The short answer
For a baby scan clinic marketing budget of £2,500 a month, put about 70% into Google Ads (£1,750), 25% into Meta (£625) and 5% into a TikTok test (£125). Google comes first because a search account needs around £1,000 a month before it can test anything, and at £24 to £36 per booked early scan, £1,750 buys roughly 49 to 73 bookings. Every platform is then judged on booked scans recorded in the clinic’s own system.
In this article
- 1.What a £2,500 budget split three ways really buys
- 2.Why every platform’s dashboard says it is working
- 3.How UpMedico splits £2,500 between Google, Meta and TikTok
- 4.A £2,500 baby scan clinic marketing budget, line by line
- 5.The calls Instagram sends that nobody credits
- 6.Frequently asked questions
What a £2,500 budget split three ways really buys
A six-year-old pregnancy scan clinic we spoke to this autumn opened its first call with the question most owners at this size ask: Facebook, TikTok, or Google? The instinctive answer is a little of each, and on a small budget that instinct is expensive.
Take £2,500 a month split evenly, about £833 per platform. In the ultrasound accounts UpMedico manages, a booked early pregnancy scan costs £24 to £36 on Google, as published in the UK Private Ultrasound Clinic Growth Index. £833 buys roughly 23 to 35 of them a month.
Move the Google line to £1,750 and the same cost per booked scan gives roughly 49 to 73 bookings. The £917 that went to Meta and TikTok in the even split would have bought about 25 to 38 booked early scans on Google, worth roughly £1,800 to £3,600 a month at a £70 to £95 fee.
The even split only works if Meta and TikTok book scans as cheaply as Google does. Some months they may. The problem is that most clinics at this budget cannot tell, because nothing in their booking system records which platform sent the patient.
Go the other way and the problem changes shape. At £300 a month and £1.75 to £2.10 a click, a Google account buys about five clicks a day, and four to six booked scans in the two-week window Google suggests for judging a change. Split across a brand campaign and two scan types, that is noise, not data.
That is why UpMedico works to a threshold of around £1,000 a month on Google before any other platform gets money, in line with the £1,000 to £2,000 our early pregnancy scan growth guide gives a single-site clinic outside London. Below that line the account cannot learn anything worth acting on.
Why every platform’s dashboard says it is working
Each advertising platform reports its own results, and each one is built to claim the booking. Put two of them on the same patient and the clinic pays for one scan that is reported twice.
Meta’s standard attribution counts a booking made within one day of someone seeing an ad, with no click at all. A mum who scrolls past an Instagram advert at lunchtime, then searches the clinic’s name that evening and clicks the brand advert, is a Meta conversion and a Google conversion at once.
Brand campaigns add to it. A multi-site scan clinic we spoke to found its agency giving brand searches the same daily budget as generic ones, although no competitor was bidding on its name. Those patients were already looking for the clinic, and the budget paid to meet them at the door.
The defaults do not help either. Google Ads campaigns show ads “All day” by default, so a small budget spends itself whenever searches arrive rather than when the diary has room.
On Meta, the e-commerce reflex is to target expectant parents and open with “Pregnant?”. Meta removed detailed targeting options relating to health causes in January 2022, and its advertising standards say ads “must not contain content that asserts or implies personal attributes”, physical health included. The advert has to sell the scan, not guess at the person seeing it.
TikTok has its own floor. TikTok Ads Manager requires an ad group budget above $20 a day, so 30 days at the minimum is $600, several times a £125 test line. A 5% share cannot run as an always-on channel; set up as one, it delivers in fits and reports nothing useful.
Then there is the phone. In our call tracking data, 42% of early pregnancy scan bookings arrive by phone. An agency that compares platforms on online bookings alone is comparing them on 58% of the evidence, and none of the calls an Instagram advert prompts.
These habits come from online retail, where every sale lands in a basket the platform can see. A scan clinic’s bookings land in its own diary, on the phone as often as online.
How UpMedico splits £2,500 between Google, Meta and TikTok
UpMedico starts from what each platform is for. Google answers demand that already exists: someone typing “early pregnancy scan near me” wants a slot this week. Meta reaches the planned scans, gender and 3D/4D, that people book weeks ahead. TikTok is a test until it earns more.
On £2,500 that becomes a 70/25/5 split: £1,750 on Google, £625 on Meta and £125 on TikTok, applied in this order.
Fund Google past the threshold first
The £1,750 line is just under £58 a day once divided by 30.4 as Google suggests, which clears the £1,000 floor with room to split. Brand, early pregnancy and gender or 3D/4D scans each get their own campaign, and the brand campaign is capped unless a competitor bids on the clinic’s name.
Make every booking traceable before adding a platform
Each platform gets its own tracked links into the booking system and its own call tracking number, and booked scans go back to Google as offline conversions. Cost per booked scan becomes the one metric every platform is judged on, read from the diary.
Give Meta the scans people plan
The £625 goes on gender and 3D/4D scans, which are planned and shared rather than urgent. Audiences stay broad and local, reviews do the persuading and the copy describes the scan. Past patients are not uploaded as an audience; repeat bookings belong in consented reminders, as set out in The 3-Scan Patient Pathway.
Run TikTok as a fixed test with a stop rule
The £125 runs as one short burst a month on a single ad group, with its own tracked link and a spend cap. If two bursts produce no traceable booking, the money moves back to Google.
Rebalance every month on booked scans
Each line is set against what the same money buys on Google, adjusted for the fee of the scans it sells. The landing page and the clinic’s visibility in AI answers decide how much of each channel’s traffic books, so both are reviewed in the same meeting.
