly what goes to Google and what goes to us.

Keeping them apart means you always know what your advertising is costing and what you’re paying for management. Your Google invoices come directly from Google, based on the clicks your ads actually receive, and our fee is set out in your agreement for the work we do: building campaigns, writing ads, setting up tracking, reporting and ongoing refinement.

How the fee is set depends on the scope of work, such as the number of campaigns, locations or practitioners involved, and we explain it clearly before you commit. If your budget with Google changes over time, we talk with you about whether the scope needs to change too, rather than adjusting anything quietly. There are no hidden margins on your clicks.

Sometimes. Call-focused campaigns suit practices where patients prefer to phone, and Performance Max can work with strong tracking, but it can also spend on low-value traffic. Whether either is worth it depends on how your patients like to book and how reliable your conversion data is.

Call-focused ads can work well for GPs, dentists and allied health practices where people want to speak to reception and get an appointment quickly. They’re less suited if your front desk is often busy and calls go unanswered. Performance Max automates placements across Google’s networks, which gives you less visibility over exactly where your budget goes and makes ad review harder under health advertising rules.

That’s why we start with search campaigns we can control and expand when the data supports it. Once tracking shows which enquiries are genuine, we can test other campaign types carefully and keep them only if they’re producing real enquiries.

We set up call and form tracking so every enquiry is tied back to the search that produced it, and where your booking system allows it we connect bookings too. That is what lets us judge campaigns on enquiries, not clicks.

In practice, that means tracking calls made from your ads and website, enquiry form submissions and, where possible, online bookings. Each one is linked to the campaign, keyword and ad that led to it, so we can see which searches bring in patients and which only bring traffic.

We keep tracking focused on the enquiry, not the patient. No health information is passed to Google or other advertising platforms, which matters under the Privacy Act and the Australian Privacy Principles. Not every booking system supports conversion tracking, so we check yours during setup and explain what can and can’t be measured. Before campaigns go live we test each tracking point, so the numbers in your reports can be trusted.

Usually both, but every ad has to meet AHPRA and TGA rules and Google’s healthcare policies. Some topics are restricted, so we check each treatment before an ad goes live.

Advertising your practice name, location and general services is usually straightforward. Specific treatments need more care. Prescription-only medicines can’t be advertised to the public, which affects how some treatments can be described, and Google limits ads in certain health categories. Cosmetic procedures carry additional obligations under the 2025 cosmetic procedure guidelines, so the wording and landing pages need particular attention.

When you tell us which treatments you’d like to promote, we review each one against the rules and let you know what’s possible, what needs different wording and what’s best left out of advertising. Where a topic is restricted, we can often promote the consultation or the service category instead. If something is unclear, we’d suggest checking with a health lawyer or your indemnity insurer, as we aren’t lawyers.

Yes. We target the suburbs and radius your patients travel from and exclude areas you do not serve, so budget is not spent on clicks you cannot turn into appointments.

We start with what you know: where your current patients come from, how far people are realistically willing to travel for your services and any areas you’d like to grow in. A GP or physio may draw mostly from nearby suburbs, while a specialist may see patients from much further away, so the targeting is set to suit your practice rather than a default radius.

Once campaigns are running, we check where enquiries are actually coming from and adjust the targeting as the data builds. If a suburb produces clicks but few calls, we can reduce spend there. If another area performs well, we can give it more budget. Any significant change to your targeting is explained in your monthly report, so you always know where your ads are showing.

A plain-English monthly report covering spend, enquiries (calls and forms), cost per enquiry and which campaigns drove them, plus what we plan to change next.

The aim is a report you can read in a few minutes and understand without knowing how Google Ads works. Rather than pages of clicks and impressions, we focus on the measures that matter to a practice: how much was spent, how many people called or enquired, what each enquiry cost and which services or locations produced them.

Each report also explains what we changed during the month and why, and what we’re planning next, such as testing new ad wording or shifting budget towards better-performing searches. If results dip, we say so and tell you what we think is behind it. You’re welcome to ask questions about anything in the report, and your Google Ads account is always available to you if you’d like to see the detail for yourself.

Yes. We set up separate campaigns and budgets for each practitioner or site and track calls separately, so you can see where enquiries are coming from.

Separating them gives you control. If one location has a full appointment book and another needs new patients, budget can be directed where it’s needed most. If one practitioner has a longer wait list, their campaign can be scaled back without affecting the rest of the practice. Each campaign can also target the right suburbs for its site and send people to the most relevant page.

We’ll agree the structure with you before anything is built, based on how your practice is organised and what you want to grow. Your monthly report then shows spend, enquiries and cost per enquiry for each practitioner or location, so you can compare them easily. Every ad still has to meet the AHPRA guidelines, including how practitioner qualifications and specialties are described.