Rebuilding an ad account that was paying twice
Three overlapping campaigns were bidding against each other on the practice's own brand name. We took the account apart.
- Client
- Prairie Sky Dental
- Sector
- Dental practice
- Service
- Ads
Prairie Sky Dental
01 · Overview
Prairie Sky inherited a Google Ads account from two previous agencies, neither of which had cleaned up after the other. Three campaigns were live, all targeting overlapping keywords, and a significant share of monthly spend was going on searches for the practice's own name from people who were already patients.
The practice knew the spend felt wrong but had no way to see it. The reporting they received was a dashboard link with a rising line on it.
02 · Goals
- 01Stop paying for clicks the practice was already going to get for free
- 02Separate new-patient acquisition from existing-patient searches
- 03Get emergency and same-day appointment searches properly covered
- 04Produce reporting a practice owner can read without a marketing background
03 · What we did
- 01
Audited before touching anything
Two weeks of read-only analysis produced a written account audit. It showed that 34% of the previous quarter's spend went to branded searches that organic results already answered.
- 02
Rebuilt the account structure from scratch
Three overlapping campaigns became four with clean separation: new patient general, emergency and same-day, specific treatments, and a tightly capped brand defence campaign.
- 03
Built a negative keyword list that actually works
Dental search is full of expensive irrelevance, from students researching procedures to people looking for jobs. The shared negative list now runs to 340 terms and is reviewed weekly.
- 04
Replaced the dashboard with a written report
Every month the practice gets two pages of plain English: what happened, what it cost per new patient, what we changed and what we are testing next. Then a fifteen-minute call.
04 · Deliverables
- Written account audit with a 90-day rebuild plan
- Four rebuilt Google Ads campaigns with clean keyword separation
- Shared negative keyword list of 340-plus terms, reviewed weekly
- Call and form conversion tracking verified against practice records
- Emergency and same-day appointment ad group with dedicated copy
- Monthly written report and review call
05 · Results
The practice is spending slightly less than it was and seeing meaningfully more new patients. The change that mattered most was structural, not creative: stop bidding against yourself, and put the recovered budget where the new patients actually are.
- Cost per new patient
- -41%
- From $184 to $109 across the first two quarters of management.
- Monthly spend recovered
- $3,180
- Previously going to branded and irrelevant search terms.
- New patients per quarter
- +58
- Compared with the quarter before the account rebuild.
- Account ownership
- 100%
- The practice holds admin access to every account we manage.
“Two agencies sent us dashboards. harwood sent us two pages that explained where the money went. We knew within a month.”
Principal Dentist, Prairie Sky Dental
We will walk you through this project in full, including the parts that did not work first time.
Book a session and we will take you through the Prairie Sky Dental build properly: the decisions, the trade-offs and what we would do differently. Then we will tell you honestly whether the same approach fits your business.
Related case studies
- Ads · 2025Filling a taproom on a TuesdayWeekends sold themselves. We built a campaign for the four nights a week that did not.Stampede City Brewing Co.
- Website · 2025Booking the whole hail seasonA trade site rebuilt around the two questions every hail-damaged homeowner asks first: can you come out, and when.Ridgeline Roofing & Exteriors
Every one of these began with one honest conversation.
Tell us what is happening in your business right now. We will tell you whether we can help, what it would cost and how long it would take, in writing, before you commit to anything.
- Emailhello@harwoodmedia.ca
- Phone(403) 555-0182
- Response timeEvery enquiry answered by the next business day.
