The cheapest clicks and the biggest search volume on this hub, and most of it brings you a consultation you barely make money on.
What your clicks actually cost, which searches are wasting money, and what your cost per booked appointment looks like. Fifteen minutes, and you keep it either way.
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A dollar more per click, and the difference between a rebate and an invoice.
GP near me, doctor near me and medical centre near me have 231,000 searches a month between them at under two dollars a click. That is the cheapest large market anywhere on this hub. It is also almost entirely people looking for a standard consultation, which for most practices is the thinnest margin in the building. Skin cancer check is $2.90 and travel vaccinations $2.89, and both are billed differently.
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.
Nothing on this chart reaches three dollars. General practice has by far the cheapest clicks and the largest volume on this hub, which sounds like an advantage until you work out what each of those clicks actually brings through the door.
The top two rows are the ones worth paying for. A skin check and a travel consultation are specific, they are planned, and they are billed in a way a standard consultation is not. The bottom three are the whole population of Brisbane looking for a doctor, which your Google Business Profile is already doing a reasonable job of catching.
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, a Google Business Profile built properly with live appointment availability, and a review process after appointments. In general practice this does most of the work that ads do elsewhere, because the local searches are enormous and largely answered by the map.
THE FAST LEVER
Campaigns split by service, not one campaign called Medical Centre, so the skin clinic never competes with general appointments for the same budget. Negative keywords so you stop paying for medical courses, GP jobs, symptom checkers, medication information and the enormous volume of people diagnosing themselves. Booking tracking, because appointments are made online far more than by phone.
THE ONE MOST PRACTICES SKIP
The cheapest reach available, and the right channel for the services patients do not know you offer. Nobody searches for a skin check until somebody puts the idea in front of them, and that is not something a search ad can do.
We start from what an appointment is actually billed at, not what a click costs. A practice that bulk bills everything and one with a skin clinic and a travel clinic cannot afford the same cost per click, even at these prices. Google Ads does the fast work, SEO and your Google Business Profile do most of the heavy lifting on the local searches, and Meta Ads introduces the services people are not searching for. 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 practice, and what each one is actually for.
Built around “skin cancer check”
5,400 searches a month at $2.90 a click, and the most valuable appointment a general practice can fill from paid search. It is planned rather than urgent, it takes a known amount of time, and it is billed rather than bulk billed in most practices. The page needs your fee, what the check involves and who does it.
Built around “travel vaccinations”
$2.89 a click on 2,400 searches, and a patient with a departure date. Travel medicine is planned weeks out, it involves a consultation plus vaccines plus scripts, and the patient is choosing a clinic rather than the nearest one. The page needs your fee, what you stock and how far ahead they need to come in.
Built around the searches we exclude
Medical courses, GP jobs and salaries, practice manager roles, symptom checkers, medication information, and the very large volume of people diagnosing themselves at two in the morning. On broad match a medical account will find all of it, and at these click prices it will find a great deal of it.
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 three dollars for the click, a planned appointment with a known duration, and a fee attached. Skin checks fill diary slots at a value a standard consultation cannot reach, and the patient often becomes a regular afterwards. It is the clearest case on this chart for spending more per click on purpose.
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.
Under two dollars for the click and 110,000 searches a month behind it. There is nothing wrong with the patient and a great deal wrong with building a paid account on them, because your Google Business Profile is already catching most of that search and the appointment at the end of it is your lowest value one.
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 practice.
GP near me and doctor near me are dominated by the local map, which your practice already appears in for free. Bidding heavily on those searches means paying for clicks you were largely getting anyway, and the cheap price makes it easy not to notice.
A Google Business Profile cannot explain a skin check fee or tell somebody how far ahead to come in before a trip. Those are the searches worth buying, and they cost about a dollar more than the ones you were already winning.
A booking count treats a bulk billed consultation and a skin check as the same event. In general practice those two appointments are worth very different amounts and take different amounts of time, and averaging them tells you nothing.
Cost per click, then cost per booking, then cost per booking by appointment type and what each one billed. That is the only view that shows a $2.90 skin check click outperforming a $1.44 local search click, and almost no practice measures it.
Medicine is a regulated profession and general practice advertising is watched closely. Testimonials about clinical outcomes are restricted under the National Law, and claims about waiting times and outcomes need to be accurate rather than aspirational.
We keep clinical claims and patient testimonials inside what the National Law allows, and hand the copy to your practice principal to review before anything goes live rather than publishing straight to the site.
We start with what an appointment is billed at and how long it takes, then work backwards to what a click can cost.
A bulk billed consultation and a skin check cannot carry the same cost per click, and the right comparison is not just the fee but the diary time it takes. A practice with a skin clinic and a travel clinic has a completely different set of affordable searches to one that bulk bills everything.
Skin checks, travel medicine, allied health and general appointments each get their own campaign, budget and landing page, so the enormous cheap local searches never quietly absorb the budget meant for billed services.
Search terms reviewed weekly and negatives added, because at these click prices a broad medical account finds symptom checkers and medication searches by the thousand. Then monthly reporting on cost per booking by appointment type.
Worth saying before you enquire, because it saves everyone three months.
If you bulk bill everything and your books are full, this is a poor use of money and we will say so. The local searches are already coming to you through the map, and buying more of them fills the diary with the appointments you make the least on. Fix the Google Business Profile first, and only then talk about ads.
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.
The click price is the least interesting number in general practice. GP near me, doctor near me and medical centre near me have 231,000 searches a month at under two dollars, and almost all of them lead to a bulk billed consultation you already win through the map. Cheap clicks that fill the diary with your lowest value appointment are not a bargain.
The services that are planned and billed. Skin cancer checks at $2.90 and travel vaccinations at $2.89 are both chosen deliberately, take a known amount of diary time, and are billed differently to a standard consultation. About a dollar more per click for a considerably more valuable appointment.
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.
Largely, yes, which is the point. The map dominates GP near me and doctor near me, and if your Google Business Profile is set up properly you are already appearing there. Bidding heavily on those same searches means paying for traffic you were mostly getting anyway.
Less than most industries on this hub, and aimed narrowly. The billed services have modest search volume, so there is a natural ceiling. Anything above it gets spent on the cheap local searches, which is where medical budgets usually disappear.
Very low on the local searches and largely meaningless. The number that matters is cost per booking by appointment type, with what each one billed against it. That is the only view where a skin check click at $2.90 obviously beats a local search click at $1.44.
Within limits. Medicine is regulated under the National Law, which restricts testimonials about clinical outcomes, and claims about waiting times need to be accurate rather than aspirational. We write to that line and hand the copy to your practice principal before anything goes live.
Three places, in this order. Bidding on local searches the map is already winning for you. Symptom checkers and medication searches, which a broad medical account finds by the thousand at these prices. And job seekers, which general practice attracts a lot of.
Split the billed services out and cut the local search budget hard. In most medical accounts we audit, the majority of spend is going to searches the practice already ranks for in the map, while the skin clinic sits unadvertised.
We look at what it is wasting, how much overlaps with what your Google Business Profile already wins, whether the billed services are advertised at all, whether anything published sits outside the advertising rules, and what your cost per booking looks like by appointment type. You get it in writing and you keep it either way.
