Your practice has room to grow. Maybe a speech therapist has joined the team, an occupational therapy location has openings, or a new clinic needs an introduction to the community. You are ready to put money behind it. The question is where.
Choosing between Google Ads and Meta Ads for a therapy practice starts with the service you want to promote, the budget you can commit, and the team handling new inquiries. A low click price means little if the ad attracts requests for a service you do not offer or sends people to an inbox nobody checks.
This guide focuses on paid advertising for pediatric therapy practices, including speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, ABA, and multidisciplinary clinics. When we discuss Google here, we mean Google Search campaigns. Google Ads also includes other campaign types, which work differently.
Which advertising channel should you try first?
Consider Google Search first: People in your service area are searching for the service you offer, your practice has capacity for the next step you advertise, and you have a useful page to send them to.
Consider Meta first: You need to introduce a practice, location, or service, you can create useful photos or video, and your team is prepared for inquiries from people who may still be learning about their options.
Fix the inquiry process first: Calls go unanswered, messages have no clear owner, or the ads would promote availability the practice cannot support. Resolve that gap before paying to bring more inquiries into it.
There is overlap. Search can introduce someone to a practice they have never heard of, and Meta can generate direct inquiries. Use these starting points to choose a test, then judge the results against the goal you set.
When Google Search ads make sense for a therapy practice
Google describes Search campaigns as a way to reach people actively searching for products and services. That makes Search worth investigating when a family can name what they are looking for, such as pediatric speech therapy in a particular area.
The practical question is how closely that search matches your practice. An adult looking for rehabilitation, a student looking for a degree program, and a parent looking for pediatric therapy could all use some of the same words. Review the searches that trigger your ads and use negative keywords to exclude irrelevant searches where appropriate.
Start with a specific service and a realistic service area. If you offer speech therapy at one location and occupational therapy at another, the ads and destination pages should make that distinction. A broad campaign promising every service everywhere is harder to evaluate and easier to misunderstand.
Before choosing a budget, check local demand. Google's Keyword Planner provides search-volume information and bid estimates that can be narrowed by location. Use them to plan, then compare the estimates with what happens in your own campaign. They do not predict how many families will contact you or schedule an evaluation.
Hypothetical example: A speech therapy practice has confirmed evaluation openings at its north-side office, a page explaining the service and location, and an intake coordinator who handles new inquiries. If relevant local searches exist, a focused Search campaign is a reasonable first test. The ad should describe evaluation availability accurately without implying that ongoing treatment can begin immediately.
When Facebook and Instagram ads make sense for a therapy practice
Paid Facebook and Instagram ads give a practice room to introduce itself through images, video, and copy. Someone might encounter the practice while browsing rather than while typing a therapy-related search.
That can be useful when the first job is helping people understand what the practice offers. A short tour of a new location, an introduction to the team, or an explanation of how to ask about services gives the ad something concrete to communicate.
Meta's lead-generation guide describes options including forms, messaging, and calls. Those options require different staffing decisions. A campaign inviting messages needs someone responsible for that inbox. A form needs a clear explanation of what will happen after submission and a reliable way for the right staff member to receive it.
Hypothetical example: A multidisciplinary pediatric clinic is opening a second location. It has approved staff photos, a clear description of services, and an intake team ready to explain the process. Meta could be a useful first test for introducing the location. The team should still check local search demand before ruling out Search.
Choose a message that stands on its own. Describe the service, location, and next step without suggesting you know a viewer's diagnosis or their child's needs. For pediatric therapy advertising, write for the adult making the inquiry and have qualified staff check service descriptions and any clinical claims.
Sample ad wording: "Pediatric speech and occupational therapy at our new [area] clinic. See the ages we serve and ask about evaluation availability." This is an illustrative message for the fictional clinic above. Use it only if those details accurately describe your practice.
Meta also needs ongoing creative work. Before choosing it, decide who will produce and approve the material, what you can show with appropriate permission, and how you will respond if the first message does not connect.
How much should a therapy practice budget for ads?
Build the budget around the service, the area you want to reach, and the work needed to run the campaign. Local demand and competition matter, so a monthly spend recommended for another practice may be a poor fit for yours.
Separate these costs before comparing proposals:
Media spend: The money paid to the advertising platform to run the campaign.
Campaign work: Research, setup, management, and reporting, whether handled by your team or an agency.
Creative and website work: Ad copy, photos or video, the landing page, and an appropriate measurement setup.
Staff time: The work of reviewing inquiries, contacting people, answering questions, and recording the next step.
For Search, use relevant local search and cost estimates to help scope the test. For Meta, account for the work needed to produce and evaluate creative as well as the media spend. Neither platform should be chosen on an assumption that its leads will always be cheaper.
Write down the service, location, spending ceiling, review date, and decision you want to make. For example: "Can this campaign generate inquiries about speech evaluations at our north-side office that our team can contact and move to the appropriate next step?" Decide what would justify continuing, changing the campaign, or pausing it.
