Most clinic owners who try Google Ads do the same thing. They log in, pick a few keywords that sound right, set a daily budget, and hope for bookings. Two months later they have spent £1,000 and have little to show for it.
The problem is not Google Ads. The problem is that they skipped the step every professional agency starts with: understanding who is actually searching, what they are searching for, and whether there is enough local demand to justify spending money at all.
Table of Contents
- Why local research comes before everything else
- What search volume actually tells you
- How to check demand for your services in your area
- What to do when the numbers are low
- The difference between a city clinic and a market town clinic
- Your catchment radius matters more than you think
- How a professional agency approaches this
- What this means for your budget
Why local research comes before everything else
Google Ads works by showing your advert when someone searches for a specific keyword in a specific location. If nobody in your area is searching for the service you are advertising, your ad will never show. Or worse, it will show to people too far away to ever book.
This is why research comes first. Before you write an ad, before you pick a keyword, before you set a budget, you need to answer one question: how many people near my clinic are searching for what I offer, every month?
If the answer is 1,200, you have something to work with. If the answer is 15, you need a different strategy entirely. Running ads against a keyword with 15 monthly searches in your area is not a campaign. It is a donation to Google.
What search volume actually tells you
Search volume is the number of times a specific phrase is typed into Google each month. Google makes this data available for free through a tool called Keyword Planner.
When you check search volume, you can filter by location. That means you can see how many people search for "ear wax removal Birmingham" specifically, not just "ear wax removal" across the whole of the UK.
Here is why this matters. "Ear wax removal" as a national keyword might get 40,000 searches a month. That sounds promising. But if you are a single clinic in Solihull, the national number is irrelevant. What matters is how many of those searches happen within the radius a patient would actually travel to reach you.
Search volume tells you three things:
- Whether demand exists. If 800 people a month search for your service in your city, there are patients to win.
- How much competition you face. High search volume usually means more clinics bidding. Low volume might mean an open opportunity, or it might mean nobody wants the service.
- What a realistic return looks like. If 500 people search and 5% of ad clicks convert to bookings, you are looking at a ceiling. You cannot generate 100 bookings from 500 searches.
How to check demand for your services in your area
You do not need to pay an agency to do this. Google Keyword Planner is free with any Google Ads account, even if you never run an ad.
Here is the process:
- List every service your clinic offers. Travel vaccines, ear wax removal, weight loss, ADHD assessments, whatever applies to you.
- For each service, write out the phrases a patient would actually type. Think "weight loss clinic near me", "private ADHD assessment Manchester", "ear wax removal cost". Use the words patients use, not the clinical terms you use internally.
- Enter these phrases into Google Keyword Planner. Set the location to your city or a radius around your postcode.
- Look at the monthly search volume for each phrase.
What you will find is that some services have strong demand and others have almost none. "Travel vaccines Leeds" might get 590 searches a month. "Vitamin B12 injection Leeds" might get 90. "Phlebotomy Leeds" might get 20.
These numbers decide which services are worth advertising and which are not. They are not opinions. They are data.
What to do when the numbers are low
Low search volume does not mean the service is not worth offering. It means Google Ads is not the right channel to fill it.
If a keyword gets fewer than 50 searches a month in your area, paid ads will struggle to deliver a meaningful return. The volume simply is not there. You might get two or three clicks a week, and even with a good conversion rate, that is one booking a month at best.
For low-volume services, the right approach is usually organic content. A well-written blog post or service page that ranks for the keyword will capture those 20 to 50 searches passively, without paying per click. It compounds over time instead of stopping the moment your budget runs out.
The professional approach is to map every service to the right channel:
- High volume, high intent: Google Ads. These are your money keywords.
- Medium volume, medium intent: SEO and content. Build a page, rank for it, capture the traffic for free.
- Low volume: Not worth spending on either channel right now. Focus elsewhere.
This is how an agency decides where your budget goes. They do not guess. They look at the data and allocate spend to the keywords that can actually deliver a return.
The difference between a city clinic and a market town clinic
A clinic in Manchester, Birmingham, or London operates in a completely different search environment to a clinic in a market town like Leamington Spa, Harrogate, or Bury St Edmunds.
In a city, the volume is there. "Weight loss clinic Manchester" might get 720 searches a month. "Travel vaccines Birmingham" might get 1,000. The demand is obvious. But so is the competition. Four or five other clinics are already bidding on those keywords. The cost per click is higher, and you need a better landing page to compete.
