Is Google Ads bringing in paying patients?

A psychologist in the EU wanted to know which Google Ads clicks turned into patients, and then send that information to Google to improve their results.

The issue: Healthcare + EU = limited conversion tracking.

It's not just an EU quirk. Lots of places have privacy laws, and Google limits what you can do with patient information.

I realised they'd conflated two separate problems:

• Problem 1: find out if Google Ads was actually making them money.
• Problem 2: improve the ads by telling Google which clicks turned into paying patients.

The good news is that you can solve problem 1 without infringing on patient privacy. And you can make your ads better even if you can't give Google feedback.

Here's how I'd do it.

Problem 1: Is Google Ads profitable?

Imagine the psychologist spends €2,000 on Google Ads this month.

• The ads generate 40 enquiries.
• Of those 40, 15 book an initial appointment.
• 10 eventually become patients.

This information is gold.

• They can compare the income from those 10 patients with the ad costs to acquire them.
• They can compare their cost per patient (€2,000 / 10 = €200) with the cost per patient of their other ad channels. If Facebook brought patients in at €150, it might be worth spending money there. If their Facebook patients cost €300, it'd make sense to shift ad spend to Google.

Neither calculation infringes on patient confidentiality.

To do this they need to know which patients came from Google Ads. That's a piece of cake: send Google Ads traffic to separate landing pages instead of the main website.

• The form on the landing page can send enquiries to a different email to the form on the website.
• The phone number should also be different, and not used anywhere else. That makes it likely that calls to the number originated from Google Ads.

After that it's just a case of keeping track of leads from Google in the CRM or booking system so you can work out the value later.

Problem 2: Improving the ads without offline conversions

Most Google searches are something like "psychologist near me".

How many people type...

psychologist who accepts insurance for diagnosing ADHD in children and offers video consultations outside working hours

If you're the kind of psychologist who:

• doesn't accept insurance,
• doesn't do ADHD diagnosis,
• doesn't work with children,
• doesn't offer video consultations,
• and only works during regular office hours,

you can't help this person.

Would you want to pay Google for them to click on your ad?

Our psychologist will get better results if they write ads that repel people they can't help. I've written more on this here: Write Google Ads that don’t get clicked or if you prefer video: https://youtu.be/78zVIM_Zylc

Send me any questions you have about making Google Ads more profitable. I'll do my best to answer.

And if the way I think resonates with you, I'd like to give you a free copy of my book Profitable Google Ads.

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