Location and near me
"Private physio near me", "physiotherapist Guildford". The core of most accounts, with location targeting set to where patients will realistically travel from, not the whole county.
Google Ads for physios works because people search for a physio when something hurts and they want it seen this week. Getting clicks is easy. The skill is paying only for the clicks that can become a booked assessment. This page covers how we run Google Ads for physiotherapists: the keywords, self-pay versus insured patients, landing pages, call tracking, what it costs and the rules that apply.
A physio account is built from a few clear themes rather than one long keyword list.
"Private physio near me", "physiotherapist Guildford". The core of most accounts, with location targeting set to where patients will realistically travel from, not the whole county.
"Back pain physio near me", "knee physio Woking", "sciatica physio" with a town. Smaller volumes and clearer intent, so each gets its own ad group and its own page.
Sports injury, post-operative rehab, women's health, running assessments. We bid only on what your team genuinely offers and has the capacity to see.
NHS physio, physio jobs, courses, home exercises, free. Excluding searches that can never become a booking is where most of the waste in an unmanaged account sits.
Search ads mostly reach self-pay patients: people who want to be seen soon and will pay for it. They want to know what an assessment costs, when you can see them and that they do not need a GP referral, so the ads and pages say so. For the wider question of what to spend on marketing overall, see how much a clinic should spend on marketing.
Insured patients work differently. They usually need their insurer to authorise treatment first, and insurers such as Bupa only fund physiotherapy at practices they recognise. So:
Sending every ad to your homepage makes a back pain searcher hunt for back pain. Each main campaign gets a page with the condition in the heading, who treats it, the fee, a line saying no GP referral is needed, where you are and how to park, and one obvious way to book. If your current site cannot do that, our physiotherapy websites are built for it.
Many physio enquiries arrive by phone, and a call you cannot attribute is a call the campaign cannot learn from. Google forwarding numbers are available in the UK and let you count calls from the ads themselves and calls to your website number after an ad click. We set a minimum call length so a wrong number does not count as an enquiry, track forms and online bookings too, and check booked patients against your diary each month where your booking system cannot report back to Google.
Physiotherapy is not a restricted category under Google's Healthcare and medicines policy, which is aimed at prescription drugs, online pharmacies, telemedicine and unproven treatments. Two things still matter. Google treats ads about treating health conditions as a sensitive category, so remarketing lists, Customer Match and lookalike audiences are off the table for those ads, although search targeting is unaffected. And the ad copy has to meet the CAP Code rules on health claims: no "cure", no "pain-free in three sessions", nothing you cannot back with evidence. "Physiotherapist" is also a title protected by the HCPC, so only registered physios can be advertised as one.
There are two costs, and we keep them separate. Ad spend is paid direct to Google, with no margin taken, and we agree a sensible starting budget on the call. Our fee is fixed, from £1,500 a month as part of a marketing retainer, whatever you spend.
The right budget depends on click costs in your area, how many services you advertise and how many new patients your team can take. A small budget spread across every condition you treat buys a few clicks on everything and enough data on nothing, so we start narrow, on the searches closest to a booking, and widen once the cost per enquiry is known. Retainers are for established clinics with a team. A solo physio is usually better served by a good website and a well set up Google Business Profile first.
How ads, local SEO and AI search work together for a multi-practitioner clinic, and what to ask any agency. See the full approach →
The map results that keep bringing patients in after the ads stop: profiles, reviews and location pages. See how local SEO works →
Running on your own for now? Start with the guide to going private as a physiotherapist.
Often within the first few weeks, because you reach people already searching. The first month is also when we learn what an enquiry costs in your area, so expect the account to get more efficient after that rather than from day one.
Yes, if insurers recognise your practice. Insured patients usually need authorisation from their insurer first, so we give them their own page and ad group. If you are not recognised, we exclude insurer searches rather than pay for clicks that cannot book.
Not for ads about treating health conditions. Google treats health as a sensitive category and does not allow remarketing lists or Customer Match for it. Search campaigns do not need them, because the search itself tells you what the person wants.
If the diary needs filling this quarter, ads, because they work from the first weeks. Local SEO builds more slowly and keeps paying when the ads pause. Most clinics end up running both, with ads leading.
On a UK marketing retainer, if we don't make you more than we cost you, you don't pay our fee until we do, assessed quarterly against an agreed enquiry value. Ad spend stays payable to Google.
One 30-minute call. We will look at your area, your services and your capacity, and tell you honestly whether ads are the right next step.
Book a discovery call →