Is Google Ads really bringing you patients?
Google says 60 patients. Your diary says 37 arrived. Both are "right", and only one of them should set your ad budget.
Google Ads and Meta both report "conversions": form fills, calls, clicks on a booking button. That's what they can see. What they can't see is whether that person booked, turned up and paid. Your clinic software knows that, but it doesn't know which ad they came from. The real cost of a new patient sits between the two.
Real cost per patient calculator
Use one month and one channel (Google Ads or Meta). The defaults are an example. Nothing you type is stored or sent.
An estimate from your inputs. The real figure needs your ad platform joined to your clinic software, campaign by campaign.
Why the two numbers never match
- Conversions aren't patients. A form fill, a call or a click on "book" counts as a conversion whether or not anyone books.
- Some bookings don't turn up. Ad-sourced patients can have a different no-show rate from referrals.
- Platforms count generously. The same person can trigger more than one conversion, and attribution windows give the platform credit for people who might have come anyway.
- Leads aren't equal. Meta's cheap leads are often the least likely to book. Cost per lead looks great, cost per patient doesn't.
How to measure it properly
- Make sure every new booking records where the patient came from. Most clinic software has a referral or booking-source field; online bookings can carry the campaign tag.
- Each month, count new patients who attended, by source.
- Divide each channel's spend by its attended new patients. That's your real cost per patient.
- Go one step further and add what those patients paid in their first few months (from your accounts). That tells you which channel is actually worth the money.
Steps 3 and 4 need two or three systems joined, every month. That's slow by hand, and it's exactly what our free data check starts to show from your exports.
See what your ads really bring in
Drop last month's ad report and diary export into the free check. It runs in your browser, nothing is uploaded, and it shows your top three gaps in pounds.