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Case study · Psychology · Brisbane, QLD
A four-clinician psychology practice in Brisbane was paying $215 for every booked first session, with a campaign built around 'mental health' and 'counselling' keywords that almost never converted to a Medicare-rebated psychology booking. We rebuilt the campaign around problem + suburb intent, negative-keyworded the counselling traffic out, and within six months the cost per booking had fallen to $71, with monthly intake doubled.
ads.google.com / overview
First 6 months
67%
Lower cost per booking
Psychology · Brisbane, QLD
2x
Monthly new-client intake
Real client. Real numbers.
67%
Lower cost per booking
From $215 down to $71
2x
Monthly new-client intake
Same budget, double the bookings
12
Sessions, average client lifetime
Used to model real ROI on each new booking
5.4x
Return on ad spend
Modelled across first 12 sessions
The starting position
The practice had been running Google Ads for nearly a year through an agency that took the broadest possible approach. The campaign bid on 'mental health,' 'counselling,' 'therapy,' 'wellbeing,' 'self-help,' and the bare word 'psychologist.' On paper, the keyword volume looked impressive. In practice, almost every click was someone shopping at a counsellor's price point, comparing to free services, or browsing without intent.
The bookings that did come through were costing $215 each, which meant a single booked session was barely break-even before the rebate. The practice was about to pause the campaign permanently when they reached out.
What we did
The single biggest budget leak was 'counselling' and adjacent terms. Patients searching counselling are often comparing at a different price point and a different funding pathway. We negative-keyworded the lot inside the first week, which alone halved the cost per click on the remaining traffic.
Anxiety psychologist [suburb]. Depression psychologist [suburb]. Trauma psychologist [city]. Child psychologist [suburb]. Each became its own ad group with its own ad copy, paired with a landing page that named the presenting issue specifically. The conversion rate inside each ad group climbed within the first month.
Patients searching for a psychologist with a Mental Health Care Plan are gold: they have the GP referral, they understand the rebate, and they convert at a much higher rate. We carved them into their own ad group with their own ad copy, and they consistently produced the lowest cost per booked session of the whole campaign.
Different clinicians in the practice book at different rates depending on their specialty, availability, and how their profile is set up. We rebuilt tracking so the campaign optimised for the clinician load that was healthiest for the practice, not just the cheapest booking.
The numbers
Across the first six months, the practice booked twice as many first sessions as the prior six months, at a third of the cost per booking. The total ad spend was unchanged. The clinician load became sustainable.
Metric
Before
After
Change
Booked first sessions per month
Before
11
After
22
Cost per booked session
Before
$215
After
$71
Inquiries to bookings conversion
Before
18%
After
41%
Mental Health Care Plan share
Before
12%
After
47%
Monthly ad spend
Before
$2,400
After
$2,400
The previous agency told us our cost per booking was the cost of doing business in psychology. Pete's team showed us, inside one month, that almost half our spend was on the wrong searches. The work since has paid for itself dozens of times over.
What's next
Next quarter we're piloting a Meta Ads creative library tuned to the specific issues the practice treats most, and rebuilding the website's clinician profile pages to support the patients arriving from the Google campaign with confidence.
Ready when you are
We'll show you what your clinic's version of this looks like.
Tell us about your clinic. We'll come back with a one-page plan: which patients to target, which to skip, and what 90 days should realistically deliver.
More stories
Looking for our general approach? See how we run Google Ads for psychology clinics.