Physical therapy is one of the clearer use cases for Google Ads: people search when something hurts, and many want to book soon. But clinics often run a single campaign on “physical therapy near me”, count every website visit or call as a win, and can’t tell whether ads are filling the schedule or just generating clicks. Good PT campaigns are built around conditions, local reach and the booking itself.
What patients actually search for
Patients rarely search for “physiotherapy services”. They search for the problem or the situation: back pain, a sports injury, rehab after surgery, a stiff shoulder, often combined with “near me” or a neighborhood. Some search for a type of treatment, some for a clinic that takes their insurance or offers direct billing, and some for a specific practitioner type.
I group campaigns by these intents. A search about knee rehab should see an ad about knee rehab and land on a page that explains how your clinic treats it, with a clear booking button. That relevance tends to lift click-through rate and Quality Score, which lowers what you pay per click. For Everett Physio, high-intent keywords such as “back pain relief”, “sports injury treatment” and “physiotherapy near me” were part of the plan.
Local targeting for a clinic
Most patients want a clinic near home or work. I set a target area that matches where your patients actually come from instead of an arbitrary large radius, and review Google’s location options. By default, Google can show ads to people who are physically in your area or who show interest in it. For a clinic, people who are actually nearby are usually the ones who book, so I check that setting early.
If you have more than one location, each one typically gets its own targeting and budget, so one busy clinic doesn’t absorb the spend meant for another.
Tracking bookings, not just clicks
Most PT clinics use an online booking system and also take a lot of phone calls. Both need to be tracked properly:
- Online bookings: a completed appointment in your booking system should be the conversion, not a click on the “Book now” button.
- Phone calls: Google’s call conversion tracking uses a minimum call length. A call tracking tool lets us go further and see which calls became appointments.
- Lead quality: separating real new-patient enquiries from existing patients rescheduling keeps the data clean.
At Mountainview Movement, a massage clinic in Vancouver, we integrated Jane App for scheduling and CallRail for call tracking. Client bookings grew 22% within the first four months. My analytics and tracking setup covers this kind of work.
What this looked like for Everett Physio
Everett Physio wanted more patient appointments at a lower cost in a competitive market. We built campaigns around specific services and conditions, focused geo-targeting on the clinic’s service area, set up lead tracking linked to revenue, tested ad copy and landing pages, and updated the landing page with clearer messaging and calls to action. Patient appointments increased 35%, cost per appointment fell 22%, and click-through rate went from 4% to 9%. The full story is in the Everett Physio case study, and the Mountainview Movement case study shows a similar approach for a massage clinic.
Common mistakes in PT accounts
- Broad keywords with no negatives. Searches for PT schools, jobs, exercise videos and equipment eat budget fast.
- Counting button clicks as bookings. Bidding learns from the wrong signal and you can’t trust the cost per appointment.
- One ad for every condition. Generic ads get lower click-through rates than ads that mirror the search.
- Ignoring the landing page. A slow or unclear page loses patients who were ready to book.
- Judging results in week two. Accounts need a learning phase before decisions on budget are reliable.
How I work with clinics
I start with your goals, capacity and current account. If you’d like a second opinion first, my Google Ads audit gives you a recorded video review. 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. There are no contracts, and you work directly with me. Learn more about my Google Ads management or browse all case studies.
