Build focused Search campaigns around the services you provide, the hours you can answer and phone friendly booking. Judge the result by attended new patients and real contribution, not by enquiries.
Before launch, run two separate checks: Ahpra and Google compliance, and whether patient data may reach ad platforms. Since June 2026, the data check, the easier one to skip, has regulator findings attached.
Build campaigns around dental patient intent
Dental searches aren't one market. Four very different people type "dentist" into the same search box:
someone with a broken tooth at 9pm
someone comparing practices after moving suburb
someone researching the cost of a consultation
someone looking for a job as a dental assistant
Our guide to high intent and low intent keywords numbers the levels from the most immediate downward. We use the same names here. The levels describe what the searcher wants from the search. They aren't a diagnosis, a clinical urgency assessment or a guaranteed conversion.
Owner level | Dental example | Campaign implication |
|---|---|---|
1 Immediate action intent | Emergency dentist open today | Only claim availability the clinic can meet. Route to a staffed phone or an accurate booking service |
2 Provider selection intent | Dentist in Carlton | A relevant local service and practitioner page with clear information and a booking route |
3 Commercial investigation intent | Dental consultation fees | Transparent, qualified fee and process information. Do not reflexively exclude cost queries |
4 Problem aware intent | Tooth pain at night | Often information seeking. Review the real queries and the practice's appropriate pathway |
5 Informational or non commercial intent | Dental assistant salary | Usually irrelevant to patient acquisition. Add verified negatives for employment and training |
Those four journeys are what the page and the ad have to serve. They don't replace the five intent levels. Nor are they four mandatory campaigns or triage advice.
Split campaigns only where budgets, locations, availability or regulatory requirements differ. Where related intents can share one message and one page, ad groups do the job. Our guide to Google Ads account structure covers the split rule in detail. Keep clinic name demand identifiable in its own campaign or ad group. That way it never flatters the non brand numbers.
Service intent | Campaign or ad group | Landing page and hours | Billing note and outcome measured |
|---|---|---|---|
Emergency and urgent care | Own campaign if the schedule or budget differs | Urgent access page, live only when staffed | Fees stated, outcome is an answered call or booked slot |
General and family dentistry | Core campaign, ad groups by service | Practitioner and service pages, all opening hours | Health fund and CDBS terms, outcome is an attended first visit |
Restorative and orthodontic | Ad groups, or a campaign if budget is protected | Service scope page with an assessment route | Qualified fee information, outcome is an attended assessment |
Elective cosmetic consultations | Own campaign for review control | Consultation page meeting the cosmetic rules | Terms of any offer stated, outcome is an attended consultation |
Clinic name searches | Own campaign or ad group | Homepage or booking page | Reported separately, never added to new patient counts |
For elective procedures, the ad sells the opportunity for an appropriate consultation, not a treatment outcome. Don't read every implant, orthodontic or restorative enquiry as cosmetic intent. Don't describe a service the practice isn't registered to provide. A dentist who offers orthodontic treatment isn't automatically entitled to call themselves an orthodontist. The Ahpra section covers the title rules.
Negative keywords need practice specific judgement, not a downloaded list. Review the search terms for:
jobs
courses
services the practice doesn't offer
irrelevant locations
research that doesn't suit the campaign
Don't blanket exclude "cost", "reviews", "free" or "bulk billing" when the practice has a relevant pathway for those searches. A fee question can be a provider selection search in disguise.
Exact and phrase keywords still need search term monitoring. Broad match is a controlled test only when permitted measurement, budget and review capacity support it. Our guide to Google Ads negative keywords covers how to build and maintain the list.
This guide assumes the account setup, billing and first campaign build are done. Our guide to setting up Google Ads for a small business covers that work.
Match location, hours and billing to the practice
Base the catchment on where the practice's patients come from. Draw on service availability and aggregated patient origin information where that's lawful. A three to ten kilometre radius is a habit, not a clinical or commercial rule.
Review the location reports and the current location settings. Remember that location targeting is never perfectly precise. Give each branch its own accurate address, practitioner list, hours, booking destination and capacity. Our guide to Google Ads location targeting covers the settings.
