As a therapist you are always on the hunt for a new client as generally churn rates are around 6-8 weeks. If you aren’t already ranking highly organically via Therapy SEO then it can be very hard for potential clients to find you and use your services.
Today we will be going through if Google Ads are worth the investment for therapists and the types of budgets that you would encounter starting a campaign.
Using Google Ads to rank above the organic listings for therapy related keywords can be an extremely valuable tool. Being above everyone else in the rankings allows for a potentially massive impact in potentially new clients.
Google allows you to rank pages for specific keywords so this could be ADHD Therapy, CBT Therapy, Counselling, Depression Therapy all of which would rank above your competitors when someone searches for a similar phrase.
Using Google’s Keyword planner, you can see keywords which people search and the associated cost. Depending on the specific competition the prices can range from a couple of pence, all the way to £30.00 plus per click.
This is also a great way to look for new keywords that can be used organically on your own website, via the creation pages or by adapting other pages to fit user intent and new views.
Getting your website above everyone else is always a massive benefit, one of the downsides to Google ads is the fact that it can be very costly especially with fierce competition. When looking to start a campaign it’s always a best to make sure you have the budget that allows the ad campaign to be as successful as possible for you.
A good common practice is to make sure you get at least 10 clicks a day, this enables you to be competitive with the other people bidding for ad space and allows for an in-depth look at the analytics google shows for each click.
This can mean that a campaign can become very expensive depending on the cost per click. A £4.00 average cost per click turns into about £40.00 a day in ad spend or roughly £1,200 a month.
This can add up quickly, although the main point of an ad campaign is ultimately what is your overall conversion rate. If you have 10 clicks a day so 300 a month at 2% conversion rate that’s 6 new clients.
Assuming your churn is 6 sessions at 150.00 =900 per client *6 = £5,400 in revenue back for £1,200 ad spend resulting in a 4.5X ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) so this can be very successful indeed.
Of course, with any upside there are risks in Google ads not paying off and ultimately losing money if you decide to do it yourself. We always recommend running a small campaign yourself first, using only exact match keywords.
This means that you are only bidding on specific keywords rather than Google using your budget for other keywords which would also be likely to convert. The aim here is to maximise the budget you have allowing for conversions then branch out to other keywords that are likely to convert.
It’s always best to use Google ads alongside a traditional SEO campaign, as this allows you to rank a website organically whilst also benefitting from an organic click that don’t cost you anything.
The downside to Google ads is the fact that regardless of someone clicking through to your site and leaving, you still must pay for the benefit of getting traffic.
Overall, ranking your website on Google using traditional therapy SEO is always the most cost-efficient way. Doing so means for every click you get through to your website there’s no direct cost as there would be by using Google Ads.
The aim of SEO is to rank your website as highly as possible for the search phrases your potential clients are searching for leading to conversion and profitability for your practice.
