Google Ads · Chiropractic
Google Ads forchiropractors
Google Ads for chiropractors, aimed at the patient in pain who is about to book today. Suburb targeting, symptom keywords, brand negatives, and bookings reported every week.
Most chiropractic clinics that try Google Ads run two campaigns at once and don't know it. One for pain relief patients (back pain, neck pain, headaches). One for wellness and maintenance. The pain campaign converts at a low cost per new patient. The wellness campaign almost never does. The clinics that win on Google focus the budget where the conversion lives: patients in pain, looking for relief today. Wellness clients come later, but they almost always start by walking in with pain. Build the campaign for the door, not the destination.
Illustration: a Google search for "back pain chiropractor near me" with the clinic's ad in the top sponsored spot, above two competitor results.
What chiropractic patients search
Chiropractic patients don't search 'wellness'. They search what hurts.
Most chiropractic visits start with pain. Back pain. Neck pain. Headaches. Someone who tweaked something on the weekend. Patients who eventually become long term wellness clients almost always arrive at your door with a specific problem first. Your Google Ads campaign should match that arrival pattern, not the long term retention pattern.
Notice none of these are 'wellness adjustments' or 'maintenance care'. Patients Google the problem, not the solution. They feel the pain. They want it gone. We build campaigns that meet them at that exact moment, then your clinic does the work of explaining the longer term care plan once they're in the room.
See the thinking behind one ad
Pick your specialty and the search a patient runs
You will get one real ad, written the way I write them, and the method I used to get there. No campaign structure, no keyword list, no budgets. That part is the work I do with you.
Where agencies go wrong
A chiropractic patient decides in two steps, and the ad only sees the second one.
Years of auditing Google Ads accounts run by chiropractors across the Clinic Mastery community surface the same recurring mistake.
The campaign is built around the destination, not the door. The clinic owner wants more wellness clients, so the agency runs ads for 'wellness chiropractor', 'spinal alignment', 'chiropractic adjustment'. The traffic comes in. Almost nobody books. Patients searching for 'wellness chiropractor' are mostly already existing chiro patients renewing somewhere else, or browsers with no real intent. The actual money searches sit in pain queries: back pain, neck pain, headaches, sciatica.
The right play is to focus the budget on the lowest hanging fruit: patients in pain, looking for relief today. They book at a higher rate than wellness searchers. The cost per new patient is lower. They become long term wellness clients once they're in the room. Most chiropractic clinics get most of their wellness clients this way: in pain first, on a treatment plan second, on a maintenance plan third. The campaign just gets them through the door.
The third mistake is broad keywords like 'chiropractor near me' or 'chiropractic adjustment'. They look attractive on a search planner. They convert poorly. The patients who book search with sharper intent: their specific pain, in their suburb.
Wellness is the goal. Pain is the door. Build the campaign for the door.
How we run it
How we run Google Ads for chiropractic clinics.
Same four steps every clinic gets, sharpened for chiropractic.
Audit your ideal client list against Google reality.
Every chiropractic clinic has an ideal mix: pain relief patients in the short term, wellness and maintenance patients long term. Google Ads is for the first group. Wellness clients almost always come from referrals, in clinic conversation, and the treatment plan you build with each patient after they walk in. We focus the budget on the patients Google can deliver. Pain led searchers.
Build keyword groups around symptoms, not adjustments.
Back pain. Neck pain. Headaches. Sciatica. Sports injuries. Each of these is a real money search. Each gets its own ad group, its own ad copy, and its own landing page section that speaks to the symptom. The patient lands on a page about back pain, not a page about adjustments. The booking follows. The wellness conversation happens in the consult.
Filter out the searches that don't pay.
Brand name competitors. Free public clinic queries. Generic 'wellness' searches. adjustments as a concept searches. We negative keyword them out before launch and keep stripping them out every week.
We report on bookings. Not clicks.
The dashboard tells you what each new chiropractic patient costs you, broken down by which symptom search brought them in. That's the only number that matters. Click through rate doesn't pay your rent. Bookings do.
Field notes
What we see in chiropractic accounts
Chiropractic accounts have the longest patient relationship in this group, around twelve visits, and a new patient costs $80 to $100 to acquire. That maths should make chiro the easiest profession to advertise, and it would be if the accounts stopped buying wellness. People in pain search for the pain. People who want maintenance care are already patients. The campaigns that work are built on back pain, neck pain, headaches and sciatica, and say nothing about adjustments curing anything.
AHPRA is the other pattern. Chiropractic copy gets read more closely than most, so every headline is checked against the advertising guidelines before it runs. Maylands Healthcare Hub went from three enquiries a week to eight to ten with pain led copy that never made a claim it could not back.
The chiropractic conversion funnel
Pain is the door. Wellness is the destination.
