Melbourne
VIC · 5.2 million
Google Ads, Meta Ads and websites tuned to the Melbourne market. Built around the practitioner mix, the funding pathways, and the patient patterns that actually run in this city.
Google Ads · $90 to $130
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Sydney · Healthcare clinic marketing
Healthcare marketing in Sydney, by clinic owners.
Google Ads, Meta Ads and websites tuned to the Sydney market. Built around the catchment patterns, fee structures, and patient mix that actually run in this city.
Sydney is the largest, most competitive healthcare market in Australia. The cost per click is higher than every other capital, the catchment overlaps are tighter, and patients in many suburbs are choosing between three clinics on the same street. The agencies that win in Sydney aren't running broader campaigns. They're running narrower ones.
clinicmasterymarketing.com / locations / sydney
NSW · AEDT in summer, AEST in winter
Sydney
Metro population 5.4 million
Google Ads cost per booking
$90 to $140
Meta Ads cost per booking
$50 to $75
Real ranges. Real catchments. Local clinic owners.
The Sydney market
What makes Sydney different.
Sydney's metropolitan area is the largest and most clinically dense in the country. Inner-Sydney suburbs in particular carry an unusually high allied health clinic density, which forces marketing decisions most regional clinics never have to make: catchment radius is measured in kilometres, not whole metros, and a 4 km radius around the clinic is often the difference between a healthy cost per booking and a budget that bleeds.
Sydney's geography also matters. The harbour, the airport corridor, and the Hawkesbury split the metro into roughly five practical sub markets: North Shore, Eastern Suburbs, Inner West, South West, and the Northern Beaches. Patients rarely cross those boundaries for routine allied health services, so a campaign targeting the whole metro is paying for impressions on patients who'll never book.
Cost per click in Sydney runs 30-50% above the Australian metro average for most healthcare keywords. That doesn't make the market unaffordable; it makes campaign discipline non-negotiable. The clinics that sustain Google Ads in Sydney are the ones that strip out the avatars Google can't deliver, segment by sub market, and report on bookings rather than clicks.
The health precincts anchor the whole map. Randwick, where the Prince of Wales and Sydney Children's sit alongside UNSW. Camperdown and Missenden Road, where RPA and the University of Sydney sit on top of each other. Westmead, which holds the largest concentration of hospital and research capacity in the state. St Leonards and the Royal North Shore. A clinic inside one of those precincts competes with hospital outpatient services and university clinics as well as private practices, and it picks up referral flow the suburbs ten minutes away never see. The campaign has to know which of those two clinics you are.
The growth corridors are the other half of the story and they sit a long way from the harbour. The North West through Rouse Hill, Box Hill and Marsden Park. The South West through Leppington, Oran Park and the land around the new Western Sydney airport at Badgerys Creek. These are suburbs where the housing arrived well before the allied health did. Competition on Google is thin, patient density climbs every year, and a clinic that gets in early builds a catchment that would cost three times as much to buy in Bondi.
The practical consequence is that 'Sydney' is almost never the right geographic target. A patient in Cronulla will not drive to Chatswood. A patient in Penrith will not drive to Manly. The harbour, the airport, the Parramatta River and the M4 and M5 corridors do more to define a Sydney catchment than any radius setting can. Suburb beats city in every Sydney keyword we have ever run, and it isn't close.
What new patients cost
Realistic cost per booking ranges in Sydney.
These are the ranges a well run campaign should land inside, in this city, in 2026. Outside this range, usually higher, the campaign almost always has a fixable issue: wrong avatars, keywords that are too broad, or a leaky booking page.
Google Ads
$90 to $140
per new patient booking
The most expensive Google Ads market in Australia. Higher CPC, denser bidding in inner suburbs, and a competitive specialty mix push the top of the band to the national ceiling.
Meta Ads
$50 to $75
per new patient booking
Lead form mechanic: ~$25 per lead, 1-in-2 to 1-in-3 leads book. Requires a real offer (e.g. 40% off or $69 initial) plus a world class first session to convert into LTV. Psychology runs higher ($100-$150) because no offers.
Where we run campaigns
The Sydney pockets we know best.
Each sub market behaves differently. A campaign that books patients well on the North Shore can fail entirely in the South West unless it's segmented. We split campaigns by sub market by default.
