Google Ads · Physiotherapy

Google Ads forphysiotherapists

Google Ads for physiotherapists, run by people who own physio clinics. We go after the patients you can win in your suburb and report in bookings, not clicks.

Most physio clinics that try Google Ads stop trying. They run a campaign for a few months, watch the budget disappear, and decide Google Ads doesn't work for physiotherapy. Almost every time, it wasn't Google. It was the campaign chasing the wrong physio patients. Brand name keywords. Bulk billing searches. Post surgical patients who were never on Google in the first place. The fix isn't a bigger budget. It's pointing the budget at the physio patients who sit down and search for a physiotherapist near them.

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google.com

physiotherapist for shoulder pain near me

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Sponsoredyourclinic.com.au

Newcastle Physio · Hands-On Pain Relief

Individualised treatment plans. Back pain, shoulder pain, neck pain. We fix it.

4.9 · 312 reviews

competitor-clinic.com.au

Competitor Physio Clinic

Welcome to our practice. Comprehensive physiotherapy services.

another-physio.com.au

Another Physiotherapy Practice

When patients search, you win the click.

What physio patients search

Patients don't search 'physiotherapist'. They search what hurts.

Optimise for the word 'physio' and you'll pay Google for browsers, students, comparison shoppers, and anyone with a passing curiosity. None of them book. Your real money searches sit further down the funnel, where the patient already knows what hurts.

lower back pain physio near me

shoulder pain physiotherapist [suburb]

knee pain treatment [suburb]

sciatica physio

pelvic floor physio [suburb]

physio for runners knee

Patients Google the problem, not the solution. They know their shoulder hurts. They don't know whether they need a physio, a sports doctor, or a remedial massage. So we build campaigns that capture both kinds of search. The symptom search. The specialty search. Because the buyer lives in both.

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

Not every physio patient is winnable on Google. The campaign has to know which ones are.

We've spent years inside Google Ads accounts run by physiotherapists across the Clinic Mastery community. One mistake stands out from all the others.

Every physio clinic has an ideal client list. Runners with chronic knee pain. Mums recovering postpartum. Tradies with sciatica. The list is real. But here's the part agencies miss: not every ideal client is reachable on Google.

The post surgical knee replacement patient doesn't search Google for rehab. Their surgeon hands them a shortlist. The chronic disease management patient doesn't search Google. Their GP refers them. The paediatric referral doesn't search Google. Their paediatrician does.

If your Google Ads campaign is built around those patients, your budget bleeds. They were never going to find you on Google in the first place. The work isn't bigger ads or a higher budget. It's a tighter, more accurate list of the physio patients who do search Google. Then pointing every dollar of your budget at them.

Not every ideal client is on Google. The job is knowing the difference.

How we run it

How we run Google Ads for physio clinics.

Same four steps every clinic gets, sharpened for physiotherapy.

Audit your ideal client list against Google reality.

Every physio clinic has an ideal client list. Most of those clients aren't on Google. The post surgical patient gets a list from their surgeon. The chronic disease management plan comes from a GP. The paeds referral comes from a paediatrician. None of them type their problem into a search bar. So before we spend a cent, we strip the avatars Google can't deliver off the list. The patients who remain are the ones we point your budget at.

Build keyword groups around symptoms, not specialty.

'Lower back pain physio' is a different person to 'physio Newcastle'. Same booking on the other end. Different mindset on the way in. The first patient is in pain right now and wants relief. The second is researching, choosing, comparing. So we build separate ad copy and separate landing messages for each. Same campaign, two doors in.

Filter out the searches that don't pay.

Bulk billing. Brand name competitors. Personal trainers. Pilates instructors. Search terms that look related but never convert for fee paying physio clinics. Other agencies leave them in. We strip them out before launch and keep stripping them out every week.

We report on bookings. Not clicks.

The dashboard tells you what each new patient costs you, broken down by the keyword that 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 physio accounts

Physio is the busiest auction in allied health, and the cleanest to read. A healthy account books a new patient for $80 to $100, and that patient comes back around six times. The accounts that sit at the top of that band are nearly always paying for the wrong searches: free exercises, jobs, bulk billing, and the clinic's own name. The accounts at the bottom bought back pain, neck pain, sports injuries and post surgery rehab, inside a radius drawn around where the diary is empty.

The other pattern is tracking. Half the physio accounts we take over count a click on the booking button as a booking. When we rebuild the count against completed bookings, the cost per booking usually doubles on paper and the account finally starts getting cheaper in practice. 4D Health and Performance doubled their enquiries on under $1,000 a month once the searches and the count were both honest.

Not every ideal physio patient is reachable on Google.

Every physio clinic has an ideal client list. The first job is sorting which avatars are on Google in a way Google can deliver, and which arrive through someone else's recommendation. Your budget belongs in the first column.

Google can deliver

5 avatars · budget here

Lower back pain, age 35 to 55
Searches on their own. In pain today.
Postpartum recovery
Searches on their own. Often suburb led.
Sciatica
Searches on their own. Symptom led.
Runner's knee, hip, calf
Searches on their own. Activity led.
Pelvic floor
Searches on their own. Often discreet, suburb led.

