Ben Lynch: Peter Flynn, here he is. Just waiting on Anna and Jack, then hardly on time.

Hannah Dunn: I still wait Jack, even though everything just shut down and made me re-login to everything.

Ben Lynch: Jacobren, how late are you? You in Noosa? I am in Noosa. The virtual background, he's in Noosa. G'day, good people. Welcome to the Grow Your Clinic podcast by Clinic Mastery. Here's what's coming up inside of this episode. Clinics get better quality patients when using Google ads over Facebook or Instagram ads. Did you really mean that?

Peter Flynn: Yes. Yes, I did.

Jack O'Brien: When someone says to me, I want more new clients, I say, great, well, how much are you willing to pay to acquire?

Peter Flynn: Google ads works by focusing on what you don't want in order to get what you want. For the people watching, the second sponsored ad here is actually a very specific ad but it's coming up for very broad search terms and so they need to improve their keywords. Should every clinic be running paid ads? Yes or no? Do you really want to pay $2,000 a month to people who are already searching for you?

Ben Lynch: This episode will be right up your alley if you're looking to generate more new patients. We're diving into using Google Ads as a paid marketing source. You'll want to see Peter walk through a live Google Ad for a clinic and suggest immediate improvements. Plus, we discuss how to know if your marketing agency is actually getting results. Before we dive in, today's episode is brought to you by AllieClinics.com. If you're the kind of clinic owner who loves to feel organised and stay ahead of the chaos, you'll love Allie. Think of it as your digital clone. It's the single source of truth for all your clinics, policies, systems, and training. Test it for free at AllieClinics.com. And, in other news, applications are now open to work with us one-on-one at Clinic Mastery. If you want support to grow your clinic and bring your vision to life, just email helloatclinicmastery.com with the subject line podcast and we'll line up a time to chat. All right, let's get into the episode. All right, it is episode 315. My name is Ben Lynch. If you're new to the podcast, welcome. Thank you so much for joining us. We've got a lot of new listeners recently from the US, the UK, and a special shout out to our dentist friends who I made a little bit of fun of last time, you know, their patient communication when they got their hands down your throat. No offense intended, but hello to our dentist friends. Again, I'm joined by the ever reliable Hannah Dahn, director of DOTS OT, Jack O'Brien, recovering physiotherapist, and now cycling tragic. Is that about right, Jack? Is that how you identify?

Jack O'Brien: I'll claim it. Yeah, middle-aged man in Lycra.

Ben Lynch: Yes, love to see you in Lycra. And of course, Peter Flynn, who you must win the award for the most improved on the CM team, I reckon, Pete. If you've been following our YouTubes, you'll be familiar that Pete's just 1% better every day. So Pete, welcome. I hope we're 1% better after today's episode. You are joining us because we're talking about marketing, something that you love. Pete, you said something recently that got a bit of a reaction. You said, Clinics get better quality patients when using Google ads over Facebook or Instagram ads. Did you really mean that?

Peter Flynn: Yes. Yes, I did. I do believe it is a better quality patient on average coming through, but there's pros and cons to going either way there.

Jack O'Brien: Well, you can't sit on the fence, Pete. That's not welcome at this podcast. Get off the fence. That's fair.

Ben Lynch: Well, that sounded pretty reasonable. He's happy. Google ads is better than Facebook ads.

Jack O'Brien: I'll say they are different. And you just told me don't sit on the fence.

Ben Lynch: Now you're on the fence. How's your bum?

Jack O'Brien: There's a few splinters. Yeah, it was questionable for a moment, but I'm good. And they are not better, in my humble opinion. Oh, gee. And Hannah, you might as well be the tiebreaker here. What do you think? You're an NDIS clinic. You've never needed a new client in your life.

Hannah Dunn: That's right. That's why it's not my wheelhouse, but it is something that I definitely need to be doing. And I am excited. I mean, I feel like I'm going to go with Pete on this one.

Ben Lynch: Well, Pete, you are the guest here in this episode, so I'll throw it over to you because you feel quite passionate about this. Tell us a little bit more about Google Ads. Tee it up for us.

Peter Flynn: I think the thing about Google Ads and Facebook Ads is they're two entirely different beasts. You've got Larry Page versus Zuckerberg. I mean, in a fight, I'd pick Zuckerberg to win these days. But here, I would go personally with Larry Page and Google. And the thing of Google Ads is Google's a search intent platform. So people are jumping on Google, they're Googling, you know, how do I fix my back pain? Where can I find a speech, etc. And so because they're actively searching for something, they have what's called buyer's intent. So they're searching for a solution to a problem. And so that person is likely already invested in their mind. They made the decision to invest in solving a solution or solving a problem. They need a solution. With meta ads, which is the alternative here, people aren't necessarily sitting on Facebook or Instagram going, I really, really need to find a solution to my back pain, or I hope there's an OT around the corner who's going to send me an ad. And so we need to pop up in front of them. We need to educate them. And typically, we need to offer some kind of special offer, discount, et cetera, to be getting people through the door. The delineation between those two is one is search intent and one is not search intent. If I really want to sit on the fence here, I'd say there's more competition on Google and less on Facebook. So, if you do Facebook very well, you can pick up new clients cheaper, but you can sometimes find the quality of client to be a little bit more challenging to get right.

Ben Lynch: When you say quality of client, what do you mean?