Schedule call led ads and call assets around reception coverage. An unanswered urgent call is a lost patient and a wasted click. Online booking can carry out of hours enquiries when the available times and confirmations actually work.
Verify the after hours and urgent contact wording with the practice. Treat "open now" and "appointments today" as claims that must be switched off the moment they stop being true. Reception follows the practice's clinical escalation process. It does not improvise treatment advice from an advertising script.
Billing is where dental ads go wrong quietly. For health fund queries, verify the details before any of them appear in an ad. That means preferred provider status, claiming capability, exclusions and the patient's out of pocket terms. A claiming terminal on the front desk isn't proof of fund provider status or full coverage.
The Child Dental Benefits Schedule is a separate scheme again.
Services Australia's guidance on using the CDBS explains four things. Families should check the remaining balance before the appointment. The cap is indexed each January. The practice confirms what each service will cost and whether the schedule covers it. Some dentists bulk bill while others charge on the day and let the family claim.
Say what your practice does. Keep changing caps out of evergreen copy. Never imply that Medicare covers dental care generally. GP bulk billing is a different model that belongs in the doctors section, not a dental campaign.
Set a budget using attended patient economics
Build a test budget from four inputs:
the expected cost per click
the measurement the practice is permitted to use
the appointments the clinic can add
a realistic learning period
Separate media spend from management, setup and tracking costs. State the GST basis once.
Our Google Ads cost per lead by industry table gives a sense of scale. In our own suburb targeted dental campaigns, general searches cost $6 to $8 a click. At our standard 5% to 6% enquiry rate, that's $100 to $160 a raw enquiry. Emergency searches cost $9 to $13 a click, or $150 to $260 an enquiry.
Citywide bidding can push a dental click past $19. That's why we target by suburb. Treat these as a reference point, not a forecast for your practice.
There is no universal viable dental budget. Elev8d recommends at least $3,000 a month for a managed account. A self managed test in a low CPC niche can start nearer $1,000 to $1,500.
Both figures are ad spend before any fees. They're our planning figures, not a Google requirement or a dental market fact. At dental click prices, a test that small buys few observations. No sum guarantees enough patient data to learn from. Our guide to how much Google Ads costs in Australia covers the wider cost picture.
Those three figures are examples, not a dental benchmark or an Elev8d result.
The ledger below follows one cohort over one observation period. In this example, that's a calendar month of spend, with outcomes recorded for the following six weeks. Every stage belongs to that same cohort.
Input or outcome | Example value | Interpretation |
|---|---|---|
Media spend | $6,000 | Money spent on ads, excluding the fees below |
Management and tracking | $1,500 | Included in this example's acquisition cost, same GST basis |
Combined acquisition spend | $7,500 | Not every clinic overhead or cost of care |
Recorded enquiry entries | 50 | Raw records, not 50 suitable new patients |
Existing patients | 5 | Final recorded status, counted once |
Wrong service enquiries | 5 | Services the practice does not provide |
Spam or duplicate entries | 4 | Removed before any cost is calculated |
Unbooked new enquiries | 4 | Genuine, not yet booked, with a follow up owner |
The remaining 32 entries are new patient bookings. The total checks out: 5 plus 5 plus 4 plus 4 plus 32 is 50.
Of the 32 bookings, 26 attended a first appointment and 6 cancelled or didn't show. That adds to 32 again. Those are nested stages, not additional enquiries. So nobody is counted twice.
With the combined $7,500 as its spend, the diagram shows $150 per raw entry. The first tile above shows $120 because it uses media alone. Both are right. But neither is the cost of a patient.
The number that matters is $7,500 divided by 26 attended first appointments. That's about $288 per attended new patient. Compare it with contribution on the same basis.
Here's that comparison, with one more assumed input: $180 of contribution per attended new patient. That's after the relevant costs of delivering the first visit. For the 26 patients, first visit contribution is $4,680. That leaves a $2,820 shortfall against the $7,500 of acquisition spend, before any other overhead. On first visit contribution alone, this campaign doesn't pay.
