Goal: a fuller diary
Google Ads for bookings and appointments
Judged at the confirmation page, not the click
A campaign for bookings is measured where the booking is confirmed, and everything about it is built backwards from that point: a radius drawn around where your patients, clients or diners actually come from, a schedule that follows the hours you take bookings and the days you have gaps, ads that name the treatment or the occasion someone typed, and a booking page that is tracked to the end even when the engine belongs to someone else. For a Manchester clinic, salon, restaurant, venue or studio, the management fee starts at £249 a month, and the report counts bookings and what each cost.
Who books, and what they type
Six kinds of Manchester diary, six different campaigns
Dental and medical practices
Emergency dentist, hygienist, invisible braces, a private GP appointment. High intent, a tight radius, and the booking often ends in a phone call, so calls are counted alongside online bookings.
Didsbury, Chorlton, Sale, the city centre
Salons, barbers, aesthetics
Balayage, lash lifts, a specific treatment by name. Searches are for the treatment first and the salon second, so the ad and the page name the treatment, and the radius follows the tram lines.
Northern Quarter, Ancoats, Altrincham, Prestwich
Restaurants and bars
Christmas party venue, bottomless brunch, private dining, a table tonight near a show or a match. Occasion searches, run in season and on the days that matter, never for the walk-in trade that fills anyway.
Spinningfields, Deansgate, Castlefield, the Quays
Venues and events
Wedding venue, conference room, a party room for forty. Long decisions, a form as often as a booking, and a campaign that runs all year for a diary that fills a year ahead.
Across Greater Manchester and into Cheshire
Studios, gyms, classes
Reformer Pilates, a climbing intro session, a beginners' course. Trials and first sessions are the conversion; the retention afterwards is what makes the cost per booking worth it.
Salford Quays, Stockport, Chorlton, the centre
Trades with a diary
Boiler service, MOT, a window clean round. Booked, not emergency: the ad runs for the planned job and the local services page covers the emergency one.
Every borough
The booking path
Six steps from the search to the counted booking, and where each one breaks
Most booking campaigns that look expensive are not expensive; they are unmeasured. The path below is tested end to end at setup, with a real booking, before the campaign spends.
The search
'Emergency dentist Manchester', 'Christmas party venue Deansgate'. The keyword is the treatment or the occasion, at phrase or exact match, so the search terms stay readable.
The ad
Names what was typed, the area, and the thing that makes you the choice: same-day, late opening, a price if you publish one. A location asset from the Business Profile, a call asset in hours.
The page
The treatment or occasion page, not the home page, with the booking button above the fold on a phone and the number beside it. Measured for speed monthly.
The engine
Your booking system, whoever provides it. This is where tracking breaks: an iframe, a different domain, no thank-you page. Solved at setup, or the report says what could not be counted.
The confirmation
The conversion fires here, once, with the treatment or table type as a label where the system allows it, so the report can say what kind of booking the money bought.
The report
Bookings by campaign and by day of week, cost per booking including the fee, the searches that booked and the ones that did not, and the next change.
Radius and hours
Bookings travel a known distance at known times
Your existing diary already tells you where people come from. A clinic in Sale that sees patients from Altrincham, Stretford and Chorlton does not need clicks from Rochdale, and a restaurant in Castlefield does not need a booking search from Wigan on a Tuesday. The radius is set from the postcodes you already serve, presence not interest, and the boroughs outside it go on the negative list by name.
Hours matter more for bookings than for almost any other goal. Restaurants are searched for in the afternoon for tonight and in the evening for the weekend; clinics are searched for at lunchtime from a desk and at nine at night from a sofa. The schedule follows the search terms by hour, and the budget moves towards the days you have gaps rather than the days you are already full.
What the free listing does first
The ad is not always the answer, and we say so
For a great many Manchester bookings, a well-kept Google Business Profile with photos, hours, a booking link and recent reviews does the work for nothing, especially for “near me” searches. Before we recommend a campaign we look at the map results for your searches, and if the Profile can win them the reply says fix the Profile first and spend on the searches the map does not cover.
The same honesty applies to seasons. A restaurant's Christmas campaign starts in October and stops in December; a wedding venue runs all year; a tax adviser's appointment campaign runs from January to the end of the month. The budget follows the diary, and the report shows the cost per booking for each period rather than an average that hides both.
Keep reading
Next door to this page
Ads for phone calls
When the booking ends in a call, both are counted.
Landing pages
The treatment or occasion page the click lands on, with the booking button where thumbs are.
Pricing
The fee is by spend band, whatever fills the diary.
Get a quote
Tell us what a booking is worth; the reply says what one should cost.
Questions about ads for bookings
How do you count a booking as a conversion?
At the confirmation page or the confirmation event, not at the click on the 'book now' button. If your booking engine is on your own domain that is a tag on the thank-you page; if it is a third-party engine it is either their conversion integration, a thank-you redirect back to your site, or a call to us from their support to set up the event. We test it with a real booking before the campaign spends.
My booking system is a third-party widget. Can it still be tracked?
Usually. Most of the common systems for clinics, salons and restaurants either support Google Ads conversion tracking directly, redirect to a page you control after booking, or fire an event we can catch with Tag Manager. Where none of that is possible we count the phone call and the enquiry form instead and say so in the report.
Is Google Ads worth it for a restaurant in Manchester?
For occasions people search for, yes: Christmas parties from October, bottomless brunch, private dining, pre-theatre near the Palace and the Opera House, a table on a matchday. For a walk-in lunch trade in the Northern Quarter that fills anyway, usually not, and we will say so. The question page on this site goes through it in detail.
What radius do you use for a clinic or salon?
The one people actually travel. A dentist in Didsbury draws from south Manchester and the tram line, not from Bolton; an aesthetic clinic in the city centre draws from the whole region for a specialist treatment. The radius is set from where existing patients come from, and the report shows where the bookings came from so it can be tightened.
Can the ads run only when I have gaps?
Yes. A campaign can run on the days you have capacity and pause when the diary is full, and the budget can move towards the quiet weekday afternoons. It is one of the few goals where spending less at busy times is the whole point.
What does it cost?
The management fee is set by spend, not by goal: £249 a month up to £1,000 of ad spend, £399 up to £3,000, £599 up to £8,000, excluding VAT. What a booking costs depends on the treatment or the table and on the Manchester CPC for it, which the first month's report shows.
Do you handle the Google Business Profile as well?
We check it is set up properly, because the location asset on the ad pulls from it and because for many bookings the free map listing does the job before the ad is needed. The Profile is not what the fee is for, but a campaign that ignores it wastes money.
Can you advertise health treatments?
Within Google's healthcare and the UK advertising rules, yes. Some treatments and claims are restricted or need certification, and some words in ad copy are not allowed. We write within the rules and tell you when a claim you want to make cannot run.
How fast will the diary fill?
Clicks the first day, bookings in the first week if the page and the tracking are right, and a fair reading of cost per booking after about a month. A new practice with no reviews takes longer than an established one, because the ad is only the first step and the booking page has to earn the rest.
Say what the ads are for. The fee and the first three changes come back in writing.
Calls, sales, bookings or leads, roughly what you spend, and the part of Greater Manchester you sell to. Daniel Stoychev reads it himself and answers within one working day with the tier, the fee and what he would change first. Already spending? The free check reads your account in 72 hours.