Paid Advertising for Health & Wellbeing — The Practitioner’s Playbook.

SectionThe honest reframe most paid agencies won't tell you

Generic paid agencies run aesthetics clinics, dental practices and private GPs through the same Performance Max template they use for plumbers. Broad-match keywords. A single "Get a free consultation" headline. One landing page covering twelve treatments. Claims that fly straight into ASA upheld-complaint territory. Conversion tracking that stops at the form fill, so the algorithm chases the cheapest tyre-kicker leads it can find.

Health & wellbeing paid is structurally different. Google and Meta both restrict aesthetic, supplement and medication ads under named policies. ASA, CAP and the MHRA actively police healthcare claims and 2023–2026 enforcement has tightened on aesthetics specifically. Per-treatment LTV varies enormously — a hygiene visit and a full-arch implant case sit on the same site but should never sit in the same campaign. And the most expensive thing a healthcare paid account can do — bid on its own brand at 30%+ of spend — is the default most agencies set up.

This playbook fixes the structure. Read it, run it yourself, or have us ship it on retainer. Same canon either way.

SectionThe eight-point audit we run on day one

Score your own paid account red / amber / green this week.

1. ASA / CAP / MHRA-compliant ad copy + creative review process — Every headline, description, image and landing-page block reviewed against CAP Code section 12 (medicines, medical devices, health-related products) before it goes live. "Best in [city]," superlative outcome claims, before/after photos without controls, "no risk" language — all upheld-complaint magnets. Misleading aesthetic claims are now the most-investigated category at ASA. We refuse to ship copy that crosses the line.
2. Per-treatment campaign architecture — One campaign per treatment. Cataracts is its own campaign, dental implants is its own campaign, ASHP — wait, scratch that, that's the eco-energy playbook — anti-wrinkle injectables is its own campaign, hormone testing is its own campaign. Generic "treatments" campaigns with twelve ad groups and one landing page cap out at 1–2% conversion. Per-treatment architecture lifts to 4–8% with the same spend.
3. Brand-spend ratio under 15% — Anything more is paying Google to find people who already know your name. Search "[your clinic name]" and you'll appear organically and in the local pack for free. Buy the treatment terms, the "near me" terms, the competitor-conquest terms — not your own.
4. Search-term report cleanliness — Last 30 days of search-term-report queries. Flag every query that wasted £50+ with no qualified consult. Add as exact-match negatives. We typically find £800–£5,000/month in waste on first audit — usually irrelevant condition queries, NHS-only intent, or job-seeker traffic.
5. Restricted-product policies — categorise correctly — Google Ads restricts "Healthcare and medicines" (botulinum toxin, prescription medicines, weight-loss prescriptions, hormone-replacement therapy). Meta restricts cosmetic procedures, weight-loss claims and before/after imagery under their Personal Health and Appearance policy. Most clinics get accounts suspended because they didn't categorise the product correctly or applied for the wrong certification. Get the certifications, run the right ad formats, and stay live.
6. Landing-page creative emphasis on credentialled clinicians + GMC/GDC numbers — Named clinician with photo, credentials, GMC/GDC/GOC/HCPC number, years in practice. Clinic registration (CQC for medical, GDC for dental). Generic stock-imagery LPs with no named practitioner convert 30–50% lower in this category. The regulator number is already public on the register; surfacing it lifts trust signals materially.
7. Offline conversion tracking — enquiry → consultation → contracted treatment → revenue — Most healthcare accounts only track "enquiry" because that's what the platform sees. The algorithm then optimises for cheapest-enquiry, which is junk. Push the deeper events (consultation booked, consultation attended, treatment plan accepted, treatment paid) back to Google + Meta as offline conversions with revenue values. The algorithm starts bidding on real patients within 30–60 days.
8. Review-creative integration showing real review counts — Aggregated star rating + review count from Google + Doctify + Trustpilot in the ad creative and on the landing page. "4.9 stars · 487 patient reviews" outperforms "Trusted local clinic" by a clear margin. Pulled from a verified review platform, not made up.

Three or more reds — fix the foundation before scaling spend.

SectionSix productised deliverables we ship per cycle

ASA / CAP / MHRA-compliant copy review process. Every ad headline, description, extension, image and landing-page block routed through a written compliance checklist against CAP Code section 12 before launch. Catalogued register of approved claims, approved photography conventions, approved before/after rules with controls. Refused-claim log with rationale. Saves the four-figure CAP fine, the six-figure trust hit if a complaint goes upheld, and the platform-level account suspension that follows a regulator action.

Per-treatment campaign architecture. Separate campaign per treatment — cataracts, glaucoma, dental implants, root canal, Invisalign, anti-wrinkle injectables, dermal fillers, hormone testing, sports physio, women's health, paediatric optometry. Each with treatment-specific keywords, ad copy, landing page, creative and conversion goal. Ad relevance improves, CPC drops 20–35%, conversion lifts 2–4×. Time to first signal: 14 days.