Whether it pays later depends on actual retention evidence over a stated period. Factor in cancellations, servicing costs and the cash flow gap until the spend is recovered. That evidence comes from the practice's own records, not from a lifetime value figure somebody assumed.
A common mistake is to justify a loss on the first visit with speculative high value treatment. Historical appropriate care can inform a budget. It must never decide which care a patient receives.
Two definitions protect the numbers. First, an appropriate assessment may end in a referral or no further treatment. That's still a valid attended new patient appointment. The patient isn't unsuitable because nothing was sold. Clinical suitability is the clinician's call.
Second, a confirmed booking that becomes a no show was still a booking. Report bookings and attendance as separate stages. Use attendance for the attended patient cost. Let the definition of each Ads conversion action decide whether anything is adjusted. Any adjustment stays within the data rules in the measurement section.
The gap between those two stages is real money. Our managed account sample is 45 service accounts we managed from May 2024 to September 2026. Across its dental practices, about 80% of booked new patients attended their first appointment.
Scaling, when it comes, needs spare appointment capacity. It also needs an acceptable marginal cost for the next patient, not the historical average. Our guide to a good cost per lead for Google Ads takes the target setting from here.
We'll check your campaigns, your conversion tracking and your booking route, then tell you what we'd fix first.
Make the booking journey clear and accessible
Send specific intent to a relevant service page. A general homepage can suit some clinic name searches. Someone with an urgent dental problem needs to find out whether anyone can see them today. They shouldn't have to navigate past the elective services to do it.
The page shows the actual practitioners and their registration, the location and the service scope. It also shows the appointment process, availability and qualified fees. It uses real facts rather than a testimonial or a stock outcome image as substitute proof. Our guide to choosing a Google Ads landing page or the homepage covers the general rule.
The real page has to present risks, fees and offer conditions in full. Don't hide them behind a tidy layout.
Check the page for:
readable text
contrast
keyboard access
form labels
error feedback
Then test the journey on a phone and on a desktop. Your GA4 device report shows how your own visitors split between them. Our guide to a good conversion rate covers how to judge what the page converts.
Keep the booking or contact route administratively minimal. A general marketing form shouldn't collect detailed symptoms, diagnoses, medication histories or open clinical narratives. Tell the patient where they can share that information securely. Clinical intake stays inside the practice's own process.
Then follow the booking to its actual outcome. Map the website, the external booking platform, the practice management system, the confirmations and reception's follow up. A button click is an interaction.
A successful booking needs evidence from the provider's supported integration or the booking record itself. Embedding a platform in an iframe doesn't give you access to the events inside it. Nor does installing Tag Manager on the clinic site.
Before specifying any integration, run the data review in the next section. Then test with approved synthetic records:
An available slot and an unavailable slot.
A validation error.
An abandoned booking.
A successful booking.
A repeated visit to the confirmation page.
A cancellation and the internal attendance update.
Confirm that the confirmation email or message actually arrived as well as the analytics event. Never send test clinical records to an advertising platform.
Calls need the same discipline. These are five different things:
a tap
a connected call
an answered call
an administrative fit
a booking
Call duration proves none of them.
Track the operational outcome internally where it's lawful to do so. Counting calls doesn't require recording them. So treat call recording as a separate decision, with its own notice, consent and jurisdictional review. Our guide to call tracking for Google Ads covers forwarding numbers and what each method proves.
Give the follow up an owner. Someone handles missed calls and incomplete enquiries, within a stated time, and records the outcome. Messages stay discreet and honour the patient's contact preference.
A booking reminder and a promotional recall are different purposes. However unfair a review is, a public reply never confirms that the person was a patient. Nor does it confirm what treatment they had.
Measure outcomes without exposing patient data
On 11 June 2026, the Privacy Commissioner issued determinations against two companies. Monash IVF Pty Ltd and Medmate Australia Pty Ltd were both found to have interfered with people's privacy. The people affected had their sensitive information collected through third party tracking pixels. The OAIC announced the findings on 24 June 2026 and published an inspection report the same day.
