The Private Practice Success Podcast

74. The 10 Green Flags That Tell Me Your Practice Is Ready for Google Ads

• Gerda Muller • Episode 74

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In Episode 74, Gerda tackles one of the most talked about (and often misunderstood) growth tools in private practice being Google Ads.

More and more practice owners are asking the same question…. 

“Are Google Ads actually worth it?” 

This episode cuts through all of that noise and gets straight to what actually matters, with Gerda sharing her perspective on when exactly Google Ads can be an incredibly EFFECTIVE growth tool and when it can quickly become an EXPENSIVE mistake. 

Gerda breaks down the 10 key signs that show when a practice is truly ready to make Google Ads effective and it starts wayyyy before ads ever go live.

In this episode, you will learn:

  • The 10 green flags that indicate your practice is ready for Google Ads.
  • Common operational gaps that can negatively impact ad performance and ROI.
  • Why enquiry handling (and what happens after an enquiry) matters just as much as getting one.

Who This Episode Is For:

  • Practice owners considering Google Ads as a growth strategy.
  • Group practice owners focused on wanting to make more confident marketing decisions and improve ROI.

If you've been wondering whether Google Ads are the missing piece in your growth strategy, then this episode will help you determine whether your practice is truly ready or whether there are more important foundations to strengthen first.

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Well, hello there awesome private practice owner. My name is Gerda Muller, and you are listening to the Private Practice Success Podcast, and this is episode number 74. 

Today's title is The 10 Green Flags that Tell Me that Your Practice is Ready for Google Ads. In short, we are talking about Google Ads. Why are we talking about Google Ads? Because over the last couple of weeks, I've had quite a lot of practice owners reach out to me asking about Google Ads - How do I know that this is the right time for me to start investing in Google Ads, because there's been a bit of talk about Google Ads across the private practice owner community. So I thought what I might do today is share with you my thoughts about Google Ads, as well as my experience about Google Ads, and what I would recommend to you as a group practice owner when the time comes for you to make the decision, "Is my practice ready for Google Ads?" 

In a nutshell, I approve of Google Ads, not that I need to. But I most certainly actually do think that Google Ads are a great investment in the marketing function within your business when - and this is the important part - when done at the right time, and when done in the right manner.  And today I'm going to specifically talk to you about at the right time, hence this episode title being called The 10 green flags that tells me your practice is ready for Google Ads. So as we go through this, I want you to really start ticking these off in your mind because the timing is really important. But I also want to, in full transparency, tell you the following - that as you know, I've got a group practice that I started back in 2007. And for the first 10 plus years of building my group private practice, I did not touch Google Ads. I already had a practice turning over in excess of seven figures of revenue and making a profit, before I started investing in Google Ads. And the truth of it is, it's probably only been around 24 months since we've actually gone what I would call, you know, full throttle into Google Ads. 

Now, by all means, we do not spend the amount of money on Google Ads that a lot of businesses out there do. I would actually say we are still doing entry-level spend on Google Ads.  And this is the thing, Google Ads work incredibly well, but it's not the bee's knees. It's not the way of getting clients, and that is often where people go wrong. And I think it is particularly important to have this discussion right now. At the time of recording this, because for the first time in a long time, one of the biggest challenges that people are telling me they're having in their practices - and this is not only group private practice, this includes solo practitioners, which can really do your head in if you think about it, because a solo practice owner, normally they would be the people that would be booked out first because they only have so many hours in their week - whereas if you've got a group practice, you might have five, eight, 10, 15, 20 clinicians whose books you need to fill, right?  So it makes sense that it's easier for a solo practitioner to fill up before you fill up a group practice the whole of the practice diary.  Even solo practice owners are currently struggling to fill their books. 

When people struggle to fill their books with client appointments, they will grab at anything to fill their books. Why? Because we're a service business. We need to see clients in order to get paid. People need to pay us for our services. And even if you do work that is under funding, whether that is NDIS, EAP work, WorkCover, TAC, DVA, all of the abbreviations out there, those referrals still need to come from somewhere. So people get very desperate to find those clients, and I would hate for you to run to Google Ads, spend a significant amount of money on it, and not get the return that you so desperately want and need in order for your business to remain viable. 

