Healthcare is one of the few verticals where the cheapest lead is often the most expensive patient. Someone outside your network, outside your catchment area or shopping on price converts on the form and never becomes revenue. The account has to be built to tell those apart, and to do it without collecting things you should not be collecting.
Every one of these is common, and none of them shows up as a bad number on the dashboard.
Optimising toward form submissions teaches the platform to find people who like filling in forms. Optimising toward booked and kept appointments teaches it to find patients. Those two audiences overlap far less than you would expect.
A default pixel on a condition-specific page can hand an ad platform the fact that a given user looked at that condition. That is a privacy problem before it is a marketing problem, and it has produced real litigation. It is also fixable without losing the measurement.
If half your leads carry a plan you do not accept, the account has no way to know unless that outcome is fed back to it. Until then it will keep buying more of them.
Accounts run generic copy because the specific copy got rejected once. Working out what is actually allowed, and writing to the edge of it, is most of the difference between healthcare advertising that performs and healthcare advertising that is merely safe.
Built around the two things that are genuinely different here: outcome measurement and what you are allowed to say.
GA4 and Google Tag Manager audited, conversion actions deduplicated, and offline conversion import from your scheduling system or CRM so the platform optimises toward patients who showed up rather than people who submitted a form.
Server-side tagging and event design that pass the outcome without passing the condition. You keep the measurement, the ad platform does not receive what it has no business receiving, and your legal team gets a setup they can actually review.
Most healthcare enquiries are phone calls. Not just that a call happened, but which search produced it and whether it turned into a scheduled appointment.
Distinct campaigns, bids and pages for the work that carries different economics, so a high-value procedure is not bid at the same price as a routine visit.
Ad copy and landing pages built in the space your medical advertising rules actually allow, reviewed with your compliance people rather than guessed at.
A Looker Studio dashboard tied to real appointment data, plus a written read on what changed and why. No vanity metrics, no impressions as a headline.
If you already have an agency, a fixed-scope audit that tells you in plain language whether the account is well run is often the more useful first step.
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.
Each one has its own economics, its own advertising limits and its own definition of a good patient. These go deeper than this page can.
Two funnels: clients and caregivers.
ServiceMeasured on move-ins, not tour requests.
ServiceBid against the episode of care.
ServiceEmergency and wellness, funded separately.
ServiceNew patients sized to your capacity.
ServiceTreatment value bid separately.
ServiceThe caseload you want to fill.
ServiceBid against the plan, not the visit.
ServiceOrganised by service line.
Long-form writing on this topic from the blog.
Not a form fill. A form fill in healthcare is often a price shopper, a patient who does not take your insurance, or someone outside your catchment area. The conversion worth optimising toward is a booked and kept appointment, which means the platform has to receive that event back from your scheduling system or CRM rather than guessing from the click.
Yes, with real limits. Google restricts certain health categories, requires certification for some, and disallows personalised advertising based on sensitive health conditions. On top of that sit your own regulator and your legal team. Most of the work is finding the version of the message that is both compliant and still persuasive, rather than treating compliance as a reason not to advertise.
This is where most healthcare accounts are quietly broken. Standard pixels and tag setups can send information about which condition page someone viewed to an ad platform, which is exactly what you do not want. The fix is a tracking design that passes the outcome without passing the condition, usually through server-side events and offline conversion import.
Both, and they are different problems. A practice is usually one decision maker and one location. A hospital is service lines with separate goals, internal stakeholders and a procurement process. The media mechanics are similar; the reporting and the approval path are not.
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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