The release puts the legal position plainly. Tracking pixels can follow visitors on health related websites and target them with advertising. Using them that way amounts to a collection of sensitive information. The website provider must obtain consent for that collection.
The findings were against two named organisations, not every dental website. The lesson is general all the same.
The inspection report, Your life, pixelated, describes what the OAIC saw. The regulator scanned 50 health service provider websites and looked closely at 12 of them. Pixels were sending:
full page URLs
website searches
button clicks including questionnaire answers
timestamps
device details
hashed form fields that were used to match people to profiles
Organisations argued their data was hashed or de identified. The OAIC found that this did not make it anonymous.
The report's position is that the website operator is responsible for what its pixels collect. Sensitive information should only be collected through a pixel with express consent. And pixels aren't a set and forget decision. A footer privacy policy or consent mode setting isn't, on its own, valid consent or a complete answer.
So a dental practice runs two measurement environments and keeps them apart.
Environment | Appropriate scope |
|---|---|
Inside the practice's own systems | Administrative stages, new or existing status, booking, attendance and cost reporting, with limited access |
Sent to an advertising platform | Each event, identifier, page context and destination assessed against law and policy before it is enabled |
Transmission not permitted | Aggregate acquisition and attendance reporting kept internally, attribution limits documented |
Google's customer data policies don't allow conversions in sensitive categories in enhanced conversions or conversion uploads. Those categories include health and medical information. Enhanced conversions, conversion based customer lists and patient CRM uploads are therefore not a standard dental setup. A patient's consent doesn't override a platform prohibition.
Removing the procedure name from the event doesn't by itself make the data route permitted either. Nor does passing a click ID, hashing the email or moving the tag server side. A permitted ordinary conversion setup and a prohibited enhanced data use are different questions.
Lawful internal attendance reporting continues whatever the gate decides. The practice can know its attended patient cost without exporting the same records to Google Ads. The review itself has four parts.
Inventory the clinic website, the booking vendor, the tag manager and the advertising tags. Include automatic form capture, session replay and every integration. Identify each recipient and what each request contains, including URL and referrer context.
Map the purpose, the legal and policy basis, the information that's necessary and the consent required. Also map the storage location, access, retention, deletion and the vendor's responsibilities. The OAIC's small business guidance confirms the Privacy Act covers health service providers regardless of turnover. So the general small business exemption isn't available to a dental practice. Check any additional state health privacy requirements with a qualified privacy adviser.
Keep clinical details, patient identities, booking references and free text out of ordinary analytics parameters and URLs. Assess any approved matching field separately. Review server side routes as well as browser requests.
Test the consent states and the permitted data flow with synthetic records. Disable or fix impermissible collection. Record the approver. Then retest after booking, CMS, tag or vendor changes.
Outcome: [precise administrative event]
Source system: [booking provider or practice system]
Data and context: [fields, identifiers and URLs]
Recipient and purpose: [internal report or named platform]
Legal and policy basis: [documented assessment]
Consent and notice: [requirements and implementation]
Access and retention: [owner and controls]
Success test: [confirmed record and permitted request]
Failure test: [invalid, abandoned and repeated events]
Approver and date: [actual qualified review]
Review trigger: [website, vendor, policy or goal change]
The record is an implementation planning document, not consent wording. It keeps clinical records out of the marketing file. Where an outcome is permitted to reach Google Ads, verify the success event and the campaign goal settings. Our guide to Google Ads conversion tracking setup shows how to check both.
Resist making raw enquiries, bookings and attendance all primary actions. Otherwise they'd be added together as if they were different patients. Google's primary and secondary actions page adds a trap. A secondary action inside a selected custom goal still influences bidding.
The wider obligations for any Australian website are in our guide to Australian privacy law changes for websites.
Apply Ahpra rules to every advertising surface
Section 133 of the National Law sets five obligations for anyone advertising a regulated health service. Ahpra's advertising guidelines make clear the advertiser is responsible for content produced on its behalf. That includes work by a marketing agency. The practice owner and the agency share the checking.
Ahpra and the National Boards cannot approve advertising. So nobody can tell you an ad is Ahpra approved.
