To work out what one new patient costs, take your monthly spend on a channel (ads, management, content) and divide it by the number of new patients from that channel who actually turned up. For the physiotherapy practice Be Fyzio, one enquiry from advertising cost 203 CZK and ad spend came to 14% of revenue. There is no universal figure, so calculate the cost for each channel separately and compare it with what a patient brings in.
Click, enquiry, booking, patient: four different costs
Agencies and ad platforms report several different “costs”, and each one measures something else. Mix them up and your marketing can look like a great success while the waiting room stays exactly as full as before.
| Metric | What it measures | Where to find it |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per click (CPC) | What you pay each time someone clicks on an ad | Google Ads, Meta |
| Cost per website visit | Spend divided by the number of visits from ads | Google Analytics |
| Cost per enquiry | Spend divided by the number of completed forms, bookings and calls | Conversion tracking, booking system |
| Cost per patient | Spend divided by the number of new patients who turned up | Your patient records or booking system |
On the Doctor Dent project, the cost of a website visit from Google Ads fell from 16 CZK to 4 CZK over six months. On its own, that says nothing about patients. What mattered was that enquiries rose from 302 in 2024 to 498 in 2025, an increase of 65%, and bookings for August to October were up 59% year on year (from 103 to 164). Cheap clicks are a good start, but what you are really paying for is patients.
The formula for cost per patient
The basic formula is simple:
Cost per patient = channel spend ÷ number of new patients from that channel who turned up
Spend means everything you pay for the channel: the budget in the ad platform, the agency fee, and photography and video production. If you count only the ad budget, the cost will look lower than it really is.
Breaking the calculation into steps shows you where patients drop out:
- Cost per click ÷ share of clicks that become enquiries = cost per enquiry
- Cost per enquiry ÷ share of enquiries that book = cost per booking
- Cost per booking ÷ share of booked patients who turn up = cost per patient
A worked example from Be Fyzio
Be Fyzio spent 7,739 CZK on Meta and Google ads. This brought in 2,178 clicks, at an average of 3.55 CZK per click. Those clicks produced 38 enquiries, roughly 1.7% of clicks, so the cost per enquiry was 7,739 ÷ 38 = 203 CZK. We calculated revenue by multiplying the 38 enquiries by an average spend of 1,500 CZK, which gives 57,000 CZK. Ad spend as a share of revenue (known in Czech as PNO) comes to 7,739 ÷ 57,000 = 14%. You can read the full story in the Be Fyzio case study.
Now imagine that 30 of those 38 people booked and 27 turned up. The cost per patient would then be 7,739 ÷ 27 = 287 CZK. This is purely an illustration, but it shows why you need to track what happens after the form is sent. Losses between enquiry and patient usually come down to the reception desk and how quickly someone replies, and have nothing to do with the ads.
How much you can afford to pay for a patient
Cost per patient means little until you compare it with what the patient brings in. Use the value of the whole course of treatment, not a single visit.
Take a hypothetical physiotherapy practice: the average patient has 5 sessions at 1,500 CZK, which is 7,500 CZK in revenue. After wages, rent and materials, the clinic keeps, say, 40%, or 3,000 CZK. If you want marketing to take no more than a third of that, you can pay up to 1,000 CZK for a new patient. Any channel that comes in below that is worth expanding.
In dentistry, services vary widely. A hygiene patient and an implant patient are worth very different amounts, so they should not share the same target cost. In our campaigns we handle this with separate ad groups, each with its own target. When everything sits in one campaign, the platform automatically shifts money towards cheaper, lower-value enquiries.
