Case study · Healthcare and clinics
Optometry Clinic · High-value consults
A practice with routine revenue wanted more of the high-value work. Getting there was less about ad budget and more about what happened between the enquiry and the surgical calendar.
How does an optometry practice get more LASIK and cataract consultations?
By advertising against the searches people make when they are choosing a provider rather than researching a procedure, and by fixing the path between an enquiry and a booked consultation before increasing the number of enquiries.
This practice ran Google Ads with hands-on consulting and AI automation behind the enquiry flow, and reports an increase in LASIK consults and cataract cases. The practice also expanded and grew into a surgical centre, which were its own business decisions and are not claimed here as marketing results.
Routine work paying the bills, elective work paying for growth
The practice wanted more high-value consults and a path to expand.
Optometry has an unusual revenue shape. Exams, frames and contact lenses provide steady, predictable income with thin margins and a high patient count. Refractive surgery and cataract referrals are the opposite: infrequent, high value, and heavily dependent on being chosen at a specific moment.
A practice that wants to grow cannot do it by seeing more routine patients, because chair time is finite and the margin per chair hour is fixed. It grows by increasing the share of its existing and incoming patient base that goes on to a higher-value procedure, and by being the practice people find when they start looking for one.
The complication is that these procedures are not impulse decisions. LASIK candidates research for months and are extremely price sensitive in a market where price is rarely advertised honestly. Cataract patients are often referred, often older, and frequently want to talk to a person rather than complete a form. The marketing problem and the operational problem are inseparable.
Where the consults were being lost
Before increasing the number of enquiries, the question worth answering is how many of the current ones reach a consultation. In elective eye care the answer is usually lower than the practice thinks.
Count enquiries against booked consults, not against clicks
We traced the path from advert to consultation rather than from advert to form submission. The gap between the two is where the real money was, and it was not visible in any report the practice had been receiving.
Find out what happened to an enquiry in the first hour
For an elective procedure that people are actively comparing, response speed is close to decisive. We looked at how long enquiries waited, who handled them, and what they were told.
Separate LASIK demand from cataract demand
They look adjacent and they are not. LASIK is elective, self-funded, marketed and shopped. Cataract surgery is medically indicated, often insurance-involved, and frequently arrives through referral or through an existing exam. Treating them as one campaign underserves both.
- LASIK: comparison shopping, price sensitivity, long consideration
- Cataract: clinical trigger, referral pathways, older demographic, phone-first
See the remaining steps: Where the consults were being lostHide the remaining steps: Where the consults were being lost
Check whether the practice answered the price question
Refractive surgery pricing is the single most searched aspect of the procedure and the one most practices refuse to address. Silence does not remove the question. It just sends the person to a competitor who answers it.
Audit the internal handover
An enquiry that arrives well and then sits in a shared inbox, or reaches a front desk with no script for elective procedures, is a marketing cost with no marketing cause. This is why the engagement included consulting rather than campaign management alone.
Treating the funnel as one system
| Item | Before | After the work |
|---|---|---|
| Campaign structure | Eye care, broadly | LASIK and cataract handled separately |
| What was measured | Form submissions | Booked consultations |
| Response to an enquiry | When someone got to it | Immediate acknowledgement, then a human |
| The price question | Avoided | Addressed directly |
| Front desk handling | Same script as a routine exam | A path built for elective decisions |
| Out of hours | Unanswered | Captured and queued with context |
What we actually did
Rebuild Google Ads around two distinct procedures
Separate campaigns, separate messaging, separate landing pages and separate definitions of success. A cataract campaign optimised against LASIK-style conversions will quietly spend its budget on the wrong people.
Bid where the decision happens
Budget was concentrated on provider-choice and cost searches rather than procedure-explainer searches. Explaining what LASIK is attracts a reader. Being present when someone searches for a surgeon attracts a consultation.
Consult on the operational side, not just the account
This is the part that is rarely in an agency scope and was decisive here. We worked with the practice on how enquiries were received, who owned them, what was said, and how quickly. No amount of advertising fixes a handover that loses people.
See the remaining steps: What we actually didHide the remaining steps: What we actually did
Automate the parts that should never depend on availability
AI automation covered immediate acknowledgement, routine questions, appointment logistics and follow-up for people who were not ready yet. The human conversation was reserved for the parts that need a human.
- Instant response at any hour, with real information in it
- Routine questions answered without occupying clinical staff
- Structured follow-up for a decision that takes months
Report on consults, and keep reporting on consults
The measure never moved back to clicks or form fills. When the reported number is the one the practice cares about, the decisions made from it tend to be better.
Why the operational half mattered more than the budget
In a high-value, low-frequency procedure, small improvements late in the funnel are worth more than large improvements early in it.
If a practice doubles its enquiry volume and converts the same low share of them into consultations, it has doubled its cost base and bought itself more admin. If it improves the share of enquiries that reach a consultation, every enquiry it already pays for becomes worth more, including all the future ones.
That is why the engagement included consulting and automation rather than campaign management alone. The advertising found people. The operational work is what stopped them leaking out between the enquiry and the calendar.
It is also the reason the same budget can produce very different results in two practices with similar demographics. The difference usually is not the account. It is what happens in the ninety minutes after someone raises their hand.
