What a new exercise physiology client should cost you on Google in 2026

A healthy exercise physiology Google Ads account in Australia acquires new clients at $70 to $110 each. That is under physio, under podiatry and well under psychology, for one plain reason. You are competing in a thinner auction, because gyms are not bidding on chronic disease language and most of your own profession is not bidding at all.

The number beside it is the program. A standard session sits around $90 and a client runs about eight sessions, so roughly $720 of work arrives with each new client. Paying $90 to open $720 is a business that works, and it works quietly, without needing a single heroic month.

The catch is that eight is an average across pathways that behave nothing like each other. The pathway is usually decided before the client ever opens Google, which is where most exercise physiology campaigns go wrong.

Exercise physiology demand is referral shaped in a way physio demand is not. Chronic disease management plans come from the GP with the referral already written. Cardiac rehab comes across from the hospital. Plenty of your caseload was allocated to you by somebody else, and not one of those people typed anything into a search bar.

So I will say the uncomfortable part first. Google Ads is not your main channel and I would rather tell you that now than after three months of finding out. Your GP relationships are your main channel. Google is the channel that reaches the people those relationships never touch, and for most clinics that is a real slice of growth rather than all of it.

The NDIS sits across the same line. Self managed and plan managed participants choose their own provider and do search, while participants working through an agency managed plan usually arrive via a support coordinator instead. I have written the full sort of which funded cohorts a click campaign can reach in can you win NDIS and compensable patients on Google Ads, and the same test applies here.

Ask a room of exercise physiologists what people search and most will say exercise physiologist. Some do, and it is a perfectly good keyword. Far more type the thing that is actually wrong with them, because your profession is not in their vocabulary yet.

That is the whole game. The searches that fill an exercise physiology diary name a condition, a goal or a funding pathway, and they rarely name the practitioner. A campaign built on the profession gets thin volume at a high price. A campaign built on conditions gets both.

The trap on the other side is the fitness auction. Personal trainer, fitness coach, gym program, boot camp. Those look adjacent and they are not, because that click was never going to book a rebatable session, and it drags your cost to acquire up while the traffic report keeps looking perfectly healthy.

Most exercise physiology clinics run both, and the two have completely different economics. A one to one session at $90 carries one client for the hour. A group session at a lower fee carries five or six, and that hour costs your clinic much the same to deliver either way.

What you can afford to pay for the next client is set by what you keep, not by what you charge. So a clinic with a healthy group program can carry a higher acquisition cost than a clinic running one to one all day, on an identical session fee. That is a real advantage and almost nobody prices it into their budget.

It changes who you advertise to as well. Group capacity wants condition cohorts, so diabetes, falls prevention and chronic pain. One to one capacity wants the client who needs a program written for them and is willing to pay for that. Point the budget at the capacity you actually have open.

Run it on your own fee, your own session average and your own margin. What you can afford to spend acquiring a client is the number that should set the budget, not our band.

You do not win this by arguing you are better than a trainer. You win it with words a trainer cannot use, because those words do the sorting for you before anyone clicks.

Accredited exercise physiologist. Medicare rebatable. Chronic disease management. Clinical exercise. Those phrases are cheap to bid on and they qualify hard, because the person typing them already knows there is a difference and is looking for which side of it you sit on.

Exercise physiologists are accredited through ESSA rather than registered under the national scheme, which means your page has to do the explaining a registration number does elsewhere. Say what the assessment involves, who writes the program, and how the rebate works. Most exercise physiology pages skip all three and then wonder why the click did not convert.

Compare your account to $70 to $110, then run the four checks below in order. Almost every exercise physiology account we open has the first two loose.