Peter Flynn: someone who's willing to pay for your service to solve the problem. So they might be happy to come in for that initial consult because we've offered a discount. However, they may go, oh, well, after this initial consult of X amount, which is discounted, if this is your normal fee moving forwards, I don't really want to pay that. But the way to look at it as a whole is, let's say you get 20 people come in, Let's say that six of those people go, no, it's too expensive. You've still got 14 good new clients from it. And so when you're working at your cost of acquisition of a client there, you just would use 14 realistically rather than 20 and work that out and compare that to other marketing sources.

Ben Lynch: So Jack, you felt like Google ads aren't as good as the Facebook platform. What's your reasoning behind that?

Jack O'Brien: Well, look, I had to pick a side, right? And so, I'm going to play contrarian here. And the reason I chose that was because I would argue that it is very difficult to differentiate yourself on Google. You are playing in black and white words and text with a blue link. And that's about it. Whereas on Facebook, your brand positioning can be really strong and therefore your offer can be really compelling and your targeting can be super lasered. And so if I had to justify why I would prefer Facebook, it's because of the brand and the specificity.

Ben Lynch: So if someone's weighing up, should I go with one or the other? What's your advice? Or is it both? Pete, where would you go?

Jack O'Brien: Yes. It's the old El Paso. Like, why not both? Forgive my terrible Mexican accent. But I think it can and should be both, but it probably depends on the type of client that you're looking to attract. To Pete's point, if you want people with high intent who are looking to convert quickly, then Google Ads is probably the place. If you want to play a long-term branding game, maybe it's more about the awareness and top of mindedness, maybe that mental availability angle, then perhaps Facebook is good. Pete, what would you say to that?

Peter Flynn: I would agree. I think I mean, Meta is going to be so much better for branding. Like on Google, you can barely even have a logo on that thing. I think the thing I would look at is both of them are great. Both of them have a place in a marketing plan, but it's understanding for you and your clinic where you're at at the moment. What makes more sense to start with? Because it's probably best to start with one and do one well rather than try and do both at the same time and understand who your ideal client are. Right? Like it always comes back to this and whereabouts do they hang out? Are your ideal client aware of the problem that they need to solve and how aware of it are they? Because if they're not, you know, acutely aware of the problem and acutely aware that you have the solution, well then meta ads makes more sense because we can educate them and we can take them through a bit of a journey and get them in that way. If those people don't really understand the problem that they have, the likelihood they're going to Google what you need them to Google is low, and so Google Ads will not be effective.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, well it's a really good point. I was thinking of an example just last week. We're recording this on a Monday, but last week I spoke with two different clinic owners. I spoke with a sports medicine doctor and with an OT speech clinic. And both of them were trying to solve for problems that maybe the client wasn't fully aware of or hadn't completely considered. You know, if we talk about a speech OT clinic, we're speaking on Facebook particularly, I mean on any platform, but we're specifically speaking to the primary caregivers, usually mums, and talking about some of the challenges that they may face or the solutions they may not be aware of. And similarly with sports doctors who might often be a second opinion or require a GP referral in order to access their new clients, Facebook is a brilliant platform for that. But if you're looking for the weekend warrior type patient who's got an acute injury or a work injury, they need to get some treatment quickly, get their pain under control, they're probably Googling you with high intent. And so in that case, Google's a great option.

Peter Flynn: Exactly. And even to build on that too, when you're thinking about meta, the other thing that it can be used for is when you want to be a little bit cheeky and you're thinking, Hey, we think we do a great job with clients. Maybe you're an OT clinic. Um, and you think in our local area, we have this piece of equipment or we have this way of doing things, which is way cooler. And we, and we think it's going to get a better result or better outcome for our clients. You can't market that well to people who are already receiving a service on Google, but on Meta, you can market those things. You can have videos of how you're working with families and working with kids, and you can advertise that in your local area, and people can come in and they can have a trial. They can come and see what it's like working with you. So it depends how far you want to take that, but you can be a bit cheeky and you can also target other people who already have a provider.

Hannah Dunn: And can I just take it back a few steps and say for those listening that have no idea about Google ads and Meta ads, what we're really talking about is Google ads when you're paying for Google ads. What that looks like is that. in a search engine that you're coming up first that what else like what is like what is a google ad versus a facebook ad i think there's people that are really at that level of like okay so i'm doing meta ads and i'm getting reels popping up when people are scrolling like What do they look like, I guess? That's a great question.

Ben Lynch: There's a massive cohort of people just like that, Hannah, who haven't had to do a lot of the digital advertising side of things, or they've outsourced it. And we're going to talk about working with agencies in just a moment. But this is so true. Let's go back and look at maybe even some of the best practices around what it looks like, Pete.

Peter Flynn: Well, even just to answer what Hannah said there, because I feel like we've gotten real high level real quick. So let's pull it back a few steps. So think of when you Google something and typically the first one, two, three posts will say sponsored posts. If you were to look at, you know, small letters by the other side of it there, that's someone who's paying to sit at the top there. So often everyone wants to sit number one on Google or Bing or Yahoo, mainly Google these days. But what's Yahoo? want to sit up. They were the company that wanted to buy Google for, I don't know, not that much in 2000. And then again a few years later and didn't take it both times and then got dominated by Google in the end. So probably should have bought that one.

