Google will not quote a click price for the word physiotherapy. It will quote one for everything a physio clinic actually does.
What your clicks actually cost, which searches are wasting money, and what your cost per new patient looks like. Fifteen minutes, and you keep it either way.
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Advertise what you do, not what you are called. In this profession that is not advice, it is the only option available.
When we pulled this data, Google’s own keyword tool returned no cost estimate for physiotherapy, physio near me or physiotherapist near me in Australia. It returned a full set of figures for every service a physio clinic sells. Exercise physiology is $4.89 with 22,200 searches a month. Remedial massage is $2.68 with 33,100. Myotherapy is $2.78 with 18,100. The demand is enormous and none of it is attached to the job title.
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.
Every row on this chart is a service rather than a profession, because those are the only rows that exist. Nothing here breaks five dollars, which makes physiotherapy one of the cheapest health markets on this hub to buy attention in.
The bottom of the chart is the largest market. Remedial massage and its variants have more monthly searches than everything above them combined, and most physio clinics either offer it already or have a therapist in the building who does.
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 instead of a Services list, condition pages that answer the question before offering the appointment, a Google Business Profile built properly, and a review process after treatment. Slow to arrive, and it is also the only way to rank for the words you cannot buy.
THE FAST LEVER
Campaigns split by service, because the profession itself is not buyable. Negative keywords so you stop paying for physiotherapy degrees, physio assistant jobs, university entry, and the very large volume of people looking up exercises to do at home. Booking tracking, because appointments are made online as often as by phone.
THE ONE MOST CLINICS SKIP
The cheapest reach available, and the channel that does the most for a clinic built on repeat visits. Rehabilitation is a course of appointments, and staying visible between them is worth more here than in almost any other health vertical.
We start from what a patient is worth across a course of treatment, not what a click costs. A clinic built on rehabilitation and one built on single massage appointments cannot afford the same cost per click. Google Ads does the fast work, SEO eventually takes the paid clicks off your bill, and Meta Ads keeps you visible between appointments. 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 clinic, and what each one is actually for.
Built around “remedial massage”
33,100 searches a month at $2.68 a click, and another 27,100 on the near me version at $2.12. This is the largest piece of demand available to a physio clinic and most clinics treat it as a sideline. The page needs your rates, your health fund rebates and how quickly somebody can get in.
Built around “exercise physiology”
$4.89 a click on 22,200 searches, the dearest row here and the best patient on it. Exercise physiology is funded work with a course of appointments attached, often through a plan or a scheme, which makes it the closest thing this profession has to predictable revenue.
Built around the searches we exclude
Physiotherapy degrees, university entry requirements, physio assistant jobs, salaries, and the enormous volume of people looking up stretches and exercises to do at home. 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.
Under three dollars for the click and the biggest search in the profession. Remedial massage is claimable on most extras cover, it fills appointment slots that would otherwise sit empty, and a fair share of those people turn out to need actual physiotherapy once somebody has had hands on them.
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.
Physiotherapy, physio near me and physiotherapist near me returned nothing at all when we pulled this. No cost estimate, no search volume. Whatever the reason, the practical effect is the same: the words you would instinctively bid on first are not available to build an account around.
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 clinic.
Every account we open is structured around the word physiotherapy, because that is what the business is called. It is the one part of this market with no reliable data behind it, which means the budget is being aimed at the least measurable thing available.
Remedial massage at $2.68, exercise physiology at $4.89, myotherapy at $2.78, dry needling at $4.26. Real prices, real volumes, and every one of them something your clinic already does or could offer next week.
People looking up stretches and rehabilitation exercises are the single largest source of traffic around this profession, and they are looking for something free. An account on broad match will find every one of them.
That audience is worth having and not worth bidding on. It belongs in content that ranks, which is why physiotherapy is one of the few verticals where we will tell you to put more into SEO than into ads.
Physiotherapy is a regulated health profession. Testimonials about clinical outcomes and claims about treating specific conditions are restricted under the National Law, and plenty of agencies write them anyway because they do not know the rules apply.
We keep clinical claims and patient testimonials inside what the National Law allows, and hand the copy to your principal physiotherapist to review before anything goes live rather than publishing straight to the site.
We start with what a patient is worth across a course of treatment and work backwards to what a click can cost.
A one off massage and a funded rehabilitation program cannot carry the same cost per click. We work out what your patients are worth across a course of treatment and how many complete it, because that is what decides which services are worth advertising and at what price.
Massage, exercise physiology, dry needling, hydrotherapy and funded programs each get their own campaign, budget and landing page. There is no generic campaign, because there is no generic search to build one on.
Search terms reviewed weekly and negatives added, because this profession attracts an enormous volume of student, career and home exercise traffic. Then monthly reporting on cost per new patient by service, and how many returned.
Worth saying before you enquire, because it saves everyone three months.
If you only offer physiotherapy and nothing around it, this is a harder market than most, because the words for what you do are the ones with no data behind them. And if your therapists are already booked out, this buys you a waiting list rather than revenue.
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.
When we pulled this data, Google’s own keyword tool returned no cost estimate and no search volume for physiotherapy, physio near me or physiotherapist near me in Australia. It returned complete figures for every service a physio clinic sells. We are not going to speculate about why. The practical effect is that you build the account around services rather than the profession.
What you actually do. Remedial massage has 33,100 searches a month at $2.68, exercise physiology 22,200 at $4.89, myotherapy 18,100 at $2.78, dry needling 3,600 at $4.26. That is a very large market at prices well under most health verticals on this hub.
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 most clinics, yes. It is the largest search in the profession, it is claimable on extras cover, it fills slots that would otherwise sit empty, and a fair share of those people turn out to need physiotherapy once somebody has had hands on them. Most clinics treat it as a sideline and advertise it accordingly.
Enormous volume, and looking for something free. That audience belongs in content that ranks rather than in a bidding strategy. Physiotherapy is one of the few verticals where we will genuinely tell you to put more into SEO than into ads, and this is the reason.
Within limits. Physiotherapy is regulated under the National Law, which restricts testimonials about clinical outcomes and claims about treating specific conditions. Explaining what a treatment involves and what it costs is fine. We write to that line and hand the copy to your principal physiotherapist before anything goes live.
Lower than most health verticals, because the clicks are cheap. The number that matters more is how many of them complete a course of treatment, which is why we report cost per new patient by service and then the return rate rather than one blended figure.
Three places, in this order. Home exercise and stretch traffic, which is the largest source of searching around this profession and the least valuable. Students, careers and degree searches. And accounts built around a job title that has no usable data behind it.
Rebuild it around services. Nearly every physio account we audit is structured around the profession, which means the budget is aimed at the least measurable part of the market while remedial massage and exercise physiology sit unbid.
We look at what it is wasting, how much is going to exercise and student traffic, whether the services are advertised in their own right, whether anything published sits outside the advertising rules, and what your cost per new patient looks like by service. You get it in writing and you keep it either way.
