Eleven clinical verticals, and they have less in common than the phrase allied health suggests. Different regulators, different funding, different advertising law, and click prices that vary by a factor of four. Pick yours, or read the comparison below.
Click through to the vertical that matches your clinic. You'll see how we approach each space and the case studies from clinics in it.
Ahpra's higher risk non-surgical cosmetic guidelines name dental veneers by name. That bans smile simulators, bans targeting under 18s, and blacklists the exact phrases most veneer ads are built on. We have not found one Australian dental marketing page that mentions it.
Free consult, then a paid records appointment, then finance, then often waiting for a growth spurt. By the time the case actually starts, Google has discarded the identifier that would have connected it to the advertising. Every orthodontic account in Australia has this problem and almost nobody has named it.
WorkCover, TAC, NDIS, DVA, a chronic condition plan, private health extras, or their own card. Six funding pathways, six different searches, six different landing pages. Most physio campaigns bid on all of them with one ad and one phone number.
Baby chiropractor. Pregnancy chiropractor. Paediatric chiropractor. Those are among the fastest rising chiropractic queries in Australia, and they sit directly on top of the Chiropractic Board's most restricted territory. Advertising this profession well means knowing exactly where that line runs.
Remedial massage is not an Ahpra registered profession, so the section 133 testimonial ban does not apply to it. Physiotherapy, chiropractic, osteopathy and podiatry are all bound by it. This is the largest advertising asymmetry in Australian allied health and we have not found a single page that uses it.
Diabetic foot care, DVA, NDIS and aged care are where the recurring revenue lives, and most of it arrives by referral. Meanwhile the search term with the highest intent in the whole profession, ingrown toenail, is worth one or two visits and then nothing. Getting podiatry advertising right starts with admitting that.
Inner regional Australia records the highest melanoma incidence in the country. 91 per cent of Australia's 661 dermatologists practise in a capital city. That inversion between where the disease is and where the supply is should be driving geographic strategy, and almost nowhere is it.
Anti-wrinkle injections. Dermal fillers. Those were the safe substitutes for a decade. They are no longer expressly permitted, and the guidance now says to advertise the consultation rather than the treatment. Most Australian aesthetics advertising has not caught up.
94 per cent of Australian optometry services are bulk billed, and Optometry Australia's own estimate is that a sustainable consultation costs more than $50 above the Medicare schedule fee. So the conversion every optometry account optimises towards is a loss leader. The margin is in what happens next.
The national workforce strategy puts psychology at 35 per cent of its own planning target. In a market that short, buying more enquiries is usually the wrong goal. The question worth answering is which enquiries, at what funding, filling which gaps.
Ahpra does not regulate veterinary practice. Eight state and territory boards do, under eight separate Acts, with no national code and no shared advertising guideline. They do not agree with each other, and one ad headline can be compliant in Adelaide and flagged in Melbourne.
This is the single most consequential difference between the verticals, and almost every Australian healthcare marketing page gets it wrong by assuming one framework applies to all of them.
| Vertical | Who regulates the advertising | Client testimonials |
|---|---|---|
| Dental, orthodontics, physio, chiro, podiatry, optometry, psychology, dermatology | Ahpra, under one National Law | Prohibited where they touch clinical care |
| Cosmetic and aesthetics | Ahpra, plus the TGA, plus additional cosmetic guidelines since September 2025 | Prohibited, and more broadly than elsewhere |
| Veterinary | Eight separate state and territory boards. No national code | Permitted. Victoria repealed its ban in 2015 |
| Remedial massage | Not an Ahpra registered profession. Association and consumer law | Permitted, subject to consumer law |
Two clinics on the same street can face opposite rules on the same ad. A physiotherapist cannot publish a patient describing their recovery. The remedial massage therapist next door can.
Australian weighted average cost per click by vertical, from Medical Marketing Group's Q3 2026 benchmarks. These are derived from Google keyword planning data rather than observed account spend, so read them as auction estimates.
Two verticals are missing from that list because no Australian benchmark exists for them. There is no published cost per click for optometry or for remedial massage, and the figures circulating for both are either Canadian or American. We would rather say so than convert somebody else’s currency and call it Australian.
Real accounts. Real tracked numbers. Click any tile to read the full breakdown.
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.