Similarly, what I also know is that if you are a level one, two, and three practice, so you're really in that startup and expansion stages, me and you both know that cash flow is tight anyway. So a lot of practice owners at those levels don't have the money or the budget, I should say, to spend on something like Google Ads. Because you need to pay for the management fees, and then you need to pay the actual advertising cost to Google. So there's a lot to consider here, and I always want you to make the best decision for your business, okay? So most certainly, Google Ads is a great marketing strategy to use, if used at the right time and in the right manner - your business needs to be ready for Google Ads.  Remember, it's there, but your business needs to be ready to squeeze as much juice out of it as possible, once you say yes to it. And it's my goal that these 10 green flags that I'm going to talk to you about today is going to help you get to that point that when you say yes to Google Ads, you're going to be squeezing some awesome juice. Alright? Excellent. So let's talk about it. 

Green Flag #1: You Already Have Consistent Organic Referrals & Enquiries 

You already have consistent organic referrals, and enquiries coming through to your business - and there's a couple of really important words in this first green flag. 

Let's talk about consistent - consistent meaning consistent. Not just you know, one month you get 10 new clients, the next month it's zero, and then you get 15 new ones, and then it's two. No. We want to make sure that it's already consistent. Organic, of course, meaning free. So we're not paying for Google Ads, we're not paying for Facebook or Instagram, these days, that's called Meta Ads, so it's no paid advertising or marketing that is being done - it's all organic, so people are finding you from non-paid sources. And it's referrals, meaning third-party referrals, as well as enquiries, which is direct enquiries. So these things should already be happening. And this is a really big and important one, and it's why I'm talking about this first. Because if nobody is finding you organically, or if nobody's referring to you organically, and if your website isn't converting people or any other marketing you're doing aren't converting people, then your Google Ads is not going to be the answer. It probably tells me that the marketing messaging, the positioning, your niching, all of that stuff is not talking to the people you want to serve. 

What happens when you use something like Google Ads, you are amplifying your current marketing, messaging, and positioning. So all you will be doing is amplifying a marketing message, and positioning, and a niche, and communication that's proven not to work. Why would you want to do that? That would be like taking money and just driving with your car and opening the window and just throwing dollars out the window and saying, "Here you go. Here you go. Anybody and everybody can get it, and I don't need any of that money." That's what you would be doing. By having current consistent organic referrals and enquiries tells us that your service offering has already been validated organically. Because I can tell you, if you want to validate your service offering through Google Ads, it's going to cost you a shit ton of money and you're going to tell me that Google Ads doesn't work. It works. But you need to have a validated offer - and in our instance, as allied health providers, it is a service offering. And you validate that with your organic content, your organic messaging, and your organic positioning, which will then lead to consistent organic referrals, and enquiries. So take a moment to reflect. Do you already have consistent organic referrals and enquiries? If that is a no, then this is not a green flag for you, but actually a red flag. 

Green Flag #2: You Know Exactly Who You Want More Of 

We've just spoken about the importance of having a viable service offering, and that really segues beautifully into green flag number two, which is: You know exactly who you want more of - in terms of clients/ That's what I'm talking about, right? So you know which clients, AKA what type of work do I want more of? Because one of the fastest ways for you to waste money on your Google Ads, is to just try and market to everyone. If you just go, "We work with all ages and all presentations," if that is your marketing messaging going out there, then you are not ready for Google Ads. 

An effective Google Ad strategy is going to require you to have clarity around who you help, what problems, AKA pain points they are searching for when they go into Google, what language are they using? And I'll give you a really great example of language here based on what's happened for us at the practice. I've got a psychology practice, we do assessments, a whole range of autism assessments, ADHD assessments, educational cognitive assessments, and a couple other ones/ And the language that we use on our website uses the words: assessments. But when we actually went down the Google keywords rabbit hole, people didn't search for ADHD assessment. People search for ADHD testing. 

I actually don't like the word test as a psychologist. It's like no, I don't like that word. It doesn't sound right. It sounds like I'm at school, I'm being graded on something. But if I want the Google ads to work, that's the word that needs to be on the website because that's what people are searching for, so that helps with our SEO anyway. But it also means that when people then land on our landing page on our website, the word that they search for, ADHD testing, is the word that's also on our landing page. So there's that congruency of this is my pain point, this is what I asked Google to give me because this is what I searched for, and look, I've landed on a website of a psychology practice that uses the exact same words. They must be the people that can help us. 

