Orthopaedic clinic
Volume and quality aren’t a trade. Not if the ads are built right.
125 leads a week, every week, at $9 each — down from $17, with the conversion rate sitting at 17%.
Industry
Healthcare — orthopaedics & sports medicine
Channel
Google Ads (Search + Call-only)
The account
An orthopaedics and sports medicine clinic. Knees, shoulders, joint pain, sports injuries — people search for the body part, not the practice, and most of them would rather call than fill in a form.
The diagnosis
Most clinics are told to choose. Push for volume and the leads get worse; tighten for quality and the diary empties. It sounds like physics.
It isn’t. It is what happens when an account buys broad terms, sends every click to a form, and runs the same ads at 3am as at 3pm — when nobody is there to answer the phone.
The trade only exists in accounts that were never structured to avoid it.
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The treatment
Two campaign types, doing two different jobs. A Search campaign for the people who want to read first, and a call-only campaign for the ones who want to speak to somebody now. Both built on treatment-intent keywords rather than clinic names.
Phrase and exact match only — broad was never allowed in. Ad groups were kept tight around each service, one theme per group, because relevance is what makes Quality Score work for you instead of against you.
Then the unglamorous part. Location targeting drawn to the actual catchment. Ad scheduling weighted to office hours, so a call that costs money gets answered by a person. Call, location and structured snippet extensions to take more of the page.
Conversion tracking covered calls and forms, search terms were reviewed continuously, negatives added, losing keywords paused, and budget moved onto whatever was working that week.
None of it is clever. All of it compounds.
The results
- Cost per conversion: $17 → $9
- 125+ leads a week, consistently
- ~17% conversion rate
- 5.40% click-through rate
The account stayed in management on that footing rather than spiking and fading.
More leads and cheaper leads, at the same time. The trade was never real.