Ben Lynch: Let's screen share here. For those that are on YouTube, let's pull up a company near us, a company near you, a clinic near you. And let's actually look at it as a reference point. There's a lot of visual learners here on the YouTubes that want to see what does this actually look like? As you said, Hannah, so I can get a sense for what I'm trying to achieve, what the outcome looks like and how this plays into it. Essentially, as health professionals, we do so well with our clients that hopefully they refer and hopefully you install a system that enables referrals to happen, word of mouth from colleagues and friends, and then your professional network that other professions that you work collaboratively with will refer to you because of the great reputation and service. But the referrals might only get you so far, and you might be incredibly reliant on a few key sources. So we're trying to diversify here by using money, not necessarily time, as the leverage point for you to attract more new clients, to fill the books of the new therapist on your team or your current therapists here. And how can we use that in a really smart, deliberate manner? And so we're really looking at Facebook ads and Google ads as two really effective ways to do it. Pete, you're the expert. Do you want to tee us up here with a screen share? Just walk us through the anatomy of an ad, what we might see.

Peter Flynn: All right, I'll do that in just a second, but to just expand on what you said there, a lot of the time, the reason people will move into Google or Facebook ads is as the clinic grows, right? If I was to ask most clinic owners, if we were to try and double the size of your clinic or triple the size of your clinic, you know, what would break? What are the things that are true now that wouldn't be true then? And a lot of the time it's that the personal relationships you have now and the referral partners, it's like that can't scale. If you were going to go 2x or 3x, that can't scale in that same manner. And so having a more scalable way of generating new clientele to the business is essential, especially if you can add a second site, a third site, etc. Because a lot of the time, the first site clinic owners make, it's the simplest because it was built around them. It's when they go to site number two, site number three, that things become much more challenging. Now, let's jump into this and I'll talk to you. We'll scroll past that because that's just because I run Google ads. But here, so this is the top Google ad. You see, it says sponsored here. Physiotherapy in Southport. I just Googled physio near me.

Ben Lynch: Shout out to Physio Southport. Enhanced physio.

Peter Flynn: Awesome. If you need someone to help you with your Google Ads, we can improve this for you. But you can see here it says five-star rated Physio Southport. And then it's actually chucked in one of their Google reviews in as what's called a description. You can see they've got their address here. They've got a phone number. This is a Google forwarding phone number, which means that they can track this number. It's not their actual phone number.

Ben Lynch: Just to pause the tracking, we're going to get to in a moment. So just stick around for when we get to tracking, because you spend this money, you want to know what return did I get on this investment? So that's even an important one, Pete, is the Google tracking number. Is that standard practice? Is that best practice? Is that what you would recommend?

Peter Flynn: It's not standard, but it is best practice. And then we've got schedule and appointment today, pre-initial assessment. So you can see that they do have a special here, licensed physiotherapists and men's health physio. Now, it's not a bad ad. A few key things that I would think about here is I feel like they want us to take this step here. Otherwise, you know, why would it be there?

Ben Lynch: Which is the pre-initial assessment. Sorry to interrupt. Just for those listening in.

Peter Flynn: And so I think a lot of the other links they have here They hide what the next step that they want us to take here was. They're hiding that next step. So really, we need to get rid of the fluff and go, this is the one step we want you to take. Either call or book that free initial assessment today. And then we would want it to reference the initial assessment up here. And they could do that by pinning a headline so that they could always have it sitting up there that there is a free initial assessment. And then if you come down, there's another one here, and you'll see that they just haven't built it out the same way. They've actually got a mobile number here so that they're not able to track that number. It's not a Google forwarding phone number. And then they haven't actually got the same level of detail.

Ben Lynch: Okay, so Pete, so we got the Google forwarding phone number is really useful for tracking the spend that you've got and the effectiveness of that spend. The second thing was you're essentially shortening what we can see on here. There's one, two, three, four links that are present on this main post. What you're saying is you would actually distill that down to just one and it would be about the free assessment because that's what we want. Is that correct?

Peter Flynn: Yeah, make it as specific as possible with the next step. And I would probably change up five star rated physio Southport. And I would probably take that out as the description and actually put something that's more specific to the offer and more specific to what the person's most likely to find. And if for the people watching, the second sponsored ad here is actually a very specific ad. very, very specific data around dysautonomia physio and hypermobility physio, but it's coming up for very broad search terms. And so the likelihood that me Googling physio near me is going to want such a specific physio treatment is low. And so they need to improve their keywords so that they can get the right traffic here, because otherwise a lot of people will see this and they're not going to get a lot of clicks through to that one.

Hannah Dunn: Are you happy with their photo?

Peter Flynn: The photo's not bad. I don't really mind the photos too much to be honest. I feel like people, maybe it's just me, that doesn't really look at that so much. I'm looking at the other key things. How would you improve that photo, Hannah?

Hannah Dunn: I'm not. I'm just wondering if you'd have the logo or whether you'd have a photo of specific treatment or equipment. Depends what you're doing.

Peter Flynn: Best practice is some kind of smiling face. Someone who looks like you.

Ben Lynch: It's a good point. Pete will often say, don't ask me for advice on creative. It's really good on the strategic side of things and the execution. Pete, now I'm sharing my screen. This is a slide from a recent session that you did. You've started to dovetail into some of the pitfalls or things to watch out for when doing Google ads and how to do them properly. Do you want to talk through some of these points and just add to it, for those that are running ads, what are the challenges here that they need to avoid?

Jack O'Brien: I could see missing from there, and it would be around the geo-targeting, right? So, for instance, I grew up in a town called Maitland, and if I had, I didn't, but if I had Maitland physiotherapy, I would want to make sure that only people searching Maitland physiotherapy in New South Wales would see my ad, not people from Maitland in South Australia or Maitland in the Northern Territory. So making sure our geo-specificity is on is an important way not to waste clicks and budgets. Pete, back to you.