So language is incredibly important. You also need to know which of your services are profitable, because you want more of that work. Also, which services within your business have capacity to actually serve new clients. Maybe you've got multiple locations like I have. What locations need the most growth right now? And if you think about it, there's a huge difference between running an ad for child autism assessments versus couples therapy.  There's a big difference between running ads for occupational therapy for emotion regulation and sensory concerns, versus occupational therapy for NDIS functional capacity assessments..okay? So you need to know what you are doing here, because each audience out there that needs your services will be searching differently. Each of them has a different level of urgency behind the search for the service that they're looking for. Each audience will have different conversion timelines depending on the service and the problem and the pain point they have. Each service that you offer has got different levels of profitability, has got different levels of operational demands. And you need to consider all these things when you decide what type of Google ads I want to put out there. It's not just anything and everything. That's not when you get the return on investment. So, the more clear you are, the less money you will waste. 

So ask yourself this: Do I know the answer to these things that Gerda has just asked me? If I don't, then this is a red flag that I'm not ready for Google Ads. If I do know it, excellent work. Let's move on over to green flag number three and see where you're at with that one. 

Green Flag #3: Your Website Actually Converts 

This is the one that can hurt your back pocket. I have seen practice owners spend thousands of dollars on Google Ads, and when I say thousands of dollars, I mean thousands, on Google Ads, sending people to websites that are confusing, outdated, totally unclear, and extremely slow. And then what happens is they blame the Google Ads. Generally, they blame the Google Ads management agency, and very often it's not their fault. Because very often the issue is not with the traffic, the issue is with the website. You want a website that actually converts people into just looking at what you have to offer, to taking an action, AKA converting into becoming an actual client.  

In order for that to happen, your website should be able to very clearly answer things such as: Who do you help? Where are you located? This one, I can't tell you how many people miss this one, and you know how I know? Because I speak to a lot of practice owners, and if somebody wants to work with me one-on-one or they want to join my Private Practice Success Academy, I would generally hop on a clarity call with them. Now, in preparation for doing the clarity call, I will actually check out people's websites.  Now, I am a random person that doesn't know that practice owner from a bar of soap. You know how hard it is for me to generally find people's location. I can totally understand, right? If I've got a practice in Brisbane located in the suburb of Springwood, I know exactly where I'm located. But if some other random person lands on your website, how are they to know where you're located? You need to tell them, particularly if you offer in-person sessions. 

If you don't do in-person sessions, you need to make it clear that we are a telehealth business, that we offer remote or online counselling services. Make it clear for people. Don't make it so freaking hard to find out where you are located. And be specific, okay? Suburb, State, put all of the things in there. Because guess what? There is more than one Bayside, there's more than one Cleveland, there's probably more than one Springwood located throughout Australia. So be clear and don't just put your postcode. Say, Springwood, this postcode, this state, okay? Sorry about that, but it just does my head in, and you need to scroll all the way to the bottom, and sometimes it's not there. Okay, if it's not there, now I need to go to find it. Do they have a contact us page? Okay, go there. Is it there? Yes or no? Don't make it so hard, people, okay? I actually go digging for those things because I'm meeting with somebody to talk about their business and to give them input on stuff such as their website and conversions and all of those things. But your clients, they don't want to go digging for your information, they'll just move on to the next option that Google gave them when they searched for it if you make it too hard. 

So where are you located? What services do you offer? How do people book? Why should they trust you? And what happens next if I want to take the next step and actually book an appointment or speak to somebody, And that also leads us, do not make people hunt for your contact details. Have a clear phone number right at the top of the website.  Actually, now that I think of it, when I said that, I remembered I have done a podcast episode on 12 Website must-haves for your Allied Health Business, and I actually think that specific episode had an actual handout that went with it. Let me just have a look. This was episode 34. So go, once you finish this one, go and download that podcast episode, have a listen to it, and make sure that you have those 12 website must-haves. 

Between me and you, that's just the initial things that you need to make sure is on there, in order for your website to actually convert. I can't tell you how many practices make it extremely hard for people to actually find their phone number, or find an email for them. Don't do it. People are tired. People are overwhelmed. People are stressed. Very often they are in crisis, and you might say, "Well, we're not a crisis service, Gerda." I know, we've got that on my website as well, but people feel in crisis, their internal feelings are in crisis. I'm not talking about at-risk clients here. So if you want to honestly help them, you need to reduce that friction. You need to make it easy for them to take that next step, because Google Ads can bring people to your website, but your website must do the heavy lifting after that. So is this one a green flag, or a red flag within your practice? 

