Rebuilding Confidence in Paid Campaigns
While some businesses use digital marketing to build trust and authority, advertising for healthcare clinics serves a singular purpose: securing patient bookings.
That’s why at Candid, we make sure our clients get the return on investment they deserve for their advertising spend; through consistent reporting, collaborative processes, and thorough practises we make sure you know how your advertising budget is being spent, and that it’s never wasted on campaigns that don’t drive sales.
Time and again, we speak to clinic directors and marketing managers who are never fully sure if their ad spend is working for them. When we take a look, it’s clear their account has been left to drift - running, but not optimised. Rather than overspending, a more common problem is misalignment: budgets left to drift, tracking disconnected, and ads optimised for clicks instead of patient bookings.
Below is a summary of how we identified and rectified some of these issues for clients in the past.
Wasted Ad Spend
Paid advertising only works when spend matches intent.
This means focusing on what we call “high-intent, bottom-of-funnel searches” - people actively looking to book.
As David Skinner, Candid’s Ads Specialist, explains:
“You want to spend the most amount on the highest-value keywords- the ones at the bottom of the funnel. In most cases, it’s not useful to target mid- or top-funnel audiences, because there are enough people ready to convert.”
Too often, clinics spread limited budgets thinly across multiple platforms and broad audiences, hoping reach will equal results. When we reviewed River Medicals account, we saw that most of their spend was in top-of-funnel campaigns, targeting high-value searches like “breast augmentation Dublin”.
We restructured the account, consolidating 47 campaigns into 11, and redirecting 60% of spend toward proven, high-intent terms.
The result: cost-per-enquiry dropped by 42 %, and qualified leads doubled within eight weeks.
Clarity in allocation is the first step toward regaining trust and driving bookings.
Clarity in our reporting is how our clients know it’s working.
David Skinner, Candid’s Ads Specialist with 10+ years’ experience in PPC, ad spend optimisation, and performance strategy.
Reporting and Transparency
At Candid, our ethos is simple: clarity builds trust.
Because advertising campaigns can be highly technical, but this shouldn’t come at the expense of transparency in reporting.
Behind every dashboard is a clinic team trying to make sense of what’s really going on, because too often, agencies report numbers without meaning. Without clear communication, strategies become misaligned, results start to dip, and the issues can become buried under technical talk and endless reports.
Things slow down, questions stop being asked, and before long, clinic’s feel like they’re sitting on the back burner at their agency.
We believe every partner should know exactly how their budget is performing, what’s working, and what’s changing, at all times. Our campaigns are structured around insights, and the better our clients understand them, the better they perform.
Clarity begins with accurate tracking, connecting ad spend to real patient enquiries so we always know what’s driving results.
That’s why we meet partners weekly, share reports in plain language, and explain decisions before we make them. No dense PDFs. Clear dashboards that translate data into everyday language: reach, cost, enquiries, bookings, with nothing hidden and nothing overcomplicated.
For clinics who have been left in the dark by past agencies, that level of transparency changes everything.
“What stood out was how quickly they became a trusted extension of our clinics, delivering work that reflected our standards and brought in new patients with a clear return.” — Dr. John Canacott, CEO, River Medical & Fitzwilliam Clinic
With clear visibility, issues come into focus.
We often see campaigns structured without a clear funnel, or a clear understanding of the user journey. Meta, Search, and Display all target the same audiences, with overlapping goals that drive up costs.
Each stage of the journey has to play a different role.
Awareness to introduce the clinic.
Shared video content on Instagram builds early awareness.
Engagement to build trust.
Retargeting with testimonials through Meta and Display strengthens trust mid-funnel, nurturing familiarity and confidence.
Conversion to secure the booking.
End-of-funnel conversions are best achieved through Google Search, targeting those ready to book with clear calls to action.
When we took over FitzWilliam Clinic’s campaigns, we rebuilt them around following these kinds of best practices. Budgets were balanced by intent, and each stage had a measurable purpose. Once the overlap was removed, performance improved immediately.
Results:
Conversions increased by 48% while overall ad spend dropped 27% between August and September.
In September alone, River Medical generated 218 conversions on just €4.62k of Google spend the account’s most efficient month to date, with cost-per-enquiry down to €21.
| Month | Spend (€) | Conversions | CPA (€) |
|---|---|---|---|
| July (pre-Candid) | 6,340 | 147 | 43 |
| August (transition) | 5,000 | 135 | 37 |
| September (Candid full control) | 4,620 | 218 | 21 |
Weak Creative & Mismatched Messaging
While understanding the customer journey, marketing funnel, and platform requirements is essential - none of it will convert without high quality creative. That’s why we believe in content that reflects our partners’ standards of care, and aligns with their brand at every stage of the funnel.
When Candid began working with River Medical, the content didn’t match the clinic’s reputation. The tone was transactional, the visuals impersonal, and prospective patients weren’t seeing the care and professionalism with which River Medical have been treating patients since 2008.
We rebuilt the creative around authenticity. Clinician-led videos, genuine recovery stories, and reassuring visuals replaced generic stock imagery and sales language, transforming the creative to reflect the real standard of care. The ads stopped feeling like ads and started building genuine trust and results.
Results:
After launching these campaigns, Meta click-through rate rose by more than 150%, and patients began referencing “the videos we saw online” during consultations. Conversion quality improved month after month, supported by a steady drop in cost-per-enquiry
Behind the scenes: Candid Creative’s Director and Assistant DOP preparing the set for a River Medical shoot.
Competitor Leakage
One of the simplest ways clinics lose performance is through competitors bidding on their own brand name. Every time a rival appears beneath your listing, you’re effectively paying to build their visibility instead of your own.
When we reviewed Fitzwilliam Clinic’s account, we found competitor ads appearing directly under their branded searches, revealing a clear leak in what should have been the clinic’s highest-performing campaigns.
As our ads-specialist puts it: “We’re not trying to fight competitors, we’re trying to make sure our clients show up where they deserve to show up.”
We launched brand-protection campaigns and refined bidding strategy to secure that space. The goal wasn’t just to compete, but to reclaim intent, ensuring patients searching for Fitzwilliam reached Fitzwilliam, not a rival clinic.
Within days, 15% of branded search traffic was recovered, resulting in a direct boost to enquiries and a clear win for campaign efficiency.
Results & Resolution
Most clinics don’t struggle with budget; they struggle with clarity. So when advertising spend is used effectively, performance becomes predictable. Costs go down, conversions rise, and every euro begins to count.
When structure, creative, and tracking all move in the same direction, enquiries grow consistently, quality improves, and campaigns turn into a dependable system they could trust.
At Candid, we believe the best results come from mutual respect: campaigns built with the same care and attention that our partners give their patients.
If you’re interested in seeing what we can do to increase the effectiveness of your existing ad spending, or build your strategy from the ground up, get in touch!
