SUNRISE COUNSELING
CASE STUDY
About Sunrise Counseling
Industry: Outpatient mental health counseling (multidisciplinary group practice).
Specialty: General therapy plus perinatal mental health, sport psychology, child and teen counseling, men's counseling, Spanish-language services and faith-based counseling.
Size: Six clinicians, one office in Dallas, and online therapy for clients anywhere in Texas and Colorado.
Perinatal Mental Health
Sunrise Counseling is an outpatient mental health group practice based on the Dallas Parkway in North Dallas. Clients can meet with a therapist in person at the Dallas office or through secure online therapy anywhere in Texas, and the practice has since expanded its online services to clients across Colorado. Its promise to clients is simple: help children, adolescents and adults "rise to new beginnings."
Led by owner and psychologist Dr. Gayla Sahl, the Sunrise team supports people through anxiety, depression, ADHD, OCD, trauma, grief, anger, chronic pain and the relationship strain that often comes with them. The practice is known for specialties many group practices don't offer under one roof: perinatal care for postpartum depression and anxiety, pregnancy loss and infertility; sport and performance psychology for athletes; dedicated counseling for men and for women; therapy for children and teens; faith-based counseling for clients who want their beliefs included in care; and Spanish-language therapy with a bilingual psychologist.
That breadth is a strength, but it also makes marketing harder. Each specialty has its own audience, its own search terms and its own seasonality, and every one of them needs a steady flow of the right inquiries to keep six clinicians' caseloads full.
Sports Psychology
Child & Teen Therapy
Faith-Based Counseling
Online Therapy (TX & CO)
Men’s & Women’s Counesling
Couples 7 Family
Servicios en Español
Key metrics for the Performance Max campaign since launch in April 2026
Conversion rate
Stable since the campaign finished its learning phase.
Conversions per month
On top of roughly 10 a month from the long-running Search campaign.
Lifetime Conversions
From the new campaign alone, April through October 2026.
The Challenge
Challenge: A long-running, well-performing Google Ads campaign had hit a plateau in lead volume.
Timeline: 2–3 months for the new campaign to fully ramp up
Objective: Scale Google Ads effectively and substantially increase the number of leads coming from paid search.
THE PLATEAU
The campaign was still performing well. It just wasn't growing anymore.
Sunrise's Search campaign was averaging about 10 conversions a month. Healthy, consistent, and flat.
Sunrise Counseling is one of RevKey's longest-standing partners. For years, its Google Ads Search campaign did exactly what it was built to do: put Sunrise in front of people in Dallas and across Texas who were actively searching for a therapist, and turn those searches into inquiries.
By every standard metric, the campaign was still healthy. Click-through and conversion rates were solid and cost per lead was steady. The problem was that the number of leads had stopped growing. The practice was ready for more. It had added specialties, expanded into Colorado, and wanted every clinician's schedule full, especially for niche services like perinatal counseling and sport psychology, where the right client is harder to find.
A plateau like this is a common stage for a mature account. A Search campaign can only capture the searches that already exist, and once it is winning most of the relevant ones, adding budget brings smaller and smaller returns. Pushing harder on the same lever would not change the outcome.
Because of the years of trust behind the partnership, Sunrise came to RevKey for a recommendation, not just a budget change. They wanted a trusted partner's guidance on how to scale, and they expected that plan to bring in a significantly higher number of leads than the account was producing.
The Key
Two campaigns, one set of services, two ways to reach people
Search waits for the person who is already looking. Performance Max goes out and finds the person who will be.
INBOUND
Search campaign
Keep
The proven Search campaign continues unchanged
+
We have seen this pattern before, both in Sunrise's account and with other group practices we manage: a campaign that is strong on paper but has run out of room to grow. Our years of history with Sunrise meant we already knew which services, locations and audiences mattered most to the practice, so we could move straight to a plan.
Rather than rebuild what was working, we kept the Search campaign running and added a second campaign beside it: a Google Ads Performance Max campaign. We set it up to advertise the same services, in the same areas, as the Search campaign. That choice was deliberate. The two campaigns would not compete for different goals. They would approach the same goal from two directions.
Shared across both campaigns
Add
Performance Max launches in April 2026 with the same services and areas
Stabilize
2-3 months of learning, then a steady 7-8% conversion rate
Running the two together does two things. First, it roughly doubles Sunrise's exposure. The same practice now appears both when someone searches for help and while they browse, watch videos or check maps across Google's network. Second, the campaigns cover each other's weak spots. A specialty that struggles to gain traction in Search, often because few people search for it by name, may perform well in Performance Max, where Google can find likely clients based on their behavior. The reverse is true as well. For a practice with as many distinct services as Sunrise, that overlap matters.
Performance Max needs time to learn. We gave it a 2–3 month ramp, refining its signals and assets as data came in, until conversion volume and conversion rate stabilized.
OUTBOUND
Performance Max campaign
Launched April 2026, 8–15 conversions a month
Reaches people across Google's network, including YouTube, Display, Gmail, Discover and Maps
Builds new demand from audiences likely to need care
Running for years, about 10 conversions a month
Shows ads to people typing therapy searches into Google
Captures demand that already exists
Same services
Same Dallas, Texas and Colorado targeting
Each cover the other’s weak spots
Google Ads leads
Adding the second campaign doubled the leads Sunrise receives from Google Ads.
Combined Conversions a month
About 10 from Search plus 8-15 from Performance Max, up from about 10 before.
Conversion rate
The Performance Max campaign’s stable rate after its learning phase.
The Results
The strategy solved the problem Sunrise brought to us. Running Search and Performance Max side by side doubled the number of leads the practice receives from Google Ads. Before the new campaign, Search alone produced about 10 conversions a month. Now Performance Max adds another 8 to 15 each month on top of that, and it has produced 51 conversions since it launched in April 2026.
The immediate benefit was more inquiries and more new clients, which let Sunrise fill clinicians' schedules faster. Just as important, the new campaign brought in better leads for the practice's more specialized services. These are the clients who are hardest to reach through search alone, and they are exactly the clients Sunrise's specialists are trained to help.
Why the data matters
Of everything we track, the two figures we watch most closely are the Performance Max conversion rate and its average monthly conversions. A steady 7–8% conversion rate means the new campaign is not just adding traffic. It is reaching people who are ready to reach out. Steady monthly volume means that result is dependable enough for the practice to plan around.
It is also unlikely a Performance Max campaign would reach numbers this strong on its own. Its results are supported by the long-running Search campaign. Years of Search data, a recognized presence in Dallas search results, and people who first saw Sunrise in one place and came back through the other all strengthen both campaigns. The two campaigns perform better together than either would separately.
Long-Term Impact
Performance Max improves as it gathers more data. As the campaign keeps optimizing, Sunrise should see a steady, gradual increase in leads on top of the gains it has already made. With two complementary campaigns covering inbound and outbound reach, the practice has a growth engine that can support new clinicians, new specialties and its continued expansion in Colorado, without depending on a single campaign that had already reached its limit.
Has your therapy practice's Google Ads hit a plateau?
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