Green Flag #4: Your Front Desk Can Actually Handle Leads Properly 

Your front desk can actually handle the enquiries and leads coming through to them in a proper manner. Now, this one is massive. Because a lot of times people think, "Oh, I need to market more because I've got a marketing problem," when the diary isn’t full. When the actual problem behind that problem -  the surface level problem - is not a marketing problem, it's actually a conversion problem, and of course, conversion happens at the front desk. So just for clarity, conversion is when your front desk picks up the phone, or follows up on a referral, and converts that enquiry into an actual confirmed booking. I really want to make this point, you do not need more enquiries if right now your phone calls aren't being answered. If voicemails are left for hours and even days on end before being followed up. If emails or contact enquiry forms coming through from your website aren’t being answered. If reception does follow up and does answer but they sound disengaged or they sound rushed because they've got all this other stuff that they need to do. In other words, if enquiries and potential clients are already falling through the cracks, you do not need more enquiries, that will just make things worse. So really ask yourself, can your front desk handle more enquiries right now? 

Because if you are paying for Google Ads, and Google Ads are expensive, it's worth it if you get a return on investment.  But if you're going to put money towards it, especially money when you might already be cash strapped because there's holes in the diary, then every missed phone call now has a dollar value attached to it. Well, let's be honest, it has a dollar value attached to it anyway. What you've just done now is you've doubled, if not tripled, the dollar value attached to it that you are losing. And now not answering that phone call is not just a once-off ball that's been missed. Not following up in a timely manner in order to capture that client who's left a voicemail is not a, “oh, bugger, we need to do better next time.” It becomes freaking expensive. Very expensive. Which is why I teach the practices that I work with to track this freaking stuff. You need to track your conversion rates. You need to know how long it takes reception to answer a phone call? How long does it take them to respond to emails? What are our response times in other words? Also, what are those objection patterns when people don't book? What are they telling us why they aren't booking? That is your objection list, so that you can make informed decisions around what's happening with your conversion rates, why it is the way it is, and what are you doing to fix it, right? 

What I can tell you now is that the fastest way to more clients, and therefore more revenue coming into your practice, is converting the leads you already have. So that needs to be your first priority, and only once you can say, hand on heart, that our front desk conversion process and system is optimised -  fully optimised - only then do you step into the next stage of buying more leads. Because when you engage in paid advertising - any type of paid advertising, and today, of course, we're particularly talking about Google Ads - if you want to buy more leads, you want to know that you're going to be able to handle those leads at the front desk. So is this a green flag or a red flag for you at your practice? 

Green Flag #5: You Have the Clinician Capacity to Fill the Demand 

I'm hoping by now you might have caught on that the one green flag automatically leads to the next one, so there's a bit of a sequence to these as I talk you through it. So let's say you go, "Yes, Gerda, I pass green flag number four, I am 100% sure that my front desk can handle more enquiries." Well, that then leads us to green flag number five, and that is the following: You have capacity, AKA clinician capacity to fulfill the demand that you are wanting to create with your Google ads. And if you don't have that, then please do not run freaking Google ads. Especially if your current clinician team is already drowning. If you know that they are already fully booked and they can't take on any more clients, then you cannot put a dollar towards Google ads. Because if you do, what's going to happen? You're just going to be creating a wait list of clients that you can't service. If you go, "Oh, let's just pop an extra client hour into the diaries here, there." No. Your team's going to burn out. That's not good. Then they can't help any clients. 

Also, if you do that and you give more clients to an already drowning and stressed-out, burnt-out team, that will just lead to poor client experiences, because your clinicians can't do their best work when they're burnt out. That's going to lead to negative Google reviews. It might even lead to refund requests. It's going to lead to frustration amongst your clients, and I'm not even talking about, again, how that's going to impact your clinical team. And it's going to lead to frustration amongst the front desk team, who is doing amazing work converting clients, and now where do we put them, there's no space for them in the diary. And the thing is, in allied health, your freaking reputation matters. You need to actively manage your reputation. 

So sometimes the smartest thing you can actually do if you don't have clinician capacity is to pause any paid marketing. I would never say to pause marketing. You should always be marketing, because if you completely stop marketing, you're going to have an issue two, three months down the track, particularly if you're doing traditional private practice work.  If you've got a mostly NDIS caseload where clients stay on your caseload for a really long time, or you deal with certain psychological problems that people do stay on your caseload for a really long time, that's different. But bread and butter private practice work, people come, they go through a course of treatment, you even do relapse prevention, and they might go into maintenance, but they get discharged from our service. They don't stay with us forever, and they shouldn't, okay? Yes, they should come back if they have an issue or a challenge in the future, but we discharge them. So you have to be doing that baseline of marketing on a consistent basis.  I know I'm going on a bit of a tangent here, but if your caseloads are full, your marketing messaging's going to change towards branding, and therefore marketing and branding for the team. But you're still going to be doing marketing. But you most certainly do not want to pay money towards Google Ads when your clinicians can't see those clients. 