Google struggles to deliver

4 avatars · mostly referral

Post surgical knee or hip replacement
Surgeon hands them a shortlist.
Chronic Disease Management plan
GP refers under a CDM plan.
Paediatric musculoskeletal
Mostly via paediatrician or school. Some parents do search.
Workers compensation, post acute
Mostly insurer or GP referred. A few search on their own.

The avatars on the right will keep coming. Some of them do search Google occasionally, but the volume isn't enough to make them the campaign's centre of gravity. Build the campaign around the avatars Google can reliably deliver. Build a different strategy for the rest.

The economics

What a new physio patient costs, and what they're worth.

Before we touch a keyword, we want the two numbers that decide whether Google Ads is even the right channel for your clinic. What it costs to acquire a new patient, and what that patient is worth by the time they finish their plan of care.

Cost to acquire a new patient

$80 to $100

The band a healthy physio account in Australia runs at, with a tight catchment and clean keyword segmentation.

Typical initial consult

$129

The default we use in our own calculators for an Australian physio first appointment.

Visits per patient

Around 6

The average across the physio clinics we work with. This is the number that pays for the acquisition.

Physiotherapy has one of the friendlier sets of numbers in allied health. Spend $80 to $100 acquiring a new patient, charge around $129 for the initial, and the campaign has washed its face before that patient walks back out the door the first time. Everything from visit two onward is margin.

Which is why the visit average matters more than the acquisition cost. Two physios in the same suburb can pay an identical $90 to acquire a patient. One keeps that patient for eight visits, the other loses them after three. Same ad account, completely different business. If your visit average is sitting at three, the problem isn't the campaign and we'll say so.

The mix inside that number matters too. A sciatica patient and a postpartum pelvic floor patient cost roughly the same to acquire and are worth very different amounts over twelve months. We report acquisition cost split by the search that brought the patient in, so you can see which physio patients your budget is buying, and move it toward the ones worth keeping.

The numbers nobody publishes

What a new patient enquiry costs a physiotherapy clinic.

Off the accounts we run, September 2026. An enquiry only counts when it is genuine: a website call past 30 seconds, an ad call past 60, or a real booking or contact form submission. No link taps, no button clicks, no page views.

$97

median cost of one new patient enquiry, September 2026

$64 to $139

lower quarter to upper quarter

$774

what one new patient is typically worth, at $129 across 6 visits

See where physiotherapy sits against every other discipline

What good looks like

What a healthy physio Google Ads account looks like.

A healthy physio Google Ads account in Australia costs $80 to $100 per new patient booking. That assumes a tight catchment, a booking page that doesn't leak, and clean keyword segmentation. We've seen it lower. We've also seen physio clinics paying well past $200 because the campaign was chasing the wrong words. The number on the screen doesn't matter. What matters is what each new patient is worth to your clinic over their first six months. That's the lens we run every 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 Pete

Common questions

The questions clinic owners ask us.

How much do Google Ads cost for physiotherapists?

Two numbers. The ad spend, which starts at $500 a month for a suburb level catchment and goes up from there, and the cost to acquire a new patient, which sits at $80 to $100 in a healthy Australian physio account. Add our management fee on top and you can model the whole thing before you commit. If your initial consult is around $129 and your patients average six visits, that acquisition cost is paid back on the first appointment. The number to watch isn't the monthly invoice. It's what each new patient costs and what they're worth after it.

Do Google Ads work for physio clinics?

Yes, for the patients who search. Physio is one of the specialties Google does best, because people with sore backs and sore shoulders reach for their phone at 9pm and type the problem in. Where it fails for physios is when the campaign is pointed at patients who were never going to search: post surgical referrals, chronic disease management plans, paediatric referrals. Those arrive through a surgeon, a GP, or a paediatrician. Point the budget at the searchers and physio Google Ads works. Point it at the referral pipeline and it doesn't.

Does Google Ads work for a small physio clinic?

In most catchments, yes. The minimum we'd recommend is $500 a month in ad spend. At that level, in a well defined suburb level catchment, a physio clinic should expect 5 to 10 new patient bookings a month. The bigger question is usually the booking page, not the ads. If booking from your page is slow or confusing, a lot of that spend is lost before the patient finishes scrolling. We'll tell you the truth on that one before we ask you for a cent.

Should I run ads for post surgical patients?

Probably not. Post surgical patients almost always come from a surgeon's recommendation. Google search isn't part of their decision. If you've built genuine referral relationships with orthopaedic surgeons, that's your strategy. And it's a relationship game, not an ad game. We'd rather tell you when ad spend is the wrong tool than sell you a campaign that won't work.

Do you lock me in?

No. We have a 30 day notice period and that's it. We don't believe in 12 month contracts. Clinics work with us because they see value, they get results, and they enjoy working with healthcare professionals who understand them. Not because they're trapped. If we're not earning our keep, we don't deserve to keep your business.

How fast will I see results?

Typically, most clinics start seeing results inside the first four to six weeks. We're not promising overnight miracles. Anyone who does is lying. We are promising that your campaign will be live, optimised, and bringing in genuine new patient bookings within that window.

Ready when you are

Find out which physio patients your suburb can give you.

Tell us about your physio clinic. We'll come back with a one page plan: which patient avatars we'd target, which ones 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.

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This page is the physiotherapy playbook. The general approach is on the Google Ads for healthcare clinics page.

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