A surge in patient visits for a leading Bangalore hospital
Three months of flat results despite growing budgets. First Launch introduced Performance Max — and patient acquisition finally broke through the ceiling.
The client & the ask
A leading multi-speciality hospital in Bangalore committed to global standards of healthcare and surgical excellence.
The hospital had been running digital marketing campaigns for some time, building a presence and generating patient leads. But despite consistent investment, patient acquisition had plateaued — they couldn't crack 100 visits from digital in a single month.
The engagement with First Launch came with a clear mandate: break through that ceiling and achieve 120 patient visits per month through digital, while keeping cost per lead within the existing range. Not just a volume target — an efficiency target too.
Three months of stagnation despite every optimisation
The team had tried everything in the standard playbook — and nothing moved the needle.
Prior to engaging with First Launch, patient growth had been frozen for nearly three months. Despite increasing campaign budgets and running multiple rounds of optimisation, acquisition numbers held stubbornly in place. Three distinct initiatives had already been attempted:
- Ad copies were regularly refreshed and multiple messaging variations tested, in an attempt to improve engagement and campaign response rates.
- Cost-per-conversion caps were introduced to improve lead flow efficiency and optimise acquisition costs.
- Campaigns were restructured to strengthen keyword relevance and ad alignment, targeting improved Quality Scores, reduced cost per lead, and higher lead volumes.
Why Performance Max — and why it worked
A unified, machine learning-driven campaign framework that broke the structural ceiling incremental optimisation couldn't reach.
First Launch introduced Performance Max (PMax) campaigns as the cornerstone of the revised growth strategy. This goal-oriented format enabled the hospital to leverage Google's entire advertising ecosystem through a single, unified campaign structure — designed to maximise reach, targeting efficiency, and conversion potential simultaneously.
The existing campaign structure was limiting reach, audience discovery, and conversion scalability. Traditional formats relied on predefined targeting and isolated channel execution — restricting the ability to find high-intent users beyond the existing audience pool.
Performance Max enabled cross-channel execution across Search, Display, YouTube, Discover, Gmail, and Maps through a single unified setup — using existing audience data as strong intent signals while simultaneously enabling Google's algorithm to discover new, high-potential users likely to convert.
How it all unfolded
Six precise interventions that transformed a stagnant campaign into a scalable patient acquisition engine.
The data that followed
Before and after Performance Max activation — the numbers tell the story.
Rather than one more optimisation, the focus shifted to building a conversion ecosystem that learns continuously from user behaviour, intent signals, and real business outcomes.
Questions about this engagement
Common questions about how First Launch scaled patient visits for a leading Bangalore hospital using Performance Max.
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Performance Max is a goal-based Google Ads campaign type that runs across Google's entire inventory — Search, Display, YouTube, Discover, Gmail, and Maps — through a single unified setup. First Launch chose it because the hospital's existing campaign structure had plateaued despite multiple optimisations, and PMax offered a way to leverage machine learning and real-time audience signals to discover new high-intent patients beyond the existing audience pool.
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The case study reflects results achieved in 2024 following implementation. Performance Max campaigns typically require a learning period as Google's algorithm collects conversion data — during this phase, the team continuously refined audience signals and excluded low-quality placements to accelerate performance.
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Several key controls were implemented: URL expansion was disabled to ensure users only reached pre-selected high-conversion landing pages; automatically created assets were turned off to retain messaging control; low-quality placements were excluded at the account level; and brand exclusion lists were used to prevent cannibalisation of organic branded traffic.
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The mandate included maintaining cost per lead within the existing range while scaling volume. Audience signal optimisation — continuously refined using revenue and conversion data — enabled the algorithm to prioritise higher-value users, improving lead quality alongside volume rather than simply increasing raw traffic.
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Yes. The principles applied here — unified cross-channel execution, intent-signal optimisation, placement hygiene, and brand exclusion — are applicable across healthcare verticals including clinics, diagnostic centres, wellness brands, and speciality care providers. The strategy adapts to the specific treatment categories and conversion goals of each client.
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First Launch combines deep performance marketing expertise with an analytical, data-led approach to healthcare patient acquisition. Rather than incremental optimisations within existing structures, the team evaluates whether the campaign architecture itself is the limiting factor — and, when needed, rebuilds it from the ground up around measurable business outcomes.
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