The purpose of Google Ads is to support sustainable growth, SUSTAINABLE in capital letters. Sustainable for the business, which means sustainable for the clinician team. Because otherwise all that's going to happen, it's going to increase your marketing budget and it's going to increase operational chaos, and that's not good for anybody. Sometimes as business owners we do unconsciously create ourselves operational chaos, because it's like somebody said somewhere that I need to do Google Ads because I've got holes in my diary, let's do it.  And then if you've not gone through these 10 green flags and you've ticked them all, then all you're going to have is some beautiful - and I'm saying that in a very sarcastic manner - but beautiful organisational chaos. And you're going to scratch your head and go, "I'm a failure as a business owner because these other people are doing Google Ads, and they're telling me how amazing it is. They're filling their diaries and, and why am I failing at it? Why is my practice in such chaos and I'm now even more burned out trying to hold this all together and make it make sense?" This is why. 

So ask yourself: Does your clinician team have the capacity to fulfill the demand that Google Ads, when done right, will create? If not, now's not the time to do it. I'm not saying never. I'm just saying you need to go through the green flags and make sure that you've got all those foundational pieces in place, in order to do Google Ads, and do it successfully. If you have a recruitment problem within your business, I can help. This is what I do. But I would suggest you start with Episode number 2 of this podcast, and this is how important it is, it was Nine Steps to Recruitment Success. So if you're sitting there and going, “Yeah, Gerda, this is the one that's going to trick me up, because I do not have the clinician capacity.” - then please go and listen to Episode number 2 and walk through The Nine Steps to Recruitment Success, and hire your next clinician so that you can have that clinician capacity. 

Green Flag #6: You Understand Your Numbers 

If I asked you: What is your cost per client acquisition? Would you be able to tell me? In other words, for every new client booking that you have in the diary, do you know how much it costs you, financially, to get that new client booking? If you don't, you're not ready for Google Ads. If I ask you: Do you know how much money you are willing, able, and prepared to spend to acquire a long-term client, what would that number be? If you don't know, you're not ready for Google Ads. Google Ads is a very effective marketing strategy, but it is a data-driven marketing strategy. In order to do it and do it right, if you're going to spend the money, you want to do it right, you need to understand what is the lifetime value of your client. What is your average session attendance, like your retention rates? On average, how many sessions does a client attend at your practice? So you can work out that lifetime client value, right? You need to know what your conversion rates are, because that's going to inform how many leads you need from your Google Ads.  What are your current profit margins? What is the revenue per clinician? What are your capacity thresholds like we've just spoken about in the previous green flag? 

Because if you don't know this, you can't make good decisions throughout the process, and I can tell you, Google Ads is not a set and forget marketing strategy. If you don't know your numbers, and if you don't trust your numbers, what's going to happen? You're going to just make guesses. You're just going to end up guessing, or worse still, make emotional decisions. Emotional decisions from a place of fear and desperation because, oh my goodness, there's holes in the diary, I've got all these wages and bills to pay, and just, just do it. You don't want to do that. You want to have the numbers, you want to look at the numbers, and you want to make well-informed, strategic decisions. It's when people panic, and, and I've seen this happen, people panic. "Oh my goodness, there's these holes in the diary. I need to get clients because I've got," you know, like I've just said, "wages and bills to pay." Then they spend $2,000. Then they get nervous after a week, they turn everything off, and then they go, "No, I can't. We've just spent all this money and there's still no appointments in the diary." And then two weeks later they go, "Oh my goodness, let's try that again." They restart it all. Then they go, "No, it's the agency. They don't know what they're doing." Then they change agencies, then they change a marketing message. It's like this just running in circles like a dog chasing its tail. That's not how you do Google Ads. 

I'm not saying this from a place of judgment, I'm saying this from, I've spoken to practice owners that've been doing that. And they're doing this because they're coming from that place of not knowing their numbers, and again, no judgment. It's just, okay, let- let's stop chasing our tails. Let's take our time. Let's step back out of the panic and out of the chaos, and let's do one thing at a time. A lot of time it's you need to have the patience, and I feel like that is where a lot of high-functioning, achievement-driven female practice owners go wrong. We've had to work so hard to prove ourselves. We had to work so hard to get to where we are, that there's this impatience, like I should be there already. I really want to encourage you to just go stop that. Stop it therapy. Just stop it. Stop it. You're the boss. You get to decide at what pace you are doing this. Don't judge yourself for the pace at which you're growing your business. Because I can tell you, if you just slow down, that will allow you to speed up. Okay, but this green flag, I digress, is about understanding your numbers, okay? Because if you don't have the numbers, you can't make informed decisions. 

