Notes
Notes on performance marketing for healthcare
Practical writing on paid media, measurement, privacy and AI search for clinics and high-ticket service businesses.
Written by me, from accounts I run myself. No ghostwriters, no content team.
Measurement and privacy
Google Ads for Dentists: From Click to Booked Patient
Account structure by treatment, budget math, tracking to booked patients and the seven mistakes I find in dental accounts.
Open →Meta Ads vs Google Ads for Clinics: Cheaper Leads, Real Limits
Why Meta was about 3× cheaper per verified patient than Google Ads in one luxury US healthcare clinic, and why moving the whole budget there still fails.
Open →Lead Source Tracking: Verify Every Lead in Your CRM
Capture channel, campaign, keyword and time on every lead with hidden fields and a first-party cookie, then check it weekly against GA4 and Clarity.
Open →Call Tracking + CRM: Closing the Attribution Loop
Call tracking tags the source. Closing the loop means the CRM's outcome — booked, showed, treatment accepted — makes the trip back to the ad platform.
Open →Call Tracking for Dental Practices Without Breaking HIPAA
You can track which ad produced a call without sending patient data anywhere. Where the line sits, what may flow to ad platforms, and what must not.
Open →Click-ID-Only Conversion Feeds: How Clinics Send Results to Google Ads Without Patient Data
How a clinic tells Google Ads which clicks became patients while sending only a click ID, a stage and a time. What leaves your systems and what never …
Open →Enhanced Conversions for Leads: What It Sends, and When a Clinic Should Not Use It
What enhanced conversions for leads actually sends, what it fixes, how it compares with a click-ID-only feed, and why clinics usually choose the other…
Open →GCLID in Salesforce: capture, store and import
A step-by-step guide to importing closed revenue from Salesforce back into Google Ads, so bidding optimizes on patients instead of form fills.
Open →Google Ads CRM Attribution: Spend Tied to Patients
How Google Ads CRM attribution works on any CRM: click-ID capture, the revenue stage, offline import, and what changes once bidding learns from patien…
Open →Google Ads Conversion Tracking: Setup and Troubleshooting
Set up Google Ads conversion tracking so it counts real outcomes once. Primary vs secondary actions, count settings, Tag Assistant and 12 common fault…
Open →Google Ads Offline Conversion Tracking: How to Tell Google Which Clicks Became Customers
How offline conversion tracking works in Google Ads: click ID capture, which CRM stage to send, CSV vs API, the 90-day limit and the healthcare rules.
Open →HIPAA-Compliant CRM: What a Clinic's Marketing Team Can Actually Use
No CRM is HIPAA compliant out of the box. What a BAA really covers in HubSpot and Salesforce, 9 questions for any vendor, and where the click ID fits …
Open →HIPAA-Compliant Call Tracking: What Can Leave Your Systems
What a call tracking vendor must sign, whether calls may be recorded, who can listen, and how the ad click ID still reaches the CRM without leaking an…
Open →HIPAA-Compliant Email Marketing: What a Clinic Can Actually Send
What a clinic may email, why segmenting by procedure is itself health data, which platform features need a BAA, and the subject-line rule that matters…
Open →HIPAA-Compliant Forms: Builders, BAAs, and How to Keep the Click ID
What makes an online form HIPAA compliant: 8 checks for any form builder, where email alerts break it, and how to keep the ad click ID safely.
Open →HIPAA-Compliant Marketing Automation Guide
What HIPAA compliance means for marketing automation, tracking pixels and CRMs: BAAs, PHI in ad platforms, and a practical architecture that keeps.
Open →HubSpot to Google Ads: Sending Verified Stages Back as Offline Conversions
How to send verified HubSpot deal stages back to Google Ads: the properties to create first, native integration versus offline import, and what to upl…
Open →Is Google Analytics HIPAA Compliant?
No. Google signs no BAA for Analytics. What the 2024 court ruling changed, which clinic pages can still run GA4 and which must not. Page by page.
Open →Sending Offline Conversions to Google Ads with n8n
Build an n8n workflow that sends verified CRM outcomes to Google Ads: trigger, filter, payload, upload and the logging node most builds leave out.
Open →What Is GCLID? The Google Click ID, Explained for People Who Pay for the Clicks
GCLID is the ID Google adds to your URL after an ad click. What it looks like, where it is stored, how long it lasts and the 6 places clinics lose it.