Peter Flynn: The things we have here are brand name keywords, therapist name keywords, et cetera. These are two of the most common pitfalls. So often a clinic will come to me, we'll do a free assessment of their current Google Ads. and they'll say, Pete, I'm getting 300 conversions a month for $6 per conversion. So they're doing pretty good, right? And I'm like, well, are you getting 300 new clients a month? And they're like, well, no, I'm getting 30 new clients a month. Okay, so there's a mismatch here between these two. And we want our data, it's important that we can trust our data. And often what's happening is They're set up to bid on their own brand name. So PhysioFit was my physio company. And so if someone was Googling PhysioFit Adelaide, I don't want to pop up for that because that's a return client who's looking for me or someone who's been referred in who's specifically looking for us as well. So we want a negative keyword, our brand name. So often we jump in and we find that all the conversions are either from the brand name of the company or the therapist names. People are Googling one or the other. And then conversions are set up so that the same person can become a conversion on multiple occasions, which for a new client, a new client should only ever become a new client once from a conversion perspective. So those are some of the key things. I would say the key issues I find when I jump in and I look at the account, And it just hasn't been set up well from conversions and there's really no negative keywording to prevent us popping up for the wrong things.

Ben Lynch: So negative keywording, Pete, is to exclude the name of your clinic. You don't want to pay for the name of your clinic to be an ad because people are already searching for that. So you're just paying for something people are already doing. Is that correct?

Peter Flynn: Exactly. The thought process from a marketing agency is other people might be bidding on your brand name, so you should bid on it too. And I feel like the only reason they say that is because it makes them look good from a data perspective at the end of the month, because you don't know enough typically to really question that. But once we dig deep and we go, do you really want to pay $2,000 a month for people who are already searching for you? No. If you're spending that kind of money, you want that going towards new clients rather than existing clients.

Ben Lynch: So then, Pete, how do you track that? Because we often hear clinic owners say, I have an agency, I've outsourced it because it's not in my skill set. I'd rather pay somebody else. The agency is telling me that it's working and they're sending me these reports with numbers that look pretty good. But I open up the appointment diary and I just don't see the new client appointments that relate to their report.

Peter Flynn: I think that's the most common thing that we see. And I'll try not to get too deep into the weeds here with this one. But there are a few different things we do for conversion tracking. Now, to start with, the most important thing is that someone can only become a conversion once. Once you become a conversion, you can't be a conversion again. So a conversion should be once through. If it's a phone call, we say two minutes or longer for the phone call. If it's a 30 second phone call, the likelihood it's a conversion is low, so two minutes or longer. And we track phone calls in three ways. Directly from the ad, like you would have seen, the 1800 forwarding number. When they go through to your website and they click the call now button. Or if they're on a desktop and then they go through the website and then they type your number in, we do something what's called a dynamic phone swap, which is where we write a line of code that swaps your phone number out for a Google forwarding number when someone has come through a Google ad. Now when I say we, it's the royal we. We actually employ a developer who writes that code for me. Absolutely not me doing that one, that's above my pay grade. But it's awesome that we can do that. The other thing that we can track is online bookings. Now this is dependent on the system that people are using. For example, if someone is on Halaxy, nightmarish challenge. Whereas if someone's on Cliniko, Nookle, Splos, PracSuite, they all offer ways for Google Tag Manager to integrate so that we can track it through to the final booking confirmation page. So we can have a relatively high degree of, I guess, confirmation of booking. and that's the key thing for conversions is that we want to be able to trust our data. I would rather know that it's costing us $300 per conversion and it's not worth continuing to do this so we can then reallocate that budget to somewhere else rather than getting told we're getting conversions at $10 or $20 and we're getting $1,000 a month.

Ben Lynch: What is the band that you would see advised as a benchmark for the cost to acquire a new patient that's sustainable? How do you think about that?

Peter Flynn: It really is dependent on a lot of different things here. So I look at it in a couple of different ways. The first one, and this applies much more to an MSK clinic, but the first one is you want a cash on cash return. So if your initial session is $150 for an initial, you want it to be below 150. Now, obviously, we want it to get lower than that. I'd say between 70 and 90 would be reasonable after a few months of tweaking it. But you want to start by being below 150. So you're not losing money month on month in order to make that happen. And that has to include the agency fee. If you're paying an agency that's included in it, not separate money that the government pays like superannuation, right? So that's one way of looking at it. And then the second one is to look at the lifetime value of a client. And this is why I separate the MSK and let's say the NDIS based clinics, because for a clinic where you might see someone once a week or once a fortnight, and they may have a yearly value to the clinic rather than a lifetime value, yearly value more like $8,000 to $12,000 you're probably happy to pay $400 to acquire that client there if you know that they're likely going to be a long-term client and if that's a scalable way of doing so. So that's where we would look at that as well and that applies more when we're looking at those let's call it NDIS type clinics.