Green Flag #7: You Have the Cash Flow to Test Properly 

This also leads very nicely, to green flag number seven, and this is: You have the cash flow to test properly. Because Google Ads is very rarely an overnight success story, as with anything else in business - but particularly in allied health. We aren’t selling handbags, people. We aren't selling activewear or any other type of merchandise, We are selling relationships. We are selling emotions. We are relieving pain. So you need to have the patience, and therefore also the cash flow, because it takes time to test properly. Because when I say testing, what I mean is you want to test the right keywords. You want to test, does my landing page work? What types of tweaks do I need to make? Let's tweak one thing and test, because if you tweak 10 things, you don't know which of the tweaks worked. So you need to tweak one thing, test, then tweak the next thing, test. That requires patience and money, okay? You want to test your targeting, your messaging, if you've got different locations, if you've got different offers - you want to test all of those things, and that requires patience and money. If your business is already in financial distress, that's really hard to do because where's the money going to come from? And when you desperately want these ads to work, you're going to be disappointed. Like I said earlier, desperation rarely leads to making good marketing decisions. Which also means that, do not wait to do your Google Ads until you've got no money in the bank, because you're not going to be able to use it. It's just going to put you in a worse financial situation. 

A lot of people, again, on the flip side, wait too long. They wait until there's no clients, and they've got no money, and then they go into their lines of credits and credit card debt, or business loans even, and they just add to the financial stress and pressure that they are already in, and that leads to more panic-based decision-making, so it's not good. So you really want to go into Google Ads from a position of strategy, not from a position of panic and survival, like this is my last-ditch attempt. That's not when we do it. So in my Private Practice Success Academy, for example, I've got a practice growth roadmap, and guess what? I actually only recommend Google Ads when people get to a level four to five - where they actually have these numbers, we've got the foundations in place, we know what the numbers mean, we've optimised the front desk, we've optimised all those systems and processes. You know, all these green flags have been optimised, and we've got the money there to now actually elevate our business growth, and amplify our business growth and scale our business growth by using Google Ads 

Green Flag 8 #: Your Client Experience Is A WOW 

Capital W-O-W. I've been speaking about creating the wow factor since I first wrote my book: The 7 Figure Practice, back in 2016. People often go, "What the hell is a wow factor when I'm a psychologist, Gerda? I can't do a wow." Well, actually, you can. A lot of times when I ask practice owners, " What makes your practice different?" In other words, what is your wow factor? a majority of people will talk about how good they, and/or their team are in establishing the relationship with the client. My response to that is, "That's not a wow. that should be a given. That is something you should do anyway, so that's just the baseline. What else?" Because it is incredibly important to provide a wow client experience. We just earlier spoke about reputation, and why it is so important in the work that we do. So you really want to ask yourself, if I were to survey your clients right now, what would they tell me? What score would they give you out of 10? Would they say that you provide a wow client experience? 

Now, I'm a trauma psychologist. When I did a lot of clinical work in the day, 9 out of 10 of my clients would walk out of session having spent most of their session time in tears, or in some level of emotional distress. Now, we would think that's not a wow experience, but, you know, for a trauma psychologist, that is. Because I know that if they work through this trauma with me, and that's my job, and my job is to walk through that experience and processing with them, they will get to the other side, and they will describe this as having been the best decision that they have made for their life and for their family and for their future to work through that, because of how different life will be once they've processed it. So it is a wow for them in their world. But that is just from a therapeutic perspective. 

What about the other parts of the client journey, and the client experience that people have when they deal with your business? Because Google Ads will help you to bring in new enquiries, if your front desk can convert them, as per one of our previous green flags, you will have more appointments. So Google Ads can bring you that first appointment. But the systems that underpin the client experience will mean that they come back for session two, three, four, and so on. Those systems will determine whether they refer their friends and family. The systems will determine whether they will actually stay a client and come back, even once they've been discharged and a year later something else pops up, that you will be the practice and the business that they come back to.  Your system will determine whether they actually recommend you to other people or whether they leave a negative Google review. 

