Award-Winning Google Ads Strategy Helps Healthcare Providers Reach More Patients Needing Autism Evaluations

Axis for Autism leverages groundbreaking technology and a wide network of psychologists to slash autism evaluation wait times from years to weeks, ensuring Arizona families find much-needed diagnoses and answers sooner.

They came to us with the goal of attracting new patients seeking autism evaluations through a start-from-scratch Google Ad strategy — and a modest advertising budget. With numerous, more established competitors often quadrupling their ad spend within a single month, quality proved critical for success amid saturation. Year after year, our award-winning strategy worked — we cut through a crowded marketplace and delivered targeted leads better than any other initiative or channel.

Laying the Groundwork for a Dominant Lead Source

Our Google Ads/Pay-Per-Click (PPC) strategy kicked off in January 2023 with a total budget of $17,500, stretched until June.

The Axis target audience comprised less than 3% of AZ families, so reaching millions wasn’t our goal. What really mattered was driving quality leads to form fills, then evaluations — and doing it better than the rest.

Focusing on medium-volume keywords to target bottom-of-funnel searches helped make it happen. And while competitors cast a wide net, we cast a narrow, more impactful one. E.g., one business spending $100,000+ on PPC had 497 paid keywords. Axis vied for 47 strong ones. As a result:

• We ranked among the top 3 ads on the page 88% of the time
• We ranked as the 1 ad 30% of the time. Wordstream data reports most healthy search campaigns find an absolute max of 20%.
• We obtained a cost-per-conversion of just $41. The medical industry average was $78 (at time of campaign).

We spurred an evaluation influx at roughly half the medical industry’s average cost-per-conversion, basing our success on the difficult PPC feat of outperforming enterprises with massive marketing spend.

As evidence of the campaign’s success, Aker Ink was the only agency to bring home a “Mastery” title — the highest honor at the 2023 AZIMA TIM Awards — in Search Marketing/PPC.

Continuing PPC Success

Fast forward to 2024. The strategy remained relevant and intact, yet we made adjustments to the budget and paid keywords throughout the year. Competitors continued to cast a wide net, while we focused on medium-volume keywords to reach bottom-of-funnel searches, focusing on 56 strong keywords. As a result:

• We achieved a cost-per-action of $20.55; the medical industry average was $61 (at time of campaign).
• A 13.25% click-through rate (industry average 6.9%) and 14.48% conversion rate (industry average 7.4%) show the ads’ effectiveness.
• We ranked among the top 3 ads on the page 68% of the time, and the No. 1 ad 27% of the time. Most healthy PPC campaigns max out at 20%.

By prioritizing quality, Axis has supported thousands of new patients seeking autism evaluations.