A physio clinic does not have one market. It has a compensable market, a funded market and a private market, and they behave nothing like each other. Here is how we structure an account around that, and which funded patients Google genuinely cannot reach.
Most agencies segment a physio account by suburb. That is the wrong axis. Two patients in the same postcode can be worth completely different amounts and need completely different pages, because one is on an accepted WorkSafe claim with no gap and the other is paying $110 out of pocket and deciding between you and the clinic across the road.
Segment by who pays and everything downstream gets easier: the ad copy answers the question the patient actually has, the landing page carries the right proof, and the cost per booking becomes comparable within a campaign instead of an average of unlike things.
These are the funding routes into an Australian physio clinic, and what each one means once you are buying clicks against it.
| Pathway | What it is | What it changes for your ads |
|---|---|---|
| WorkCover | WorkSafe Victoria treats physiotherapy as a primary contact service, so an injured worker can self present with no GP referral. | High intent and reachable, because the worker often chooses the clinic. Your page must answer whether you accept claims and what happens about a gap. |
| TAC | Transport accident claims, subject to insurer authorisation on an approved claim. | Small volume, high value, and usually reached through injury specific searches rather than the word physio. |
| NDIS | The 2026-27 physiotherapy price limit is $183.99. Since 1 July 2025 the NDIA has applied a single national limit rather than state based ones. | Only worth bidding on for self managed and plan managed participants. NDIA managed participants are allocated by a coordinator and do not search. |
| DVA | A D904 GP referral covers up to 12 sessions or one year, whichever ends first. Gold Card covers all conditions, White Card accepted conditions only. | No gap fee may be charged, so the offer is simply access. Veterans do search, but the referral gates the booking. |
| Chronic condition plan | From 1 July 2025 the EPC and CDM plans were replaced by the GP Chronic Condition Management Plan. Up to 5 subsidised allied health visits a calendar year, splittable across providers. | Largely GP driven, so search reaches the patient late if at all. Most competitor pages still call this EPC, which tells you how closely they follow it. |
| Private health extras | Around 90 per cent of funds reset limits on 1 January. ahm resets 1 July. Limits do not roll over. | The most reachable cohort of the six, and the one with a hard annual deadline you can build a December campaign around. |
Sources: WorkSafe Victoria physiotherapy services guidelines; DVA allied health treatment cycle; ProviderScout NDIS therapy rates 2026-27; Australian Government chronic condition management plan changes, 1 July 2025; Canstar and Finder on extras reset dates.
Google reaches people who search and then click. If a funded patient does neither, no budget and no bid strategy will reach them. That sounds obvious written down, and it is still the single most common reason a physio account underperforms.
Reachable: self managed and plan managed NDIS participants, WorkCover and TAC patients who choose their own provider, and private payers. Not reachable: NDIA managed participants allocated by a support coordinator, patients arriving on a GP chronic condition plan, and post surgical referrals from a treating specialist.
Clinic Mastery publishes roughly $80 to $100 cost per booking for general physio demand and $120 to $180 for reachable NDIS demand. When a blended campaign reports a number well above that band, the usual explanation is not a bad bid strategy. It is that a share of the budget is chasing people who were never going to type anything into Google.
Physiotherapy sits in the middle of the allied health field. The comparison matters if you also run a chiropractic or podiatry arm, because the same budget buys very different volumes.
Source: Medical Marketing Group Australian healthcare Google Ads benchmarks, Q3 2026. Weighted average CPC in AUD. Their method mixes Google planning data with third party clickstream estimates because Google prices very few commercial terms in these niches.
Not a campaign per suburb. Ad groups split on what the patient named: the injury, the funding, or the service. Budget stays poolable and the data does not fragment into groups too small to learn from.
Different campaigns, because the landing pages differ and because you will want to switch one off independently of the other.
Presence, never presence or interest. Interest targeting quietly serves your ads to people researching your suburb from another state.
Calls over 60 seconds from first time numbers, plus verified online bookings. Agreed in writing before a dollar is spent, so nobody argues about what a lead was afterwards.
The extras reset is a fixed date. The campaign that captures it needs to exist before the last fortnight, when every other clinic has finally noticed.
A senior team that lives inside your account. Conversion infrastructure wired in before any ad goes live. Reporting that ties spend to booked appointments, not impressions.
A senior specialist who runs clinic accounts day to day.
Every keyword, headline and account structure built inside real Australian clinic accounts.
Winner, Best Google Ads Campaign, Australia 2025. Google Partner. AFR Fast 100.