The Client
iHealth Clinic is a walk-in urgent care and primary care clinic in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and our Google Ads for urgent care clinics took its calls from ads from about 2 a month to 130 a month.
The clinic is built around simple, affordable care: walk-in visits, short waits and flat-fee visits without insurance or copays. When someone needs care today, they search, pick a clinic close by and call. Being the clinic that answers that search is the whole game.
About 2 calls from ads a month before us. 130 in January 2022. 2,400+ since.
The Challenge
Google Ads for urgent care looks simple and isn't:
- Hyperlocal demand. Patients want a clinic minutes away. Clicks from across the metro area cost money and rarely turn into a visit.
- Big competitors. Hospital-system urgent care chains bid on the same searches with far bigger budgets.
- The call is the conversion. A walk-in clinic has no booking form. The lead is a phone call, so tracking has to count calls, not page visits.
- Many intents in one search. "Clinic near me" can mean urgent care, primary care, TB testing or a driver's physical.
What We Built
1. A Search campaign built for urgent and walk-in care
We built a new Search campaign around urgent care and walk-in searches: "urgent care", "urgent care shadyside", "children's express care", "walk in health clinic", "walk in clinic near me" and "immediate care center", plus TB testing. Each group of searches lands on its own page: urgent care, walk-in clinic, TB testing, and comparison pages for urgent care and primary care.
2. Tight local targeting
The campaigns target nine Pittsburgh ZIP codes around the clinic plus radius targets of 2 to 15 miles, so the budget goes to people who can actually walk in.
3. Call-first tracking
The lead in this account is a call from an ad, counted by Google when a patient calls from the ad's call button and the call lasts long enough to count. Page visits and menu clicks are not counted as leads.
4. A/B tests on bidding
From August 2021 to August 2024 we ran A/B test copies of the lead campaign and of the call campaign on a different bid strategy, so the bidding was always chosen by results.
5. Exclusions and assets
Campaign negatives plus shared negative lists filter out job seekers, research and unrelated searches. Sitelinks, callouts and structured snippets give each ad more room on a mobile screen.
6. Daily Optimization via Ad Campaign Concierge™
The account is reviewed daily through our proprietary Ad Campaign Concierge™ system: search-term mining, negatives, bid adjustments and budget pacing.
The Results
The figures below come from iHealth Clinic's Google Ads account and cover our campaigns only, from August 2021 to today.
- 2,400+ calls from ads since August 2021, at about $19 a call on $45K+ of ad spend.
- First 12 months: 1,000+ calls from ads, about $10 a call.
- Best month: January 2022, about 130 calls.
- 2022: 880+ calls from ads in a single year.
Key Takeaways
- For a walk-in clinic, the call is the lead. Counting calls, not page visits, keeps bidding focused on patients.
- Target the neighborhood, not the city. ZIP codes and short radiuses put the budget where patients can walk in.
- Match the page to the search. Urgent care, walk-in, TB testing and price-comparison searches each land on their own page.
- A small budget can work locally. At $500 to $900 a month, a single clinic produced 2,400+ calls from ads.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does a patient call from Google Ads cost for an urgent care clinic?
Across the whole engagement, iHealth Clinic's calls from ads averaged about $19 each: 2,400+ calls on $45K+ of ad spend. In the first 12 months it was about $10 a call.
What do urgent care patients search for?
The searches that produced the most calls were "urgent care", "urgent care shadyside", "children's express care", "urgent care center", "urgent care near me", "walk in health clinic" and "walk in clinic near me". Neighborhood names and "near me" searches matter, because patients want the closest clinic.
How much should a single-location clinic spend on Google Ads?
iHealth Clinic started at about $900 a month and runs today on about $500 a month, targeted to the Pittsburgh ZIP codes around the clinic. At that budget the first year produced 1,000+ calls from ads.
How quickly do urgent care ads produce calls?
Right away. Before our campaigns the account recorded about 2 calls from ads a month. Our first month, August 2021, brought 58, and by January 2022 it was 130 a month.
About This Campaign
Urgent care and walk-in clinic lead generation on Google Ads, built with our proprietary Ad Campaign Concierge™ optimization system.
Industry: Healthcare (Urgent Care & Walk-In Clinic) Platforms: Google Ads (Search) Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Account Duration: August 2021, still running today
Leads are calls from ads, counted by Google Ads for our campaigns (the campaigns marked LPA). Website page visits, menu clicks, directions and other engagements are excluded. "Before us" is February to July 2021, calls from ads across the account's earlier campaigns. All figures are rounded down and approximate. Amounts are in US dollars.