Driving New Patient Growth for a Multi-Location Chiropractic Practice

The Challenge: Filling Appointment Books Across Multiple Locations
In the competitive world of healthcare and wellness services, attracting new patients consistently is no small feat. A multi-location chiropractic practice with clinics across Melbourne's south-east faced an uphill battle: competition from other chiropractors and wellness providers was fierce, appointment bookings were inconsistent across locations, and their digital marketing wasn't generating the steady stream of new patients they needed to grow. They needed a way to connect with people actively searching for chiropractic care, reach patients in each specific location, and most importantly, drive booked appointments.
When they approached us, their challenge was clear: how do we attract new patients to each of our locations and build a predictable patient acquisition system that works across multiple suburbs?
Crafting a Winning Strategy
We knew this wasn't just about running ads; it was about building a sophisticated multi-location SEM strategy that would drive new patient bookings to each clinic whilst maintaining cost efficiency. Our approach combined:
Location-specific campaign structure: Creating dedicated search campaigns for each clinic location (Dandenong, Pakenham, Balnarring, Frankston) to ensure ads were highly relevant to local searchers and budgets could be optimised based on each location's performance.
High-intent keyword targeting: Focusing on keywords that captured people actively searching for chiropractic services, including condition-specific searches, treatment-related queries, and local chiropractic searches with strong booking intent.
Performance Max expansion: Implementing a Performance Max campaign to complement search efforts, leveraging Google's AI to find additional conversion opportunities across Search, Display, YouTube, and Gmail.
Continuous optimisation and geo-targeting refinement: Constantly analysing performance data to identify top-performing suburbs within each campaign area, adding bid adjustments for high-converting locations, refining negative keywords, and testing new keyword opportunities to improve efficiency.
The Breakthrough: Seeing the Results
The impact of our multi-location campaign strategy was immediate and sustained. What began as inconsistent appointment bookings transformed into a reliable stream of new patients across all locations. Here's what happened over a recent 6-week period:
- Total Clicks: 3,150
- Total Conversions (Booked Appointments): 423.51
- Total Investment: $10,100
- Average Cost Per Conversion: $23.89
- Overall Conversion Rate: 13.44%
Unlocking the Insights
What Worked Best?
We analysed every aspect of performance across all locations to understand what truly drove exceptional results:
Location-Specific Performance Variations: Different locations showed dramatically different performance levels. Pakenham delivered an exceptional 31.25% conversion rate with the lowest cost per conversion, whilst Balnarring achieved a strong 19.43% conversion rate. This insight allowed us to allocate budgets strategically, investing more in top-performing locations whilst optimising underperformers.
Performance Max Efficiency: The Performance Max campaign proved to be the most efficient channel overall, delivering a cost per conversion of just $11.21 (53% lower than search campaigns) with a 19.51% conversion rate. This demonstrated the value of multi-channel reach beyond traditional search.
High Search Campaign Engagement: Search campaigns achieved an impressive 11.50% click-through rate, well above industry benchmarks, proving that location-specific targeting and relevant ad copy resonated strongly with local searchers actively looking for chiropractic care.
Geo-Targeting Optimisation Impact: By analysing conversion data at the suburb level and adding 10% bid adjustments to high-performing areas like Blackburn South, Burwood East, Rowville (for Dandenong), and Chelsea Heights, Cranbourne South (for Frankston), we improved efficiency by focusing budget where it delivered the best results.
Continuous Keyword Refinement: Regular optimisation, including adding negative keywords like "spa melbourne" to eliminate irrelevant traffic and adding high-intent keywords like "gonstead chiro near me" and "sports massage", continuously improved campaign performance and reduced wasted spend.
The Takeaway: Multi-Location Strategy Drives Predictable Patient Growth
This campaign wasn't just about numbers; it was about building a reliable new patient acquisition system that worked across multiple locations, each with its own market dynamics. By combining location-specific campaign structures, strategic budget allocation based on performance, and continuous optimisation, we transformed sporadic bookings into predictable appointment flow. For multi-location healthcare practices looking to drive new patient growth, this case study proves that the right SEM strategy with location-specific targeting and performance-based budget allocation can deliver consistent results whilst maintaining cost efficiency across all locations.