Jack O'Brien: When someone says to me, I want more new clients, I say, great, well, how much are you willing to pay to acquire that new client? And typically the answer is, well, I don't know, you tell me. And so here we go. There is a fairly simple formula and common formula for you to consider. And your acquisition cost of a new client should be a percentage of the lifetime value of that client or even of the annual value. I like that distinction, Pete. And so we should be thinking about the percentage being as low as possible, but typically in a paid marketing context, it's going to be about 5% of the lifetime value of a client. And you would probably allow up to 10%. But 5% is a good target range. And so in an MSK context, if the lifetime value is say $1,000, round figures, you'd be willing to pay up to $100 in acquisition costs for that client. If we're talking more of a third party or NDIS type patient that might be worth $8,000 annually, you might be willing to pay up to $700 to acquire that Now, of course, we want it closer to $100, but you should be willing to from an economics perspective. And Pete, your point on the inclusive of the agency spend matters. Can you maybe explain the difference between ad spend, agency spend, and how it all adds together?

Peter Flynn: Yes. Remind me to jump back to that in two seconds because I do just want to provide a slightly different viewpoint of the five to ten percent. And that is because I have a lot of clinic owners who will come to me and say, look, I want to run ads. I'm actually happy to spend more. I'm happy to spend two hundred dollars in an MSK setting to acquire a new client. The reason being they've got one or two practitioners that they're paying a salary. who are only seeing 10 to 15 clients a week. So they're in their mind, they're going, look, I'm already paying this salary. So I just need more new clients in. So when someone's more in that growth phase where they're trying to fill up a practitioner, it's actually still quite useful, even though we want it to be lower, but you'd still actually accept it to be higher because the return when we look at them next to each other, it becomes a no brainer as you get more clients into their diary. Now, As the clinic matures and you want to be more profitable, then absolutely. You want to look at that five to ten percent. That's that sustainable sort of range when clinicians are already busy. But when someone's got no clients, move heaven and earth to get them in their diary. Now, jumping back to the agency spend versus ad spend, so typically an agency will charge you fees to do your ads for you, basically. They'll take it off your plate. Let's say at Clinic Mastery, we charge $5.25 a month plus 15% of ad spend. So let's say a clinic's spending roughly $1,000 a month, they're going to pay about $650 for us to manage those ads. So what you would think about is it probably costs you about $150 a week for someone to do that for you. Now, if your hourly rate seeing clients is $200 an hour, $250 an hour, the way to think about it is, is my time better spent trying to learn and fumble my way through Google ads or Meta ads? Or should I just see one extra client and pay someone else to do this for me? And not to toot our own horn, but probably do it slightly better because that's all they do. If that, call it the $650 and you're spending $1,000 on ads, let's say you get clients coming in at $100 each, we could say that that's $100 on $1,000. That's $100 per client. But realistically, what we have to do is we have to add the 1,000 plus the $650, $1,650. So it's now $165 per new client. So I hope that the math makes sense as I'm talking through that one and not going too fast.

Ben Lynch: The headline really is that you need to use the agency's fees in the cost that it takes to acquire a new patient. That's the important takeaway, I think. Hannah, as someone who hasn't really had to do a lot of the ad side of things, you personally, and then by extension, your clinic, What are some of the questions that come to mind that you mentioned that you want to go into this space, you're going to need to expand in this space? Let me have to get clear on your strategy because you in many ways represent a lot of clinic owners out there who are going, okay, this makes sense. I know I've got to get to it, but maybe where do I start? So what are some of the questions, thoughts going through your mind?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, I guess like even around like how to access like Google ad dashboards and that sort of stuff, like knowing that. And I guess the other thing I hear from members is like, I've got a marketing agency, but I just feel like I've got to create the content and then they're just uploading it. Is it really worth it? Like that's sort of some of the. Thoughts, I think barriers that people have as well.

Ben Lynch: So Hannah, just to jump in, sorry, the dashboard side of things, just expand on that. What do you mean? Are you looking to track the effectiveness of it? Like, what do you mean when you say that?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah. Like when Pete talks about, like, we want to be able to see how our ads are going, that there is an interface that we can see that is set up on Google somewhere in the background. Yeah. And so, yeah, I guess I don't really know about where that is. Like if you're looking, like you want to use an agency, but maybe you first want to sort of get your head around what you're looking at and be hearing about what Pete's talking about. Even just being able to go into the back end of Google and be like, oh yeah, I see how this is set up and I see where these things are.

Peter Flynn: Absolutely. And so where you would go to look at it, and you would have to sign up for Google ads to start with ads.google.com. And then you would have all the dashboards there, but without any data in it, unless you're running ads currently. And what you also did mention was people who have called a marketing agency who are kind of just uploading things. So sometimes people will be using a marketing agency for their organic social media, which I think in 2025, it's not super necessary anymore. We've got all kinds of scheduling platforms we can use, and even just uploading things a couple of times a week is fantastic.

Ben Lynch: And Pete, just to that specifically, you mean you've outsourced to an agency and they create content that goes on your Instagram and your Facebook? and they're publishing three, four times a week for you as part of the organic play instead of the paid side of things. Is that what you're referring to?

Peter Flynn: Yes. Yeah. The organic play there. But I think what Hannah referred to is what ends up happening most of the time is the company says, we need this photo, we need this photo, we need this one now. So the clinic owner ends up doing 80% of the work still. And so these days, maybe outsourcing to a VA, it could be a way of giving one of your admin team extra roles and responsibilities as they step into taking that over for you. So I think there's a lot of opportunities there to not necessarily need a professional company for just your organic social media.

Ben Lynch: And just to confirm, VA virtual assistance. So perhaps someone offshore that's got a specialist skill set, they're perhaps cheaper than onshore talent. Places like Upwork and Fiverr are great websites. That's Fiverr and Upwork to go find talent from around the world, perhaps at cheaper rates than onshore. Pete, do you need a minimum dollar spend on ads to get started? You know, perhaps below a certain point it's not even worth it. Like, what would be the minimum you need to get started to spend on ads for it to be worthwhile?

