The person searching is almost never the person receiving the care, and nearly every account we audit is written as though they are.
What your clicks actually cost, which searches are wasting money, and what your cost per onboarded client looks like. Fifteen minutes, and you keep it either way.
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A third cheaper, five times the searches, and the money is already approved.
In home care is the dearest search here at $10.73 with 1,300 searches a month. Home care packages costs $6.76 and gets 6,600, and that person has already been assessed and has a level of funding attached to them. NDIS provider is $7.84 with 6,600. Aged care near me is $3.89 with 33,100, and almost all of that is an adult child at the very beginning of working out what to do.
Average cost per click across Australia, from Google Keyword Planner. What your account pays will differ with location, competition and quality score. The gap between these rows is the argument, not the exact figures.
The expensive end of this chart is the vague end. In home care and aged care services are what somebody types before they understand the system, which is why they cost the most and convert the slowest. There is a long way between that search and a signed service agreement.
The middle is where the funded clients are. Home care packages, NDIS provider and respite care are searched by people who have already been through an assessment, know roughly what they are entitled to, and are choosing a provider rather than working out whether they need one.
Three numbers, and only the last one decides anything. It is the same chain our Brisbane digital marketing agency works through in every industry, only the dollar figures change.
We work it right to left. What a job is worth sets what a lead can cost, which sets what a click is worth bidding.
Cost per click is the easiest number to improve and the least useful one. Bid on cheaper searches and it drops immediately, whether or not those searches ever turn into work. That is why we will sometimes tell you to pay more per click rather than less.
Google Ads is the fastest of the three and the only one you pay for by the click. Here is what the other two do, and where the expensive clicks eventually stop.
THE SLOW ASSET
A real page per service and per funding pathway instead of a Services list, plain English explanations of how assessment and funding work, and a review process families can actually see. Slow to arrive, and the only thing that eventually takes the expensive clicks off your bill.
THE FAST LEVER
Campaigns split by funding type so package clients never compete with private enquiries for the same budget. Negative keywords so you stop paying for support worker jobs, aged care courses, certificate III, provider registration and the very large volume of people looking for work in the sector rather than services from it. Form and call tracking, because families enquire both ways.
THE ONE MOST PROVIDERS SKIP
The cheapest reach available, and unusually well suited to this market. The decision is made by adult children in their forties and fifties over a period of months, and they are on social media in a way their parents are not.
We start from what a client is worth across the years they stay, not what a click costs. A provider onboarding funded package clients and one chasing private hourly work cannot afford the same cost per click. Google Ads does the fast work, SEO eventually takes the expensive clicks off your bill, and Meta Ads reaches the family member who is actually deciding. We will tell you if one is not worth running.
Not a strategy document. These are the three campaigns we would build first for a Brisbane provider, and what each one is actually for.
Built around “home care packages”
6,600 searches a month at $6.76 a click, a third under the vague search above it, and the person has already been assessed. They know their level and they are comparing what different providers take in fees. The page has to state your pricing schedule plainly, because that is the single thing they are trying to find out.
Built around “ndis provider”
$7.84 a click on 6,600 searches, and a mixture of participants, families and support coordinators looking for someone with capacity. Capacity is the whole pitch here. A page that says which regions you cover and that you are taking new participants this month will outperform anything written about your values.
Built around the searches we exclude
Support worker jobs, aged care courses, certificate III, disability support worker wages, provider registration, and the enormous number of people looking for work in this sector rather than services from it. It is the single largest source of wasted spend in the vertical.
Send us access to your Google Ads account and we will come back with what it is wasting, which searches are costing you the most for the least, and what we would change first. Fifteen minutes, no obligation, and you keep it either way.
Two clicks can cost the same and be worth completely different amounts. That gap, not the click price, is what decides whether an account works.
Under seven dollars for the click and somebody who has already been assessed, already knows their level, and is now working out which provider takes the smallest slice of it. The sale is a pricing schedule and a phone call. It is the shortest path to an onboarded client in this market.
Your Google Business Profile, suburb pages, and local listings optimised so customers in your area find you first.
Technical fixes and service-focused SEO that make your site easy for Google to understand and trust.
Build your reputation through reviews, with monthly reports tracking rankings and leads from organic search.
Nearly eleven dollars for the click and a family member who has just realised their parent needs help and has no idea how any of this works. That person becomes a client eventually and they need six months, three phone calls and an explanation of the assessment process first.
