From $197 to $80 Per Lead — Premium Addiction Recovery & Mental Health Facility
One service line was bleeding at a $197.20 cost-per-lead. The problem wasn't the budget — it was that informational searches were flooding in and burning every dollar. I restructured the account around clinical intent, navigated Google's strict healthcare policies, and drove 1,999 high-ticket patient inquiries at a $24.01 blended CPA.
Key Results
-59%
PTSD CPA Reduction
From a peak of $197.20 per lead down to $80.33
1,999
Total Patient Inquiries
High-ticket inquiries across PTSD, Addiction Recovery, and Mental Health campaigns
$24.01
Blended Account CPA
Across $48,006 in total YTD spend — Jan to Aug 2026
The Challenge
What the client was dealing with
Marketing an addiction recovery and mental health facility is one of the most restricted niches on Google Ads. While their core Addiction Recovery campaign was breaking even, the PTSD and Mental Health service lines were drowning — the PTSD campaign peaked at $197.20 per lead because people searching 'what is PTSD' or 'PTSD symptoms' were triggering the ads. Real clinical intent was getting buried by informational noise.
My Approach
What I actually did
- Performed a rigorous Search Term audit focused on separating clinical/facility intent ('PTSD treatment centre', 'addiction recovery program') from informational intent ('PTSD symptoms', 'is alcohol a drug') — eliminating the latter entirely
- Navigated Google's Healthcare & Medicine advertising policies to keep ads eligible and competitive — a critical technical skill in this niche that most advertisers get wrong
- Transitioned all campaigns to Maximize Conversions bidding, feeding the algorithm clean data from real patient inquiry submissions (not generic page views)
- Reallocated budget dynamically across service lines based on weekly CPA performance — scaling what worked, pulling back what didn't
The Numbers
Biggest Lesson Learned
“Healthcare advertising taught me that policy compliance is as important as optimization. You can have the perfect campaign structure, but if your ads keep getting limited by policy flags, your impression share tanks. I now build a compliance review step into every healthcare account setup before anything else.”
Project Info
Industry
Healthcare & Rehabilitation
Country
Canada
Duration
Ongoing
Budget Scale
$6k / Month
Tags
Need similar results?
See how I work →