So your client experience can literally make or break your Google Ads investment. In trying to determine, do you have this as a green flag, your client experience, ask yourself, is that intake process a smooth process? What are the reminders like for your clients? What is the communication like that your clients receive from your practice? Do clients feel supported? Is the process easy to navigate? Do they understand how referral pathways work? Have they been provided with education, so that they can manage that better. There's a lot of stuff that goes into the client experience, both therapeutically inside the therapy room, but also outside of the therapy room, each and every interaction that they have with your business.  Very, very important.

I often talk about building a sustainable practice, right? And sustainable growth, yes, that includes, very importantly, new client acquisition, but even more important than that is client retention, and business reputation. So you can spend all the money on Google Ads, but if the clients do not have a great client experience, they will not keep coming. So you can only do your Google Ads once you can say, "Yes, I've actually scrutinised my client experience, and I'm happy that it is a wow, so let's turn on the Google Ads tap, and let's get those clients coming through.” Of course, also making sure that you tick off all the other green flags 

Green Flag #9: You Have Clear Goals for Your Google Ads 

Get more clients is not the goal. Yes, it might be that initial prompt in the back of your head that's going, "Oh, we need more clients. All these other things I'm doing, it's time to add to my "get more clients strategy," which is not a strategy. We need to add to what we are already doing in order to get more clients, but getting more clients is not a business strategy. So you want to ask yourself, "What am I actually trying to achieve by doing Google Ads? 

For example, do I want to full capacity at a specific location? For example, at my practice, The Psych Professionals in Brisbane, we've always had two locations on Brisbane's south side. At the time of recording, it is 11 days in from just having purchased a new practice in Brisbane's north side. So for us, we now want to promote a new practice location. We already have a very strong and established reputation and brand, but it's in a different location, and we are most certainly going to be using Google Ads to full capacity at this specific location. 

Another example might be that you want to grow a specific service line. So this might be a new service that you are introducing at your practice. For example, if you traditionally had a child and adolescent practice and you have psychologists, you might go, "Hey, I want to add a paediatric occupational therapist to my team." So this is a new service line that you are introducing. 

Another example might be to, this is an interesting one, recruit clinicians by demonstrating demand. Now, that would be your strategy if, for example, you have a services and facilities business model, whereas part of what you offer the independent practitioners working at your practice would be marketing and client generation, right? So that doesn't apply to employee models and independent contracting models. 

Another example would be to reduce reliance on one referral source, and similarly increase private paying clients. So right now, for example, at the time of recording, if you've got a predominantly NDIS private practice, I'm guessing you've been thinking to yourself, "Uh-oh, we are highly, if not 100%, reliant on NDIS. We need to start generating and increasing private pay clients." Google Ads is a really great strategy for that if you've got all the other green flags. Remember, it is very important. 

Another example might be if let's say you are well known for doing therapy and you want to grow your assessment bookings at your practice, then you might go, "That is what I want to target." So it's really about getting detailed. Yes, it's about getting more clients, but that's just this top line idea. Then you want to go, "Okay, I want to get more clients, but how am I going to get that from Google Ads?" You're going to get that by being really specific in terms of what that goal is. Because that clarity is going to help shape the budget that you're going to put behind that specific Google Ad campaign, the targeting, the messaging, the keyword selection, the landing pages that you're going to need, and the metrics that you need to track. 

So as you can see, freaking Google Ads is a whole different project. And when you want to do it, you want to do it really well to optimise it because that's when you're going to get the return on investment of the money that you're going to invest into it. So without that clarity, without clear goals, it's going to be impossible for you to know whether your Google Ads are actually working or not. With any strategy that we implement in our business, we want to ask that. You're not going to know overnight, like I said earlier, it's going to take time, but you're not going to know whether you're making the right judgment as to whether this is working or not, if you don't know what was the goal of this campaign, and did we meet it, yes or no? 

Green Flag #10: You Understand that Google Ads are just A Tool 

Understand that Google Ads are just another tool in your toolbox of running your business. It's not the be-all and end-all of your business. It is a tool. This is a really important mindset to have when you think about it. Google Ads is a strategy, yes, but it is one strategy, one tool within the broader ecosystem that is your business. One of the things that I've seen over the years is that some practices become overly dependent on paid advertising, because they've never built referral relationships. They've never built community trust. They've never really focused on their branding. They don't have clear retention processes within their practice. They don't have the word-of-mouth momentum that is so important. And they've neglected their operational standards.  What is happening is they have to constantly put money into paid advertising in order to fill the diaries, and they're on this freaking treadmill that never stops, and they just need to keep going, keep going in order to sustain where they are right now. 

