Case Study: How a Victoria Physio Clinic Cut Cost-Per-Lead by 35% in 90 Days

This case study documents a Google Ads optimization engagement for a physiotherapy clinic in the Victoria BC area. The clinic had been running Google Ads independently for approximately 8 months before engaging SEO Medics, and was frustrated by rising costs without a clear picture of what the campaign was actually producing.

By the end of the 90-day engagement, cost-per-lead dropped 35% and tracked monthly lead volume increased significantly — without increasing the monthly ad budget.

Starting Point: What We Found

When we audited the existing account, we found several compounding issues that were inflating costs without improving results:

• No conversion tracking: The account had zero conversions recorded. The clinic had no idea which keywords or ads were generating phone calls or bookings — the campaign was being optimized for clicks alone.
• Broad match keywords dominating spend: Terms like “physiotherapy” (broad match) were triggering irrelevant searches including job listings, physiotherapy education programs, and out-of-area searches. A significant portion of the budget was going to traffic that had no intention of booking a clinic appointment.
• No negative keyword list: “Jobs,” “hiring,” “school,” “course,” “salary,” “how to become,” and dozens of other irrelevant terms had never been added as negatives. The campaign was hemorrhaging budget on unqualified clicks from day one.
• One generic landing page for all ads: Every ad — regardless of service — sent traffic to the clinic’s homepage. There were no condition-specific or service-specific pages, meaning patients landing after searching “ICBC physiotherapy Victoria” or “sports injury physio Saanich” arrived at a generic homepage with no direct relevance to what they’d searched for.
• No call extensions or call-only ads: The clinic’s primary conversion path was phone calls, but the account had no call extensions active and had never tested call-only ads. Most traffic was being sent to a page where the phone number was buried in the footer.

Month 1: Foundation Fixes

The first 30 days focused entirely on fixing the structural issues before spending more budget.

Conversion tracking setup: We installed Google forwarding number tracking with a 45-second minimum call duration threshold, and set up a thank-you page redirect for the contact form. Within two weeks, the account was recording real conversion data for the first time — which immediately revealed that a handful of exact-match keywords were generating nearly all the actual calls.

Keyword restructuring: We moved from broad match dominance to a phrase and exact match structure for core service terms (“physiotherapy Victoria,” “physio Saanich,” “ICBC physio Victoria BC”). Broad match was retained only for exploratory testing at a small budget allocation with close monitoring.

Negative keyword build-out: We added 80+ negative keywords in the first two weeks, drawn from the search terms report, which showed exactly which irrelevant queries had been eating budget. This alone reduced wasted spend significantly in the first month.

Call extensions and call ads: Active call extensions were added to all ad groups. A call-only campaign was launched for the highest-intent emergency and urgent-care searches.

Month 2: Landing Page and Ad Copy

With clean conversion data now flowing, we could see exactly which ad groups were converting and which weren’t. Month 2 focused on improving what was working and eliminating what wasn’t.

Condition-specific landing pages: We worked with the clinic to build three targeted landing pages: one for ICBC physiotherapy, one for sports injury, and one for general physiotherapy in the Victoria area. Each page led with the relevant condition, included direct billing information, and made the phone number the primary CTA. Conversion rates on these pages ran significantly higher than the homepage had.

Ad copy refresh: Generic headlines (“Victoria Physiotherapy Clinic — Book Today”) were replaced with outcome and differentiator-focused copy: “ICBC Physio Victoria — Direct Billing, Same-Week Available” and “Sports Injury Physio — Accepting New Patients, Book Online.” Click-through rates improved within two weeks of the swap.

Campaign segmentation: ICBC referrals, sports injury, and general physiotherapy were separated into distinct campaigns with their own budgets, keywords, and landing pages. This prevented budget from the high-volume general campaign from crowding out the higher-converting ICBC campaign.

Month 3: Results and Optimization

By the end of 90 days, the account looked substantially different — and so did the results:

• Cost-per-lead reduced by 35% compared to the pre-engagement baseline (calculated using the first 60 days of conversion tracking data as the reference point)
• Tracked monthly leads up significantly on the same monthly budget — driven by the reduction in wasted spend on irrelevant clicks and the improvement in landing page conversion rate
• Search term quality improved markedly — the search terms report in month 3 showed almost exclusively relevant, intent-matched queries versus the mix of job searches, educational queries, and out-of-area traffic that had dominated month 1
• ICBC campaign outperforming on cost-per-lead — patients searching for ICBC physiotherapy converted at a higher rate than general physio searches, validating the decision to give it its own campaign and budget

Key Takeaways for Physiotherapy Clinics

This engagement illustrates patterns we see consistently in self-managed or poorly-managed healthcare Google Ads accounts. The problems aren’t unusual — they’re common. And the fixes aren’t technically complex. What’s required is the audit discipline to find them and the campaign knowledge to correct them systematically.

The most transferable lessons from this case:

• You cannot optimize a campaign without conversion tracking. Every month spent without it is a month of misdirected spend. Setting it up correctly is the most important first step in any healthcare Google Ads account.
• Broad match keywords without aggressive negative lists are budget leaks. The search terms report tells you exactly what you’re paying for — reviewing it weekly in the early months is non-negotiable.
• Landing page relevance matters as much as the ad. Sending “ICBC physio Victoria” traffic to a generic homepage is the equivalent of handing someone a menu at a restaurant when they’ve already told you what they want. Condition-specific landing pages convert at meaningfully higher rates.
• Phone calls are the primary conversion for most physio clinics. If your campaign isn’t set up around call tracking and call ads, you’re measuring the wrong thing and optimizing blind.

If your physio clinic is running Google Ads and you’re not sure what it’s actually producing, reach out to SEO Medics for an audit. We’ll tell you exactly what’s working, what’s wasting budget, and what a properly structured campaign should look like for your market.