Google Ads · Physiotherapists
Google Ads for physiotherapy clinics, bought by condition
Almost nobody wakes up wanting a physiotherapist. They wake up with a shoulder that will not lift, and they search the shoulder. A physiotherapy account that bids on the profession rather than the complaint is bidding against every clinic in the city for the smallest slice of the demand there is.
In short
Google Ads for physiotherapists in the UK needs a different build from a generic Google Ads account, and this is how PipelineOS structures it. Start with what the demand actually looks like. Search volume for “physio near me” is real but thin, expensive and contested by every clinic within ten miles. The first ad group to build is Back, neck and sciatica: the largest volume in the account and the most polluted by self-help searches. The most common way this goes wrong: running the whole account on “physiotherapy [town]” and its variants, then concluding the channel is expensive.
How we build it
Start with what the demand actually looks like. Search volume for “physio near me” is real but thin, expensive and contested by every clinic within ten miles. Underneath it sits five to ten times as much volume in complaint language: frozen shoulder, sciatica down the leg, plantar fasciitis, tennis elbow, knee pain going downstairs. So the account is organised by body part and complaint, one ad group per presentation, with the clinic-name terms kept in a separate small campaign for brand defence. Bidding by complaint is cheaper per click and the ad can name the thing the person typed, which is most of the reason the click costs less in the first place.
The second decision is funding route, and it needs its own campaign because the two behave nothing alike. Self-pay patients search at night, book quickly and care about how soon you can see them. Insurer-referred and occupational health patients search during working hours, arrive with a policy number and want to know whether you are recognised by Bupa, AXA Health or Aviva. Mixing them means one budget, one bid strategy and one landing page trying to answer two incompatible questions. Split them, schedule the self-pay campaign into evenings and Sunday afternoon, and keep the insurer campaign on weekday hours where the enquiries actually come from.
Then the filtering, which in this sector is the single largest lever. Complaint searches are dominated by people who want a free exercise video, not an appointment. Anything containing exercises, stretches, home treatment, how to fix, self massage, NHS, waiting list, referral form, course, degree, band 5 or apprenticeship goes into an account-level exclusion list on day one, and the search terms report is read weekly for the first two months rather than monthly. Without that list a condition-led account can spend a third of its first month educating people who were never going to pay for a session.
Copy has a compliance edge that most clinics run straight past. Physiotherapist is a protected title and the ads sit under the CAP Code, so recovery claims need evidence behind them. “Cure your sciatica in three sessions” is not a headline you can defend. What you can say is who treats you, that they are HCPC registered, how quickly you can be seen and what an assessment involves — which converts better than the claim anyway, because the anxiety in that search is about waiting, not about outcome.
Ad groups
The account structure in practice. Ad groups stay tight so the ad can genuinely match the search, which lowers cost per click for the same position.
| Ad group | Example keywords | Bids and handling |
|---|---|---|
| Back, neck and sciatica | sciatica treatment [town], lower back pain physio, slipped disc physiotherapy | The largest volume in the account and the most polluted by self-help searches. Exact and phrase only until the exclusion list has six weeks behind it. Ad copy names the complaint in the headline. |
| Shoulder, knee and joint presentations | frozen shoulder treatment, rotator cuff physio, knee pain specialist [town], plantar fasciitis treatment | Excellent intent because the person has usually already self-diagnosed and given up on rest. One ad group per joint, each pointing at a condition page rather than the homepage. |
| Sports injury and return to play | sports injury clinic [town], running injury physio, hamstring strain treatment, ACL rehab | Younger, faster-booking, more likely to commit to a block of sessions. Worth a higher bid and evening scheduling. Mention same-week availability rather than credentials. |
| Post-operative and insurer-funded rehab | post op knee replacement physio, Bupa physiotherapist [town], AXA recognised physio | Separate campaign, weekday hours, landing page listing the insurers you are recognised by. Lower volume, longer treatment blocks, far better value per patient. |
| Clinic name defence | your clinic name, clinic name plus physio, clinic name reviews | Cheap, and it exists because national chains and directory sites will bid on your name. A small daily budget here protects traffic you have already earned elsewhere. |
Running Google Ads for a physiotherapist business already?Send us view access or a screenshot and we will tell you what we would change first, at no charge.
Call 07443 392243WhatsAppBudget and the arithmetic
Take the numbers a clinic already knows. An initial assessment across the UK typically bills at £45–£75 and a follow-up at £40–£65, with London running well above both. A genuine musculoskeletal presentation is rarely one visit: four to six appointments is the common block, so a new self-pay patient is worth roughly £220–£400 across the episode, before any repeat episode two years later. Direct costs are clinician time and room, and most clinics contribute £25–£40 an hour against fixed overheads once the diary is not empty.
Now the conversion chain, which is where clinics lose the argument. Clicks on complaint terms run roughly £1.80–£5, and higher on insurer and sports clinic terms. Of the people who ring or fill a form, a clinic with a staffed phone books somewhere between half and three quarters; a clinic whose reception is covered between patients books far fewer, because the caller has three tabs open. At a 60% booking rate and a £280 episode value with a £150 contribution, you can pay around £90 for an enquiry before the campaign stops adding anything. Most condition-led accounts land between £18 and £55, which is why the channel works at all.
One caveat worth building into the account from the start: capacity. A physiotherapy diary fills at a fixed rate and an over-funded campaign simply generates enquiries you answer four days later. Set the daily budget against the number of new patient slots you genuinely have that week, and treat the campaign as a tap to be turned down in a busy month, not a fixed cost.
Four ways this goes wrong
- Running the whole account on “physiotherapy [town]” and its variants, then concluding the channel is expensive. It is expensive there and nowhere else.
- Letting exercise and stretch searches through for a full month. That traffic clicks beautifully, reads for ninety seconds and never books anything.
- Sending an insurer-funded searcher to the same page as a self-payer. One needs a fee list, the other needs the words Bupa, AXA and Vitality visible without scrolling.
- Writing recovery timescales into ad copy that the clinician would never put in writing to a patient. It is a CAP Code problem and it is also the promise you get judged on at session four.
- Advertising same-week appointments while the online booking system shows nothing before a fortnight on Tuesday. The click is paid for either way.
The two pages behind this one
This page is the intersection. For the wider picture:
Google Ads in general
Everything about marketing for physiotherapists
Questions
Should we bid on condition keywords or clinic keywords?
Both, in different proportions. Condition terms carry the volume, cost less and let the ad echo the exact phrase the person typed, so they should take most of the budget. Clinic and profession terms are worth keeping because they catch people already looking for a physio, but they are the contested end of the market and should not be the whole account.
How do we stop paying for people who only want exercises?
An account-level negative list built before launch, then extended weekly from real search terms. Block exercises, stretches, home remedy, how to treat, self massage, video, NHS, waiting list, referral, jobs, band 5, course and degree. Send condition traffic to a page that opens with assessment availability rather than a long explanation, so the browsing visitors leave quickly and cheaply.
Can we advertise a specific recovery outcome?
Only to the extent you could evidence it if challenged. The CAP Code applies to search ads exactly as it does to a poster, and physiotherapy is a regulated profession with a protected title. Talk about HCPC registered clinicians, assessment content and appointment availability. Those are verifiable, and in testing they generally beat outcome promises for booking rate.
What is a sensible starting budget for one clinic?
Enough to gather data inside a month rather than a quarter, which usually means a spend that produces at least thirty clicks a week on your main condition groups. Below that the account cannot tell a good ad group from a bad one and you spend three months guessing. Match the ceiling to your actual new-patient capacity rather than to an ambition.
Related
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