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.
What a click costs in healthcare right now. Median Google Ads cost per click in the United States, from the October 2026 edition of the Paid Media Cost Index, a Diwizi dataset pulled on October 15, 2026 with the date the source last refreshed each figure.
| Search | Cost per click | Source refresh |
|---|---|---|
| home care services | $13.51 | Sep 15 |
| medical spa | $6.37 | Sep 13 |
| urgent care near me | $3.66 | Sep 16 |
Healthcare median, $6.37 across 3 keywords. Free to reuse with credit to the Cost Index.
Selling to hospitals rather than attracting patients? That is a different buyer, a different cycle and a different account. See B2B healthcare marketing.
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 real work honestly than invent a case study with invented numbers. Some engagements have figures I can publish. My healthcare experience comes from an employed role, so nothing from it appears here at all, which is a deliberate choice rather than false modesty.
I have also worked in paid media in healthcare. Nothing from that work is published anywhere on this site: no employer named, no budgets, no results, no internal detail. It is listed only because it is where a large part of my healthcare experience comes from.
Google Ads and a monthly report for a reseller of health plans. On almost the same spend as September, quote requests went from 566 to 651 and the cost per request fell from R$ 16.42. It is health insurance, not a practice, so what carries over is the measurement and the lead quality work, not the patient journey. Read the case.
Google Ads and Performance Max in one of the most competitive local markets in the US, with expensive clicks, ZIP code choices and seasonal demand. The performance data is confidential by contract, so the case covers the work and the lessons, not the numbers. Read the case.
Cumulative account history since 2020: 5,707 clicks and R$ 63.61 per conversion. Conversions are contact actions recorded by Google Ads, not sales. I also created the brand identity and built the site. Read the case.
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.
Selling into hospitals and health systems.
ServiceTwo 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.
ServiceOrganised by service line.
ServiceMedical and cosmetic, funded separately.
ServiceMeasured on case starts.
ServicePaid on accepted cases, not leads.
ServiceCounted in tours and new residents.
ServiceBuilt around booked hearing tests.
ServiceSized for practices run by the owner.
ServiceExams and surgery, priced apart.
ServiceCounted in scheduled surgeries.
ServiceSurgery and routine care, funded apart.
Long-form writing on this topic from the blog.
Clinics, practices and providers bound by platform policy and privacy rules.
Not a fit: Supplements, unapproved treatments or anything Google's healthcare policy will not clear.
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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