An independent practice has no marketing department. The owner, a practice manager or a front desk lead decides on the ads, usually between appointments. The account has to be simple to read, honest about what each new patient costs and paced to the hours the doctors actually have open.
Most of it comes from running a large practice playbook on a small practice budget.
With a few thousand dollars a month, ten service lines each get a little and none gets enough clicks to learn from. A small practice wins by funding the one or two services with open capacity and real margin first.
Searches from outside your area, for insurance you do not take or for a service the doctors do not offer still cost money. Location, payer and service filters belong in the account before the first dollar is spent.
Most new patients still call. If calls are not tracked to the keyword and marked as booked or not, the account learns from clicks and the report cannot say which ads filled the schedule.
An owner needs three numbers, what was spent, how many new patients came in and what each one cost. A dashboard with forty metrics hides the answer from the person paying for it.
Sized for a practice where the owner or the practice manager is the marketing department.
Campaigns start where the practice has open appointments and the best margin, then expand once those are working.
Each enquiry traced to its keyword and marked by outcome, without sending patient details to the ad platforms.
Radius, schedule and the insurance or self pay terms you accept are set before launch, so the budget stays on patients you can see.
You talk to the consultant who builds and runs the campaigns. No account manager in between, and no agency overhead in the fee.
A page per service with the doctor, the visit, the insurance you accept and how to book. Fixed scope, built for the campaigns. See landing pages and websites.
Spend, new patients and cost per new patient, with what changed and what comes next, written for the owner.
Ads are written inside the healthcare policies of Google and the health rules of Meta. Google does not allow health conditions to be used for audience targeting, and Meta limits the conversion events a health site can send back.
Average cost per click on Google in the United States. A search for a doctor is cheap per click. The value is in how long the patient stays with the practice, so the bid is set from that and not from the first visit.
| Search term | Monthly searches | Average CPC |
|---|---|---|
| pediatrician near me | 246,000 | $5.11 |
| doctor near me | 165,000 | $4.16 |
| allergist near me | 60,500 | $6.50 |
| primary care physician near me | 49,500 | $6.50 |
| family doctor near me | 49,500 | $4.48 |
| concierge doctor | 40,500 | $9.58 |
| direct primary care | 18,100 | $5.18 |
Source: Google Ads data for the United States via DataForSEO, read on October 15, 2026. National averages for the last twelve months.
I have not published a case for an independent medical practice, and I would rather say so than borrow one. This is what is real.
Different industry, included because the numbers are public and verifiable. Roughly $20K per month in Google Ads spend, in a market with $45 to $80 CPCs. Read the case.
I have also worked in paid media in healthcare. Nothing from that work is published on this site. No employer is named, and there are no budgets, results or internal details.
What carries over is the method. Conversions are defined as booked work, calls are tracked to the keyword, and bids are set against what a customer is worth.
I go through the account, the tracking and the path a patient takes from search to appointment and tell you what is broken. The findings are yours whether or not we keep working together.
Tracking, conversion actions and structure get corrected first. Optimising on top of bad data just makes you confidently wrong.
Campaigns, ad copy and landing pages built around how patients actually search, and around what the platform rules allow.
Weekly optimisation against booked appointments rather than form fills, with a monthly written read on what moved and what is next.
Longer reads on this topic from the blog.
Independent physicians and small physician groups with room in the schedule.
Not a fit. Hospital systems and large groups that buy through a formal tender, which is a different kind of engagement.
It can be, when there is a service with open capacity and a patient worth more than the cost of finding one. A practice booked out on everything has nowhere to put new patients, and ads only add cost. The first conversation is about the schedule, not the ads.
A search for a doctor is one of the cheaper clicks in healthcare. In October 2026 the United States average was $4.16 for doctor near me, $6.50 for primary care physician near me and $9.58 for concierge doctor. These are national averages, and your market can sit above or below them.
No. Most independent practices work with me through the owner or the practice manager. I need someone who can confirm which enquiries became booked visits, usually once a month, and the ad accounts stay in the name of the practice.
You work directly with the consultant who runs the account, without an account manager in between. With no agency structure behind me, the fee sits below what specialist healthcare agencies charge for the same scope. The ad accounts stay in the name of the practice.
I have not published a case for an independent medical practice, so I will not claim one. I have also worked in paid media in healthcare, and the published numbers on this site come from a home services company in Houston. The method is the same one, applied to new patients for your practice.
A short form beats a long discovery call. Give me the basics and I will come back with a straight read on whether I can help, usually within one business day.
Rather book a time directly? Schedule a call.