Peter Flynn: I'd be interested to hear your thoughts too on this one, Jack. I think for me, there's a distinction. Are you using an agency or not? Because let's say you're using an agency, so you're going to be paying agency fees. In my mind, you should be spending at least probably 500, 600 as a minimum then. If you're just dabbling yourself, then you can't spend a lower budget. You could spend 100, 200 a week and just play around and get used to the system a little bit. But it all comes down to what's the outcome you're looking to achieve? What do you want to spend in order to do that? And what is the likelihood that you're going to achieve that with the, I guess, the skills that you have? And.

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, I was just going to say, Pete, remembering to include your hourly cost in that if you're doing it yourself.

Ben Lynch: That's great. That's the hourly cost of the clinic. Like factor that in. That's a really good point. Yeah.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, I mean, that's an opportunity cost, right? So I like that, Hannah. Pete, if you'd like my tweezers, I can lend them to you to help with the splinters, because you're very, very kind of just one foot here, one foot there. Nevertheless, I would somewhat agree with you, though my distinction would be, There is need for a minimum spend for the following reason. Let's say a click on average, if you're learning and we're trying to get some data from the system, expect your first two, three months to be experimental. And if you go into that not expecting any great returns, then that's a good mindset to have. So if we're talking about experimental phase, you know, if a click in that could be $2, $3, $5 per click. We need Google to get some impressions and get some clicks to start learning what keywords work, what ads work, what converts, what copy works, etc. So you probably want to have at least 3, 4, 5 clicks a day, which is probably about $20 a day in spend. And so $20 a day is $140 a week of roughly $600 a month. So I would suggest if you were going to do it yourself, you need to give, often say to clinic owners, you need to give Google enough rope to be able to learn for us then to be able to optimise. And so we want to be spending, I'd say, $20 a day at minimum. And you can spread that out across different campaigns, but we need enough clicks to get enough data. And put it back this way, if we're spending $600 a month, You know, for most clinics, that's a handful of clients. You know, we're talking probably half a dozen or less, one to five new clients a month for $600. you probably need more than four or five new clients a month extra. So you probably need to spend extra. So I think it's reasonable to suggest, like we do with patients, we don't say, oh, just come back next week, come back the week after, and we lead them one appointment at a time. No, if you're a clinic owner, you need to be eyes wide open. Don't be led down the garden path by anyone else. We're telling you, you need to be willing to spend $500 to $1,000 in ad spend straight out of the gate to get any meaningful optimisation and return.

Hannah Dunn: And are we looking at Google Ads being a thing that we're doing consistently for X period of time? Are they on and off?

Jack O'Brien: Are they… Well, what do you think, Hannah?

Hannah Dunn: look, this is not my wheelhouse, but sounding like we need to invest a fair bit of time in these and that they need to be live for a while while we're learning. And obviously, yeah.

Jack O'Brien: Like how many new clients you need as a clinic and how sustainably you need those new clients to flow through. And over time, we want to have, we want to have greater degrees of certainty over the sources of our new clients. And so if you've got five, 10, 15, 20 practitioners on your team and you need, you know, 150 to 200 new clients a week, then you really do need to be putting in the work and making the investment of thousands of dollars a month to generate those new clients, if that's the type of clinic you are. And similarly, on the earlier stage, I work with elevate clinics, which are solo startups, those doing less than 30, 40, 50k a month. we need to be having certainty and control over our new client flow. Because if you don't have new client flow, you can very quickly end up in a place where your clinicians are not breaking even. And that's a really nerve-wracking place to be. So control over new client flow is the key message there.

Ben Lynch: It's a good point, Hannah. And Pete, to answer that question specifically, is it the sort of thing that you turn on and turn off, or do you recommend it's more of a stable spend?

Peter Flynn: It depends on the type of clinic as well. I think some clinics may use Google Ads in order to fill up therapists. And let's call it, as I'm sitting on the fence here, let's call it that potentially some of the NDIS clinics we've worked with, they need Google ads for a period of time, three or four months, and then they are, they're busy. They really, they don't need any extra new clients for a period of time until maybe they hire someone new, depending on the type of clinic. I think with thriving kids coming in and all these changes, that's going to shake things up a bit. So I'm probably talking in the past now, but for most clinics, it gives them like a baseline new clients. So let's say that they need 50 new clients a week or 25 new clients a week. it gives them a baseline of 10, 20, 30% of that. And they understand their numbers, they understand what they need to pay for that. And at the end of the day, the question is, once we get it working, If they give Google, you know, $100, how many new clients does Google give them for each $100? And if it's one and they need 100 for that month, they would then spend 10,000. And we have clinics working with us that spend 10 to 12 to $15,000 a month on Google ads. And they're not donating that to Google, they're spending it because they see a return on investment. And so these things are scalable when done effectively. But I think the key thing is it takes a bit of time to find what works. And the longer you continue to do it, the more you can refine it. And also, the more you build those trust factors with Google, you actually pay less for the same result with Google because it now trusts you. Google is built on trust.

Jack O'Brien: Yeah, it's a good distinction, Pete. And I'd say, Hannah, there is a case for campaign-based Google or paid ads. And so maybe you've got a new clinician on board, we need to bolus them with a quick volume of new clients, then that's a great way to think about it. Pete, I'm curious in your perspective, when we turn on and turn off, particularly our Google ads and meta ads, does that impact the optimisation of our ads if we're turning them on and turning them off?

