Google Ads for ABA providers,
measured in actual clients, not just leads.

Why this is different

ABA marketing isn't ordinary lead generation

Most agencies run an ABA account the way they'd run one for a plumber: maximize form fills, report cost per lead, call it a success. Three things make ABA different, and missing them costs money.

Families aren't price shopping

Services are usually funded through commercial insurance, Medicaid or Early Intervention. The parent filling out your form isn't comparing your rate to a competitor's. They want to know three things: are you in-network with my plan, do you have openings, and how soon can we start.

Ads that answer those up front produce better inquiries. They also screen out families you can't serve before your intake coordinator spends time running a verification of benefits.

Lifetime value is high, so you can afford more per client

One client may receive services for months or years, billed in authorized units. Owners who've seen a $60 cost per lead in another industry routinely underbid a channel that could profitably pay several times that.

The number that matters isn't cost per form fill. It's what it costs to get one family all the way to their first session, and the gap between the two is wide. Inquiries fall out at verification of benefits, at prior authorization, and between the assessment and the start of care.

Track the whole intake funnel, not just the form

Google's bidding gives you more of whatever you tell it to value. If the only thing you track is form submissions, it will find people who like filling out forms. Feeding the later stages back changes what it optimizes toward:

1. Form submitted or call booked. The only event most accounts track.
2. Verification of benefits completed. Confirms the family is in-network and eligible.
3. Assessment scheduled, then completed.
4. Prior authorization approved and start of care. The point where you actually have a client.

Sending those back to Google Ads as offline conversions, with values attached, is usually the single highest-impact change we make in an ABA account.

Hiring campaigns matter as much as client campaigns

Ask most ABA owners what limits growth and the answer is clinical capacity, not demand. Even so, the ad budget usually goes entirely to client acquisition while BCBA and RBT recruiting is left to job boards and referral bonuses.

Recruitment campaigns need their own keywords, landing pages and conversion events. They often cost less per hire than agency placement fees, which is easy enough to check against what you pay now. If your waitlist is long because every caseload is full, more client inquiries only make it longer.

What Google's health rules mean in practice

Google restricts personalized advertising based on health conditions. That has a few practical effects on how an ABA account gets built:

• No remarketing lists based on health status. You can't build an audience of people who visited your autism services page and target them as such.
• Watch what your tracking sends. Conversion data, form fields and page paths shouldn't carry diagnostic or identifying health information. It's worth auditing what your tag actually transmits.
• Watch the ad copy. Language implying you know someone's condition can get disapproved.

None of this prevents you from advertising. It shapes how the account is set up, and it's easier to get right the first time.

Where ABA accounts usually waste money

• Broad match with no negatives. "ABA therapy" pulls in students researching coursework, people looking for BCBA certification programs, and job seekers. They all click.
• Targeting outside your service area. Clicks from towns with no clinician coverage become inquiries you have to turn away.
• Payer mismatch. If you're out-of-network with a plan, say so before the click rather than after a benefits check.
• Slow follow-up. Response time matters more than almost anything else in intake. A strong campaign can't outrun a two-day callback.