How Goodmind Therapeutics Grew Patient Acquisition 230%+ and Expanded Their Clinic Footprint 6x
In one of the most tightly regulated areas of Australian healthcare, Goodmind Therapeutics faced an extraordinary marketing challenge: the treatment at the centre of its service offering could not legally be named in consumer-facing advertising.
- Not in Google Ads.
- Not in SEO title tags.
- Not in email subject lines.
- Not in website copy aimed at patients.
Yet despite those restrictions, AEK Media helped Goodmind more than double patient acquisition, strengthen its search authority, improve conversion rates and support expansion from one clinic to six live locations.
We did it by engineering the context around the treatment, rather than relying on the treatment name itself.
What we achieved.
A selection of the goals we achieved for Goodmind Therapeutics
New patients per month, tracked to confirmed treatment in HubSpot
One in two people who contacted the clinic went on to begin treatment
Every new location validated by search demand before a lease was signed
About Goodmind Therapeutics
Goodmind Therapeutics is an advanced mental health clinic helping Australians living with treatment-resistant depression. Patients arrive at the lowest point of their lives, after years of therapy, multiple failed medications and, often, a hospital admission. For many, the treatment Goodmind provides is the last credible clinical option available in the country.
That places Goodmind in the hardest marketing position in Australian healthcare. Their core treatment cannot legally be named in any consumer-facing advertising under TGA and AHPRA rules, not in ad copy, not in a title tag, not in an email subject line. Meanwhile the search results were owned by overseas institutions that educate about the treatment but don’t provide it, so they can say the word freely. Goodmind had the clinicians. What they didn’t have was a way to be found.
Challenges
Goodmind came to AEK Media with real clinical authority and almost no digital presence, and a regulatory ceiling over every lever a marketer would normally pull.
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The core treatment cannot be named in any consumer-facing ad or page
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An inherited website stripped of non-compliant pages, taking rankings, traffic and crawl signals with it
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Highest-intent paid keywords restricted by Google, capping paid impression share at roughly 62% by available inventory, not by budget
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Double monthly patient acquisition, not lift it marginally
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Visibility across multiple capital-city catchments, plus new markets not yet open
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A compliant path to patients that would survive further regulatory tightening
Our Approach
Taking Goodmind to the next level began with a simple truth: a patient searching for this treatment isn’t curious – they’re at the end of the line. The emotional register is the last resort, not research. Our job was to be there at that moment without ever breaking the rules that govern how the medicine can be discussed.
So we stopped trying to advertise the treatment and started engineering the context around it. AEK Media built a compliant architecture, practitioner-facing content, structured data, entity signals and an adjacent treatment funnel, that lets Google understand exactly what Goodmind provides while every consumer-facing word stays inside the regulations. The medicine is never spoken of in a promotional context. The path to it is.
Strategy & Execution
Goodmind’s inherited website promoted services it no longer offered using language the regulator prohibits. By the time AEK Media came on board, those pages had been removed, taking rankings, traffic and crawl signals with them.
We rebuilt the site around an entirely compliant keyword architecture, absorbed the short-term migration impact and re-established the search signals the previous cleanup had disrupted. The goal was not to preserve unsafe legacy traffic. It was to create a foundation capable of supporting sustainable growth.
Because the treatment could not appear in consumer-facing titles, descriptions or page copy, we built the connection where patients would not see it, but search engines would.
We layered medical organisation, clinic and physician schema across the website, connected Goodmind to the relevant Wikidata entity and introduced alternate brand names to reclaim searches Google had previously misattributed.
This allowed us to strengthen topical relevance and entity clarity without compromising the compliance of the patient-facing experience.
Meta launched first and generated high lead volume at a low cost, but many of the enquiries were not sufficiently qualified.
We pivoted the channel strategy. Google Ads became the high-intent acquisition engine, capturing patients actively searching for a treatment pathway and supplying genuine patient signals to the wider advertising ecosystem. Meta then moved into a supporting retargeting role, nurturing patients who needed more time before making contact.
Reddit extended that journey further, reaching people already researching treatment options in the communities where these conversations were happening.
Practitioner-facing communication operates under a different framework from consumer advertising.
We created a doctor-verified clinician page that allowed Goodmind to lawfully communicate clinical detail to referring GPs and psychiatrists, while also targeting the terminology those practitioners actively search.
The page became the legal load-bearing wall of the campaign: a compliant pathway to clinical relevance that patient-facing pages could not provide. Within 35 days of indexing, it had reached page two for core treatment terms.
Website Transformation
Goodmind’s inherited website still listed services the clinic no longer offered, described in language the TGA explicitly prohibits. Those pages had already been taken down before AEK arrived, and what remained was a site with almost no online visibility.
We weren’t starting from scratch; we were starting further back than scratch: lost rankings, lost traffic, lost crawl signals, and a residual SEO ghost that kept dragging legacy terminology back into ambiguous indexing months after the pages were gone.
Rebuilding meant re-establishing what the site was about in Google’s eyes, on an entirely compliant keyword set, while clearing the historical signals working against it.
The original visual identity skewed cold and clinical; the wrong register for a patient base navigating despair. So, we tested before we built. We used Meta creative ads to rapidly split-test colour palettes, copy hooks and emotional positioning, then committed only what the engagement data supported: a redesigned logo, a warmer yellow-and-blue palette, and patient-facing copy proven on real audiences rather than shaped by a creative director’s instinct.
