When our client, a mental health platform supporting in-person and telehealth care, first came to 9Sail, many broad marketing strategies were being utilized that didn’t allow for targeted audience conversions. PPC had been attempted in the past, but a niche was yet to be found, and it was doing a lot of the heavy lifting on the marketing side. And, while the majority of its patients were looking for anxiety and depression care, capturing these inquiries was difficult due to the high keyword difficulty and content saturation.

Key Takeaways From This Study

• Trusting a proven PPC team with your accounts will reduce headaches and lift the pressure off your internal team—while resulting in better conversions!
• In-depth tracking allows for more informed, data-driven marketing decisions.
• While PPC alone can lead to incredible results, supporting it with SEO, content, and digital PR services will create a well-rounded digital marketing strategy.

A Note From the Client

“Working with 9Sail has been great for our business in the mental health space! We’ve been seeing some positive results on our paid ads. The team is very helpful, responsive, and open to feedback. They know their stuff! I would definitely recommend using 9Sail for your business.”

Where We Started

With locations spanning every region of the country, 9Sail first focused on the client’s two main states of service: New York and California. In New York, our client had previously explored Google pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns, with an average patient conversion cost of $1,567.83.

This resulted in a $175,597.22 total spend for PPC in just 2022 alone. To improve overall conversions and page views and bring in the right-fit patients for its New York providers, 9Sail began managing PPC ads for Google, as well as on-site, off-site, and technical SEO, content development, and digital PR.

Optimizing Google Ads for Better Results and Lower Costs

Our client’s previous SEM efforts had been focused on generating leads that, at initial glance, appeared to be cheaper but ultimately did not turn into patients. Many of the conversions generated were phone calls and email contact forms, which required follow-up from staff to qualify.

With the introduction of 9Sail’s experienced paid ads team and comprehensive best practices, there was an immediate difference in both tone and results.

Our client’s ad account was not targeted for best-fit conversions, leading to a high spend and high cost per acquisition. The beauty of Google ads is the fully customizable campaigns, which allow for hyper-targeting of specific keywords, resulting in more results and more strategic use of your budget. 9Sail’s strategy made this a reality, remedying those initial pain points and optimizing the practice’s budget and campaigns for their new goals.

With these changes and continued tracking of campaign performance, our client saw a 76% decrease in average patient acquisition cost on Google Ads. Although 9Sail’s campaigns ran for less than a full calendar year, they brought in 140 conversions at an average cost per conversion of $193.55. See the Results section for a full breakdown of the improvements made to our client’s Google Ads performance.

Strategic SEO Updates Improved Traffic and Conversions

While 9Sail’s Paid Ads team brought patients to our client’s website, the SEO team worked to ensure they stayed there. Upon their intake, 9Sail ran a full content audit and called on tools such as Google Search Console to understand which areas of the website needed the most attention. This, combined with our client’s PPC goals of hyper-targeting and improving local reach, guided our SEO team towards specific updates to make. 9Sail optimized and removed certain pages and also implemented technical backend changes, allowing our client to pass all Google Core Web Vitals on both desktop and mobile. These updates have resulted in ongoing success, with continued improvements across the board for traffic, conversions, and site metrics. See the Results section for a full breakdown.

How Content and PR Boosted Our Client’s SEO Success

To support the optimizations made by our SEO team and help boost on-site SEO, 9Sail created an ongoing content schedule with relevant and high-performing topics. Tools like Ahrefs and SEMRush continually allow our team to make search-driven decisions about the content makeup to help position our client as a trusted and educated industry leader. 9Sail’s digital PR services also helped our client’s off-site SEO flourish. By working with our client’s expert providers, our PR team can build an extensive backlink profile through blog placements, thought leadership quotes, and personal media interviews. In the Results section, you can see the impact these efforts had on our client’s backlink profile and overall referring domains.

The Results

Since welcoming 9Sail as a partner and vendor, our client has seen a dramatic improvement in PPC performance, on-site, off-site, and technical SEO, content generation, and digital PR.

1. Prior to bringing on 9Sail, our client was managing their own PPC and relying on other external agencies, resulting in a $353.58 cost per conversion. Since bringing on 9Sail in mid-2024, their conversions and conversion rate went up, while the cost per conversion went down.

Google Ads Performance: 

2. With the addition of 9Sail’s SEO services, our client saw a 100% increase in key events year over year. This includes increases in typeform submissions, ‘Contact Us’ form completions, and matchmaker—all seeing 100% more conversions than the year prior to bringing on 9Sail.

3. 9Sail’s content and digital PR services acted as an excellent support to our ongoing PPC and SEO work. After implementing optimized content and targeted PR and backlink outreach, our client saw a 76% increase in total backlinks and an over 107% increase in total referring domains year over year.

Content and Digital PR Management Performance:

Driving Measurable Growth Through Strategic SEO & PPC

Through a combination of strategic SEO enhancements and optimized paid advertising, 9Sail helped our client achieve significant and measurable growth. The results speak for themselves—lower acquisition costs, stronger search visibility, and a more effective digital presence.

To learn more about how 9Sail can boost your healthcare brand’s presence online and patient growth, contact us today!