Three options. Only one actually works for your business.
A waitlist that long is the market telling you to choose your work.
Most private psychiatrists in Australia have the same shape of problem: a 12- to 18-month waitlist, a calendar full of the wrong work (complex cases that should be in a public clinic, GP-referral leftovers, no-shows from patients who waited so long the crisis passed), and an income that doesn't match the hours. The lever isn't 'more enquiries'. It's the mix. The practice that earns well sees the subspecialty cases it's best at (ADHD assessment and management, mood disorders, PTSD and trauma-focused work, perinatal), at the item-296 review cadence it actually wants, with a telehealth catchment that doesn't require a city commute. A generic 'we treat everything' website pulls every GP referral in the state and you spend half the next eighteen months declining work you should never have attracted.
Good psychiatry marketing has three layers: a subspecialty page for every presentation you actually want more of (ADHD assessment, mood disorders, perinatal, PTSD, addiction medicine) so you rank for the long-tail searches with intent and a Medicare item number behind them, a GP-referral pipeline that gives local GPs the one-pager they need to write the Mental Health Care Plan referral to you specifically (with your AHPRA registration number, your typical fee, your gap, your telehealth catchment), and a Google Business Profile that ranks for 'private psychiatrist [suburb] Medicare' with the right primary category, complete services list, and the telehealth attribute set correctly. The practices that earn well do exactly this, then close the broad enquiry tap when the mix is right and the waitlist is shorter than the patients can wait through.
Six agents, working in your accounts.
Account Lead, Web, SEO, Advertising, Social Media, and Content. One platform, one bill, you approve the work.
Builds your annual plan around the subspecialties you actually want more of (ADHD assessment, mood disorders, perinatal, PTSD) rather than chasing every psychiatry enquiry. Briefs the other agents so the subspecialty pages, the GP-referral materials, the AHPRA-compliant psychoeducation and the local SEO all push the right referrals toward the right item number, and quietly closes the broad enquiry tap when the mix is right.
Imports your existing site so you stop paying for hosting plus a CMS subscription, and makes spinning up a new subspecialty page a five-minute job. Ships a page for every presentation you treat (adult ADHD, mood, PTSD, perinatal, addiction medicine), each with the Medicare item-291 rebate maths, the GP-referral PDF, the telehealth-vs-in-person logic, and an enquiry form AHPRA is comfortable with. Two taps to publish.
Goes through your live site for the things that actually move private-psychiatry rankings: long-tail keywords on every subspecialty page (adult ADHD assessment [suburb], private psychiatrist Medicare, PTSD telehealth), Psychiatrist + LocalBusiness schema, internal links from subspecialty pages to the GP-referral page, and a Google Business Profile that ranks for 'private psychiatrist [suburb] Medicare'. Auto-applies the low-risk fixes; flags anything that touches AHPRA territory.
Runs Google Ads sparingly, on the long-tail high-intent searches you can't outrank organically yet ('adult ADHD assessment [city]', 'private psychiatrist telehealth Medicare'). Switches Meta off by default (AHPRA-fraught territory), and pauses every campaign automatically when the waitlist hits the cap you set. Spend follows the calendar, never the other way around.
Posts AHPRA-compliant psychoeducation in your real accounts: a carousel on what a Mental Health Care Plan actually covers, a LinkedIn post on the structured-assessment standard for adult ADHD, a Mental Health Week piece in May. No testimonials, no comparative claims, no implied guarantees, no before-and-after. You approve in two taps; the agent learns your specific hard nos in week one.
Drafts the long-form guides that bring the right referral weeks before the booking: 'how a GP refers to a psychiatrist under a Mental Health Care Plan', 'what to expect at an adult ADHD assessment', 'when private psychiatry is more appropriate than a public clinic'. Two drafts a fortnight, in your voice, that establish you for the subspecialty before the patient or the GP picks up the phone.
Your first 30 days.
- Site imported, hosting bill cancelled (Halaxy or Genie stays)
- Annual plan against your priority subspecialties delivered by Sam
- Page per subspecialty (adult ADHD, mood, PTSD, perinatal) drafted and indexed
- GP-referral page with one-pager for local GPs to attach to MHCPs
- Google Business Profile fixed, Psychiatrist primary category, telehealth attribute set
- First fortnight of AHPRA-compliant psychoeducation queued in your voice
- First long-form guide on the MHCP-to-psychiatrist pathway drafted
- Waitlist-capacity rule set so ads pause automatically when full
The 18-month waitlist isn't a sign of success. It's the market telling you that the marketing is too broad, the GP-referral pipeline is unfocused, and the mix on your calendar is whatever turned up rather than the subspecialty work you trained for. The win isn't more enquiries. The win is the right enquiries, at the right Medicare item, with a telehealth catchment that doesn't require a city commute, and a waitlist short enough that the patients you actually want don't drop off before they sit down.
Agencies are too dear to actually run the subspecialty page library and the GP-referral work for $3.5k a month, and most don't know the AHPRA advertising rules well enough not to put your registration in front of the Medical Board. Tools are cheap but you still write the adult-ADHD page on a Sunday night between Monday's reviews. In-House is the third option: for $299 a month the agents ship the pages, draft the psychoeducation, fix the GP-referral pipeline, and quietly switch the broad funnel on and off as the calendar fills. You stay in the driver's seat, AHPRA-compliant by construction, two taps to approve.