Rebuilding Paid Search Performance for a Top Academic Medical Center
Restructured a declining paid search program for a major academic medical center, reducing ad spend 35% while increasing conversion rates 40% and improving return on ad spend 36% through campaign restructuring and keyword optimization.
35%
Reduction in Ad Spend
40%
Increase in Conversion Rate
36%
Increase in Return on Ad Spend
The Challenge
A academic medical center in the Southeast United States had built paid search into a core patient acquisition channel, but performance was dismal. Rising competition and escalating CPCs were driving costs up while conversion rates were almost flat. Leadership needed to reverse that trajectory without increasing the advertising budget. The challenge was doing more with the same spend.
The Approach
-
Audited the full paid search program: campaign structure, keyword targeting, bid strategies, ad creative, and conversion tracking
-
Identified significant wasted spend driven by broad match keywords and misaligned campaign architecture
-
Restructured campaigns around patient intent and condition-specific search behavior
-
Eliminated low-performing keywords and prioritized high-intent queries across core service lines
-
Refined bid management strategies to improve efficiency and reduce unnecessary spend
-
Optimized ad copy to improve click-through rates and align messaging with patient decision-making
When campaign architecture doesn't reflect how patients actually search, every dollar you add makes the problem worse.
The Results
The restructured paid search program delivered across every key metric simultaneously — less spend, higher conversions, better returns. A 35% reduction in ad spend combined with a 40% increase in conversion rates and 36% improvement in ROAS demonstrated that the prior program had significant structural inefficiency. The rebuilt campaign architecture also created a more scalable foundation for continued growth across the system's specialty service lines.