From CA$197 to CA$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 CA$197.20 per lead down to CA$80.33
1,999
Total Patient Inquiries
Phone calls and form submissions across PTSD, Addiction Recovery, and Mental Health campaigns, Jan–Aug 2026
CA$24.01
Blended Account CPA
Across CA$48,006 in spend, Jan to Aug 2026
The Challenge
What the client was dealing with
When the account came to us from its previous agency, it was spending roughly CA$22k a quarter, but conversion tracking had recorded only 57 conversions in two and a half years, so nobody could see which campaigns produced patients. On top of that, 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
- Rebuilt conversion tracking at handover (calls from ads plus GA4 form submissions) so every patient inquiry was counted, giving bidding and budget decisions real data for the first time
- 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
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
CA$6k / Month
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