Spine Central

SpineCentral, a leading chiropractic clinic in London, founded by Richard Gliddon DC, approached Berkeley Health to scale new patient acquisition through paid search. Positioning the clinic as a premium alternative for patients with chronic pain, complex spinal conditions, and posture-related issues who have often tried other practitioners without lasting results.

The brief was clear: build a Google Ads programme capable of consistently generating high-quality new patient applications for the clinic's £49 initial assessment offer, while reaching the right audience, patients in South West of London actively searching for relief from back pain, sciatica, neck pain, and disc-related conditions.

Paid search for a specialist chiropractic clinic in London is uniquely difficult, for several reasons.

First, the competitive landscape. London has one of the densest concentrations of chiropractors, osteopaths, and physiotherapists in Europe, all bidding aggressively on the same head terms. CPCs on these terms regularly run high, and traditional chiropractic chains dominate generic searches, making it difficult for a single-location specialist to compete profitably.

Second, the specificity of SpineCentral's offering. ABC and structural correction aren't search terms with mass volume, most patients searching for help don't yet know the methodology exists. This creates a fundamental tension: bid on high-volume generic terms and compete with everyone, or bid on niche methodology terms with low volume. Striking the right balance was critical.

Third, intent and qualification. SpineCentral isn't trying to attract one-off pain relief visits, the clinic's care model involves a structured Relief, Corrective, and Wellness journey. Attracting the wrong type of patient through paid search wastes consultation slots and damages clinic economics. Ads needed to qualify intent, not just generate clicks.

The existing account had structural issues common to specialist healthcare practices: overly broad ad groups mixing conditions and treatments, weak ad copy that didn't communicate SpineCentral's differentiation, negative keyword gaps allowing irrelevant traffic to drain budget, and conversion tracking that wasn't capturing the full picture of new patient applications and call enquiries.

Berkeley Health rebuilt SpineCentral's paid search programme from the ground up, with a strategy built around the clinic's specialist positioning.

Campaign Restructure by Condition and Intent. We segmented campaigns by condition rather than treating chiropractic as one undifferentiated service. Dedicated campaigns and tightly themed ad groups were built around back pain and sciatica, neck pain and headaches, sports injuries, posture and structural concerns, and brand defence. This allowed us to write ad copy that mirrored the language patients actually use when searching, and importantly, to differentiate SpineCentral's approach from generic chiropractic ads competing on the same auctions.

Geo-Targeting and Audience Strategy. We refined geo-targeting to focus budget on Hampton, Richmond, Kingston, Twickenham, and the surrounding catchment where SpineCentral's patient base genuinely lives and travels from, eliminating waste on clicks from across Greater London that would never convert into in-clinic appointments. Bid adjustments were layered by device, time of day, and demographic signals to prioritise high-intent moments.

Ad Copy and Differentiation. Rather than competing on price or proximity, ads were written to communicate SpineCentral's specific value proposition: a leading-edge alternative for patients who have tried traditional approaches without success. This pre-qualified clicks, driving away one-off pain relief seekers and attracting patients actively looking for a more comprehensive solution, which directly improved lead quality and downstream patient lifetime value.

Negative Keyword and Search Term Hygiene. We built robust negative keyword lists to filter out job searches, training course queries, NHS-related searches, and informational queries unlikely to convert. Ongoing search term review became a weekly discipline, continuously refining the account based on real query data.

Landing Page Alignment and Conversion Tracking. We aligned ad groups with the most relevant existing landing pages on the SpineCentral site, ensuring patients searching for sciatica relief landed on sciatica-specific content rather than the homepage. Conversion tracking was rebuilt to capture new patient applications, phone calls, and booking form completions, giving us clean attribution data to optimise against, and crucially, to feed Google's Smart Bidding algorithms with reliable conversion signals.

• Google Ads: The primary acquisition channel, restructured into condition-specific campaigns for back pain, sciatica, neck pain, sports injuries, and brand defence.
• Google Search Console & Google Analytics: For ongoing search performance monitoring and conversion attribution.
• Call tracking: To accurately capture phone enquiries generated by paid search and feed call conversions back into Google Ads optimisation.
• Google Tag Manager: For robust conversion tracking across form submissions, calls, and booking interactions.

• 5.2x ROAS on Google Ads, transforming paid search into a reliably profitable channel for new patient acquisition.
• 37% increase in monthly new patient applications, with a meaningful improvement in lead quality, applications now converting more consistently into long-term care patients.
• 21% reduction in cost-per-lead, achieved through account restructure, improved Quality Scores, tighter geo-targeting, and ruthless negative keyword discipline.
• 26% improvement in conversion rate from click to enquiry, driven by better intent-to-ad alignment and stronger differentiated copy.
• Significantly reduced wasted spend on out-of-catchment clicks and unqualified search queries.
• By rebuilding SpineCentral's Google Ads programme around the clinic's specialist positioning, and treating paid search as a qualification tool rather than just a volume play, Berkeley Health gave the practice a predictable, profitable engine for attracting the right kind of patient at scale.