Cost per patient by channel
Each channel is measured slightly differently. The table sets out what to count as spend and what to watch out for.
| Channel | What to count as spend | How to identify patients from it | Typical mistake |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Ads | Budget, management | Tracked forms, calls, bookings | Paying for clicks on searches unrelated to what you offer |
| Meta Ads | Budget, management, content production | Forms and messages from ads | Judging it only on direct enquiries |
| SEO | Writing, website changes | Organic visits that lead to an enquiry | Judging it after one month |
| Reviews | Reception time, possibly a review collection tool | A question at registration | Not counting them at all |
| Referrals | Usually nothing directly | A question at registration | Treating them as free and not tracking them |
Google Ads reaches people who are searching right now, so enquiries can be attributed fairly accurately. We cover this in more detail in our article on Google Ads for physiotherapy.
Meta Ads and social media often work indirectly. On the Angel Smile project we ran both Google Ads and Meta Ads. Monthly enquiries rose from 23 to 47, and Google searches for the clinic’s name went up from 250 to 480. Some people saw the clinic on Instagram and then looked it up by name. If you judged Meta advertising on forms alone, you would underestimate it.
With SEO and referrals, the cost is spread over time. The simplest way to measure them is a single question on the registration form or at reception: “How did you hear about us?” Record the answer in the patient’s file. After three months you will see how many patients came through referrals and your map listing, and you can plan accordingly.
How to set your clinic’s marketing budget
It is better to build the budget from the bottom up, starting with the number of patients you need, than to guess a percentage of turnover.
- Decide how many new patients a month you can take on. Your free capacity is the ceiling, and there is no point paying for more.
- Use your existing data to find the cost per patient for each channel. If you have no data, start with a smaller budget and treat the first 2 to 3 months as a measurement period.
- Multiply: for example, 25 new patients at 350 CZK each means 8,750 CZK a month on ads, plus management and content.
- Compare the result with the maximum cost per patient from the previous section.
Expect the first few months to cost more. On the Doctor Dent project we launched 12 campaigns over six months and switched off the weak ones as we went. The cost of a website visit came down gradually: 16 CZK in June, 7 CZK in August and 4 CZK in October, on a monthly budget of 26,000 to 41,000 CZK. So it makes little sense to judge a campaign on its first two weeks.
How to check your agency’s work
You do not need to understand campaign settings. Just ask for regular answers to a few questions:
- How many enquiries were there, and how are they defined? An enquiry is a completed form, a booking or a call. A click on a “Contact” button is not an enquiry.
- Do the numbers match the booking system? Compare the enquiries in the report with what reception sees. A large gap points to a tracking error.
- What is the total spend on each channel? The platform budget and the agency fee in a single figure.
- How is the cost per enquiry changing over time and by service? A clinic-wide average can hide poor results for expensive services.
- What did you switch off this month, and why? An agency that never switches anything off is probably not actively managing your campaigns.
Take care with the tracking itself. Analytics and advertising code may only run once the visitor has agreed to cookies (§ 89(3) of Act No. 127/2005 Coll., the Czech Electronic Communications Act). The fact that someone visited the page for a particular treatment can count as health data under Article 9 of the GDPR, so be careful about sending it to ad platforms. We explain how to set up tracking that is both useful and compliant in How to measure clinic marketing.
Frequently asked questions
How much does clinic marketing cost per month?
It depends on how many new patients you need and what one patient costs in your specialty and city. Calculate the budget as the number of patients multiplied by the cost per patient, then add management and content. A fixed figure borrowed from another clinic will not tell you much.
What percentage of turnover should go on marketing?
A percentage of turnover is useful as a check, not as a starting point. It is better to track ad spend as a share of the revenue from patients that marketing brought in. For Be Fyzio, this was 14%.
Why do we get cheap clicks but few patients?
Usually the ads attract people looking for something else, or enquiries get lost at reception. Compare the number of enquiries with the number of bookings, and check which searches your ads are showing for.
Are referred patients free?
You do not pay for them directly, but they come because of your care, your reviews and how easily people can find you on the map. Track them with a question at registration so you know how many there are and whether the number is growing.
As a first step, pull together the numbers for the last three months: spend by channel, number of enquiries and number of new patients from your records. If you like, we can go through them with you in a free audit.