Use supportable claims
Claims about effectiveness need acceptable evidence. The guidelines say that mostly means empirical data from formal, usually peer reviewed research. A single case study or an anecdote doesn't qualify. Keep service availability, credentials and comparisons accurate. Avoid unsupported superlatives, guaranteed relief and claims that leave out a material risk.
An ad that Google approved has passed Google's policy check. That is not evidence of legal compliance.
State offer conditions
A gift, discount or inducement needs its terms and conditions stated with the offer. The overall impression matters as much as the fine print. Urgency, discounting and financing language that nudges people towards treatment they don't need is the breach. That holds whether or not the terms are present.
The Australian Consumer Law applies as well. The ACCC's guidance on false or misleading claims makes the same point about fine print. The guidance adds that it makes no difference whether a business meant to mislead.
Review testimonials and review widgets
Testimonials about the clinical aspects of a service cannot be used in advertising. Ahpra's advertising FAQs draw the line at control and use. Reviews that patients post on sites the practice doesn't control aren't the practice's advertising. Nor is the practice expected to police the internet for them.
Using a review is different. The guidelines make the practice responsible for reviews its own website publishes or republishes. The FAQs treat sharing a clinical comment or editing a mixed review as using it.
Not using a testimonial | Using a testimonial |
|---|---|
A patient reviews the practice on a site it does not control | The practice shares or reposts a clinical comment from that site |
A mixed review stays as the patient wrote it | Staff remove the negative half and publish the rest |
Praise for the front desk, parking or opening hours | Clinical praise shown on the practice's own website, including through a review widget |
Comments that aren't about a clinical aspect are not testimonials. But they still need a look in context. Don't give staff a blanket instruction to delete every public review.
Avoid unreasonable outcome expectations
Present realistic information and the relevant limitations. Words like "pain free" and "risk free" mislead. A small disclaimer under a confident outcome promise does not repair it.
Do not encourage unnecessary care
Factual availability helps a person who needs access. Manufactured fear, shame and treatment volume pressure can cross the line. Marketing staff do not decide clinical need under any circumstances.
Know the current penalties and the separate title offence
Ahpra's Advertising and the law page states the maximum penalties for advertising breaches. They're $60,000 per offence for an individual and $120,000 per offence for a body corporate. Since July 2024, those penalties have applied in all jurisdictions, including Western Australia.
The same page describes imprisonment of up to three years per offence for an individual. It attaches that to the unlawful use of a protected title, not to the ordinary advertising offences. So a prison sentence does not belong in every section 133 warning.
Protected titles are the dental equivalent of that risk. The Dental Board's guidance on the use of title sets out who may use them. Only practitioners registered in a recognised specialty may use the associated title. Examples include orthodontist, periodontist and prosthodontist.
A dentist using "Dr" should make clear they aren't a medical practitioner. The Board's example is "Dr John Torre, dentist". Verify the actual registration before an ad, a sitelink or a page uses any of those words.
Review the whole advertising surface
The rules apply to:
every responsive search ad combination
every sitelink and callout
images
landing pages
booking pages
the third party widgets embedded in those pages
Request a named, suitably qualified reviewer for the legal, advertising and health privacy passages of your own campaign.
Record what they reviewed and when. Keep the record with the launch checklist.
Check the extra rules for cosmetic dentistry
Ahpra's guidelines for advertising higher risk non surgical cosmetic procedures took effect on 2 September 2025. The examples of procedures they cover expressly include dental veneers. The list isn't exhaustive. So a practice decides procedure by procedure.
Relabelling a cosmetic procedure as something else does not remove the rules. Nor is all dental care cosmetic. A restorative crown is not a veneer campaign.
For the procedures that qualify, the guidelines add to the section 133 obligations. Testimonials remain banned, including in time limited formats such as social media stories. Liking or responding to a patient's review can count as using it. Where a practitioner is named, the advertising carries their registration details, including the registration number.
Risk information must be accurate, realistic and educative. Where space is limited the ad must point to where the full information is.
Before and after images carry their own rules. They must show actual patients treated by the advertising practitioner. Each pair must be as similar as possible in:
lighting
angle
background
framing
posture
clothing
makeup
They must carry no editing or enhancement.
