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Patient economics

Is paid advertising worth it for your practice?

Put in what you'd spend a month and watch it run down the funnel: the clicks it buys, the enquiries they become, the patients who book, and what that's worth to you. Then set how hard you want to push, and see whether the cost of winning a patient sits comfortably under what one is worth. Pick your specialty to start.

what a new patient is worth to you £2,650

Not sure? Work it out next door →

start from
your monthly ad budget £3,000
Conversion rates · adjustable
avg cost per click £4.77 Average
LowerAverageHigher
clicks that enquire 5% Typical
FloorTypicalStrongExceptional
enquiries that book 40% Typical
FloorTypicalStrongExceptional

Cost per click is the measured UK average for your field, adjustable ±20%; the rates are typical UK benchmarks (June 2026). Nudge any, or .

Where £3,000 a month goes

potential revenue a month £33,333 13 patients, each bringing in about £2,650 · 11.1× back
what it costs to win one patient
£238 9% of the revenue a patient brings in

Indicative figures for your field, a guide, not a quote. Adjust the rates on the left to match your own.

We'll email you the full breakdown for your practice: every figure, and how we got to it. It's yours to keep, and we won't pitch you.

Or book a consultation straight away.

See how we worked it out

These are measured UK Google Ads costs and typical conversion rates, not a quote. They cover paid search, where someone is already looking for your treatment. Change your specialty, what a patient brings in, the budget, or the rates, and every number updates.

Most practices judge ads by the wrong number. They watch the cost of a click, or the size of the budget, when the number that decides everything is the cost of a booked patient: what it actually takes, in ad spend, to put one new patient in the diary. A click is cheap and a patient is not, because only some clicks enquire and only some enquiries book. Once you hold that cost against what a patient is worth, the question stops being whether ads feel expensive and becomes whether they clear the line. That one has an answer.

And the answer moves more with your funnel than with your bidding. A patient searches, lands on a page that doesn't quite answer them, hesitates at a booking form, and leaves, and you've paid for a visit that never became a patient. Tighten the page and the booking, and the same ad spend wins more patients at a lower cost each. That gap, between a leaky page and a sharp one, is usually larger than anything you'll save on the clicks, and it's the part a proper system is built to close.

These figures cover paid search, where someone is already typing your treatment into Google. That's demand you capture, not demand you create, and it's where the cost per click is real and measurable. Other channels, social and the like, work on a different economics and are better talked through than modelled on a slider.

If you want to go past the starting numbers and see what paid acquisition looks like for your practice, margins and all, that's a conversation worth having.

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Paid ads, in plain terms
  • Is Google Ads worth it for a private clinic?

    It pays when the cost of winning a booked patient stays under a sensible share of what that patient is worth to you. In some specialties the clicks are cheap enough that ads clear that bar easily; in others they are dear enough that they don't, at least until the page and booking convert better. The calculator runs your numbers, the cost of a click, how many clicks enquire, how many enquiries book, against what a patient is worth, and tells you which side of the line you are on.

  • How much should I spend on Google Ads?

    Work backwards from patients, not from a budget. Once you know what a booked patient costs you in ads, multiply by how many new patients you want a month, and that is your spend. The calculator shows the cost per patient and the monthly budget for a given target, so the figure is tied to your own economics rather than a number pulled from a blog.

  • What is a good cost per patient from ads?

    Anything comfortably below a fair share of what a patient is worth to you. If a new patient is worth a few thousand pounds and you can win one for a few hundred in ads, you are well ahead; if it costs more than they are worth, the ads lose money however good the campaign looks. The right ceiling depends on your margins, which only you know, so the calculator shows the cost and the return and leaves the line to you.

  • Why aren't my ads converting?

    Usually the leak is after the click, not the click itself. A patient searches, lands on a page that doesn't answer their question or make booking obvious, and leaves, so you have paid for a visit that never becomes a patient. Better targeting helps, but the bigger lever is almost always the page and the booking flow. In the calculator, move the funnel quality from leaky to sharp and watch the cost per patient fall: that gap is what a better system recovers.

  • What's a good return on ad spend in healthcare?

    There's no universal figure, because it rides on what a patient is worth and how well your funnel converts. A high-value treatment with a sharp booking flow can return several times what you spend; a low-value one with a leaky page can lose money at the same cost per click. The useful number is your own, which is what the calculator works out for your specialty.

  • Should I run ads or do SEO first?

    They answer different questions. Paid search buys visibility today and stops when you stop paying, which suits filling a gap or testing demand. The slower work, your own pages and reputation, compounds and keeps working after the spend stops. The honest answer for most practices is both, in sequence: use ads to prove the economics with the calculator here, then build the system that lowers the cost of every patient over time.