Site speed, crawlability, schema markup, and Core Web Vitals sorted so Google can index and trust your site.
Service pages and suburb landing pages written to rank and convert, not just fill space.
Backlink building and on-page optimisation that compounds month over month.
Three things come up in nearly every Google Ads account we audit for a provider.
The copy addresses an elderly parent or a participant directly, warmly, and in language aimed at them. The person reading it is almost always an adult child or a support coordinator, and what they need is process, pricing and capacity.
Fees stated plainly, the assessment pathway explained in order, which regions you cover, and whether you are taking new clients. That is what the daughter with a spreadsheet open is looking for, and almost no provider site gives it to her.
This sector has a bigger recruitment search market than a service one. Support worker jobs, courses and certificates will absorb an unmanaged budget faster than anything else on this hub, because the words look almost identical to the ones you want.
An aggressive negative keyword list from the first day, reviewed weekly, and tight match types on anything that could read as a career search. In this vertical the exclusion list does more work than the keyword list.
An enquiry count treats a funded package holder ready to switch and a family six months from an assessment as the same event. They are months and a great deal of money apart, and averaging them hides which campaigns actually produce clients.
Cost per click, then cost per enquiry, then cost per onboarded client by funding type, tracked over a cycle long enough to be honest. That last figure is the only one that shows which searches are worth their price.
We start with what a client is worth across the years they stay and work backwards to what a click can cost.
A funded package client who stays for years and a few hours of private respite cannot carry the same cost per click. We work out your client value across the length of the relationship, because in this sector that number is large enough to justify clicks that look expensive on their own.
Home care packages, NDIS, private and respite each get their own campaign, budget and landing page, because they are different buyers at different stages with completely different questions.
Search terms reviewed weekly and negatives added, because the recruitment traffic in this sector will find any gap you leave. Then monthly reporting on cost per enquiry and cost per onboarded client by funding pathway.
Worth saying before you enquire, because it saves everyone three months.
If you have no capacity to take new clients this quarter, do not start. Capacity is the main thing families are trying to establish, and a provider who advertises and then says no is remembered for it. And if you cannot publish your fees, the best campaign on this page will not work, because pricing is the entire reason those people are searching.
Fast answers, clear decisions.
Spend, leads and trends at a glance.
Your data, your accounts.
Budget goes to what converts.
4+ years average client retention.
Specialists across each platform.
Because the funding is already approved. That person has been assessed, knows their level, and is comparing what different providers take in fees. It costs $6.76 against $10.73 for the vague search above it, and the distance between the click and a signed service agreement is a fraction as long.
An adult child, a support coordinator or a plan manager, far more often than the person receiving care. Nearly every provider site we audit is written warmly to the client and gives the decision maker none of what they need, which is fees, process, regions covered and whether you have capacity.
Agency fees usually work one of three ways: a percentage of ad spend, a flat monthly retainer, or a base fee plus a percentage above a threshold. Percentage models get expensive as you scale and quietly reward the agency for spending more of your money. Ask which model an agency uses and why before you ask for a number.
For the package campaign, effectively yes. The person searching home care packages is comparing what providers take out of their funding, and a page that will not answer that question sends them straight back to the search results. It is the single biggest difference between provider sites that convert and ones that do not.
It has 33,100 searches a month and it is cheap, and almost all of it is somebody at the very beginning. They are working out what the options even are. That traffic is worth having through content and through your Google Business Profile. Buying it at scale means funding a very long education process.
Enough to be present on the funded searches consistently, and for long enough to see the cycle through. Families take months to decide, so a three month trial in this sector tells you almost nothing except that you spent money.
Higher per enquiry than most verticals and much easier to justify, because a funded client can stay for years. We report cost per enquiry and then cost per onboarded client by funding pathway, because the second number is what makes the first one defensible.
Overwhelmingly on recruitment traffic. Support worker jobs, courses and certificates use almost the same words as your service searches, and an unmanaged account will spend a month of budget on people looking for work in a fortnight. After that, the vague early stage searches, and budgets judged too quickly.
The negative keyword list. In this sector it does more work than the keyword list, and every account we audit is quietly funding the job market. After that, split the funding pathways apart and get your fees onto the package page.
We look at what it is wasting, how much is going to recruitment searches, whether the funding pathways share a budget, whether your pages answer fees and capacity, and what your cost per onboarded client looks like. You get it in writing and you keep it whether or not you hire us.
