The second largest search on this hub is in your industry, and it does not tell you whether the animal needs a vaccination or a surgeon.
What your clicks actually cost, which searches are wasting money, and what your cost per booked consultation looks like. Fifteen minutes, and you keep it either way.
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Forty cents more per click, and a booked procedure instead of an unknown consultation.
Vet near me gets 110,000 searches a month at $2.45 a click, the second largest search anywhere on this hub. Every one of those people wants a vet and not one of them has told you whether it is a vaccination, a limp or a surgical emergency. Pet dental is $2.86 with 720 searches, it is planned, it is priced, and it is the procedure most small animal practices know they under-sell.
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 four dollars. Veterinary has cheap clicks and enormous volume, which makes it very easy to run an account that looks busy and never answers the question of what those consultations were worth.
The rows worth building on are the planned ones. Dental, desexing and vaccinations are booked in advance, take a known slot and have a known price. The local searches at the bottom are large, cheap and completely undifferentiated.
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 procedure with prices instead of a Services list, a Google Business Profile built properly with your hours and emergency arrangements, and a review process after appointments. Slow to arrive, and it does most of the work on the local searches that ads would otherwise pay for.
THE FAST LEVER
Campaigns split by procedure, not one campaign called Vet, so dental and desexing never compete with the local searches for the same budget. Negative keywords so you stop paying for vet nurse jobs, veterinary science courses, pet insurance comparison, and the enormous volume of owners diagnosing a symptom at midnight. Booking tracking, because clinics book online and by phone.
THE ONE MOST CLINICS SKIP
The cheapest reach available, and the right channel for the procedures owners do not know their animal needs. Nobody searches for a dental until somebody tells them what tartar does, and that conversation does not happen on a search results page.
We start from what a consultation is worth and what follows it, not what a click costs. A practice built on vaccinations and one with a surgical list cannot afford the same cost per click. Google Ads does the fast work, SEO and your Google Business Profile carry most of the local search, and Meta Ads introduces the procedures owners are not looking 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 clinic, and what each one is actually for.
Built around “pet dental”
$2.86 a click, and a small search that punches well above its size. Dental is a booked theatre slot with a known price, and it is the single procedure most practices agree they do too few of. The page has to show what the mouth looks like before and after and give a price range, because owners have no idea what any of it costs.
Built around “puppy vaccination”
$2.96 a click on 1,600 searches, and the beginning of a relationship rather than a transaction. A new puppy means vaccinations, desexing, microchipping and then a decade of consultations. It is the highest lifetime value search in the industry and most clinics advertise it as a single appointment.
Built around the searches we exclude
Vet nurse jobs, veterinary science courses, university entry, pet insurance comparison sites, pet food retailers, and the enormous volume of owners searching a symptom at midnight rather than booking anything. On broad match you buy all of it, cheaply and in quantity.
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 a procedure that fills a surgical slot at a known price. Dental is planned, it is scheduled, and almost every practice we speak to says they should be doing more of it. It is a small search and the best value one on the chart.
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 three dollars for the click and the second largest search on this hub. It could be a vaccination, a limp, a lump or a genuine emergency. Your Google Business Profile is already catching a great deal of it, and buying more of it fills the day without telling you anything about what the day was worth.
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.
Vet near me and vet clinic near me are dominated by the local map, where a well maintained listing already appears. Bidding hard on those searches means paying for clicks you were largely getting anyway, and at $2.45 it is cheap enough that nobody questions it.
A listing cannot explain what a dental costs or what is included in a puppy package. Those are the searches worth paying for, and they cost within fifty cents of the local searches you are already winning.
A booking count treats a nail clip and a dental under anaesthetic as the same event. They take different amounts of theatre time and are worth completely different amounts, and averaging them hides which campaigns are actually funding the practice.
Cost per click, then cost per booking, then cost per booking by procedure and what each one billed. That is the only view where a $2.86 dental click clearly beats a $2.45 local one, and almost no practice measures it.
Emergency vet is the dearest search here and it only works if you actually take emergencies at the hour somebody is searching. Plenty of clinics bid on it, take the click, and then refer the caller to the after hours hospital across town.
We run it against your real hours and your real capability, and we turn it off when you cannot take the case. Paying for a click and then sending the animal somewhere else is the most expensive kind of goodwill.
We start with what a client is worth across the life of the animal and work backwards to what a click can cost.
A single consultation and a puppy that will be seen for twelve years cannot carry the same cost per click. We work out what your clients are worth across the life of the animal, because that number is large enough to justify bidding harder on the searches that begin a relationship.
Dental, desexing, puppy and kitten packages, emergency and general consultations each get their own campaign, budget and landing page, so the enormous cheap local searches never absorb the budget meant for booked procedures.
Search terms reviewed weekly and negatives added, because at these click prices a broad veterinary account finds symptom searches, insurance comparison and pet food by the thousand. Then monthly reporting on cost per booking by procedure.
Worth saying before you enquire, because it saves everyone three months.
If your books are full and your theatre list is full, this buys you a longer wait and some frustrated owners. Fix your Google Business Profile first in either case, because in this industry it is doing more work than any ad account will, and it costs nothing.
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.
Buy some of it. The problem is that it contains no information. A vaccination, a limp and a genuine emergency all type the same three words, so you cannot plan a day around it, and your Google Business Profile is already catching a large share of that search for nothing.
Because it is planned, priced and scheduled, and because almost every practice we speak to says they should be doing more of it. It fills a theatre slot rather than a consult room, and at $2.86 it costs about forty cents more than the local search that tells you nothing.
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.
Only if you genuinely take emergencies at the hours somebody is searching. It is the dearest click on the chart, and paying for it and then referring the caller to an after hours hospital is an expensive way to disappoint someone. We run it against your real hours and turn it off when you cannot take the case.
Less than most industries on this hub, because the clicks are cheap and the local search is largely answered by the map. The budget should be aimed at the booked procedures, where there is a natural ceiling on volume, rather than at the local searches where it can disappear indefinitely.
Low, and only useful by procedure. A nail clip and a dental under anaesthetic are not comparable in theatre time or in value. We report cost per booking by procedure with what each billed, which is the only view where the picture makes sense.
Three places, in this order. Local searches the map is already winning for you. Symptom searches, insurance comparison and pet food, which a broad account finds in enormous quantity at these prices. And veterinary jobs and courses, which this industry attracts a lot of.
Split the booked procedures out with their own campaigns and pages with prices. In most veterinary accounts the entire budget sits behind the local searches, which means you are paying to duplicate your Google Business Profile while dental sits unadvertised.
Yes, and the dental one earns its keep immediately. Owners have no idea what a dental costs or what it involves, so a page with photographs and a price range does most of the selling. A Services list does none of it.
We look at what it is wasting, how much overlaps with what your Google Business Profile already wins, whether the booked procedures are advertised at all, whether emergency is running when you cannot take cases, and what your cost per booking looks like by procedure. You get it in writing and you keep it either way.
