Dermatology marketing goes wrong when a practice that runs two businesses reports them as one. Medical dermatology fills a limited number of insured new-patient slots, cosmetic dermatology sells treatments for cash, and each needs its own searches, ad rules, budget and count.
Quick answer
- Write down the medical new-patient slots you have open each month. That number, not the click price, limits what medical advertising can usefully do.
- Run medical and cosmetic as separate campaigns with separate budgets and separate conversion actions (the results Google Ads counts and bids toward).
- Count a kept new-patient visit on the medical side and a treatment bought on the cosmetic side.
- Keep condition and treatment names out of conversion names, page addresses and form fields that a tracking tag can read.
- Get written authorization before any patient photo is used in marketing.
How do the two sides differ in practice?
The table is the whole argument in one view. Check each row against your own schedule and billing.
| Medical side | Cosmetic side | |
|---|---|---|
| Who searches | Someone with a rash, a mole or a flare-up, or someone a primary care doctor referred | Someone choosing a treatment and comparing providers |
| How they search | By symptom, by "dermatologist near me", by insurance plan | By treatment name, by price, by photos |
| How they pay | Insurance, plus a copay or deductible | Cash, per treatment, package or membership |
| First visit | A new-patient appointment | A consult, sometimes the treatment itself |
| What counts as a win | A new-patient visit that was kept | A treatment bought, then a return visit |
| What limits growth | Open new-patient slots | Ad cost per treatment bought |
| Where the money comes from | Insurer payments plus the patient's share | Treatment fees paid at checkout |
A patient with a rash wants an appointment, not a promotion. Someone considering a laser may compare providers on price and photos. One budget and one report cannot serve both.
What is the medical side really short of?
Slots. A practice with a long wait for new-patient appointments does not need more people asking for them; it needs the right people in the slots it has. The first count is therefore open new-patient slots per month, taken from the schedule rather than guessed.
Search demand exists at scale. Google Ads Keyword Planner estimates for the US, October 2026, show "dermatologist near me" at 673,000 searches a month with an average cost per click of $5.52 and a top-of-page bid range (what advertisers bid to appear above the search results) of $2.17 to $8.21; local prices differ and these are not what a practice will pay. If slots are scarce, spend there only up to what the schedule can absorb, and put the effort into sources that send suitable patients: primary care offices that refer, the practice's own insurance and "accepting new patients" pages, and a directory listing if its terms fit (is Zocdoc worth it covers that choice).
Track the referring office in a required, fixed-list field at booking. A primary care office that stops sending patients then shows up in the next monthly count.
What changes when the treatment is cosmetic?
Cosmetic ads follow different rules and need different evidence. Botox and Dysport appear on Google's list of prescription drug terms (Google, checked 2026-10-15); Med spa marketing explains what that allows in ads and keywords, so I do not repeat it here.
Before-and-after photos are the second rule. Under HIPAA, a covered practice must get a signed authorization for any use of protected health information for marketing, except a face-to-face communication or a promotional gift of nominal value (eCFR, 45 CFR 164.508(a)(3), checked 2026-10-15). A photo that can identify the patient is such information, and a website gallery is neither exception. Keep the form separate from the consent to treat, and file it with the photo.
Meta's Health and Wellness policy allows a before-and-after transformation in ads for cosmetic procedures, injectable and laser treatments among them, provided the ad is aimed only at people 18 or older; it also bars statements that attack a person's appearance (Meta, checked 2026-10-15). The same page bans claims to cure, heal or eliminate psoriasis or cancer, a ban it says does not cover claims about treating or managing symptoms. That matters for medical-side ads too.
In Canada, the HIPAA rule does not apply. In Ontario, the CPSO advertising policy bars testimonials but does not count a before-and-after photo that meets its conditions as one: among them, the photo must be for "accurate and educational information", sit next to a statement that results are not guaranteed, carry the patient's express consent to that specific use with no incentive offered, and stay out of ads "where members of the public are likely to see them unsolicited" (CPSO, checked 2026-10-15). Other provinces' colleges set their own wording.
Can you offer skin cancer screening in an ad?
You can offer an appointment. What you say it does is where the care is needed. The FTC says an ad must be "truthful, not misleading, and, when appropriate, backed by scientific evidence" (FTC, checked 2026-10-15), and its guidance for health products sets that bar for health benefit claims at "competent and reliable scientific evidence" (FTC, checked 2026-10-15). In Ontario, the CPSO requires a physician's advertising to be "verifiable and supported by available evidence and science" when it makes clinical claims (CPSO, checked 2026-10-15).