If the budget cannot support a useful test on both platforms, start with one. Splitting a limited budget across multiple services and channels can leave you with several small sets of results and little basis for deciding what worked. Choose the test with the clearest business purpose, then expand when the evidence supports it.
Give the ad a destination that answers real questions
A person who clicks an occupational therapy ad should not have to search your homepage to find out whether you offer occupational therapy at the location they need. Use a relevant page that answers the questions your intake team hears every day.
Explain the service, ages served, locations, and the next administrative step. Give visitors a clear contact route. If availability varies, say how to check it. If you list insurance plans, explain the verification process without promising coverage for every person or service.
Use the same language in the ad and on the page. "Ask about evaluation openings" and "Start therapy this week" make different promises. Have the people responsible for scheduling check the wording before the campaign runs.
Open the page on a phone and try the contact options. Check that the phone number works, the form reaches the intended team, and the confirmation message explains what happens next. Our pediatric website design guide goes into more detail about organizing these answers.
If the campaign uses an on-platform form instead, the handoff still needs testing. A submitted form should reach someone who knows what the person saw and what response they were told to expect.
Match the campaign to your ability to handle inquiries
Ask your intake team what would happen if several new inquiries arrived tomorrow. The answer should include a person, a process, and coverage when that person is unavailable.
Ownership: Who checks each phone line, form, or inbox, and who is the backup?
Response expectation: What reply window can the team consistently meet, including after-hours inquiries? An automatic acknowledgment should be clearly identified as one.
Routing: How does an inquiry reach the person responsible for the relevant service or location?
Capacity updates: Who tells the marketing team when availability changes so the ads and website can be adjusted?
A campaign built around phone calls needs a plan for missed calls. A message campaign needs an actively managed inbox. A form campaign needs dependable delivery and follow-up. None of those responsibilities disappears because the advertising platform reports a lead.
If the current process is unclear, start with our website inquiry handoff guide. Advertising and follow-up need to be planned together so the team can support what the campaign invites people to do.
Compare useful inquiries, not just clicks
Impressions count how often an ad was shown. Click-through rate, or CTR, is clicks divided by impressions, expressed as a percentage. Those measures help you understand the ad's response, but they do not establish whether the practice received inquiries it could help.
Agree on the campaign's goal before comparing results. A campaign introducing a new location and one built to generate inquiries need different success measures. If you compare Google and Meta on inquiry costs, make sure both campaigns are working toward that goal.
For campaigns seeking inquiries, review media spend, inquiries received, people successfully contacted, and inquiries that reached a defined next step. Agree on what counts before launch. An inquiry about a service you do not offer should not be treated the same as one your team can help with the service requested.
You can calculate media cost per relevant inquiry by dividing media spend by the number of inquiries meeting your agreed definition. If you include management or production costs, label that broader calculation clearly. Compare channels using the same definitions and reporting periods, and allow time for follow-up before judging recent inquiries.
Keep scheduled evaluations separate from completed evaluations and ongoing care. A low platform-reported cost per lead may still involve substantial staff work. A higher cost per inquiry is not automatically justified either. Review the next steps and workload alongside the cost.
Check health advertising and data rules before launch
Therapy advertising needs a careful review of targeting and measurement. Google's health policy for personalized advertising restricts advertiser-curated audiences, including Customer Match and your data segments, when promoting sensitive health categories. Do not assume patient-list targeting or remarketing to visitors of condition-specific pages is available or appropriate.
Google's customer data policies also prohibit sensitive health-related conversion information in enhanced conversions and store-sales uploads. Having a contact record in a CRM does not make it suitable to send to an advertising platform.
For either channel, have the people responsible for privacy and campaign setup review the actual forms, tracking, integrations, and current platform policies before launch. Keep clinical details in the practice's approved systems. Collecting an initial inquiry and sharing information for ad measurement are separate decisions. Use appropriately reviewed reporting that gives the marketing team useful totals without exposing patient details.
Choose the first campaign your practice can support
If your practice has a specific service to promote, relevant local search demand, a clear destination page, and reliable follow-up, Google Search is a sensible place to test. If the priority is introducing a location or explaining the practice through useful creative, Meta deserves consideration. If neither campaign would receive dependable follow-up, repair that process before increasing inquiry volume.
After the first test, review the searches or ad creative, inquiry records, and staff workload before deciding what to fund next. Those details give you a better basis for the next budget decision than clicks alone.
Driftlss is a marketing agency serving businesses across industries, with ABA and pediatric care among our specialties. Our paid advertising work connects channel strategy, creative, landing pages, and meaningful measurement around what a business can support. Google and Meta are two options within that broader work.
If you are choosing where to start, bring the service you want to promote, the location it serves, your working budget, and a picture of how inquiries are handled today. Talk with Driftlss about turning those details into a focused first campaign.