Whereas the strongest and most sustainable practices out there, have multiple streams of client flow. So they've got clients flowing from third-party referrers. They've got clients flowing from organic search, in other words, SEO. They've got clients flowing from community relationships, from repeat engagement, from their reputation, from other marketing strategies. And when you've got that, your Google Ads becomes an amplifier instead of being the life support machine for your practice, and that is a potential trap that people can fall into. I once spoke to a practice owner, gorgeous, beautiful practice owner, amazing practice, but they were needing to spend $10,000 a month on Google Ads in order to keep the books full, because they've neglected those other client flows that I've just mentioned. And you know what? Again, no judgment because on the one hand, if you think about it, if you spend $10,000 a month on Google Ads and it leads to $100,000, keep on spending it, right? But you're leaving money on the table, and you are locking in a long-term marketing budget for Google Ads, when you're not looking at other ways of generating client flow. 

The thing is, if you've got all your marketing eggs in one basket, that is a risk to your business, because what if Google breaks tomorrow? Okay, I know the chances of that happening is slim, but we freaking never know. What if that breaks tomorrow? Or for some reason, somebody hacks your Google Ads account, and you don't have access to it for the next two months. What's going to happen with your business then? You can't do that. That is too risky. So you need to look at other ways of generating client flow. So again, you need to understand that Google Ads are one tool, marketing tool, one client-generating tool in your toolbox - and you need to have more than one freaking tool because if this one breaks or you lose it or you misplace it, you need to have something else that you can take out and use, and that is what a responsible business owner would do. 

So in conclusion, if you've been wondering whether your practice is ready for Google Ads, then I want to reiterate: Google Ads is not inherently good or bad. It is actually a great marketing tool. It is a great magnifier of the awesome work that you're already doing.  But just like it magnifies great customer service, it will also magnify shitty customer service, So you need to always make sure that before you put money into it and before you ask the question, "Ooh, ooh, they said Google Ads. How do I do this? How do I run Google Ads? Let's go down the Google Ads rabbit hole." Instead, you want to ask yourself, Is my business operationally ready to convert and sustain the demand that Google Ads is going to create when I do it right?" Because otherwise, like I said earlier, it's just going to create operational chaos. And unless you can go through this podcast episode and say, "I've got my green flags, I've got all 10 of them," you're just going to lose money. And again, you don't need Google Ads to fill your diary, let me tell you that. You do not. If you think that's the only way, I'm telling you now it's not. There's lots of other ways to do it. 

Now, because I know some of you are probably thinking about this, I want to briefly touch on return on investment. What is my expected return on investment? And the answer is so annoying. It freaking depends, right? It depends on a lot of things. But I still want to give you a ballpark idea, and that is a healthy Google Ads campaign should aim to give you at least three to five times the return on ad spend. I would like for it to be 10 times, that's my goal always.  But if you're sitting at three to five, then you are already in the ballpark of what people are generally experiencing. Which means that if you spend $1,000 on Google Ads, it should be generating $3,000 to $5,000 in revenue from that Google Ads campaign. I would say that's, that's really, to me, the minimum that you want to expect - not during the testing period - but once you've gone through your testing period.  And then I would encourage you to work towards a 10 times return on investment. That's the goal that I have for my business, so that's what I encourage you to do if, of course, you get to set your own goals for your business. 

And finally, the question that I want to leave you with is, you have to ask: Does my business have the operational and financial maturity to turn paid Google Ad traffic into profitable long-term clients? And the answer to that is what will lead to you falling in one of the two camps that people fall into when they do Google Ads. And the first camp is those that say, "I absolutely swear by Google Ads. That's one thing I do. If I can do nothing but one thing, that's it."  And then there's this other camp of people that tell me, "We've wasted thousands of dollars on freaking Google Ads and got nothing to show for it." And that's because you didn't take the time to work through these 10 green flags to ensure that your business has that operational and financial maturity to handle the amazing traffic that Google Ads is going to send your way. 

Alrighty, we're going to leave it there for today. I do hope that this has given you a lot of food for thought. Of course, as always, if you need help with making sure that you've got the operational financial maturity, you know where to find me. Just reach out. It is what I do. If you found this episode of value, please share it with one other practice owner so that we can all work together to help more people in better and more effective ways. Thank you for tuning in, and as always, remember that I am here to help you build a practice you can't stop smiling about. 😊

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Gerda Muller

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