North Shore (Chatswood, St Leonards, Crows Nest)
Eastern Suburbs (Bondi, Randwick, Coogee, Maroubra)
Inner West (Newtown, Marrickville, Leichhardt, Balmain)
Northern Beaches (Manly, Dee Why, Mona Vale)
Lower North Shore (Mosman, Neutral Bay, Cremorne)
Hills District (Castle Hill, Baulkham Hills, Norwest)
Sutherland Shire (Cronulla, Miranda, Caringbah)
Catchment strategy
How to actually set the targeting in Sydney.
Sydney punishes lazy geography harder than any other Australian market, because the cost per click is the highest in the country and the drive times are the worst. This is how we'd set it up for a clinic here.
Step 01
Start at 4 km, not 10.
Inside the inner ring, allied health density is high enough that a 4 to 5 km radius usually contains more qualified patients than one clinic can service. Going wider in the inner suburbs buys competitors' impressions, not patients. Outside the M7 the picture flips: 8 to 10 km is reasonable through Rouse Hill, Marsden Park, Leppington and Oran Park, because clinics are further apart and people are already used to driving.
Step 02
Target named suburbs, not the metro.
Google's radius tool draws circles. Sydney's catchments are shapes cut by water and motorways. We build the target from a list of suburbs and postcodes that share a real drive time with your clinic, then exclude the ones on the far side of a bridge or a river even when they sit inside the radius. Mosman and Balmain are 6 km apart and share nothing.
Step 03
Split by sub market before you split by anything else.
North Shore, Eastern Suburbs, Inner West, Northern Beaches, Hills, Sutherland, South West. Each behaves like a different city in the auction: different competitors, different fee tolerance, different funding mix. One campaign covering two of them means the stronger sub market quietly subsidises the weaker one and you never find out which is which.
Step 04
Put the suburb in the keyword and in the ad.
'Physio Marrickville' outperforms 'physio Sydney' on every measure that matters, and it costs less. Sydney patients search by suburb because that is how Sydney thinks about itself. Every ad group gets its own suburb terms, and the ad names the suburb the searcher actually typed.
The Sydney specialty mix
Every specialty has its own Sydney fingerprint.
Patient demand, competitive density, and funding mix vary by specialty in every city. Here's what Sydney's clinic mix actually looks like, specialty by specialty.
Physiotherapy
Highest clinic density in the country. Sub market segmentation is essential.
Psychology
Strong private + Medicare mix. Inner-city catchments dominate.
Occupational Therapy
NDIS-heavy, with strong paediatric demand in family suburbs.
Speech Pathology
Paediatric early intervention dominates demand.
Chiropractic
Concentrated around CBD and high-density inner suburbs.
Podiatry
Widely distributed, with diabetes-focused practice in older catchments.
Remedial Massage
Inner-city clinical positioning beats spa positioning hard in Sydney.
By profession in Sydney
Every profession searches differently. So does every Sydney suburb.
The Sydney market context above applies to every clinic here. What changes profession by profession is which searches actually book, what a new patient costs to acquire, and where the money leaks. Each page below covers one profession properly.
Google Ads in Sydney
- Google Ads for physiotherapists in Sydney
- Google Ads for psychologists in Sydney
- Google Ads for podiatrists in Sydney
- Google Ads for occupational therapists in Sydney
- Google Ads for speech pathologists in Sydney
- Google Ads for chiropractors in Sydney
- Google Ads for exercise physiologists in Sydney
- Google Ads for osteopaths in Sydney
- Google Ads for remedial-massage therapists in Sydney
- Google Ads for myotherapists in Sydney
- Google Ads for audiologists in Sydney
Meta Ads in Sydney
Physiotherapy, Psychology, Podiatry, Occupational Therapy, Speech Pathology, Chiropractic, Exercise Physiology, Osteopathy, Remedial Massage, Myotherapy, Audiology.
Clinic websites in Sydney
Physiotherapy, Psychology, Podiatry, Occupational Therapy, Speech Pathology, Chiropractic, Exercise Physiology, Osteopathy, Remedial Massage, Myotherapy, Audiology.
NSW regulatory and pathway notes
The state-level context that shapes the campaign.
