Health Insurance Provider — 418 Conversions at $49.91 Per Lead
The Situation Before
The account was running but not efficiently. Multiple insurance products were competing inside the same campaign structure, which meant Google had no clean signal about which searches should trigger which ads. Quality Scores were suffering because ad groups were too broad and the landing pages visitors reached did not closely match what they had searched for. The search term reports were full of competitor agency names generating clicks that would never convert, and there was no systematic approach to blocking them.
In the insurance category this competitor traffic problem is particularly expensive. There are hundreds of insurance agencies and brokers bidding on overlapping terms, and without a rigorous negative keyword approach a campaign will spend a significant portion of its budget on searches where the person was specifically looking for a different provider.
What Changed
The first structural change was breaking the single campaign into three separate campaigns aligned with the main coverage types. A general health insurance campaign handled broad coverage searches. A dedicated Medicare 65 plus campaign targeted the specific search behavior of people researching Medicare options. A General Enrollment Period campaign captured the seasonal demand that spikes during open enrollment windows. Each campaign had its own budget, its own bid strategy, and its own landing page destinations matched to the specific coverage type being advertised.
Inside each campaign the ad groups were built around tight keyword themes. Searches for health insurance agent and searches for health insurance broker went into separate ad groups with separate ad copy written to match the specific intent behind each search. This kind of thematic separation is what lifts Quality Score because Google can see that the keyword, the ad, and the landing page are all tightly aligned around the same concept.
The negative keyword work was the other major lever. A comprehensive negative keyword list of competing insurance agency names was built and applied across all campaigns. In a category where competitor names show up constantly in search queries, blocking them systematically is the difference between a campaign that produces qualified leads and one that bleeds budget on traffic that was never going to convert regardless of how good the ads were.
The Results
2,480 clicks, 418 conversions, $49.91 cost per lead on $20,900 in total spend. The upward trend in the dashboard reflects the compounding effect of the structural changes. As Quality Scores improved and the negative keyword list matured, the account became more efficient over time rather than plateauing after the initial rebuild. That improving trajectory is what a well structured campaign looks like when the weekly optimization work is consistent.
It is worth noting that this engagement ran from July to December 2023 under an agency contracting arrangement in a specific regional market. Health insurance CPLs today vary significantly by coverage type, geography, and season, with Medicare campaigns often running higher and general enrollment campaigns varying based on the open enrollment window.
A Note on This Engagement
This account was managed as part of an agency contracting engagement. The audit, campaign restructure, ad group architecture, landing page strategy, negative keyword build, and ongoing weekly optimization were all performed directly by me. The results reflect the work I did on the account.
Related Work
The same structural playbook applies across regulated and high intent service categories. You can see how I approach similar problems for law firms and HVAC companies, read more about how Quality Score and a disciplined negative keyword strategy drive efficiency, or view all case studies to see additional examples of account restructures and the results they produced.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you structure Google Ads campaigns for a health insurance provider with multiple products?
The cleanest structure separates campaigns by coverage type rather than trying to run everything inside a single catch all campaign. In this engagement the account was split into a general health insurance campaign, a dedicated Medicare 65 plus campaign, and a General Enrollment Period campaign for the seasonal open enrollment window. Each campaign gets its own budget, its own bid strategy, and its own landing pages matched to that specific product. Inside each campaign the ad groups are then built around tight keyword themes, with separate ad groups for searches like health insurance agent and health insurance broker so the ad copy and landing page can match the exact intent. That structural separation is what allows Quality Scores to climb and budgets to be allocated based on which products are actually producing leads.
Why do competitor names appear in health insurance search terms and how do you block them?
Competitor names show up constantly in health insurance search reports because there are hundreds of agencies and brokers bidding on overlapping terms, and Google match types will pull in queries containing those brand names even when you never targeted them. People also search for a specific provider by name when they already know who they want to work with, which means clicks from those queries almost never convert for a different provider. The fix is a comprehensive competitor negative keyword list applied across every campaign in the account, built from a manual review of the major agencies and brokers in the market and then expanded weekly based on what shows up in the search term report. In the insurance category this is one of the highest impact pieces of work you can do because the wasted spend on competitor traffic is usually a significant portion of the budget before the list is built out.
What is a realistic cost per lead for health insurance Google Ads campaigns?
Cost per lead in health insurance varies widely based on coverage type, geography, and the time of year. Medicare campaigns typically run higher because the competition is intense and the lifetime value of a Medicare client is high enough to support aggressive bidding. General enrollment campaigns swing significantly based on whether the open enrollment window is active. Broad health insurance campaigns in regional markets tend to fall somewhere in the middle. The $49.91 figure in this case study reflects a specific regional market between July and December 2023 with a well structured account and a mature negative keyword list. It is a real number but it should be read as a snapshot of that engagement, not a universal benchmark every health insurance advertiser should expect to hit.
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