Meta Ads · Occupational Therapy

Meta Ads foroccupational therapists

Facebook and Instagram ads for occupational therapists, one audience at a time. Parents, NDIS participants, support coordinators and older adults each see a different ad.

Occupational therapists waste more Meta budget than almost any other specialty. The reason is simple. The clinic runs one campaign. The campaign serves one ad. The ad goes to everyone in the catchment. But OT has at least three completely different buyers: parents looking for paediatric support, support coordinators looking for adult NDIS, and self funded adults looking for private OT. Each one is a different person, a different tone, a different decision. One ad can't speak to all three. The clinics that segment their Meta campaigns book more enquiries at a lower cost. The ones that don't, struggle.

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Your OT Clinic

OT isn't one audience on Meta. It's three or four. Build for the right ones.

Each segment of OT has a different decision maker, a different tone, and a different buying pattern. Parents of kids on NDIS are not the same audience as adult workplace injury clients. The campaign needs to recognise the difference and run different creative for each.

Paediatric campaigns aimed at parents (school readiness, sensory, autism)

Adult NDIS campaigns aimed at participants and support coordinators

Workplace and ergonomic content aimed at HR managers

Practitioner introductions for each clinical specialty

Educational content tailored per segment

Lead forms that route to the right team member

Each segment needs its own creative library, its own audience, and its own conversion flow. We build them as separate campaigns inside the same account so you can see what's working in each. Parents convert differently to support coordinators. We make sure the data tells you which is which.

Where agencies go wrong

OT is not one audience on Meta. It is five, and they need five different ads.

Sit inside enough Facebook and Instagram ad accounts run by occupational therapists and one mistake is doing most of the damage.

The clinic runs one campaign. The ad copy is generic 'occupational therapy services'. The audience is everyone in the suburb. The creative is a stock photo of a hand holding a pen. Nothing about this ad speaks to a specific buyer. The result is a flood of cheap leads who don't match your services, plus a few real enquiries you'd have got anyway.

The right approach is segmentation from day one. A separate campaign for paediatric services, aimed at parents, with creative that shows kids learning skills and copy that meets a tired parent at 11pm. A separate campaign for adult NDIS, aimed at participants and support coordinators, with creative and copy that respects the participant's autonomy. A separate campaign for workplace assessments, aimed at HR managers, with creative that looks like it belongs on LinkedIn but runs on Facebook.

Each segment also needs its own lead form. The paediatric form asks the parent's questions. The NDIS form asks about the participant's plan and goals. The workplace form asks about the company size and assessment scope. One generic 'contact us' form can't serve all three.

OT isn't one audience on Meta. It's three or four. Build for the right one.

How we run it

How we run Meta Ads for OT clinics.

Same four steps every clinic gets, sharpened for OT segmentation.

Build segmented campaigns from day one.

We start by mapping the OT segments your clinic serves: paediatric private, paediatric NDIS, adult NDIS, adult private, workplace, schools. Each segment that matters to your clinic gets its own campaign, its own creative library, its own audience targeting, and its own lead form. The campaigns share the same Meta account but run as separate experiments. You see what's working segment by segment.

Tune creative for each buyer.

Paediatric campaigns feature kids learning skills, parents being supported, and clinicians who specialise in children. Adult NDIS campaigns feature participants in their daily lives, with messaging about goals and independence. Workplace campaigns look more corporate. We don't ask one ad to do every job. We ask each ad to do one job exceptionally well.

Layer the audience strategy by segment.

Paediatric: custom audience from current paediatric clients, lookalike, plus parent of young kids targeting and parents of NDIS children behavioural signals. Adult NDIS: custom audience from current adult NDIS clients, plus support coordinator friendly targeting layers. Workplace: HR managers and people and culture interest categories. Each segment gets the right audience, not a one size fits all approach.

Route enquiries to the right team member.

