About this episode
Harry Chambers, managing partner at Osborne Digital, has built an agency where 80 percent of the work is NEMT, and he turns away operators whose market falls short of roughly a million people. He puts the Google Ads sweet spot at $20 to $35 a day, or about $600 to $900 a month, and warns that small markets cost more per customer rather than less because fewer people are searching. SEO is a long game while ads can produce booked trips in three days, and his Nashville client TLC Rides went from one wheelchair van to six in under a year.
Key takeaways
- A Google Business Profile is free and holds the reviews families read before handing a parent to a stranger. Chambers says tools like ChatGPT now pull from that same data.
- Google subsidizes new advertisers. Chambers points owners to ads.google.com, where offers such as $800 back after $1,000 spent in the first 60 days show up regularly.
- Demand for out of pocket rides is regional. Chambers cites Indiana as heavy Medicare and Medicaid and the DMV as more willing to pay cash, with no way to filter searchers by payer.
- Ads convert two ways: a call now button straight from the search result, and a book a ride or request a quote form that captures point A, point B and trip type.
- Osborne's first NEMT client, Kourtney Hayes of Patient Transportation in Alabama, started on Google Ads with one vehicle in 2023 and was running six or seven two years later.
Chapters
- 0:34 Harry Chambers of Osborne Digital
- 1:14 A 2020 agency that went 80 percent NEMT
- 2:11 The first NEMT client and the first ad campaign
- 3:39 Step one: a website actually built for SEO
- 4:05 Step two: the free Google Business Profile
- 7:37 Why SEO is slow and paid search is the microwave
- 9:35 What to budget: $20 to $35 a day
- 11:23 Market size, and why small towns get turned down
- 12:38 Regional payer mix and who really pays cash
- 13:49 Call now buttons and book a ride forms
- 14:55 Osborne's CRM, websites and social service
- 19:09 TLC Rides: one van to six in under a year