Brand-spend ratio audit + reduction. Strict separation of brand vs non-brand spend. Brand campaigns capped at 15% of total budget. Freed budget redeployed to per-treatment non-brand campaigns and competitor-conquest campaigns. Net new patients up, blended cost-per-consult down, CRO unchanged. Time to first signal: 7 days.

Restricted-product policy + categorisation. Correct policy declarations for botulinum toxin, prescription medicines, hormone-replacement therapy, weight-loss interventions. LegitScript certification submitted where required. Meta Healthcare and Beauty advertising verification submitted. Account-suspension risk dropped from likely to minimal. Ad inventory available expands materially.

Server-side + offline conversion uploads. GA4 + sGTM + practice-management-software matching keys + offline conversion uploads pushing enquiry → consultation booked → consultation attended → treatment plan accepted → treatment paid back to Google + Meta with revenue values. The algorithm bids on real revenue, not cheapest-enquiry. Junk-lead rate typically drops 30–50% within 60 days.

Review-integrated creative testing. Live aggregated star rating + review count pulled from Google Business Profile + Doctify + Trustpilot into ad creative and landing pages. A/B testing on review-led vs benefit-led headlines. Compounding effect as the review programme adds 4–8 reviews per clinic per month. Time to first signal: 21 days.

SectionWhat to do this week

Three actions, ranked by leverage. Same first three steps we ship in week one of a Foundation retainer.

1. Pull last-30-day search-term report. Sort by cost descending. Screenshot the top 50. Owner: founder or marketing manager. Time: 30 minutes. The waste is in plain sight. Add the top wasted queries as negatives. Typical first-audit result: £800–£5,000/month in identifiable waste — usually NHS-only intent, job seekers, or unrelated condition queries.
2. Check your brand-spend share + your ad copy against the CAP Code. Owner: founder. Time: 30 minutes. Sum of cost on brand-bid keywords ÷ total cost — if it's over 25%, this is your second-biggest leak. Then read CAP Code section 12 and flag any live ad with superlative outcome claims, "no risk" language, or before/after photography without controls. Pause those ads today.
3. Decide DIY, DWY or DFY for the next 90 days. Owner: founder. See the three ways.

SectionFive questions clinic / practice operators ask us about paid

What's a realistic cost-per-consult? Across the category, typically: dental £30–£100 (£30–£50 for hygiene/check-up, £80–£100 for implants), aesthetics £40–£200 (£40–£80 for injectables, £150–£200 for surgical), private GP £40–£150, optician £25–£60, physio £30–£80. Cost-per-consult is leading; cost-per-acquired-patient with treatment-plan revenue attached is the truth — typically 2.5–4× the consult cost depending on consult-to-treatment conversion.

How worried should we be about ASA / MHRA on aesthetic claims? Worried enough to fix the copy this week. ASA upheld 60+ aesthetic-clinic complaints in the last 18 months, most of them on superlative outcome claims, before/after photography without controls, and undisclosed prescription-only medicine references in injectable advertising. The CAP Code section 12 rules are tight but knowable. Once you know them, compliant copy converts as well or better than the non-compliant version. We've never had an ASA complaint upheld on work we've shipped.

How do we navigate Google + Meta restricted-product policies on injectables and prescription medicines? Three steps. First, categorise the product correctly — botulinum toxin is a prescription-only medicine in the UK, not a cosmetic procedure, and Google requires LegitScript certification before you can advertise it. Second, apply for the appropriate platform certifications (LegitScript for Google healthcare, Meta Healthcare advertising verification). Third, run compliant ad formats — no before/after, no prescription product names in copy, focus on consultation rather than treatment. Most clinics try to advertise injectables without these and end up suspended.

How much lift does offline conversion tracking actually deliver? Material. Once Google + Meta are receiving consultation-booked, consultation-attended and treatment-paid events with revenue values, the algorithm shifts within 30–60 days. Junk-lead rate drops 30–50%. Cost-per-acquired-patient drops 20–40%. The headline cost-per-enquiry might rise — that's correct, because you're paying for better enquiries, not more enquiries. Founders who only watch CPL panic at this; founders who watch cost-per-paid-treatment send the case study to their accountant.

Can we run this ourselves with the playbook + £750 audit? Yes — most clinics can run the campaign architecture themselves with a competent in-house marketing manager and a developer who can wire up offline conversions. The CAP Code review process benefits from external eyes for the first six months until the patterns are second nature. The £750 audit gives you a written red/amber/green of all eight points + named-owner / dated next steps + a CAP Code review of every live ad. Credit toward first cycle if you sign for DWY/DFY within 30 days.

SectionWhere to go from here

If you want this shipped end-to-end on a productised retainer, book a 30-minute discovery call.

If you'd rather have a senior practitioner reviewing your team's paid spend each week, the coaching plans start at £750/month. The two-week embedded sprint at £3,000 fixed is the right call for new-clinic launches or pre-CQC-inspection compliance rebuilds where a hard deadline is already on the calendar.

Or run it yourself. Eight-point audit + one deliverable a month + twice-quarterly office hours.