They must state how long after the procedure the after image was taken. The after image must never get undue prominence.
Images of people under 18 must not be used. The advertising must not target people under 18 either. Stock images must never appear to show a treatment result. A real patient image needs informed consent and a privacy review before it's used in advertising, not after.
Where a service involves prescription only therapeutic goods, TGA rules apply separately. The TGA's FAQs on advertising health services and cosmetic injections say advertising mustn't refer to prescription only substances. That includes references through trade names, acronyms, nicknames, abbreviations or hashtags. The TGA judges the likely consumer take out of the material as a whole, business name included.
A price list or a public booking system can still advertise a restricted medicine. A line such as "for education purposes only" doesn't fix that. Describing the type of consultation is fine unless other information points to a product. Keep detailed product advertising out of the acquisition plan. Get specialist review where it's relevant.
Check Google policies and automation settings
Google's healthcare and medicines policy is organised by category and country. Its Australian table lists online pharmacies and telemedicine. Both need LegitScript verification and Google certification.
The table also lists addiction services. Only certified government entities may promote them. Ordinary in person dental services aren't listed as a certification category for Australia.
That's a reading of the policy's scope, not advance approval of any account. Google's general advertiser verification is a separate requirement that applies to everyone.
That block is a platform policy, not Australian law, governing personalisation rather than Search. Google's health in personalised advertising policy treats health conditions and treatments as sensitive interest categories. Invasive procedures, including cosmetic injections, count as well. So a retailer's remarketing plan doesn't belong in a clinic account. Our guide to Google remarketing ads covers the audience lists and the sensitive service restrictions in detail.
None of that bans a Search ad shown to someone who typed "dentist near me". A patient's permission does not switch a restricted audience back on.
Here's one more restriction that generic lead generation advice misses. Google's lead form policy states that advertisements for healthcare related content are not allowed for lead forms. The native lead form asset is off the table for a dental campaign. A lawful, secure booking form on the practice's own website is a different thing entirely. It remains the right route.
Automation needs an owner because it can change what was approved. Text customisation, automatically generated assets and final URL expansion can all alter the copy and destination after launch.
Performance Max takes automation furthest. Our guide to Performance Max for small businesses covers when it's worth testing at all. Google's page on final URL expansion in Performance Max says:
the feature is on by default
it can send people to other pages on the domain
with text customisation, a separate setting, it can build assets from those pages
a page feed only limits the destinations once expansion is off
We recommend a focused Search launch for a dental practice. That's because it gives usable control, not because it guarantees safety or results.
The bidding decision follows from the data decision. Conversion based bidding needs a trustworthy, permitted goal that the campaign actually uses. A booking target CPA isn't an attended patient target.
Our rule of thumb is 15 to 30 conversions a month before trusting a target. Our guide to Smart Bidding strategies explains this. Google itself sets no minimum for Target CPA.
If no suitable outcome can be sent to Google, don't manufacture a goal to switch automation on. Don't route around a restriction to do it either. Instead, run a controlled traffic and budget test with lawful internal outcome reporting. State the measurement limitation in the plan.
Write useful dental ads and assets
The ad should say what the practice is, where it is and what the person can do next. It should say nothing it cannot support. Here's an example for structure. It has no clinical promise, no review stars and no claim of approval.
Each headline fits within 30 characters and the description within 90, the limits Google's responsive search ads allow. Google's own page notes that assets can show in any order and must make sense alone or combined. They must not breach Google's policies or local law. Technical compliance with the format isn't Ahpra compliance.
Replace the suburb and every statement with verified practice facts. Review each combination that could appear. Use a call asset only with a staffed, verified number.
Useful assets are the actual location, a practitioner page, fee information and the booking route. The same rules apply inside them. Keep these out:
unsupported review stars
a health fund affiliation the practice doesn't hold
any clinical guarantee
the lead form asset
Our guides on how to write Google Ads and Google Ads assets cover the general craft. Apply the healthcare exceptions above on top.
The quickest repair for an outcome promise is to swap it for information the patient can use.
