Health & clinics
Ads that fill the right appointments.
Paid ads for dental, physio, allied health and skin clinics, written to AHPRA's advertising rules and measured on appointments patients actually attend, not clicks on a booking button.
The diagnosis
Why the reporting looks fine and the diary doesn't.
Clinic accounts rarely fail at the top. They fail in the gap between a click and a patient in the chair — which is exactly the part most reporting skips.
The booking happens in software you don't own
Patients are handed off to HealthEngine, Cliniko, Dentally or similar — which lives on a different domain. Unless that hand-off is instrumented, the confirmed appointment never makes it back to Google, and bidding is left optimising toward clicks on a “Book now” button.
No-shows stay invisible
If cancellations and did-not-attends are never fed back, the account has no way to learn the difference between a patient who turned up and one who didn't. Left alone, it keeps buying more of whoever books easily and attends least.
Every appointment weighted the same
A routine check-up and a full implant case arrive as identical conversions. The bidding chases whichever is cheaper to acquire, which is almost never the one that keeps the practice profitable.
Reception takes the booking, the account never hears about it
The phone books a large share of a clinic's appointments, and it's the easiest channel to leave unmeasured — nothing visibly breaks when calls go uncounted. It's the same blind spot that costs the trades, with more patient value behind it.
Broad match wandering into conditions you don't treat
Symptom searches are endless and most of them aren't your scope of practice. Without disciplined negatives, budget drains into enquiries reception has to politely turn away — or worse, into other clinics' names.
The rules you advertise under
The two tactics most agencies pitch you are both off the table.
01 — Testimonials
Patient testimonials can't appear in your advertising
The National Law that AHPRA administers prohibits testimonials about clinical care in advertising, across all sixteen registered professions. Written reviews, video quotes, identifiable patient case studies — none of them can carry your ads. It's the single most common thing a general marketing agency proposes to a clinic, and it's the one thing a clinic can't do.
02 — Retargeting
Health retargeting isn't available either
Google restricts personalised advertising around health: remarketing lists and audiences built on conditions or clinical symptoms aren't permitted. Meta has stripped its sensitive health targeting options and applies extra scrutiny to before-and-after and implied-transformation imagery. The “we'll just retarget your treatment page visitors” plan isn't a plan.
With testimonials and behavioural targeting both gone, a clinic's ads have to win on the basics: showing up for the right searches, being clear about fees and what a first visit involves, and measuring which bookings the ads produced. If a proposal lands on your desk promising testimonial ads and condition-based retargeting, the person who wrote it hasn't read the rules you work under.
What counts as a lead
An attended appointment — weighted.
Not a click on “Book now”, not a form, and not a booking that never showed. Where treatment values differ wildly, the conversion should carry a value so bidding understands the difference between a check-up and a case.
How I set up tracking →One caution that gets skipped: health enquiry data is sensitive information under the Privacy Act. Enhanced conversions and conversions API setups work by hashing and sending contact details. For a clinic, that's a decision to make deliberately, with consent wording that actually covers it, not a box you tick because a blog post recommended it.
I'll tell you when the measurement gain isn't worth the exposure. That's usually not the answer an agency gives.
How this site handles data →Working inside the rules
Plenty left to say. It just has to be true.
The rules remove the lazy options, nothing more. What's left is specific and checkable, and in practice that's more convincing to someone choosing who to trust with their health.
- ✓Practitioner names, qualifications and registration — stated plainly
- ✓What actually happens at a first appointment, and how long it takes
- ✓Fees, gaps and payment options, with the terms attached if there's an offer
- ✓Which health funds you accept, wait times, location, parking
- ✓Factual information about a treatment and who it suits
Every line above is a fact you can back up, and each one answers something patients genuinely ask before they call. It's why compliant clinic pages tend to out-convert the ones that lead with five-star quotes.
Clinics — FAQ
The questions practice managers actually ask.
Health & clinics
Fill the diary with the right patients.
Tell me which treatments you want more of and what your booking system is. I reply within one business day.
If you'd rather talk it through, book a free clarity call →