Open →Why Google Ads Conversions Don't Match Your CRM
Google Ads counts actions; your CRM counts patients. The gap is normal — here's what causes it, which number to trust, and how to make bidding use the…
Open →Google Ads and policy
7 Red Flags in Your Agency's Google Ads Report
Vanity metrics, missing patient numbers, screenshots instead of access — seven patterns in agency reports that predict wasted budget, and what to dema…
Open →Brand Traffic Inside Performance Max: The Hidden Subsidy
PMax quietly absorbs branded searches and reports them as new acquisition. How to measure the overlap, exclude brand, and read the numbers after.
Open →Compliant Google Ads in Regulated Healthcare
You can run Google Ads for addiction treatment and regulated healthcare — with certification, careful claims, and clean tracking from day one. Here's …
Open →GoHighLevel Google Ads Conversion Tracking
How to wire GoHighLevel to Google Ads: GCLID capture, appointment-stage triggers, and why pure API pipelines need CSV.
Open →Google Ads Benchmarks for Healthcare: Why the Tables Mislead
Why published healthcare CPC and CPL benchmarks mislead, the six variables that move your numbers, and how to build an internal benchmark in four week…
Open →Google Ads Disapprovals in Cosmetic Surgery: Real Causes
Disapprovals in aesthetics come from two places: before-and-after imagery and outcome claims in copy. What triggers them, and how to appeal properly.
Open →How to Audit the Agency Running Your Google Ads
A checklist for owners, not marketers. Twelve checks you can run yourself in an afternoon to find out whether your agency is producing patients or rep…
Open →Is Your Google Ads Budget Wasted? The 15-Minute Check
Five screens inside your own Google Ads account that reveal wasted spend — search terms, conversion actions, PMax brand traffic, pacing — no agency ne…
Open →LegitScript Certification: What It Is, Who Needs It, and What It Costs
LegitScript certification for Google Ads: which healthcare businesses need it, what it costs in 2026, how long it takes and the Google step after appr…
Open →Making Your Healthcare Website Google Ads Compliant
Most clinic ad disapprovals are caused by the website, not the ad. The pages, claims and tracking Google checks before it lets your ads run.
Open →PMax vs Search for High-Ticket: When to Restructure
Performance Max works in high-ticket when the conversion signal is real and brand is excluded. Where it burns budget, and how to test the split honest…
Open →Performance Max Negative Keywords: What You Can Block and What You Cannot
What Performance Max lets you exclude in 2026: brand, campaign and account negatives, content exclusions, and the four controls you still do not get.
Open →Rebuild or Optimize? When a Google Ads Account Is Done
Five signs a Google Ads account is past incremental optimization, what a rebuild actually changes, and how to migrate without torching performance.
Open →Smart Bidding on Incomplete Signal: An Anonymized Breakdown
Smart Bidding optimizes toward whatever signal it's fed, wrong or not. What an anonymized account shows about verifying signal before automation.
Open →What Is Performance Max, and When Should You Trust It?
What Performance Max is, what you control and what Google controls, why lead-gen accounts get junk from it, and the settings that decide the result.
Open →When Microsoft Ads Beats Google for High-Ticket
Microsoft Ads wins on cost per acquired customer more often than owners expect. Where it outperforms Google in high-ticket, and where it does not.
Open →Growth for owners
8 Questions to Ask Your Dental Marketing Agency
If your agency reports clicks and leads but cannot say how many patients arrived, you have no answer. Eight questions, and what evasive replies mean.
Open →Cost per Patient vs Cost per Lead
Cost per lead is the number your agency reports. Cost per patient is the number that pays your staff. Why the two move in opposite directions.
Open →Dental Marketing Ideas, Ranked by Cost per New Patient
18 dental marketing ideas ranked by what a new patient actually costs, plus the procedure mix that decides your budget and a 90-day order to run them …
Open →Fertility Clinic Marketing Automation, Done HIPAA-Aware
Automation that fits a months-long fertility journey: instant inquiry response, no-show prevention, stage-based ad sync — built on scheduling data, no…
Open →Healthcare Digital Marketing: Every Channel, What It Costs, What Is Allowed
Every digital channel a clinic can use, what each costs, how fast it produces patients, and the ad-policy and privacy limits that apply to healthcare.
Open →Healthcare Marketing Agency or Consultant: How to Choose
What a healthcare marketing agency is genuinely better at, where a consultant wins, the nine questions that tell them apart, and what each one costs.
