Google Ads for Podiatrists, From the Ingrown Toenail to the Bunion Surgery.

The form saves Google's click ID, so the booked appointment can go back to the ad that earned it. The account counts only:

• A call of 30 seconds or more
• A completed appointment request
• A booked appointment, uploaded by click ID under a plain name

Then price each service line apart: at benchmark rates a booked patient costs about $77, a loss on a $45 Medicare nail visit and a bargain against custom orthotics or a bunion surgery.

So the first dollar goes to ready-to-book searches, in what we call the Isolation campaign: exact match, one ad group and one condition page per foot problem. Eleven of the 12 practices we checked had a heel pain page, yet two in three of the 82 ads we read never named a foot problem.

Bids are set by hand, foot problem by foot problem: searches asking for a doctor averaged about $6.81 at the high end, against 89 cents for searches that only describe the problem. The ads use patients' words: 186 of 685 reviews praised or faulted the doctor for listening or explaining, and none of the 82 ads said so.

Search partners and AI Max go off, every keyword gets exact-match brackets, and the location setting moves to Presence, the option Google points health care toward. The call button shows only while the front desk answers, so after-hours voicemails don't pose as leads, while the ad keeps running for forms.

An Exploration campaign (also our name) adds broad match at about 30 quality conversions a month, usually in months two or three and sooner for bigger accounts. Performance Max follows around the half-year mark, with every doctor's name and its misspellings on a negative list, since Google's brand library rarely holds a doctor. Demand Gen needs about $380 a day at a $38 lead, Local Services Ads are an optional late test with no automatic lead credits in health care, and AI Max comes last, after “cure,” “permanent” and “painless” are cleaned off the site.

“We accept Medicare” is safe; “Medicare covers your nail care” isn't, because coverage depends on the patient's health. A “podiatrist or orthopedist?” page answers the comparison searches, while “orthopedic surgeon near me” goes on the negative list. Toenail lasers are FDA-cleared for a temporary increase of clear nail, so “cure” and “FDA-approved” stay out of the ads, and PRP can't be advertised at all, so the ad sells the heel instead.