Peter Flynn: I find for Google ads, more so, I would say. With meta ads, I actually find turning it on and off actually helps me. I reckon the results improve, personally. And typically, when I run meta ads, I run them in bursts for a lot of clinics. Some clinics, we do the baseline strategy, but a lot of clinics will run them in bursts because they're just trying to get a whole heap in using offers and specials. Whereas with Google Ads, I find when I turn them off and I turn them back on, it can take sometimes, you know, four to eight weeks to get the same level of outcome or result as we were previously. And the theory behind this, and Google never really admits to this, but the theory behind this is that Google Ads then have to go back into that learning phase, but really underneath this is that Google doesn't want you to turn your ads off. because their business is selling ads. And so most businesses, if they want to decrease or become less reliant on Google Ads for a month or two, they'll decrease the spend rather than turning them off.

Ben Lynch: So, Pete, you spoke to this learning period. How quickly should clinic owners expect to see results from their ads if they just are starting?

Peter Flynn: Honestly, within 60 seconds or turn them off, I'd say.

Ben Lynch: Within 60 seconds?

Peter Flynn: We'll turn them off, lose it. I'd say for most clinic owners, you should be seeing new clients coming through the door within the first two weeks from them. Will they be coming through the door at the, I guess, the price that you want and the level that you want? Probably not. And so I'd say it's something that will take three months to really get right, but you should be seeing the results of it in that first month. And if you're not, you really need to be tweaking that, really need to be going back and going, what's working, what's not working. You're learning, you're seeing what keywords are coming through, you're seeing cost per keyword, and you're seeing the type of search volume and around you know, what are the different search terms. So in those first two months, there's a lot of work in getting it right. And then from there, it's about then refining it. So think of it as like build, create, learn, and then refine.

Hannah Dunn: And another time in which we're using ads, I assume, is when we're diversifying the streams of income that we've got, so that we're trying to get those new clients or new work, which is exactly where those NDIS clinics and that Jack Ben and I've been talking about in regards to really staying relevant.

Peter Flynn: Absolutely.

Jack O'Brien: Good distinction there, Pete. And Hannah is like, you know, when was the best time to plant a tree? 20 years ago. Next best time is today. And so my word of caution, maybe advice, particularly to those NDIS major clinics with the Thriving Kids changes coming in is maybe it's worth considering planting the tree today that you might need in three to six months time. And so I'm going to take the reins here a little bit, Benny. Pete, Hannah, yes or no question. Should every clinic be running paid ads? Yes or no? No.

Hannah Dunn: I know I should say yes, but no.

Ben Lynch: This is from the paid ads guy.

Peter Flynn: The reason I say no is some clinics don't need them, right? I would say the majority of clinics do need them, but should every clinic be running them? Not necessarily. Some clinics are happy where they are. They don't have any huge growth prospects on the horizon. They've got enough referrals coming in and there's nothing wrong with that at all. for any clinic that's growing and especially any clinic that wants to grow beyond the current relationships that they have and wants to have a way of systemising new clients coming in that isn't attached to any one person within the business, I think that that would be you know, something to consider. And especially for someone who wants to create a business that's a saleable asset, one thing a potential buyer is going to look at, where did the new clients come from? Because they want to look at predictability of future revenues, basically. So they want to go where the new clients come from. How many of those new clients come in because they have a personal relationship with the director of the business that he's no longer going to be there in three months time. Okay, so that actually becomes more valuable during that sale process because they can look at it and they can understand the levers that can be pulled in order to increase the new client flow and therefore maintain predictability of income.

Hannah Dunn: And also just making sure we've got our systems in place to handle those new clients coming in, if that is the goal there too, maybe a reason that we don't want to push those Google ads just yet.

Ben Lynch: I would say yes. If you want to grow, yes. If you don't want to grow, no, that would be my answer. There's also a brand element to this, you know, in the work of Byron Sharp, that it's around reach and penetration into different markets. And ads are a great way to amplify both of those things that perhaps some of the organic side can't do. So I'm going to say yes, there's always nuance to how much is spent and where it's allocated and for what purposes. But I'm going to say yes.

Hannah Dunn: Is there purposes to Google Ads other than recruitment? I mean, other than, I was thinking about recruitment, other than clients.

Peter Flynn: That's such a leading question.

Hannah Dunn: I was thinking recruitment, but I was also thinking about selling products or… Yeah, absolutely.

Peter Flynn: The product side of things, for sure. Anything selling. Selling to new clients who aren't aware.

Ben Lynch: Yep, it's worth doing. My sort of advice is get someone who knows this really well in your corner. Either they're on your team already, or you recruit onto your team, or you outsource and get someone who's an expert. If you're not an expert, my advice is don't play around with this. like maybe get a quick sense, but far out. Your skill sets are better off in the areas of your genius. I just don't feel like people should dabble in a whole range of different things and try and be this sort of hero of all these domains of business. I believe you play to your genius. If this is not of interest or appealing to you, I wouldn't bother spending my time. Personally, I haven't. So I'm walking the talk in the sense that I would much rather outsource it and know how to track that I'm not got the wall pulled over my eyes, that I actually know, okay, how many bookings am I getting? I just need to know I've spent this much amount of money with you. How many bookings have I gotten? So long as I can have trust in that process, I'm not dabbling with it. So that's my approach. I know it's different. Obviously, Pete, you're a gun at this. You love doing it. But for those clinic owners like, this all sounds like too hard to work, get someone and just hold them to account. So long as you know how to hold them to account, I think that's the key distinction.