Consolidating two booking forms into one, adding a sticky call CTA and reordering panels around real drop-off points lifted booking-page form conversion 4x, from 2% to roughly 8%.
SEO & Organic Traffic Growth
We took over a site already on the back foot: stripped of pages, stripped of rankings, and carrying almost no link authority into the rebuild. Every multiplier below is measured from that starting point, which is exactly why the rebuild was worth doing.
The compliant rebuild meant accepting a deliberate organic trough before the recovery began, a trade we made knowingly rather than a hit we absorbed by accident. Authority was then rebuilt through clinical citations negotiated from Goodmind’s real-world partnerships, since standard link-building is impossible in a category where this restricted.
| Metric | Change |
|---|---|
| Domain rating | 7.6x |
| Referring domains | 7.3x |
| Booking form conversion rate | 4x (2% to ~8%) |
| Clinician page to page one and two | Clinician page to page one and two |
Impressions on the core treatment vocabulary spiked as the rebuild turned upward, evidence that compliant architecture outranks unrestricted competitors when the entity signals are right.
Paid Advertising
Google Ads became the campaign’s primary acquisition engine, despite high-intent treatment terms initially triggering repeated compliance reviews. Through ongoing testing, we identified compliant combinations of exact, phrase and broad match targeting that could still reach the right patients.
With limited keyword data available, we managed campaigns by exclusion, using a comprehensive negative-keyword framework to remove non-patient searches and protect budget. A canonicalised paid-only landing page allowed us to test messaging without risking the home page’s organic authority.
A low-budget scouting campaign uncovered real patient language and seeded more than 30 educational topics, while city-specific campaigns validated demand before new clinics opened. A dedicated TMS campaign widened the funnel further, helping Google Ads generate roughly half of all attributable patient revenue.
Premier Partner: AEK Media is recognised among the top 3% of Google Partners in Australia.
Meta launched first to build awareness among DVA-eligible veterans and private patients. Early lead volume was strong and CPL was low, but many enquiries were not sufficiently qualified.
We pivoted by making Google the high-intent acquisition channel and using genuine patient signals to strengthen Meta’s targeting. Meta then moved into a supporting retargeting role, bringing hesitant patients back over time.
Google captured the in-market patient. Meta nurtured them back.
Because commercial pages could not use internal-link anchor text naming the treatment, we routed authority differently through optimised image links, relevant alt text and geotagged metadata connecting content to clinic location pages.
We then built an educational content series around the patient journey, covering subjects such as PTSD, depression treatment pathways, alternative mental health therapies, chronic stress and what to expect from therapy. Each article was supported by a low-budget Reddit amplification campaign designed to increase qualified readership, time on page and engaged scrolling.
Reddit advertising is not typically available to healthcare advertisers by default, so AEK Media worked directly with a senior platform contact to unlock the inventory through a blog-first strategy. This positioned Goodmind inside the communities where patients were already researching failed treatments, comparing options and seeking reassurance, creating a warmer audience than conventional cold social advertising while supporting stronger content-engagement signals.
Outcomes
- Monthly patient acquisition increased 230%+, rising from approximately three patients per month to an average of more than ten.
- Goodmind achieved a 50% inquiry-to-patient conversion rate, meaning one in every two people who contacted the clinic went on to begin treatment. The original target was 10%.
- The simplified website journey also increased booking form conversion from approximately 2% to 8%.
- Domain Rating increased 7.6x and referring domains increased 7.3x. The clinician page secured first-page and page-two visibility across core terminology within weeks, while the adjacent TMS funnel began ranking and converting patients into consultations.
- Goodmind expanded from 1 clinic to 6 live locations, with further markets entering the pipeline.
- Each new location was assessed against genuine search demand before capital was committed. One proposed launch was cancelled after the data showed insufficient opportunity, potentially avoiding a six-figure investment.
- The proprietary compliance scanner, scalable website architecture and CRM attribution system created a stronger foundation for continued national growth.
- Goodmind’s CEO estimated that the business had captured approximately 30% of the Australian therapeutic ketamine category. While this was an internal estimate rather than an independently audited market figure, it reflected the scale of the clinic’s growth within a highly specialised emerging category.
Key Results
Why it worked.
Every channel was built around a patient, not a keyword. The clinician page reflected the GP referral journey, the warmer brand reassured patients arriving frightened rather than shopping, the TMS funnel reached those beginning with different treatment language, and Google, Meta and schema worked together to connect high-intent demand with compliant visibility. No single channel could have delivered the outcome alone. By prioritising sustainable authority over short-term rankings, the campaign absorbed a controlled migration, an approximately 90% organic traffic decline and continued regulatory pressure while still delivering 230%+ patient acquisition, a 50% inquiry-to-patient conversion rate and a 6x original clinic footprint. Goodmind’s growth demonstrates AEK Media’s ability to build a category-defining healthcare brand in a highly regulated market without losing sight of the person at the other end of the funnel. Compliant, not compromised.
If your healthcare organisation operates in a complex or tightly regulated category, AEK Media can build the strategy, systems and search presence required to grow sustainably.
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A selection of the goals we achieved for Goodmind Therapeutics