AHPRA's advertising rules are federal and apply identically across every state. The genuinely NSW-specific moving parts are around compensable injury pathways: NSW workers compensation is regulated by SIRA (State Insurance Regulatory Authority) and underwritten through licensed insurers, and NSW CTP green-slip claims also flow through SIRA via licensed insurers. Clinics that take a meaningful share of workers comp or motor accident clients build campaigns and intake processes around the SIRA framework specifically, not the QLD or VIC equivalents. NSW also requires a Working with Children Check for any paediatric work; every state has an equivalent, the names and requirements differ.
Ready when you are
We'll show you what your Sydney campaign should look like.
Tell us about your clinic, your suburb, and the patients you actually want more of. We'll come back with a one page plan tuned to the Sydney market: which sub market to target, which keywords to chase, and what 90 days should realistically deliver. No pitch deck. No one hour discovery calls.
Common questions
What Sydney clinic owners ask us most often.
Is Sydney too competitive for a small clinic to run Google Ads?
No, but the campaign has to be built around the constraint. A solo physio in a single Sydney suburb running a 4 km radius campaign on five symptom keywords is in a completely different competitive position than a multi location chain trying to cover the whole metro. Smaller clinics often achieve better cost per booking than the chains because their catchment is sharper. We'll tell you up-front whether your suburb supports the campaign you're imagining.
Do North Shore patients convert at a different rate to Western Sydney?
Yes, materially. North Shore and Eastern Suburbs patients tend to convert at a higher rate on private fee campaigns; Western and South-Western Sydney converts better on bulk-billed and CDM pathway aware campaigns. The campaign architecture has to recognise the difference. We segment by sub market from day one and report on each separately.
Should my Sydney clinic bid on competitor brand names?
Almost never. Brand bidding in Sydney is a race to the bottom, with multiple clinics inflating each other's costs while patients still pick the brand they searched for. The far better Sydney play is to capture the symptom searches the brand searcher hasn't performed yet, in the patient's actual catchment.
How does the NDIS landscape in Sydney affect campaign strategy for OT, speech, and psychology?
NSW carries the largest absolute number of NDIS participants in the country (it's the largest state by population), and Sydney is where most of that demand concentrates. The flip side is provider competition is also dense. The clinics that win on Google Ads in NSW for these specialties tend to lean harder on private fee and Medicare campaigns alongside NDIS, rather than chasing NDIS-only volume. We design the campaign around your service mix and the funding pathways you actually want to grow.
How much does healthcare marketing cost in Sydney?
There is no separate Sydney price. The cost to acquire a new patient sits inside the same national band your profession sits in everywhere: remedial massage $40 to $80, myotherapy $50 to $90, osteopathy $60 to $100, audiology $65 to $95, exercise physiology $70 to $110, physio, podiatry and chiropractic $80 to $100, psychology and private OT $80 to $120, NDIS OT $120 to $180, speech pathology $80 to $150. What Sydney does is move you toward the upper half of your band and punish loose targeting faster than anywhere else in the country. On top of ad spend, our Google Ads management is $525 a month with a $795 setup, and we won't start a Sydney campaign on less than $500 a month in media.
Do you work with clinics outside the Sydney CBD?
Nearly all of them are outside it, because nearly all Sydney allied health is. We run campaigns across the North Shore, the Eastern Suburbs, the Inner West, the Northern Beaches, the Hills, the Sutherland Shire, and out through the growth corridors at Rouse Hill, Marsden Park, Leppington and Oran Park. If anything the outer suburbs are where the maths is friendliest right now: patient density is climbing faster than clinic density, and the auction out past the M7 is thinner than anything inside it.
Which part of Sydney is cheapest to advertise in?
Generally the growth corridors, and generally by a wide margin. The North West and South West have far fewer clinics bidding on the same searches than the Inner West or the Eastern Suburbs, so the same budget goes further. The catch is absolute volume: those catchments are less dense, so a clinic out there fills more slowly on the same spend. The right question isn't which suburb is cheapest. It's whether your specific catchment has enough people searching your specific problem to fill the diary you're trying to fill. We'll tell you that before you spend anything.
Other cities we work in
Same playbook. Different city.
Looking for our general approach? See how we run Google Ads for healthcare clinics, or browse every city we cover.