Peter Flynn: And just to jump in there, exactly what you said, and the conversation I have with a lot of clinic owners who are looking at doing some Google ads or Meta ads, and they go, oh, do I want to pay someone to do it? Do I want to be paying $700 a month for someone to be running these for me? The conversation I have with them is, well, what's the alternative? Right. So let's say you don't pay and you're going to be doing these. You have to learn that system yourself and then you have to run those ads. And not to toot my own horn, but I would be willing to bet that the average person who tries to learn Google ads or Meta ads is not going to be not going to be able to do it as effectively as we do. Like, honestly, it's what we do all the time. It's like. having some random person go, you know what, I'm going to be an OT today, or I'm going to be a physio today. I'm just going to start learning. I'm going to do it. It's not playing to your genius. Just think for most people, it's less than one client a week. If you were to just spend that 30 or 60 minutes seeing a client outsourced to a professional, you'll get a better result. You'll probably be happier. I even pull my hair out sometimes on the Google ads platform and they randomly change silly little things and you have to relearn it. Or when a line of code breaks, you have to redo your conversion tracking. These are things that happen consistently and these are things that are not easy to deal with.

Ben Lynch: I thought those short sides were done by the barber, but clearly they're done by Google ads and you're pulling your hair out. Go Hannah.

Hannah Dunn: I was going to say my toxic trait is thinking I can do everything. So if yours is also that, then hear us when we say this is something to outsource. I think it's so common though, to think that we will have listeners who are thinking, Yes, but I need the clients to be able to pay for the ads. But just being able to what comes first and getting those ads out there will solve.

Ben Lynch: It's so true, Hannah, like we've spoken at length over time of like the two really main things. Let's go through is your ability to generate new clients to fill the books. your ability to grow your team, quality therapists who deliver great services, but recruitment and new clients, and then your ability to manage the finances when they come in the door and allocate, invest effectively, and largely back into both of those first two. So to your point there, it's like this is going to continue to be a thing to solve for as you grow your clinic, new clients and the acquisition of those. So it's worth investing in. And if you're better at doing the other two, growing your team, managing the cash flow, do that and just outsource some of this stuff. It's worth doing. I think part of the growth in business, personally, I've had this experience, I don't know about all of you, is the humbling journey of realising how much you don't know in different areas and feeling like this is pretty easy. You know, and we see that in therapists, right? They get to their third, fourth, fifth year, and they feel like they know everything in the profession. I've seen it all. And you go through that Dunning-Kruger effect of like, you know, year seven, eight, nine, going, oh, wow, I realise how much I didn't know, and that there are people far better at this than I am. I'd much rather support my team, build the systems for the client experience, manage the cash, you know. grow the internal operations of the business personally, allow the marketing for someone else. But I know there are people who love this stuff like you, Pete and Marcio and Jack. Great. That's going to be your domain expertise to build on and an asset to have to grow your clinic. So I think it's introspection with everything for every clinic owner.

Peter Flynn: Anything, probably my last thing to add on this and the greatest example of this is when we started the Google Ads service, I think it was April last year, the first person that came on, I was like, I am going to do the conversion tracking. I'm going to do it myself. I'm not going to outsource. You're going to save us so little money. And I jumped on. I'd learned to the day, but I'd learned the custom coding for this, one of the platforms today before, because it wasn't clinical, which was what I was used to. So I jumped on. I spent nearly six hours doing it, and I got to the end of it, and I was like, all right, we're done. I tested it. Two out of three things worked. One was broken, and then I couldn't find where in the line of custom code it was broken. So at about seven hours in, I'm now like, all right, I've cost us a whole lot of money. jumped on Upwork and I found a developer who was experienced with PracSuite and could jump in and do it that day. And that was the nightmare over.

Ben Lynch: Ah, the joys, hey, Pete? Well, as we close this episode, Pete, what's like the one thing a clinic owner listening could do in their Google Ads account to improve their results today? Or what's the next action you would advise someone to take?

Peter Flynn: Jump in, look at your search terms, make sure that you're not popping up for your brand name. You most likely are. And then jump into negative keywords and make sure that you have a negative keyword for everything you don't want to show up for. Google ads works by focusing on what you don't want in order to get what you want.

Ben Lynch: Yeah, very nice. And Hannah, what are you going to do? I'm interested because at the top you said, I haven't really explored this. This is a reasonably new to me. What are you going to do? What's your action off the back of this episode, hearing Pete, hearing Jack in this area of ads to acquire new patients?

Hannah Dunn: Yeah, exactly what Pete said. Have a look at my Google ads. If you'd asked me for my key learning, it would have been about that there is negative keywords and just, yeah, it's been really good to learn more about it and know where to go.

Ben Lynch: That's great. I love that. that we're all on different sort of learning journeys in different domains of business is clearly what you live and breathe every single day. So thank you for sharing. We're going to continue on this theme over the next few episodes around marketing and understanding what you can do to generate new clients in a cost effective, sustainable way. So stick around for those episodes and people will see you again, maybe in a couple of episodes, you get a little bit of leave up your sleeve, which is good. Have a great break. And Hannah, we'll be back on next week for another episode. All right, see you then.

Peter Flynn: Thank you guys. Bye bye.