The Meta and TikTok lines are often run in-house or by a social specialist. That works, provided they report into the same booked-scan numbers as the Google account; otherwise the split cannot be adjusted on evidence.
On the search side, the method is the one behind London Private Ultrasound, a central London clinic offering abdominal, pelvic and pregnancy scans, where the rebuilt account produced 603 qualified leads and a 20% increase in total bookings against the previous quarter, with cost per lead down 41% after optimisation.
A £2,500 baby scan clinic marketing budget, line by line
The table puts the 70/25/5 split into pounds and sets each line against what Google buys at published costs. Google figures come from ultrasound accounts UpMedico manages; the platform minimums are public, and each row is labelled with its source.
| Metric | £2,500 budget, UK 2026 | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Google Ads line (70%) | £1,750 a month, just under £58 a day | UpMedico working estimate |
| Meta line (25%) | £625 a month | UpMedico working estimate |
| TikTok test line (5%) | £125 a month | UpMedico working estimate |
| Minimum Google spend before testing | Around £1,000 a month | UpMedico working estimate |
| Average CPC, early pregnancy: regional UK / London | £1.75 to £2.10 / £2.10 | UpMedico client data |
| Cost per booked scan, early pregnancy | £24 to £36 | UpMedico client data |
| Booked early scans from the £1,750 Google line | About 49 to 73 a month | UpMedico working estimate |
| Google equivalent of the £625 Meta line | About 17 to 26 booked early scans | UpMedico working estimate |
| Google equivalent of the £125 TikTok line | About 3 to 5 booked early scans | UpMedico working estimate |
| Early pregnancy bookings made by phone | 42% | Call tracking data |
| TikTok minimum ad group budget | More than $20 a day | TikTok Ads Manager help, October 2026 |
| Meta view-through attribution window | 1 day after an ad impression | Meta Business Help Centre, October 2026 |
Read the Google line against the £1,000 threshold before anything else. At £1,750 it clears it by enough to separate brand from scan campaigns, which is what lets cost per booked scan be read for each scan type.
The Meta and TikTok rows carry no booking figure on purpose. Their hurdle is the Google equivalent: £625 is roughly 17 to 26 booked early scans on Google, and £125 roughly 3 to 5. A Meta line selling £140 3D/4D scans can clear it with fewer bookings, as long as the bookings are counted in the diary.
The calls Instagram sends that nobody credits
Plenty of patients who see a scan clinic on Instagram never click. They search the name, find the Google Business Profile and ring. On most dashboards that call belongs to nobody, or to whichever platform touched the patient last.
With 42% of early pregnancy bookings arriving by phone, that is a large share of the evidence any split depends on. In our call tracking data, 15% to 20% of inbound calls to ultrasound clinics go unanswered during the 9:00 to 11:30 peak, so some of the demand a Meta advert creates is lost before anyone can count it.
The Call-to-Booking Framework™
UpMedico’s Call-to-Booking Framework™ combines healthcare-compliant call tracking, call recording, and structured intake analysis to identify why patient calls fail to convert, improving call-to-booking conversion by up to 20% within 90 days.
Applied to the budget split, the recordings settle what tracking numbers cannot. A structured intake question, asked the same way on every call, records where the caller heard about the clinic, and the answer moves money between platforms more reliably than any attribution window.
Recording patient calls means processing data concerning health, which UK GDPR treats as special category data, and details of a pregnancy fall within it. It is configured accordingly, with a consent message before the call connects, a defined retention period and access limited to the people who need it. The wider case for call tracking in clinics is set out separately.
What this looks like with UpMedico running your Google Ads
UpMedico manages Google Ads exclusively for private healthcare clinics in the UK and Ireland. Every engagement includes compliant campaign build, keyword-level call tracking and recording, and monthly analysis through our Call-to-Booking Framework™, so you see exactly which keywords produce booked assessments and scans, not just clicks.
If your current agency reports on clicks and impressions but can’t tell you your cost per booked patient, request a 20-minute Clinical Campaign Audit. We’ll show you the gap in your own account.
Frequently asked questions
How much should a baby scan clinic spend on marketing each month?
Enough to give Google Ads around £1,000 a month before anything else, because a smaller search account cannot test brand and scan campaigns separately. On a £2,500 budget, a 70/25/5 split puts £1,750 on Google, £625 on Meta and £125 on a TikTok test. At £24 to £36 per booked early scan, the Google line alone buys roughly 49 to 73 bookings.
Is Google or Facebook better for a private pregnancy scan clinic?
They do different jobs. Google captures people already searching for a scan, which suits urgent early pregnancy and reassurance scans. Meta reaches people before they search, which suits planned gender and 3D/4D scans. Judge both on cost per booked scan in the clinic’s own booking system, because each platform’s dashboard can claim the same patient.
Is TikTok advertising worth it for a small scan clinic?
As a test, yes; as a main channel on a small budget, rarely. TikTok Ads Manager requires an ad group budget above $20 a day, so a £125 monthly line funds a short burst rather than a month of delivery. Give each burst its own tracked link and move the money back to Google if two bursts produce no traceable booking.
Can a scan clinic target pregnant women with Facebook and Instagram ads?
Not directly. Meta removed detailed targeting options relating to health causes in January 2022, and its advertising standards forbid ads that assert or imply a person’s physical health. Use broad local audiences and copy that describes the scan. Uploading past patients as an audience means using health data for marketing, which in practice needs explicit consent under UK GDPR.