What changed, and what belongs to the practice
The practice reports an increase in LASIK consults and cataract cases. No figure was published for either, so none is published here.
The original case page also records that the practice expanded to additional locations and grew into a surgical centre. Those are significant achievements and they were the practice's own. Opening a location and building a surgical facility are capital, clinical and operational decisions involving licensing, staffing and finance. Marketing can support the demand that makes such a decision viable. It does not make the decision, take the risk or do the work, and this page does not present those milestones as marketing results.
We are drawing that line deliberately, because case studies in this industry routinely blur it. A practice that grows during an engagement is not the same as a practice that grew because of one, and an agency that claims the second when it delivered the first is telling you something about its standards rather than its capability.
About these results
The increase in LASIK consults and cataract cases was not quantified on the original case page, so it is stated directionally here and no percentage is estimated.
The expansion to additional locations and the growth into a surgical centre were the practice's own business decisions. They happened during the engagement. They are not claimed as outcomes of the marketing work.
Consulting was part of this scope. Where operational change contributed to the result, the credit is shared with the practice's own team, who did the work of changing how enquiries were handled.
Results are from a specific client engagement and vary by market, budget, competition and other factors. They are examples of past outcomes, not a guarantee of future results.
What was actually delivered
- Google Ads management, split into separate LASIK and cataract programmes
- Landing experiences matched to each procedure and each stage of the decision
- Hands-on consulting on enquiry handling, response time and front desk process
- AI automation for acknowledgement, routine questions and long-cycle follow-up
- Reporting built on booked consultations rather than form submissions
The market a practice is competing in
BrightLocal's 2026 Consumer Search Behavior research, which surveys US consumers about their most recent local search, gives the shape of the market this work happens in.
SourceBrightLocal, Consumer Search Behavior, 2026
A practice does not need most of that demand. It needs the small share of it that is looking for the procedure it wants to sell, at the moment it is choosing where to go.
If you want more high-value procedures
Measure the thing you sell. If the report on your desk counts form submissions, you are optimising a website. If it counts consultations, you are optimising a practice. Changing the metric changes every decision downstream of it, usually within a month.
Answer the price question. In elective procedures, refusing to discuss cost does not protect the consultation, it forfeits it. A clear explanation of what determines the price, with a genuine range, outperforms silence and outperforms a fake low anchor by a wider margin still.
Respond faster than feels necessary. In a category where someone is comparing three providers, the practice that replies within minutes is frequently the one that gets the appointment, regardless of which had the better surgeon or the better advert.
Separate what marketing did from what you did. It is a better position to negotiate from, it produces better decisions about where to spend next, and it is the only version of a case study worth reading.
Want more of the high-value work?
We will look at what happens between an enquiry and a booked consult before we talk about ad budget.
Straight answers.
Should LASIK and cataract marketing be separate?
Yes. One is an elective purchase that people shop on price and reputation. The other is a medically indicated procedure that often arrives through a referral or an existing exam, with a different age profile and a strong preference for speaking to a person.
Combining them means writing copy that fits neither, bidding on terms that suit one and waste money on the other, and optimising against a blended conversion that does not describe either patient.
Why is response time such a large factor?
Because an enquiry about an elective procedure is almost never the only enquiry that person is making. They are comparing, and the practice that answers first gets to frame the comparison.
It is also a quality signal in its own right. A prompt, informed response tells someone something about how the practice will treat them as a patient, which is precisely the question they are trying to answer.
Can AI handle patient enquiries in a clinical setting?
For logistics, general information and structured follow-up, yes, and it removes a real burden from clinical staff. For anything touching diagnosis, suitability or clinical advice, no.
The line we hold is that automation can answer what is already published and can gather what the practice needs to know. It does not assess, advise or decide. It also needs to be obvious that it is automation, because pretending otherwise damages trust at the exact moment trust is being formed.
Is it worth advertising if the surgical calendar is already full?
Not at the same level, no. A practice at capacity should be reducing spend, raising prices, or both, not buying more demand it cannot serve.
The exception is when the goal is to change the mix rather than the volume: advertising to fill higher-value slots while routine demand is allowed to soften. That is a deliberate strategy and it needs the operational side to support it.
What should an optometry practice publish about pricing?
Enough for someone to know whether they are in the right place. What is included, what varies, what the range typically is and what would move someone within it.
Federal advertising rules require any claim to be substantiated, so a headline price that almost nobody actually pays is a genuine risk as well as a bad experience. A range with an honest explanation is both safer and more persuasive.
Where this comes from.
Primary documentation and published research behind the guidance on this page.
- Google Ads Help: About conversion tracking (opens in a new tab)The mechanism that connects a click to a booked job.
- Google Ads Help: About conversion tracking for calls (opens in a new tab)Tracking a phone call as a measurable outcome.
- American Academy of Ophthalmology (opens in a new tab)The specialty society for eye physicians and surgeons.
- FTC: Advertising and marketing basics (opens in a new tab)What a claim in an advertisement has to be able to support.
- Google Ads Help: About Quality Score (opens in a new tab)Expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience, defined by Google.
Talk to the team
A short call, a look at how the business currently shows up, and a straight answer on what we would do first.