In a market town, the picture is different. "Ear wax removal Harrogate" might get 70 searches a month. Competition is lower, which means cheaper clicks, but the total opportunity is smaller. Your budget ceiling is lower. There are simply fewer patients searching.
Neither situation is better or worse. But they require completely different strategies:
- City clinics need to compete on quality. Better landing pages, tighter keyword targeting, and higher relevance to win the auction at a reasonable price.
- Market town clinics need to be selective. Only advertise the one or two services with enough local demand to justify the spend. Use content for everything else.
A one-size-fits-all campaign ignores this reality. A professional approach acknowledges it from day one.
Your catchment radius matters more than you think
Google Ads lets you set a targeting radius around your clinic. Most owners leave this at the default or set it arbitrarily wide. That is a mistake.
The right radius depends on the service, not the clinic. A patient will travel 10 to 15 minutes for ear wax removal or a blood test. They will travel 30 to 45 minutes for a hair transplant or a private ADHD assessment. They might travel over an hour for a specialist sleep study.
If you set a 25-mile radius for ear wax removal, you are paying for clicks from patients who will never drive that far for a £60 appointment. They will find someone closer. Your ad reached them, they clicked, you paid, and they booked a competitor five minutes from their house.
The fix is simple. Set a different radius for each service campaign:
- Routine, low-cost services: 5 to 10 miles.
- Mid-value services: 10 to 20 miles.
- Specialist, high-value services: 20 to 40 miles or more.
This is not a minor optimisation. It is the difference between paying for patients who can realistically book and paying for clicks that go nowhere.
How a professional agency approaches this
When a professional agency takes on a clinic account, they do not start by writing ads. They start by building a picture of the local market. Here is what that looks like:
Step 1: Service audit. List every service the clinic offers, including variations patients might search for. "Anti-wrinkle injections" and "Botox" are the same service but different campaigns.
Step 2: Keyword research by location. For each service, check the monthly search volume within the clinic's realistic catchment. Flag the high-volume opportunities and identify the gaps.
Step 3: Competition analysis. Search each keyword and see who is already advertising. Count the ads. Look at their landing pages. Assess whether they are doing it well or doing it badly. Both are useful information.
Step 4: Demand mapping. Sort every service into one of three buckets: advertise now, build content for, or deprioritise. This becomes the strategy.
Step 5: Budget allocation. Allocate spend to the keywords with the highest volume and clearest intent. Do not spread a small budget across everything. Concentrate it where the return is highest.
This process takes a few hours, not weeks. But it is the difference between a campaign built on evidence and one built on hope.
What this means for your budget
Understanding local demand changes how you think about your budget entirely.
If "travel vaccines" in your area gets 800 searches a month and the average cost per click is £6, you know that capturing all available clicks would cost roughly £4,800 a month. You probably do not want all of them. But you now have a ceiling. You know the maximum opportunity and can decide what share of it to target.
If "ear wax removal" in your area gets 1,200 searches a month at £3 per click and converts at 8%, you can calculate that a £500 monthly budget should deliver roughly 13 bookings. At £55 per appointment, that is £715 in revenue from £500 in spend. The maths works.
If another service gets 30 searches a month at £10 per click, the maths does not work. You would spend £300 to get 30 clicks, maybe convert two, and generate £110 in revenue. That is a losing proposition before you even factor in your time.
This is what data-driven means. It is not a buzzword. It is the act of checking the numbers before you spend money, rather than after.
Start with the research, not the spend
Every pound spent on Google Ads without local research behind it is a gamble. Some clinics get lucky. Most do not.
The clinics that consistently win from paid advertising are not spending more. They are spending better. They know which services have demand in their area, which keywords patients actually type, and what radius makes sense for each service. They allocate budget to the opportunities the data supports and use content for everything else.
You can do this yourself in an afternoon with Google Keyword Planner and a spreadsheet. Or you can work with someone who does it professionally. Either way, the research has to happen before the spend.
If you skip it, you are not running a campaign. You are guessing with your credit card.
Get your clinic's ad strategy built on data, not guesswork
We build Google Ads campaigns for clinics and pharmacies based on real local demand. That means keyword research for your area, landing pages built to convert, and budget allocated only where the numbers support it.
Book a free discovery call and we will walk you through exactly what the search data says about your services in your location, before you spend a penny.