Most chiropractic clinics want more wellness clients. So they bid on wellness keywords. The traffic comes in. Almost nobody books. Wellness is something patients understand once they're inside your clinic, on a plan that's working. The campaign that fills the diary is the one that wins the door, not the destination.
1. The patient is in pain.
Google's job
Back pain. Neck pain. Headaches. Sciatica. Sports recovery. They Google the symptom. They aren't searching for wellness. They aren't searching for maintenance. They're searching for relief, today.
2. They click. They book.
Google's job
The campaign meets them at the symptom search. The landing page speaks to their specific pain. The booking flow takes under a minute. Cost per new patient is the lowest it's ever going to be.
3. Your clinic does the assessment.
Your clinic's job
First appointment. The patient walks in with one issue. Your clinic explains what's going on, and what a course of care would look like. This is the conversation that converts pain into a plan.
4. Treatment plan, then wellness.
Your clinic's job
A meaningful share of pain relief patients become wellness clients. They didn't search for wellness. They got there because the treatment plan worked, and you earned the next visit. Wellness is the destination. Pain was the door.
Every wellness client at your clinic almost certainly walked in with pain first. The campaign is for that first appointment. Your clinic does the rest of the work.
The economics
Chiropractors buy the first visit. The plan of care pays for it.
Chiropractic has the lowest per visit fee and the highest visit average in musculoskeletal care. That combination changes what you can afford to pay for a new patient, and almost nobody models it properly.
Cost to acquire a new patient
$80 to $100
Roughly level with physiotherapy, in a tight catchment with symptom led keywords.
Typical visit fee
$112
The default we model on for a standard Australian chiropractic visit.
Visits per patient
Around 12
The highest visit average in allied health, because care runs as a plan rather than an episode.
Look at the first two numbers alone and chiropractic barely looks worth the trouble. You pay $90 to acquire a patient and take $112 on the door, so the first visit washes against the ad money and leaves you very little. Every chiropractor who has ever tried Google Ads for a month and quit has quit at exactly that point, one visit into a twelve visit relationship.
The third number is the whole business. A plan of care that runs a dozen visits turns a $90 acquisition into something you'd pay twice for. So the question we ask a chiropractor before we quote is never what a click costs. It's what share of first visits convert onto a plan, and what your visit average is when you count it out of the practice software.
Referral behaviour is the quiet multiplier. Chiropractic patients refer at a higher rate than most of allied health, because the care is longer and the relationship is closer. A patient acquired on a back pain search who brings in a partner and a workmate over two years was never a $90 patient. That doesn't show up in the ad platform, which is precisely why chiros who judge the account on the platform's numbers alone consistently underspend.
The numbers nobody publishes
What a new patient enquiry costs a chiropractic clinic.
We do not publish tracked figures for chiropractic clinics yet, so this is the band we hold those accounts to. It is a standard we set, and every row on the benchmarks page names which of the two it is.
$90
middle of the band we hold those accounts to
$80 to $100
bottom to top of the band
$1,344
what one new patient is typically worth, at $112 across 12 visits
What good looks like
What a healthy chiropractic Google Ads account looks like.
A healthy chiropractic Google Ads account in Australia costs around $80 to $100 per new patient booking, very similar to physiotherapy. That assumes a tight catchment, a booking page that lets the patient book straight in, and clean keyword segmentation. We've seen it lower with sharper symptom targeting. We've seen agencies push past $200 by chasing wellness keywords. The number on the screen matters less than what each new patient is worth to your clinic over their treatment plan, including their conversion to wellness and maintenance care. That's the lens we run the account through.
Pricing
Management is $525 a month plus GST and 15 percent of ad spend, with a one off setup of $795 plus GST. No lock in, and the account is yours. See the full pricing breakdown.
Written by Pete Flynn, physiotherapist. One of the owners of Clinic Mastery and Physio Fit Adelaide.
About PeteCommon questions
The questions clinic owners ask us.
What should chiropractors look for in a Google Ads agency?
How much do Google Ads cost for chiropractors?
Why don't you focus the campaign on wellness or maintenance keywords?
Are AHPRA rules harder for chiropractic ads than for other professions?
Do you lock me in?
How fast will I see results?
Ready when you are
Find the pain searches your clinic can own.
Tell us about your chiropractic clinic. Which patient avatars you serve, which presentations you specialise in. We'll come back with a one page plan: which symptom keywords we'd target, which we'd skip, and what 90 days of Google Ads should realistically deliver for a clinic your size. No pitch deck. No one hour discovery calls that add no value whatsoever.
Related
We work with healthcare clinics across Australia.
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Other services for Chiropractic clinics
This page is the chiropractic playbook. The general approach is on the Google Ads for healthcare clinics page.
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