Client Case Study - Synergy
PPC Success Story
In May of 2024, Synergy Health Partners approached us, intending to get new patients for their Orthopedic Surgeons. They had previously used an agency, and then a freelance PPC person who was recommended to them as having a speciality in healthcare. Neither setup nor strategy took hold, and Synergy was still on the fence on whether or not online ads would be viable for their business. Up to this point, nearly all of their success was attributed to referral programs and B2B marketing promotions with other doctors and clinics.
We inherited an account with one campaign and 10 ad groups spending $6,000-$20,000 per month over the past quarter. Conversion tracking in the account was set up for “Schedule now” button clicks - so not the worst set up we had seen but how many people are clicking that button looking at schedules and then not actually scheduling an appointment? Based on our talks with the new marketing director, a lot, because the “conversions” in the account were much more than the total scheduled appointments from all sources.
The original goal that we were given was to drive 35 new patients per month through the site. Up to that point, they had been averaging about 7-10. To do this, we were told we could spend up to $6,000 per month, but if results were strong, they would be willing to increase their ad spend budget (previously they had spent upwards of $25,000 but thought the money was being wasted as they weren’t seeing their new patient numbers grow).
In June of 2024, we started work on the account. The first step was to set up correct conversion tracking. The account had been using button clicks on the site as conversions, but there was no way of knowing if the user actually followed through and scheduled an appointment. We set up conversions to trigger on new phone calls and new patients scheduling through ZocDoc. The second step was to create new, lower-funnel search campaigns for their main specialities (hip, knee, spine) that we could send to dedicated landing pages for each area.
We launched our campaigns on June 10th, 2024, and were quickly asked to increase the ad spend budget to $20,000 as performance quickly improved. By focusing on conversion tracking and lower funnel keywords/demand capture, by July 23rd, 2024, we received an email from the client stating, “We had the best week in company history by at least 20 new patients last week.” This was the first review of the extra ad spend, and we were greenlit to keep the budget at $25,000 for July and August.
Through July and August, we were getting quality data into the account and were starting to run experiments with Target CPA bidding (up to this point, we were using only manual bidding for everything but brand). This led to an increase in conversions and a drop in CPA; however, lead quality suffered as we were driving more phone calls rather than scheduled patients. Our client let us know that users scheduling through ZocDoc on the site had a much higher probability of keeping their appointment, as well as scheduling one in the first place (as many times phone calls did not lead to appointments). Up to this point, both phone calls and online appointment schedules had a conversion value of one in the account, so Google Ads was treating them as equal, and with target cpa as the bidding strategy, found it was more cost-effective to drive phone calls rather than appointments. To tackle this problem, we pivoted and worked with the client and did some quick napkin math based on numbers that the client knew to estimate values for phone calls and scheduled appointments based on their predicted revenue, AOV, and conversion rates. This led to our next experiment, Target ROAS. The ensuing test showed a “ROAS” of .58 compared to the control campaign’s “ROAS” of .42, even though the CPA was nearly double for the experiment campaign ($156 vs $83). This was clearly a winner as it was driving more scheduled patients and revenue.
On September 20th, 2024, we received this email from the client, “We also have 58 kept appointments this week, with 4 still on the books. If 3 of those patients keep their appointments, we will set a record since I have been here for most B2C kept new patient appointments with 62”. At this point, they updated the goal to 65 new patients/week. Nearly double their original goal.
In addition to the experiments and normal optimizations, we started a new strategy in the fall to increase CTR in the account and the conversion rate on the site within one test. We created ad customizers based on doctors' availability to let users know how many appointment slots were available that week. The idea here was that sometimes competitors were all booked up, and a pain point for users was having to wait weeks to get an appointment when they were already in pain. So showing that we have a bunch of appointment slots open that week, right on the SERP page, would show users that they could get in right away. From December 2024 through May 2025, ads with customizers had an $8 cheaper CPA and slightly higher CTR and Conversion Rates.
As results continued to increase, getting nearly monthly emails about new records set, so did our campaigns and budgets. By March 2025, the budget was $60,000. Double the budget of December. We had split the biggest campaigns between the two main clinics and were starting than when we started).
By utilizing better conversion tracking, experiments, customizers, and overall strategy, we saw 9,200 more clinic visits and 839 more new patients from DtoC in 2025 compared to the previous year. Spend over the course of the year increased by 445%, and we have managed to keep the CPA of a new patient below $100 at $79.61. By correcting the tracking to count only scheduled appointments rather then clicks, this has given us more accurate conversion data. This has led to the client being able to scale their business and add new locations and more doctors to their current locations.
