If you own an orthopedic practice or administer a surgeon group, Google Ads costs need to be considered alongside appointment capacity, enquiry handling and the work needed to run the account. A media allowance alone does not describe the full engagement. Start with the services and locations you want to support, then agree what will be measured before increasing spend.
I run Sprout Sage Solutions’ orthopedic marketing service. This guide helps owners compare a paid-search proposal and decide what evidence they need. It does not publish an orthopedic spending average, a procedure-specific acquisition benchmark or a promised number of consultations or surgical cases.
Need to compare what an agency would actually manage? Use our orthopedic PPC management scope to check the destination page, conversion definitions, clinical approval and account access before commissioning campaigns.
Separate media, management and implementation costs
Identify money paid to Google separately from the supplier’s management fee. Ask whether campaign preparation, landing-page changes, measurement setup and ongoing reviews are included or quoted as separate work. Record software, tracking-number and integration costs, along with your team’s time for approvals and enquiry follow-up.
A percentage-based fee, flat fee or hourly arrangement can each be assessed against the same questions: what work is included, who performs it, who authorizes spend and what evidence is reported? The billing model alone does not establish the quality of the proposed work. Put exclusions and change requests in writing.
Define the practice and service scope
List the real locations, clinicians and offered services the campaign would support. Identify available appointment capacity and a contact responsible for scheduling changes. The practice determines clinical information, suitability and treatment decisions; a marketing campaign cannot determine whether an enquiry will become a procedure.
Check the page a visitor will reach. Does it accurately explain the service, identify the practice and provide a working contact route? Does the team know how to handle calls or form requests during the advertised hours? Repair a confirmed broken enquiry route before judging a campaign by the resulting lead count.
For multiple locations, identify how enquiries reach the appropriate office and how that office records the outcome. Avoid combining different locations or service lines into a single performance claim when capacity, enquiry definitions or reporting coverage differ. The multi-location orthopedic marketing guide expands on those shared and local responsibilities.
Use account evidence to discuss a starting budget
Request the proposed search scope, geography, estimates and assumptions behind the budget. Where historical account data exists, review its dates, campaign types, search terms and measurement coverage. A number from another practice or another healthcare service is not automatically applicable to your market.
Label forecasts as forecasts and identify which inputs are uncertain. Agree a spending authority, review date and conditions for continuing, changing or stopping the work. There is no universal spending floor that proves an orthopedic account has enough reliable information to make a decision.
Google’s spending-limit guidance distinguishes average daily budgets from billing limits. For most campaigns, the daily limit is twice the average daily budget and the monthly limit is 30.4 times that budget. Campaign type, start date and budget changes can affect the applicable limits; confirm the account’s actual settings and current rules. An average daily budget is not a promise of identical daily spend.
⚡ 2-minute scorecard · instant result
Is your orthopedic practice website turning searches into booked consults?
Answer 5 quick questions. Get your score + the top fixes, free.
1. Can a new patient request an appointment from a phone in under a minute?
2. Is every phone number on your site a tap-to-call link?
3. Do your procedure pages name the surgeons who perform them and show patient reviews?
4. Does each office have its own page with hours, phone and the surgeons who work there?
5. Do you track new-patient requests from the first click to a kept consult?
Keep enquiries, bookings and attendance separate
A tracked form submission, phone call or booking-button click is not automatically a qualified enquiry or an attended consultation. Define each stage and identify where the supporting record comes from. Exclude internal tests, duplicates, spam and unrelated contacts from the practice’s enquiry review.
Use a defined enquiry cohort and a stated outcome cutoff. Some bookings or attended appointments occur after the period in which the original enquiry arrived. Record that delay, along with cancellations, reschedules and no-shows, rather than dividing unrelated weekly totals. The orthopedic intake worksheet helps document this path.
For cost per qualified enquiry, divide media spend attributable to the defined enquiry cohort, plus any explicitly included and allocated management or implementation costs, by its qualified enquiries.
For cost per attended consultation, use the same numerator and count consultations originating from that cohort through the stated outcome cutoff.
Explain how shared costs are allocated, which costs are excluded and the attribution method. Do not substitute spending from the later appointment period. If there are no qualifying outcomes, or coverage is incomplete, report the limitation rather than an invented ratio. Use the orthopedic acquisition cost worksheet to record these definitions and allocation choices.
Do not equate procedure charges with advertising value
Billed charges, collected revenue and contribution after delivering care are different quantities. A click is not a surgical case, and an attended consultation does not establish that downstream treatment will occur. Your finance team should approve any planning assumptions, including the time horizon, variable costs, probability of downstream care and the entity receiving the contribution.
Do not use another practice’s procedure figures to claim that one case will pay for a campaign. Any comparison must use your own approved assumptions, distinguish observed outcomes from estimates and account for costs excluded from the calculation. An attributed outcome also does not, by itself, prove that advertising caused an incremental outcome.
Still choosing between a paid-search engagement and work on organic visibility? The SEO versus Google Ads guide for orthopedic owners compares the scope against specific service and location problems, with review rules to agree before expanding the budget.
A blank paid-search proposal worksheet
Use these fields for each proposed engagement. They are questions to complete with your practice and supplier, not a rate card or expected result.
- Practice locations, offered services and scheduling capacity.
- Campaign geography, search scope and proposed exclusions.
- Media allowance, management fee and separate implementation costs.
- Software, tracking and internal review responsibilities.
- Landing-page changes and checks for the enquiry routes.
- Who approves public claims and campaign changes.
- Received, qualified, booked and attended definitions.
- Spam, duplicate, test and unrelated-contact exclusions.
- Enquiry cohort dates, outcome cutoff and attribution coverage.
- Budget approval, review dates and conditions for changes.
- Finance-approved value assumptions, if a value model is used.
- Account access, asset rights, cancellation notice and handover deliverables.
Access and reporting questions before signing
Confirm the practice’s access to the advertising account, website, reporting and any tracking numbers. Identify who holds each subscription and what can be transferred or exported. Agree the reporting fields, exclusions and source limitations. Current written terms should explain setup commitments, renewal, notice and exit obligations.
Use aggregate business observations for a scope discussion. Keep patient records, passwords and confidential financial information out of a public website form. The practice and its designated advisers determine the applicable requirements for claims, permissions and data handling; a marketing proposal should identify those responsibilities.
Request an orthopedic marketing scope review
If you own or administer an orthopedic practice and are considering ongoing support, share your public website, role and the business issue you want to address. I can discuss the public enquiry path and possible priorities. Implementation, campaign management and media spending require a separately agreed scope and authorization.
Request an orthopedic marketing review →
For the broader budget discussion, see the orthopedic marketing scope and budget guide. To compare suppliers’ advertised services, use the orthopedic agency shortlist.
