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How We Cut Wasted Google Ads Spend by 55% and Improved ROAS for a Multi-Speciality Healthcare Brand

  • Writer: Amit Chopra
    Amit Chopra
  • Jul 3
  • 3 min read

Client Overview

Wellness First Hospitals is a chain of 4 multi-speciality hospitals across Delhi NCR — with units in Noida, Faridabad, Gurgaon, and Greater Noida — offering orthopaedics, cardiology, neurology, oncology, and IVF services. With 800+ beds and 120+ specialist doctors, the group had excellent clinical outcomes but was losing the digital outpatient acquisition battle to competitors like Fortis and Max Healthcare. Internal teams were running Google Ads with a ₹4.2 lakh/month budget — but 55% of that spend (₹2.31 lakh) was going to completely irrelevant queries: 'free hospital near me', 'government hospital Noida', emergency services.

The cost per online appointment booking stood at ₹2,800 — financially unviable for an outpatient who might have a single consultation value of ₹800. HO Digital was brought in with a two-part mandate: eliminate waste first, then rebuild for profitable scale.

The Challenge

  • 55% of ad spend (₹2.31L/month) wasted on irrelevant queries including free clinics, government hospitals, and emergency services

  • Single campaign for all 4 locations — impossible to allocate budget based on each hospital's capacity and occupancy

  • No department-level targeting — a patient seeking 'knee replacement Gurgaon' saw the same generic ad as someone searching 'cancer treatment Noida'

  • Appointment form had 9 required fields and was not mobile-optimised — taking 4+ minutes to complete on mobile

  • Phone call conversions were completely untraceable — the primary booking channel was invisible in the data

  • Quality Scores averaging 2.8/10 — landing pages were generic homepage links with no specific medical content

Strategy: Phase-by-Phase

Phase 1 — Waste Elimination & Account Rebuild (Month 1)

HO Digital built a 640-term negative keyword list, eliminating all government/free hospital queries, emergency services, and competitor names. This alone cut irrelevant spend by 43% in the first week. The account was rebuilt: one campaign per hospital location, with ad groups for each of the 12 key medical departments. Google Call Ads were configured with dedicated numbers per hospital for call tracking.

Phase 2 — Department Pages & Form Optimisation (Month 2–3)

Dedicated landing pages were created for the top 6 revenue departments: orthopaedics, cardiology, IVF, neurology, oncology, general surgery. Each featured the specific consultant's profile, patient success statistics, and a 3-field appointment form (Name, Phone, Department) — reduced from the original 9 fields. The simpler form increased completion rate by 4.8×. 'Same-Day Appointment Available' badges were added to all high-traffic pages, reducing search-to-booking friction significantly.

Phase 3 — RLSA & Doctor-Specific Campaigns (Month 4–6)

Doctor-specific campaigns were launched for the group's 8 most-searched consultants — with ad groups targeting queries like 'Dr [Name] appointment Noida'. These zero-competition, high-intent campaigns converted at 31% — the highest rate in the entire account. Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA) applied 2× bid multipliers to users who had visited department landing pages but hadn't booked, recapturing the most valuable warm audience.

📊 Campaign Results Dashboard — Before vs After

  • Wasted Ad Spend: 55% → 12% of budget (₹1.85L/month recovered)

  • Cost Per Appointment Booking: ₹2,800 → ₹420 (85% reduction)

  • Monthly Online Appointment Bookings: 78 → 510 (554% increase)

  • Google Ads Quality Score: 2.8 → 8.1 average

  • Mobile Form Completion Rate: 3.2% → 18.7% (after 3-field form)

  • Phone Call Conversions: 0 tracked → 210 tracked calls/month

  • Revenue Attributed to Google Ads: ₹28L → ₹1.9Cr/month

Key Takeaways

  • In healthcare PPC, the negative keyword list matters more than the positive keyword list — waste elimination is step one

  • Doctor-specific campaigns have near-zero competition and near-100% conversion intent — the most underused tactic in healthcare PPC

  • Form length directly determines conversion rate — every extra field costs you bookings

  • Multi-location hospital groups must run location-specific campaigns — patients will not travel across the city for an outpatient visit

What the Client Said

Before HO Digital, we knew Google Ads was leaking money but couldn't fix it. They eliminated ₹1.85L/month in wasted spend on day one and then rebuilt the account into a genuine patient acquisition machine. Our cardiology and orthopaedics OPDs now run at 90%+ capacity. — Group Marketing Head, Wellness First Hospitals
 
 
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