Each lead form asks the qualifying questions that matter for that segment. The submission tag tells your front desk which team member should follow up: paediatric enquiries go to the paeds lead, NDIS enquiries go to the NDIS coordinator, workplace enquiries go to the principal OT. Time to first contact drops. Conversion rate goes up.

Field notes

What we see in OT Meta accounts

OT is not pain led, so the Meta lever is parental concern rather than a sore body part. Each segment prices differently. Paediatric private with a clear screening offer books at $50 to $75 a patient. Paediatric NDIS runs $90 to $140 because the parent has already done research. Adult NDIS runs $120 to $180 because the participant is choosing between providers. Workplace OT is low volume and high value, over $200 a booked engagement.

One campaign for all of that fails every time. We run a campaign per segment, with its own creative and its own page, and we stop the paediatric NDIS campaign the moment the waitlist is longer than a parent will tolerate.

OT on Meta is four campaigns, not one.

The breadth that makes OT hard to advertise on Google makes it equally hard on Meta. Each buyer is on a different platform mix, responds to a different creative tone, and asks different questions before they fill in a lead form. The clinics that segment all four book at a fraction of the cost. The ones that don't, burn budget on the wrong enquiry.

Parents of paediatric clients

Ad set 01

Platform mix: Instagram + Facebook
Creative angle: Mum led explainer reels, sensory regulation tips, school readiness content. Reassuring. Outcome focused for the child.
Lead form qualifies on: Child's age, presenting concern, NDIS or private

Support coordinators

Ad set 02

Platform mix: Facebook + LinkedIn
Creative angle: Capacity led posts, plan type clarity, goal and supports phrasing, walkthroughs of how your team works with plan managed participants.
Lead form qualifies on: Participant age, plan type, goals, capacity

HR managers and return to work coordinators

Ad set 03

Platform mix: LinkedIn + Facebook
Creative angle: Workplace ergonomic case content, return to work outcomes, reporting examples. Professional tone, business outcomes.
Lead form qualifies on: Industry, role count, assessment type, urgency

Adult carers and family

Ad set 04

Platform mix: Facebook (older skew)
Creative angle: Empathic, practical content. Home assessments, post stroke recovery, supporting an older parent.
Lead form qualifies on: Relationship, person's age, situation, NDIS status

Each ad set runs its own creative library, its own audience targeting, and its own lead form questions. Same clinic, four conversations, four reporting columns. That's the Meta build that works for OT.

The economics

Four OT segments, four different acquisition costs.

There is no single number for what an OT client costs to acquire, and any agency that quotes you one hasn't segmented the account. The funding pathway and the buyer between you and the client both move it.

Cost to acquire, private

$80 to $120

Self funded paediatric and adult private. Meta usually comes in under this band.

Cost to acquire, NDIS

$120 to $180

Higher, because the parent or coordinator compares providers before they make contact.

Typical session fee

$194

The default we model on, before assessment and report work is counted.

Paediatric private is the cheapest client an occupational therapist can buy on Meta, because parental concern is the strongest hook on the platform. A video of an OT describing exactly the handwriting or sensory pattern a parent has been worrying about does the work that a search keyword can't. Pair it with a screening session that lowers the cost of finding out whether you're the right clinic and the acquisition cost drops under the private band comfortably.

NDIS is a different economy. The parent has already done their research, the coordinator is comparing providers on paper, and you're bidding for attention against every teletherapy provider in the country. That's why NDIS clients sit at $120 to $180. They're still worth it when the client runs an assessment, a report and a block of therapy across a plan year, but the payback is measured in months, not weeks.

The strategic question underneath all of this is which line you want growing. Successive NDIS pricing reviews have squeezed the hourly rate in real terms and plan managed volume is contracting. Paying $180 to acquire an NDIS client made sense when rates were rising. Building the private and Medicare pipeline while the NDIS one still works is the safer play for most occupational therapists in 2026, and Meta is the cheapest place to build it.

The numbers nobody publishes

What a new patient enquiry costs an occupational therapy clinic.

