Target the injury, not the sport, on Google Ads

Here is the line I gave that physio. People are Googling the injury more so than the sport. A runner with a sore knee does not search 'running physio'. They search 'knee pain when running', or 'sharp pain outside of knee', or just 'how do I fix my knee'. The sport is context in their head. The injury is what makes them open their phone.

So I would not build a campaign called Running. I would build campaigns around body regions and conditions. Low back. Mid back. Shoulders. Knees. Each one is its own theme, because each one is a different search and a different person in a different amount of pain. The sport specialist still wins those searches, because the ad copy speaks to the runner inside the knee pain campaign. The structure just follows how people actually type.

The same trap catches every profession, not just physios. Podiatrists want to advertise 'podiatry'. OTs want to advertise 'occupational therapy'. The patient is not searching for your job title.

This goes deeper than swapping a sport for a body part. A lot of the time the patient does not know which profession solves their problem at all. I was talking with an OT practice owner about this and said it straight: I imagine they're not searching for an OT, they're probably more searching for the problem, not quite knowing what the solution is.

Think about a parent whose child melts down every afternoon after school. They are not searching 'occupational therapist near me'. They have never been told that is the answer. They are searching 'my child has meltdowns after school', or 'how do I help my child calm down'. If your whole campaign is built on the words 'occupational therapy', you are invisible to the exact person you are best placed to help.

They might look for the problem and just how do I fix this, how do I fix, how do I learn, those are common Google search terms. Build for that language. 'How do I fix' is a buyer raising their hand. Your job is to be standing there when they do.

This is the translation job. You think in services and professions because that is your world. The patient thinks in symptoms and frustrations because that is theirs. Good Google Ads sit on the patient's side of that gap, every time.

Here are the swaps I make most often when a clinic hands me their first keyword wish list.

Most clinics arrive with a keyword list that reads like their website menu. Service names, the profession, maybe the sport or population they love. It feels right because it is accurate. It loses because it is not how anyone searches when they are in pain.

Put the two lists side by side and the difference is obvious. The injury and problem keywords cost a little more per click sometimes, because the intent is sharper. The cost per booking almost always comes out lower, because the person clicking already has the exact problem you fix.

Here is the mechanic underneath all of this, and it is the part most clinic owners get wrong because they bring their Facebook brain to Google. The two platforms target completely different things. What we're targeting is the search intent, whereas on Facebook we target the person themselves. We can't target that on Google.

On Meta you build an avatar. Women, 28 to 45, parents, interested in netball, within 10km. You are choosing the person and pushing a message at them while they scroll. On Google there is no person to choose. You cannot target a 38 year old netball mum. You can only target the words she types when her knee gives out. The injury is the targeting.

So all that elaborate avatar work clinic owners do for Facebook does not transfer to Google the way they assume. It is not wasted, it sharpens your copy, but it does not pick who sees the ad. The keyword picks who sees the ad. That is why the whole game on Google is choosing the right injury and the right problem language, then writing to it. Get the keyword right and the right person finds you. Get the keyword wrong and the best avatar in the world never sees a thing.

In practice this becomes a clean default. I start most clinics with two campaigns. A location based one, the safe bet, because no matter where you are in Australia 'physio near me' and the suburb searches are strong high intent traffic. And a condition based one built on the injuries and problems we just mapped. Then split test the two and let the data decide where the budget should sit.

One thing to nail before you write a single keyword. The same condition means different things to different clinics. I always ask, what is knee pain to you that you want to work with? For some clinics, they love working with advanced osteoarthritis, and other clinics couldn't think of anything worse, they want people looking to get back to running. Same words on the screen, completely different patient. The injury sets the campaign, your ideal version of that injury sets the copy.

Done this way a defined injury focus also runs at a lower cost per booking than a clinic bidding on broad service terms, because the budget concentrates on people who already have the exact problem. For generalised physio, a reasonable cost is $70 to $90 per new client. Niche it down to the right injuries and you give yourself every chance of landing at the bottom of that range rather than the top.