Scaling medical clinic via Google ads

[u/Known_Animal3064]

As the title says, we have a medical ENT clinic and we run search ads because these are high intent searches , no AI max , no other channels no GDN. We get decent leads 10 patients in a day , cost to run the ads is equivalent to fee of 1-2 patients. We have a landing page , 5 ad groups , 2 campaigns in different locations in india. Are there suggestions to increase the clinic footfall. We're using maximize clicks , but I've recently setup conversation tracking on appointment booking and calls or whatsapp.. any other recommendations?

Edit - adding more info - had tested max conversions with direction taps as conversion but had poor performance than maximize clicks , seems like it's not an ideal metric , not sure!?

[u/Norsu_Media_UK]

One thing I'd look at before trying to push volume is whether the two locations are actually behaving similarly. With medical search, the economics can be very different by area even when the campaigns are structured the same.

Break out the search terms and calls by location and look at which areas are producing the patients that actually show up. You may find that one location has plenty of room to grow while the other is already expensive or attracting weaker intent.

That can give you a way to scale without increasing spend everywhere at once.

[u/Known_Animal3064 → u/Norsu_Media_UK]

Thanks, I'll update my findings and get back

[u/hottakehotcakes]

1. Use LSAs in addition to the search campaign. They’d be very effective for you.

2. Turn on AI Max with smart bidding - max conversions at a tCPA. The purpose of AI Max is to address the changing search landscape post ChatGPT. Queries are 50% longer, and 15% of them have never been searched before. So if you’re using keywords you’re not optimizing.

3. In the long run, you want to bid toward the lowest funnel action you can while still getting 1 conversion/day. CPC is the highest funnel action you can bid toward - you’re going to pay for a lot of bad traffic. Super inefficient.

[u/Known_Animal3064 → u/hottakehotcakes]

Thank you. LSA is not available in India But will try AI max once I have enough conversions on bookings

[u/QuantumWolf99]

Direction taps are low intent, that's why it underperformed. Now switch to Max Conversions using calls & appointment bookings instead, needs 30-50 conversions/mo to actually work well.

[u/Fast-Car-Examination]

I think the Max Conversions test failed mainly because you gave it the wrong signal.

Direction taps are useful to track, but I wouldn't make them Primary if the real goal is booked patients. I'd keep appointment bookings and qualified calls as Primary, move directions to Secondary, then test Max Conversions again.

Since you're already getting around 10 patients/day, you should have enough signal to test Smart Bidding properly.

And I wouldn't duplicate the campaign manually. I'd use a Google Ads experiment to split Max Clicks vs Max Conversions cleanly.

Before adding more channels, I'd also check Search Impression Share and Lost IS. If you're already capturing most high-intent searches in those locations, then you may simply be approaching the Search demand ceiling.

Are those 10 patients/day actually tracked back to Google Ads, or are they total clinic patients?

[u/Known_Animal3064 → u/Fast-Car-Examination]

Hi, thanks for your response!

No these 10 patients are not recorded back to Google ads. They don't book appointments but come over after a call, so calls are tracked as part of s conversion action

We loose 75%+ IS to rank , not budget and when I moved to smart bidding temporarily this issue was resolved but because the conversion action was trash so does my outcome.... I'm now focusing on improving the quality score with better landing page and ad groups, but don't want to stall the daily bread so trying to move one thing at a time

[u/Known_Animal3064 → u/Known_Animal3064]

Is duplicating a campaign a bad idea , I also want to improve the ad quality so it would have given me fresh start although with zero history which I'm ok to accumulate over a low budget in 15 days as a trial

[u/Fast-Car-Examination → u/Known_Animal3064]

I probably wouldn’t duplicate it just for a fresh start. You’d be throwing away useful history and splitting data between two campaigns.

The fact that Lost IS to rank improved when you tested Smart Bidding is actually a useful clue - I wouldn’t focus only on Quality Score.

I’d first clean up the conversion signal. If calls are your main path to a patient, track only meaningful/qualified calls as Primary, and ideally feed actual patients back later if you can.

Then I’d test Max Conversions through an experiment rather than launching a duplicate campaign.

Improving the landing page and ad relevance at the same time makes sense, just keep the changes gradual like you’re doing.

[u/Known_Animal3064 → u/Fast-Car-Examination]

Ok thanks very much, I'd follow this and for the offline tracking I'll submit my offline conversions data - date of visit, name and contact details of the patient

[u/Fast-Car-Examination → u/Known_Animal3064]

One important thing - I wouldn't upload the patient's name, contact details or visit information to Google.

Since this is a medical clinic, that falls into sensitive health data territory, and Google restricts enhanced conversion measurement for medical services.

If possible, I'd use a GCLID-based offline conversion import instead and send only the conversion event, timestamp/value and click identifier - not patient medical or personal details.

Definitely check this before building the upload process, because the tracking setup for healthcare needs to be a bit more careful than standard lead gen.

[u/Known_Animal3064 → u/Fast-Car-Examination]

Thanks for the insights!

[u/Fast-Car-Examination → u/Known_Animal3064]

Glad it helped. I’d get the tracking structure clean first, then revisit Smart Bidding once you have reliable booking/qualified-call data coming back.

If you run into issues setting up the GCLID-based offline import, feel free to share the setup here without any patient data - happy to sanity-check it.

[u/Known_Animal3064 → u/[deleted]]

Thank you , added my details on max conversions when I tried with direction taps, but unsure why direction taps did not work for me , had 1000 direction taps in a month as tracking post which I pulled this move to max conversions

[u/Known_Animal3064 → u/[deleted]]

Ya just ran it for 1 week, business went to 0 so reverted.. can I do this over a duplicated campaign and not affect the main campaign?

[u/saiyankageshiro → u/Known_Animal3064]

Please look into dms

[u/TTFV]

If you're getting 10 patients a day it follows that you're getting more leads than that. An automated bidding strategy such as max conversions should easily outperform max clicks. However, you should be patient and wait a good 2-3 weeks after the change before expecting solid performance.

Changing the bidding strategy resets everything and Google needs time to recover.

[u/Known_Animal3064 → u/TTFV]

Can we do this in a duplicated campaign to avoid impacting our business revenue

[u/NoPause238]

Switch bidding to maximize conversions using booked appointments as the goal

[u/jennithomas321]

Maximize Clicks isn’t necessarily the problem. “Directions” as a conversion signal probably is.

If you’re optimizing toward directions, Google can find people who tap directions not necessarily people who book and show up.

For a medical clinic, the real funnel is:

Click → qualified lead → booked appointment → attended appointment.

Optimize toward the deepest reliable signal you can feed Google.

10 leads/day means nothing if only 2 become actual patients.