We do not publish tracked figures for occupational therapy clinics yet, so this is the band we hold those accounts to. It is a standard we set, and every row on the benchmarks page names which of the two it is.

These are Google Ads search figures. They are here as the market rate for winning a new patient, the number any Meta campaign has to be judged against, not a Meta benchmark.

$100

middle of the band we hold those accounts to

$80 to $120

bottom to top of the band

$1,552

what one new patient is typically worth, at $194 across 8 visits

See where occupational therapy sits against every other discipline

What good looks like

What a healthy OT Meta Ads account looks like.

OT isn't pain led, so the Meta playbook is different. The lever is parental concern. Paediatric private (with a clear offer like a discounted screening session) typically books at $50 to $75 per patient, in line with the rest of the allied health Meta benchmark. Paediatric NDIS runs higher ($90 to $140) because the audience is harder to define and the parent has already done research. Adult NDIS is harder again ($120 to $180) because the NDIS market is competitive and the patient is often choosing between providers. Workplace OT is low volume but high value, over $200 per booked engagement, worth several thousand dollars in service. The thing that moves all of these is the same: a video where the OT speaks directly to the concern the parent is already losing sleep over (handwriting, sensory regulation, getting through a school day), then an offer or screening that lowers the cost of finding out if you're the right clinic. We track each segment separately so you see exactly where the spend is producing return.

Pricing

Management is $725 a month plus GST and 15 percent of ad spend, with a one off setup of $795 plus GST and a minimum ad budget of $500 a month. 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.

Do Facebook ads work for occupational therapists?

Extremely well for paediatric work, because the buyer is a parent and parents live on Facebook and Instagram. An OT talking to camera about the thing a parent has been losing sleep over, whether that's handwriting, sensory regulation or getting through a school day, will out perform any keyword campaign for reach. Adult NDIS is harder and more expensive, workplace OT is low volume and high value. The mistake is running all three from one ad, which is what most OT clinics do.

How much do Meta ads cost for an OT clinic?

Ad spend from $500 a month plus our management fee. Paediatric private clients come in cheapest, usually under the $80 to $120 private band. NDIS clients cost $120 to $180 because the decision cycle is longer and the auction is crowded. Workplace engagements cost more per booking again but are worth thousands each. We report the segments separately, always, because one blended number for an OT clinic is worse than no number at all.

Should I run all my OT segments under one Meta campaign?

No. Almost every OT clinic we've worked with has done this at some point and regretted it. The data gets muddy, the creative gets diluted, and the cost per booking stays high. Splitting into separate campaigns adds zero extra spend and dramatically improves the result. We've seen clinics cut their cost per qualified booking in half just by segmenting an existing campaign.

What if my clinic only does one OT segment, like paediatric NDIS?

Then we run one campaign, not three. Most of this approach scales down cleanly. We'd build paeds NDIS creative, target parents and support coordinators, and use a paeds NDIS specific lead form. The principles are the same: tight segment, sharp creative, careful audience, qualifying form. Single segment OT clinics often see the cleanest Meta numbers in the entire portfolio because the targeting is so focused.

If Meta clients are lower intent, won't they churn after one session?

Only if you treat them like a discount client. The single biggest reason Meta campaigns fail isn't the campaign. It's that younger team members see a discounted booking and unconsciously deliver lower quality care. The patient feels it, doesn't rebook, and the campaign gets blamed. The clinics that win on Meta build the systems around the patient: calls or messages before the session so they know what to expect, an in clinic experience that's genuinely impressive, follow up after the first session. Done that way, a Meta patient delivers lifetime value comparable to a Google patient. The discount is the cost of acquisition. The first session is what earns it back.

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.

Ready when you are

See how Meta reaches each OT segment on its own terms.

Tell us about your OT clinic. Which segments you serve, which buyers you want more of. We'll come back with a one page plan: what creative we'd test first per segment, who we'd target, and what 90 days of Meta Ads should realistically deliver. No pitch deck. No one hour discovery calls that add no value whatsoever.

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