Open →Healthcare Marketing Strategy: A Plan Built on Patients, Not Clicks
Build a healthcare marketing plan backwards from revenue: what a patient is worth, how many you need, what you can afford per one, and the one number …
Open →How to Get More Patients, and Know Which Ones Came From Marketing
Most clinics lose more patients after the enquiry than they fail to attract. 7 fixes ranked by effort and payback, and how to tell what marketing brou…
Open →How to Hire a Healthcare Performance Marketing Consultant
What a performance marketing consultant does that an agency doesn't, the four reports to ask for before signing, and the questions that expose a …
Open →I Inherited a Wasteful Ad Account: The First 30 Days
What actually happens in the first month of taking over a badly run Google Ads account — in order, with what gets touched and what deliberately does n…
Open →Med Spa Marketing Ideas: How to Market a Med Spa Without Attracting Discount Hunters
15 med spa marketing ideas ranked by what they do to client quality, the ad policy traps that get aesthetics accounts disapproved, and a 90-day order.
Open →Patient Acquisition Cost: How to Calculate Yours, and Why Benchmarks Mislead
What belongs in patient acquisition cost, why published benchmarks by specialty mislead, and the six variables that make two clinics get different num…
Open →Patient Acquisition Strategies for Multi-Location Groups
How groups acquire patients without five versions of the truth: one system across sites, budget split by capacity and case value, one number per locat…
Open →Plastic Surgery Marketing Agency vs Consultant
Comparing plastic surgery marketing agencies with a senior independent consultant: staffing, incentives, verification, and the questions that expose.
Open →Plastic Surgery Marketing Ideas, Ranked by What Books Consultations
16 plastic surgery marketing ideas ranked by cost, speed and how to measure each one, plus the ad policy traps that get cosmetic practices disapproved…
Open →Speed to Lead: What Every Minute Costs High-Ticket
In high-ticket healthcare the practice that responds first usually wins the consultation. Why response time beats ad optimization, and how to fix it.
Open →What Healthcare Marketing Costs: Retainers, Percentage of Spend, Audits
The four pricing models for healthcare marketing, 2026 market ranges for each, the costs that never appear on a proposal, and how to compare two quote…
Open →Why Click-Through Rate Is the Wrong North Star
Click-through rate measures the click, not the patient. Manage a clinic account to cost per verified patient in your CRM instead. Here's why and how.
Open →Why Cosmetic Surgery Leads Never Book Consultations
Your ads generate enquiries and your schedule stays empty. The gap is not lead quality — it is what your account was told to optimize toward.
Open →Your Clinic Gets Leads but No Patients: Where They Go
Ads report leads, the schedule stays thin. The four places patients vanish between click and chair — and how to see each leak in your own numbers.
Open →AI search
AI Tools for Patient Acquisition: What Works
Which AI tools actually help a clinic acquire patients, which waste money, and the two categories where the compliance risk outweighs the gain.
Open →8 Tracking Mistakes in a Dental Implant Ad Account
Agency-owned accounts, the wrong pixel, two CRMs: eight tracking mistakes from a real implant-group audit, with fixes.
Open →AI Visibility Trackers for Clinics: What They Measure
Why your practice has no ChatGPT ranking, what trackers really sample, and how to check AI answers yourself in an hour.
Open →Best AI Search Monitoring Tools for Clinics (2026)
How to track whether ChatGPT, AI Overviews and Perplexity cite your clinic: tool categories, a fixed query panel method, and what the numbers mean.
Open →Connect Social Media to Google Search Console
Google Search Console now adds Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube as properties — see the queries your posts rank for and write to earn traffic.
Open →Healthcare Marketing Trends for 2027: What Actually Changes the Budget
Five shifts that actually change a clinic's budget: AI answers, automation, privacy enforcement, zero-click search and review rules. Plus what has not…
Open →How to Rank in ChatGPT and Perplexity: How Clinics Get Cited by AI Assistants
How clinics get named by ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity: six on-page factors, entity setup, GA4 measurement, plus 90 days of numbers from my own site.
Open →How Patients Find Clinics in ChatGPT, Gemini & AI Overviews
Patients now ask AI engines which clinic to trust. If the models can't find and cite you, you're absent from the answer. Here's how clinics get cited.
Open →llms.txt, Schema & Extractability for AI Citation
An assistant can only cite what it can find, parse, and lift cleanly: discovery, structure, and extractable prose. Missing any one caps citation.
Open →Not sure which one fits? Send me what you have and I will tell you where the money is going.
15 minutes. With me, not a sales rep.