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What a podiatry client should cost you on Google in 2026
The band we run podiatry accounts to, and the foot searches that decide what a new patient costs you.
By Pete Flynn · 27 July 2026 · 7 min read
Every podiatry owner who asks about Google Ads wants one number back. What should a new patient cost me? We can give you the number, because we run podiatry accounts every day and the band is consistent. What the number will not do is tell you whether your account is healthy.
Two podiatry clinics can pay the same to acquire a patient and be in completely different shape. One is filling the diary with heel pain and biomechanics work. The other is buying nail cuts cheaply and quietly training the campaign to buy more of them. Same figure on the screen. Different business underneath.
So here is the band, and here is what actually moves it.
Podiatry search intent, priced
Every foot search costs a different amount to acquire, and is worth a different amount.
$80 to $100 to acquire a new patient
Bars below show relative positions on the ladder, not dollar figures.
Heel pain and plantar fasciitis
What they type: heel pain treatment [suburb]
Sore this morning, wants it fixed, and usually stays for a course of care. Cheapest good patient on the ladder and the most valuable one. This is the rung the budget belongs on.
Ingrown toenail and nail surgery
What they type: ingrown toenail surgery near me
Decent money for the one or two sessions it runs, then it stops. A short course, good for the week's cash flow, with very little lifetime value behind it.
Fungal nail
What they type: fungal nail treatment [suburb]
Acquires at a sensible price and usually runs as a course rather than a single visit.
Orthotics
Where it actually comes from
The consult room, after a heel pain or plantar fasciitis visit.
Not a lane you buy. Almost nobody searches a treatment they have not been told they need yet, so there is no acquisition price to put on this rung. Orthotics is part of why the heel pain patient above is worth what they are worth.
Podiatrist near me
What they type: podiatrist [suburb]
Everyone and no one, and still worth comfortably more than it costs. Whoever this books depends entirely on what your page says in the first screen.
On every rung you can actually buy, the patient is worth comfortably more than they cost to acquire. That is the test a healthy podiatry account passes rung by rung, not on average.
The whole point
What you pay to acquire a patient is an average of the rungs you are buying. Change the mix and the average moves, while nothing in the account gets better or worse.
The band, and the number that has to sit next to it
A healthy podiatry Google Ads account in Australia acquires new patients at $80 to $100 each. That is the cost to acquire a new patient (CAC), and it assumes a tight catchment, clean keyword segmentation, and a booking page a patient with a sore heel can finish on their phone at 9pm.
Now put the other number beside it. A typical podiatry consult sits around $141, and a new podiatry patient averages about five visits. So roughly $700 of work walks in the door with every new patient, before orthotics or anything else that follows. Paying $90 to win $700 is a business. Paying $90 to win a single nail trim is a hobby.
The physio band sits in the same place for the same reasons. What makes podiatry different is how wide the spread of search intent runs underneath that average.
The band is real. It is also an average, and an average is very good at hiding the one thing you need to see.
You are not buying one search. You are buying four.
Heel pain is not the same purchase as an ingrown toenail. Plantar fasciitis is not the same purchase as a fungal nail. Each costs a different amount to win, and each is worth a different amount once the patient is in the chair. Your CAC is simply the weighted average of whichever ones you bought this month.
That is why two accounts can both post $92 and be in different health. One bought heel pain and biomechanics work. The other bought nail work at $40 a click, because the campaign was running broad and nobody had read a search terms report since launch.
Patients Google the problem, not the solution. Almost nobody searches orthotics before a podiatrist has said the word to them, so orthotics is work booked in the consult room rather than a lane you buy. A campaign built on treatment keywords gets thin volume at a high price, where a campaign built on symptoms gets both. What you pay to acquire a patient varies for reasons you can name, and intent is the biggest of them.
The radius decides more than most owners expect
A podiatry clinic bidding across a whole metro pays more per patient than the same clinic bidding on a tight ring around the practice. Sore feet do not drive 40 minutes. They pick the nearest clinic that looks like it treats what is wrong with them.
