Intro
The client is a specialist orthopedic clinic in Indonesia, treating herniated discs, pinched nerves, bone and joint disorders, and height-correction patients. When GTMLab took over paid media, the clinic was generating a modest, flat volume of recorded leads each month, with a minimum paid search presence.
Nine months later, monthly leads had climbed over 600% from where they started, on a budget that grew less than 25%. We rebuilt the paid layer from the ground up: launching Google Search across three condition-specific campaigns and scaling Meta into a structured two-layer funnel — one layer to warm new audiences, one to convert them. The results compounded month over month.
A high-intent healthcare market, underbuilt paid infrastructure.
Our Client's patients have active, often painful musculoskeletal conditions — they've typically been suffering for weeks or months and are actively researching solutions. That makes them ideal for Google Search (high-intent, condition-specific queries) and responsive to social-proof-driven Meta creative (reassurance plus clinical authority).
The Indonesian orthopedic market is competitive — private specialists, hospital orthopedic departments and traditional-medicine alternatives all compete for the same patient. The paid opportunity at takeover was significant. The existing setup wasn't capturing it.
The challenge.
Demand was searching. The clinic had no paid system to meet it.
- No Google Search presence. High-intent condition searches were unaddressed. Competitors captured that demand while the client had zero paid search visibility.
- Meta campaigns lacked funnel structure. No MOFU/BOFU split. Budget allocation didn't reflect the journey from awareness to active consultation intent — all campaigns ran with similar objectives and audience logic.
- Condition segments were untargeted. The three core patient segments — acute herniated-disc, chronic bone-and-joint, and elective height-correction — are distinct personas with different urgency, treatment cost and decision timelines. One creative served all three.
- Attribution was weak. No consistent UTM structure, pixel tracking unverified, no cross-channel view. The clinic relied on manual lead counting with no paid performance framework.
- Lead-to-patient conversion was unmeasured. The roughly one-in-eight baseline conversion rate wasn't being used as a feedback signal into ad targeting or creative decisions.
Where Our Client was at takeover (August 2025)
We knew the patients were out there — we just weren't reaching them. GTMLab fixed that. They got us showing up in search, reworked our Meta ads around how people actually choose a clinic, and gave our front desk a simple process that turned more calls into appointments.CEO · Co-Founder
OUR BUILD
A 5-phase system, built measurement-first.
1 Signal & tracking setup
You can't optimise what you can't see. We didn't touch a campaign until the measurement layer was clean — because every budget and creative decision downstream is only as good as the data feeding it.
- Corrected tracking and standardised attribution across both channels
- Stood up a monthly dashboard surfacing leads, patients and conversion value
2 Meta campaign architecture
A single-layer Meta account can't reflect the patient journey from awareness to consultation intent. We rebuilt it as a clear two-layer funnel — reach at the top, messaging connections and lead capture at the bottom — with condition-specific creative and tighter targeting at the BOFU layer.
- Rebuilt Meta as a two-layer MOFU/BOFU funnel — reach at the top, lead capture at the bottom
- Condition-specific creative and tighter targeting at the bottom of the funnel
3 Google Ads launch
Patients searching their condition by name are already in buying mode. With zero paid search presence, the clinic was handing that decision moment to competitors. Three BOFU search campaigns went live against the core condition clusters.
- Launched paid search from zero against the highest-intent condition clusters
- Concentrated budget on the clusters driving the most volume and the most efficient leads
4 Creative & messaging development
Healthcare creative requires clinical authority, not clinic branding. We built condition-specific messaging for each patient segment — because a herniated-disc patient and a height-correction prospect are not persuaded by the same thing.
- Healthcare creative requires clinical authority, not clinic branding. We built condition-specific messaging for each patient segment — because a herniated-disc patient and a height-correction prospect are not persuaded by the same thing.
- Video added at the top of the funnel to build recall before bottom-funnel retargeting
5 Cross-channel optimisation
From month 4 the system ran on a monthly feedback loop — and that loop, not any single campaign, is what turned good months into a compounding curve. January's peak was a direct result of it.
- A monthly feedback loop off the clinic's own patient tracker, not platform data
- Budget rebalanced to the best-performing clusters; creative refreshed before fatigue
Patient segments & messaging
Three conditions, three completely different patients.
| Patient segment | Core friction | Hook angle that worked |
|---|---|---|
| Herniated discPinched nerve | "I've been in pain a long time, I'm scared of surgery, and I don't know which doctor to go to. I'm worried it'll be expensive." | Urgency + non-surgical framing — "Explore non-surgical care, guided by specialists who explain every step and what recovery looks like." — with doctor credibility and a clear recovery timeline. |
| Bone, joint & muscle pain RoleChronic bone, joint & muscle pain | "It's chronic. I've tried lots of places and I'm still not better." | Empathy for the chronic-pain experience plus specialist authority — "why am I still not better?" as the way in, then transparency about the treatment process to rebuild the trust earlier failures had worn down. |
| Height correctionElective height-increase treatment | "I want to be taller but I'm unsure — is this clinic legitimate? Are the results real?" | Aspiration backed by clinical credibility — before-and-after height-progression proof and doctor-validated results. |
The Strutural Shift
Before → After GTMLab
| Dimension | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly leads | 100+ leads, mostly low-intent | 1,000+ high-intent leads |
| Cost efficiency | High, unbenchmarked CPL — no paid performance framework | Over 60% reduction in CPL |
| Google Search | One campaign that is aimed for everyone | Segmented campaigns based on persona, intent; resulting not only a higher lead volume, but also at a 40%+ lower CPC compared to before |
| Funnel structure | Single-layer campaign, with no clear objective | Prospecting and retargeting layer live, utilizing all channels. |
| Perfromance Creative | Generic clinic creative across all patient types | Message that is tailored and resonates to the target persona, aimed for conversions. |
What the funnel looks like
Results — 9 months in.
A machine that keeps running. A clinic that once counted leads by hand now runs a measured, two-channel paid system with a monthly feedback loop — and a front-desk team with a steady, qualified pipeline to work from.
The honest part: the lead-to-patient rate wasn't steady. It swung month to month — single digits in the early weeks — and only climbed as the monthly feedback loop compounded. The peak was the ceiling, not the norm.
What nine months of healthcare paid media taught us
Four principles that earned their place.
Search intent is the real unlock for healthcare leads.
Patients searching their condition by name are already in buying mode — they've moved from "something's wrong" to "I'm ready to fix this." Google captured that decision moment at a click-through rate more than double the healthcare benchmark. Meta builds the warm audience; Google catches them at the moment they act. Both are necessary; neither alone is enough.
Condition-specific messaging compounds over time.
The best-performing BOFU condition campaign hit about a third of the account-average cost per messaging connection — because every word spoke to one patient type. Generic clinic creative spreads budget across audiences who don't convert. Segment by condition, write for the pain, measure separately.
The lead tracker is your best optimisation signal.
The clinic's monthly lead and patient data was the most valuable input we had. When a month's lead-to-patient rate jumped, we doubled down on the campaigns driving that quality; when a month dipped, we audited creative and audience logic. The feedback loop between offline data and paid strategy is what separated compounding from plateau.