A therapy practice does not benefit from more enquiries in general. It benefits from enquiries that match your specialty, your modality and the way you take payment. Everything else is time spent on referrals out, and that time is not free.
This vertical punishes generic advertising more than most.
The broad therapy searches are expensive, crowded with directories and marketplaces, and produce enquiries you will refer elsewhere. The specific ones cost less and reach people looking for exactly what you offer.
Whether an enquiry can actually work with your fee structure or panel status is the single biggest determinant of whether it becomes a client, and a default setup has no idea.
Mental health is a sensitive category. Standard remarketing built off page visits is both restricted and inappropriate here, and accounts that ignore that are taking a risk for very little return.
Someone who reaches out for therapy is often at a specific moment. An enquiry answered two days later frequently finds that the moment has passed, and no amount of bidding fixes that.
Narrow, specific and built to protect both the caseload and the client.
Campaigns built around the presentations, modalities and populations you actually work with, rather than the general terms everyone bids on.
Ad copy and landing pages that state fee structure, availability and scope clearly enough that the people who cannot work with you self-select out before you spend time on them.
Conversion measurement that passes the outcome without passing the reason, using server-side events and offline import, so the platform can optimise without receiving anything sensitive.
Enquiry paths built around how quickly you can genuinely respond, because in this vertical response speed converts better than almost anything you can change in the ad.
Pages that answer the specific search, establish credentials and make one clear action available. Fixed scope, tied to the campaigns.
Enquiries, enquiries you could take on, and first sessions booked, kept as three separate numbers.
If you work across several presentations, expect a small number of tightly-drawn campaigns rather than one broad one. That structure is the whole point here.
I would rather describe a real engagement honestly than invent a case study with invented numbers. The healthcare work below is an ongoing senior role, so I can speak to scope, scale and approach, but not to a client logo or exact percentages.
Ongoing role as Senior Paid Media Manager, leading strategy and a growing paid media team across multiple service lines, in an industry where every claim in an ad is subject to medical advertising rules and clinical review.
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.
I go through the account, the tracking and the patient journey and tell you what is actually broken. You get the findings whether or not we work together.
Tracking, conversion actions and structure get corrected first. Optimising on top of bad data just makes you confidently wrong.
Campaigns, ad copy, audiences and landing pages built around how patients actually search, and around what your compliance rules allow.
Weekly optimisation against booked appointments rather than form fills, with a monthly written read on what moved and what is next.
Long-form writing on this topic from the blog.
Yes, with care. Mental health sits in a sensitive category, which means personalised advertising based on inferred condition is off limits, and some targeting and remarketing options are restricted or unavailable. Search intent advertising is largely unaffected, which is fortunate, because that is where most of the demand is anyway.
Usually to change the mix rather than the volume: more of the presentations you specialise in, more of the payment arrangements that work for you, fewer enquiries you have to refer out. A full practice with the wrong mix is a real problem, and it is a targeting problem rather than a budget one.
By passing the outcome and not the reason. The ad platform needs to know that an enquiry became a booked first session; it does not need to know which page the person read before enquiring. That separation is a tracking design decision, and it is entirely achievable with server-side events and offline import.
Specialty, almost always. General terms are expensive, competitive and attract enquiries you will refer elsewhere. Specific presentations, modalities and populations cost less, convert better and reach people who are looking for exactly what you do.
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.
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