The fix is not a smaller radius everywhere. It is new patients per dollar, broken into distance bands, then spending where the maths says. Some bands earn. Some quietly do not, and they have been sitting in the campaign since launch because nobody has looked since.
The other band breaker is match type. Broad keywords on a modest podiatry budget find pedicures, nail salons, public clinic queries and job seekers long before they find a patient. That is the fastest way to push a healthy account past $200 a patient.
When $100 is fine, and when $70 is still bad
The number is not a grade. It is a price, and a price only means something next to what you bought with it. Both of these accounts exist. Only one of them has a problem.
$70 to acquire, and still a problem
- Most new patients are single visit nail work.
- The heel pain ad group is capped and starved.
- The clinic wanted more biomechanics work and is getting less of it.
- Average patient value is falling while the report looks better.
- The cheap searches drag the average down, so nobody investigates.
$105 to acquire, and perfectly healthy
- New patients are heel pain, plantar fasciitis and biomechanics presentations.
- Most come back for a course of care, not a single visit.
- Orthotics conversations happen in the room, not in the campaign.
- Roughly $700 of work walks in for every $105 spent.
- The diary is filling with the patients the clinic wants more of.
Work out your own ceiling before you argue with the band
Our band is a fleet number. Yours is a maths problem, and it takes about two minutes. Your fee, your visits per patient, what you keep after wages and rent, and how much of that you are willing to hand over to win the next patient.
What you can afford to spend acquiring a patient is the number that should drive your budget, not our band. If your ceiling lands at $150, then a $110 cost to acquire is a good account being talked about badly. If it lands at $60, the band is telling you the economics need work before the campaign does.
Marketing budget calculator
Your budget from your numbers, not from a feeling.
Start with what a patient is worth. The right monthly budget follows from there.
Average across an episode of care
Wages, super, commissions
Past patients you'll bring back via email or SMS
Patient LTV
$705
Gross revenue per patient
Gross profit
$353
After 50% costs
Max CPA target
$141
40% of gross profit
Paid deficit
16 patients
Target minus reactivations
Recommended monthly ad budget
$2,256
16 patients at $141each. Not a guess. A derivation from your clinic's economics and the outcome you're targeting.
Illustrative estimate. Actual CPA varies by catchment, campaign quality, booking page conversion rate, and keyword strategy. Use as a starting point, then calibrate against your first 60 to 90 days of real campaign data.
Your numbers say spend $2,256 a month at a maximum of $141 per new patient.
Whether your campaigns can actually buy patients at that price is exactly what a Google Ads audit tells you.
The numbers behind this article
See what a new patient enquiry costs across every discipline.
The lower quarter, median and upper quarter for podiatry, next to every other discipline we run, on one scale. Then put your own budget and fee in and see what a month of ads is worth.
Open the benchmarksWhat to do with the band
Compare your account to $80 to $100, then, whatever it says, run the four checks below in order. Most podiatry accounts we open have at least two of them loose.
Four checks, in this order
Check one
Split your new patients by what actually walked in.
Not by keyword. By presentation. Nail work, heel pain, biomechanics, diabetic care. If you cannot do that split today, that is the first job, not the campaign.
Check two
Read 90 days of search terms, sorted by cost.
Highest spend first, looking for money sitting next to no bookings. Pedicures, nail salons, job ads and suburbs you do not serve are the usual four culprits.
Check three
Break the radius into distance bands.
Then spend where new patients per dollar tell you to spend, instead of where the map looked reasonable on the day the account was built.
Check four
Give the searches you want their own budget.
A shared budget lets cheap searches bully expensive ones. The presentations you want the diary filled with need their own campaign and their own money.
Podiatry marketing, run by clinic owners
We will show you which foot searches your budget is actually buying.
Heel pain, nail work, biomechanics, diabetic care. We split your new patients by what walked in, then show you what each one costs to acquire and what each one is worth.
See how we do podiatry marketingCommon questions