Scalable Paid Media Strategy for 400+ Location Veterinarian Network
Driving Efficient Growth Together
Since 2021, Southern Veterinary Partners (SVP) has partnered with Cardinal to build a scalable paid media framework that supports continual expansion and growth while maintaining cost efficiency and profitability.
Through refined budgeting, operational alignment, and continuous campaign optimizations, SVP has seen strong year-over-year (Jan-Nov 2023 to 2024) growth, with new leads increasing by 54% and ROAS improving by 11%.

Southern Veterinary Partners
Based in Birmingham, Alabama, Southern Veterinary Partners (SVP) is a veterinarian-owned and operated network of animal hospitals with 420 locations currently open nationwide.
As a massive house of brands, each SVP hospital location remains locally branded and committed to its community, maintaining a unique identity while benefiting from the support of the larger network.

Challenges:
- Integrating new acquisitions into media strategy
- Streamlining workflows to manage campaigns across 400+ locations
- Aligning budget with capacity and goals across all locations
Goals:
- Drive year-over-year growth in EBITDA paid search to each new location as it folds into the SVP brand.
- Optimize budget allocation
- Introduce new channels to achieve incremental growth.
Unlocking Performance
Through our partnership, we’ve refined data integrations and passbacks to ensure we’re optimizing to the right conversion signals and business outcomes. With this foundation, we’ve been able to drive lead acquisition volume while maintaining efficiency goals.
By optimizing match types and bidding strategies, enhancing conversion opportunities, and managing overlapping geographic areas, we ensured that SVP would continue to appear prominently in local search results.
These improvements increased visibility, boosted conversion rates, and made ad spending more efficient, leading to sustained growth for the brand.

Scaling Growth Across Google’s Ecosystem
In 2024, we focused on enhancing budget efficiency, expanding SVP’s presence on Google Search, and diversifying into new channels like Performance Max and Local Service Ads (LSAs). As a result, we reached new horizons in conversion volume during peak season.
Paid Search
SVP’s paid search strategy began with a highly fragmented account structure that limited optimizations. We aimed to create a system that balanced individual location goals while enabling scale and efficiency.
Refining the budgeting process, launching an online booking system, and consolidating multiple ad accounts significantly improved paid search performance.
Performance Max
We introduced Performance Max in locations with high efficiency and strong impression shares. This lowered costs, making leads more affordable than traditional Paid Search.
Branded search volume also surged in previously underperforming areas, while cost-per-click in competitive regions fell by nearly 50%.
LSAs
The initial Local Service Ads (LSAs) rollout delivered outstanding results, outperforming traditional search campaigns in cost-per-lead efficiency.
This success has set the stage for further expansion. By leveraging their efficiency, the strategy aims to drive continued growth and enhanced lead quality across the entire network.
Aligning Marketing, Capacity, & Financial Data
Together with SVP, we adopted a dynamic budgeting approach to ensure resources are allocated where they can deliver the greatest impact. This methodology integrates three key data streams:
- Marketing Data: Tracks ad spend, impression share, leads, and cost per lead to evaluate visibility and campaign performance.
- Capacity Data: Considers lead-to-booking rates, appointment availability, visits per doctor per day, and unanswered call rates to align budgets with operational readiness.
- Financial Data: Incorporates EBITDA growth, contribution profit, acquisitions, and 12-month new client revenue/ROI to drive budget decisions based on financial outcomes.
This system ensures marketing investments are strategically aligned with SVP’s operational and financial goals, maximizing ROI and supporting scalable growth.

Efficiency Gains Power Rapid Expansion
Since partnering with Cardinal in November 2021, Southern Veterinary Partners (SVP) has achieved remarkable growth, expanding from 314 locations to 420 while consistently exceeding ROAS goals and attracting more clients across its nationwide network.
In 2024, Cardinal’s paid media strategy propelled SVP to new levels of performance. Optimizing budgets, enhancing Google Search, and diversifying channels led to notable gains in profitability and efficiency. From Jan-Nov 2023 to Jan-Nov 2024, SVP saw:
- 41% increase in lead acquisitions
- 74% above 12-mo ROAS goal
- 11% increase in ROAS while scaling the budget
Cardinal’s integrated, data-driven approach has empowered SVP to achieve impressive growth, profitability, and a stronger market presence, positioning them for continued success in the competitive veterinary industry.

I'm so pleased and grateful to see the collaboration within the team, the work being accomplished, and the results that we are achieving together. 400+ animal hospitals is a lot to scale marketing for but between the Cardinal + SVP teams we have grown lead volume while lowering CPL over the last 3 years together.
