A quick note before anything else: I haven’t run a chiropractic account that I can show you as a case study. The two case studies on this page are the closest comparable work I have: Everett Physio, a physical therapy clinic, and Mountainview Movement, a massage clinic in Vancouver. Neither is a chiropractic practice. I show them because the patient journey is very similar. Someone has back or neck pain, searches for help nearby, compares two or three clinics and then calls or books. Running PPC for chiropractors is mostly about getting that journey right.
How patients search for a chiropractor
A lot of people searching for a chiropractor don’t type the word “chiropractor”. They search for the problem: lower back pain, neck pain, sciatica, headaches, a stiff back after a car accident. Others do search “chiropractor near me” or add a neighborhood, and some search for a specific technique or for a clinic that takes their insurance.
These searches carry different intent, so I don’t put them in one campaign. Branded and “near me” searches, condition searches and situation searches (such as auto accident or sports injury) each get their own ad groups or campaigns, ads that mirror the search, and a landing page that speaks to that problem with a clear way to book. Relevance like that tends to lift click-through rate and Quality Score, which lowers what you pay per click. On the comparable side, Everett Physio’s campaigns were built around services and conditions, with high-intent keywords such as “back pain relief” and “sports injury treatment”.
What Google’s policies mean for chiropractic marketing on Google
Chiropractic search ads are generally straightforward to run, but two policy areas deserve attention.
- Remarketing and customer lists. Google’s personalized advertising policy says advertisers promoting products or services in sensitive interest categories, including health, can’t use advertiser-curated audiences: Customer Match, your data segments (remarketing), audience expansion and lookalike segments. Google’s health category page doesn’t name chiropractic, but it does cover treatments for chronic health conditions, with arthritis as one of its examples. If your ads and pages focus on managing chronic pain, I’d plan the account without remarketing and treat it as a bonus if it turns out to be available.
- What still works. The same policy lets health advertisers use predefined Google audiences, such as in-market and affinity segments, demographics and location targeting. For a local clinic, good keywords and location targeting do most of the work anyway.
I’m careful with claims in ads and on landing pages too. Describing what you treat and how a first visit works is safer, and usually converts better, than promising a result.
Local targeting
Most chiropractic patients come from a few miles around the clinic, and many come back for repeat visits, so distance matters even more than for one-off services. I set targeting to the area your patients actually come from and check Google’s location options. The default can show ads to people who are in your area or who have shown interest in it. For a clinic, people who are physically nearby are usually the ones who book, so I check that setting early.
With more than one location, each clinic usually gets its own targeting and budget, so the busiest location doesn’t absorb spend meant for the others. Call-heavy hours matter as well. If nobody answers the phone at 7 p.m., call ads probably shouldn’t run at 7 p.m.
Tracking new patients, not just clicks
Chiropractic offices take a lot of calls, and many of them are existing patients rescheduling. If every call counts as a conversion, Google’s bidding learns to find more of the wrong thing. What I set up:
- Phone calls: Google’s call conversion tracking counts calls above a minimum length you choose. A call tracking tool lets us go further and see which calls turned into first appointments.
- Online bookings: a completed booking in your scheduling system, not a click on “Book now”, should be the conversion.
- New vs. existing patients: keeping these apart is what makes cost per new patient a number you can trust.
That’s the same kind of setup behind the comparable work. At Mountainview Movement we integrated Jane App for scheduling and CallRail for call tracking, and client bookings grew 22% within the first four months. At Everett Physio, lead tracking linked to revenue was part of the work, and patient appointments increased 35% while cost per appointment fell 22%. The full stories are in the Everett Physio and Mountainview Movement case studies. My analytics and tracking setup covers this work in detail.
Common mistakes in chiropractic accounts
- Only bidding on “chiropractor near me”. It’s competitive, and it misses the many people who search for the problem instead.
- No negative keywords. Chiropractic school, jobs, at-home stretches and equipment searches drain budget.
- Counting every call as a new patient. Rescheduling calls inflate results and mislead bidding.
- Sending every ad to the homepage. A sciatica search should land on a page about sciatica.
- Building around remarketing first. It may not be available for your ads, so the core campaigns need to stand on their own.
How I work with chiropractic clinics
I start with your goals, your capacity for new patients and your current account. If you’d like a second opinion before deciding anything, my Google Ads audit gives you a recorded video review and a PDF. From there I restructure campaigns, fix tracking and manage the account day to day. The first 30 days are for data and testing; scaling usually comes in months two and three.
Every two weeks you get a Loom video explaining results and changes, plus a live dashboard you can open anytime. You work directly with me, there are no contracts, and the account stays yours. If you run a larger practice with several services, see my page on Google Ads for healthcare clinics. You can also learn more about my Google Ads management or browse all case studies.