Guaranteed perfect smile. Pain free results for everyone.
Dental consultations in Carlton. Meet the team and discuss appropriate treatment options.
Keep a claims register for the campaign: each claim, its evidence, who approved it and when. That lets an auto applied recommendation or a generated asset be checked against it.
When an ad is disapproved, read the policy cited and inspect the full destination. Fix the substantive issue, or use the appeal route if the decision is wrong. Then record what changed.
Don't reach for keyword euphemisms, a second account or a different domain to get around a restriction. Don't let a copy grading tool stand in for a review. No tool can certify Ahpra or privacy compliance.
What changes for other healthcare practices?
The dental rules above are the healthcare rules. What changes between professions is the intent, the access model and the billing. Healthcare Google Ads covers the other professions too.
Google Ads for physiotherapists
Intent is provider and offered service. Examples are a condition area the practice treats and the practitioner who treats it. Claims need the same support. The target is appointments attended with appropriate care, not a treatment volume goal set by the ad budget.
Google Ads for chiropractors
Keep to the actual scope of practice, the credentials, the access and the fees. Avoid disease and cure claims that the evidence standard cannot support. Apply every obligation above, including the testimonial ban and the outcome expectation rule.
Google Ads for doctors and medical centres
Accuracy of availability, location and billing arrangements carries the campaign. State the practice's real bulk billing terms. Keep eligibility information current and remove the claim the moment it stops being true. That's because a bulk billing search is a billing promise before it's anything else.
Google Ads for specialists
Referral and eligibility requirements, waiting times and appointment access decide whether an enquiry can be accepted at all. More enquiries are not useful when the service cannot appropriately take them. The ad and the page explain the referral route rather than inviting everyone.
Review readiness before launch or expansion
A readiness score cannot approve a critical failure. An unlawful claim, an impermissible data flow or a reception desk with no capacity blocks the affected activity. Getting everything else right doesn't change that. So readiness is a set of gates.
Supportable advertising
Claims register with evidence and approver, every RSA combination, asset and page reviewed
Permitted data flows
Approval record for each outcome, synthetic record tests passed, impermissible collection disabled
Booking and calls work
Success and failure tests through to the confirmation, missed call owner and response time named
Correct goals
Only permitted outcomes as actions, one intended primary action, custom goals checked
Billing and service accuracy
Health fund, CDBS and bulk billing statements verified against the practice's actual terms
Attended patient reporting
Media cost, raw enquiries, eligible enquiries, bookings, attendance and cancellations on one definition
Capacity and follow up
Spare appointments confirmed per branch, marginal cost reviewed before any budget increase
Separate brand from non brand in the reporting, without pretending brand traffic equals existing patients. And don't pretend a conversion Google attributed was an additional patient the ads created.
What we recommend at Elev8d
We'd run the two reviews before touching the keywords. The data review decides what may reach Google at all. A qualified adviser the practice appoints checks the claims against Ahpra's rules. Nothing goes live until both are done.
Then we'd launch focused Search for general dentistry. We'd add urgent care only when someone can answer the phone while the ads run. Elective cosmetic consultations come later, in their own campaign, once the page meets the cosmetic advertising rules. We'd also switch off the automated changes that can rewrite approved copy. Our guide to Google Ads settings that waste budget walks through them.
We'd judge the first three months on attended new patients and first visit contribution, reported inside the practice. Spend goes up only when the clinic has appointments to fill. Even then, the next patient must still cost less than they contribute.
We'd change course when the facts say so. If no permitted outcome can reach Google Ads, we'd run Search on a controlled budget with internal reporting. We wouldn't force Smart Bidding. If reception can't answer the calls, we'd fix that before spending another dollar. The same goes if the clinic can't fit new patients in.
Next steps
Map the patient journeys before the keywords
List the urgent, general, planned and clinic name journeys. For each one, note the page, the hours and the outcome that counts. Check every availability and billing statement against what the practice can deliver.
For help with the campaigns and the tracking build, see the healthcare practices page linked earlier. It explains how we work with practices. The legal sign off on the advertising claims and the patient data stays with the adviser you appoint.
