How a Leading Urgent Care Provider Cut Ad Costs by 27.5% with Freshpaint

A fast-growing urgent care provider with hundreds of clinics across multiple states was pouring millions into digital advertising, but lacked data to understand what was actually driving results.

Like many in healthcare, the marketing team was limited in how they could use data because of privacy laws, like HIPAA, limiting their ability to use data for marketing optimization. As a result, this provider’s team was forced to optimize campaigns based on the default conversion signal in Google Ads: web clicks and form fills that served as a proxy for “booked appointments”. But web clicks and form fills aren’t the same as an attended appointment, and no-shows or cancellations were inflating cost-per-acquisition numbers.

Worse, the CFO viewed marketing as a cost center, and the CEO didn’t fully understand what marketing platforms were providing a positive ROI. The team needed a clear, data-backed value story to justify the budget and continue innovating.

Seeing the Full Picture with Freshpaint

The provider partnered with Freshpaint to implement Ad Performance, a solution designed to bridge the gap between appointment data and ad campaigns, all while staying HIPAA compliant. This enabled the provider to move beyond unreliable web conversion metrics and gain a clear view of ROI.

Freshpaint set up side-by-side campaign tests across different states and optimization strategies (CPA and tROAS). Each test measured cost per attended appointment, not just bookings, to reveal true marketing efficiency.

Delivering Real ROI

Freshpaint delivered measurable cost savings across multiple campaign tests. In four key experiments across different states and optimization strategies (CPA and tROAS), the urgent care provider saw consistent, double-digit reductions in marketing costs:

• The highest improvement came from Midwest Region A in which a tROAS strategy was used to drive a 27.5% cost reduction, indicating the value of optimizing toward return on ad spend rather than cost-per-action alone.
• West Coast Region B and Midwest Region C each used different strategies both saw over 20% cost reduction, supporting the national scalability of the approach.
• In Southern Region D, a CPA-focused campaign still achieved a 9% cost reduction, demonstrating that even more traditional optimization strategies benefit when powered by deeper conversion signals.

With ad spend totaling $3 million per year, even a conservative 10-15% efficiency gain would result in $300,000-$450,000 in annual savings. These results gave the marketing team exactly what they needed: clear, defensible proof that marketing was not just a cost center, but a growth driver. By showing how Freshpaint directly reduced acquisition costs while driving attended appointments, the team was finally able to shift the narrative with the CFO and demonstrate positive ROI to the CEO.

Performance Without Compromise

Freshpaint enabled this urgent care provider to transition from guesswork to precision, while still protecting patient data. By optimizing around actual care delivered, they not only reduced costs but also built trust at the executive level, with data to back it up.