The most expensive click in this profession comes from somebody telling you upfront that they do not want to pay for anything.
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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Half the price, twenty five times the searches, and a patient who reorders every few months.
Bulk billed eye test is the dearest search in optometry at $13.38 a click, and the person typing it has told you plainly what they intend to spend. Contact lenses is $6.39 with 18,100 searches a month. Optometrist near me is $4.35 with 33,100. The test is not where a practice makes its money, and it is where nearly every practice spends its budget.
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 test itself, and specifically the version of it that is free. Every practice in the postcode bids on those searches, which is why they cost the most, and the patient behind them is the one least likely to buy anything on the day.
The middle and lower rows are where a practice actually earns. Contact lenses and prescription glasses are product searches with repeat purchase behind them, and optometrist near me is the largest search in the profession at a third of the price of the free test.
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 product category instead of a Services list, a Google Business Profile built properly with your booking link, and a review process after appointments. Slow to arrive, and the only thing that eventually takes the expensive test clicks off your bill.
THE FAST LEVER
Campaigns split by what the patient wants, not one campaign called Optometrist, so contact lens searches never compete with the free test for the same budget. Negative keywords so you stop paying for optometry courses, optical dispenser jobs, online glasses retailers and people pricing lenses overseas. Booking tracking, because appointments are made online as often as by phone.
THE ONE MOST PRACTICES SKIP
The cheapest reach available, and the right channel for frames. Eyewear is a visual purchase people make socially and slowly, and no search ad has ever persuaded anybody that a pair of glasses suits them.
We start from what a patient is worth across the years they stay, not what a click costs. A practice built on bulk billed testing and one built on eyewear and contact lenses 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 is where frames sell. 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 “contact lenses”
18,100 searches a month at $6.39 a click, less than half the free test search. Contacts are the one thing in this profession a patient buys on a schedule rather than every two years, and your competition on that search is largely online. The page has to answer fitting, price and how quickly you can get them.
Built around “optometrist near me”
33,100 searches a month at $4.35, the largest in the profession and a third of the price of the free test. The map pack sits above the ads on this search, so the ad has to earn its place with something the listing cannot show: your next available appointment and whether you bulk bill.
Built around the searches we exclude
Optometry courses, optical dispenser jobs, optometrist salaries, online glasses retailers, cheap frames overseas, and the very large number of people pricing lenses rather than booking an appointment. On broad match you pay full price for all 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.
Six dollars and change for the click and a patient who comes back on a schedule rather than in two years. Contact lenses are the closest thing optometry has to recurring revenue, and most practices are losing that patient to an online retailer while spending the budget on a free eye test.
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.
Thirteen dollars and change for the click, and somebody who has typed the word free into the search bar. That patient is welcome and the appointment is worth having. It is a strange thing to build an account around when it costs three times what the local search costs.
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.
The eye test searches take the whole budget because they are the obvious buy, and the bulk billed version costs the most of all. The account fills the book with appointments and never asks what any of those patients bought afterwards.
Contact lenses at $6.39 with 18,100 searches, prescription glasses at $2.66 with 8,100. Cheaper clicks, product intent, and repeat purchase behind them. The test gets you the patient. The dispensary is the business.
A booking count treats a bulk billed test and a contact lens fitting as the same event. They are not, and averaging them hides which campaigns are actually paying for themselves.
Cost per click, then cost per booking, then what those patients spent. That last figure is the only one that shows a $6.39 contact lens click outperforming a $13.38 test click, and almost no practice reports it.
Optometry is a regulated health profession. Testimonials about clinical outcomes are restricted under the National Law, and plenty of agencies write them anyway because they do not know the rules apply to a practice at all.
We keep clinical claims and patient testimonials inside what the National Law allows, and hand the copy to your principal optometrist to review before anything goes live rather than publishing straight to the site.
We start with what a patient is worth over the years they stay and work backwards to what a click can cost.
A bulk billed test and a contact lens patient cannot carry the same cost per click. We work out your average spend per patient and how often they return, because a practice that keeps patients for a decade can afford clicks a practice churning them cannot.
Testing, contact lenses, eyewear, and specialist services like behavioural optometry each get their own campaign, budget and landing page, so the free test search never absorbs the budget meant for the dispensary.
Search terms reviewed weekly and negatives added, because optometry attracts a large volume of online retail and pricing searches. Then monthly reporting on cost per booking by campaign, and what those patients spent.
Worth saying before you enquire, because it saves everyone three months.
If your appointment book is already full, more marketing buys you a longer wait rather than more revenue. And if your dispensary conversion is poor, fix that first, because paying $13.38 to bring somebody in for a free test and then not selling them anything is an expensive way to be busy.
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 every practice in the postcode bids on it and it is an easy thing to advertise. The awkward part is that the patient has typed the word free into the search bar. The appointment is still worth having. Paying three times the local search price for it, as most accounts do, is harder to justify.
Yes, modestly, and with your dispensary conversion in mind. A bulk billed patient who buys frames is a good patient. A bulk billed patient who does not is a $13.38 click and a chair hour. If you know which one you tend to get, you know how hard to bid.
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.
Yes, and that is the point rather than the objection. Those 18,100 searches a month are your patients buying lenses from somebody. At $6.39 a click you can compete on fitting, on getting them quickly and on the fact that somebody local checked their eyes. Most practices are not competing at all.
It sits above the ads, which is exactly why the ad has to say something the listing cannot. Next available appointment, whether you bulk bill, and what you actually stock. A generic ad on that search is paying $4.35 to be ignored in favour of the listings underneath it.
Within limits. Optometry is regulated under the National Law, which restricts testimonials about clinical outcomes. Explaining what a test involves, what it costs and what you stock is fine. We write to that line and hand the copy to your principal optometrist before anything goes live.
It varies far too much by what they came in for to give a single honest number. A contact lens patient and a bulk billed test are not comparable, which is why we report cost per booking by campaign and then what those patients actually spent.
Three places, in this order. The whole budget on the test searches, particularly the free version. Online retail and pricing traffic, which this profession attracts a lot of. And bringing patients in without knowing whether they buy anything, which makes every other number meaningless.
Split contact lenses out with its own campaign and page. In most optometry accounts we audit it is not being bid on at all, which means the one product your patients buy on a schedule is being left entirely to online retailers.
We look at what it is wasting, how much of the budget is going to the test searches, whether contact lenses and eyewear are bid on at all, whether anything published sits outside the advertising rules, and what your patients spend after they arrive. You get it in writing and you keep it either way.