On screening specifically, the US Preventive Services Task Force concluded in 2023 that the evidence is "insufficient to assess the balance of benefits and harms" of visual skin exams by a clinician in adolescents and adults without symptoms, a grade I statement; it does not apply to people with a personal or family history of skin cancer or with symptoms (USPSTF, checked 2026-10-15). An ad that promises to catch cancer early is making a claim a reviewer may ask you to support.
"Book a skin check" with no outcome promised is a plain description of the visit. The same caution covers the page the ad leads to. This is a summary of public pages, not legal advice, and advertising rules also differ from one state medical board to the next.
For scale, "skin cancer screening near me" shows 3,600 searches a month at an average cost per click of $6.87 and a $2.03 to $8.62 top-of-page range, again Google Ads Keyword Planner estimates for the US, October 2026.
How do you stop one side from starving the other?
Keep the two sides fully apart. Each side gets its own campaigns, daily budgets, landing pages, conversion action and report. A shared budget lets the platform shift money toward whatever looks cheapest on the one number it sees. That may not be the side your schedule needs.
Each month, if medical slots went unbooked, raise the medical campaign. If slots were booked but kept visits fell short, the gap is no-shows, and reminders fix that, not budget. If slots were booked and kept, hold the medical campaign flat and work on referral sources. Judge the cosmetic campaign only by treatments bought against its own spend, and let neither campaign borrow the other's budget unless you change it on purpose.
What do you send back to Google Ads?
Two events, named for what happened rather than why. A kept new-patient visit goes back with a fixed planning value you set from your collections, and a treatment bought goes back with the amount collected. Neither name contains a condition or a treatment, and neither does the address of any page that fires them. HIPAA-conscious conversion tracking shows how to set that up so the booking system, not the ad platform, holds the clinical detail.
What does a month look like with both columns?
Illustrative: every number below is made up for an imaginary dermatology practice, and none comes from a client.
| Medical | Cosmetic | |
|---|---|---|
| Ad spend | $2,000 | $3,000 |
| Open new-patient slots | 56 | not capped |
| Consults or appointments booked | 54 | 40 |
| Arrived | 46 | 30 |
| Treatments bought | not applicable | 18 |
| Collected from the cosmetic buyers | not applicable | $14,400 |
| Planning value per kept visit | $120 | not applicable |
The formulas, repeatable with your own numbers:
- Show rate = arrived ÷ booked: medical 46 ÷ 54 = 85 percent; cosmetic 30 ÷ 40 = 75 percent.
- Slots filled = kept visits ÷ open slots: 46 ÷ 56 = 82 percent, so 10 slots went unused: 2 never booked (56 − 54) and 8 booked but missed (54 − 46).
- Medical cost per kept visit = spend ÷ kept: $2,000 ÷ 46 = $43.48.
- Medical value per ad dollar = kept × planning value ÷ spend: 46 × $120 = $5,520; $5,520 ÷ $2,000 = $2.76.
- Cosmetic cost per treatment bought = spend ÷ bought: $3,000 ÷ 18 = $166.67.
- Cosmetic collected per ad dollar = collected ÷ spend: $14,400 ÷ $3,000 = $4.80.
Cosmetic costs $75 per booked consult ($3,000 ÷ 40) against the medical $37.04 ($2,000 ÷ 54), which one shared lead report would read as a failure on the cosmetic side. Counted properly, the more useful finding is the ten empty medical slots: 8 of them were booked and missed, so reminders have more to recover than a bigger medical budget could. The planning value is a chosen constant, not a revenue figure, so use it only to compare months.
What should you ask a dermatology marketing agency?
- Are medical and cosmetic separate campaigns with separate budgets and separate reports?
- Which stage fires each conversion, and does any conversion name contain a condition or treatment?
- Where do you get the open new-patient slot count each month?
- Who holds the signed authorization for each patient photo in use, and where is it filed?
- Which claims on my skin check pages did you write, and what supports each one?
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Frequently asked questions
Can a dermatology practice advertise skin cancer checks?
It can, but the wording needs care. A claim that a check finds, prevents or reduces the risk of skin cancer is a health claim, and the FTC says ads must be truthful, not misleading and, when appropriate, backed by scientific evidence. The US Preventive Services Task Force found the evidence insufficient to weigh the benefits and harms of a clinician's visual skin exam in adolescents and adults without symptoms (a grade I statement), so describe the appointment rather than promise a benefit.
Should the medical and cosmetic services share one website?
They can share a domain, but each needs its own landing pages, because the visitor, the price and the next step differ. A mole check page that asks for insurance details and a laser page that shows prices and a consult form serve different people. Separate pages are also what let you attach a separate conversion and a separate report to each side.
How do I stop cosmetic ads from using up the budget that medical visits need?
Run them as separate campaigns with separate daily budgets, so a high-cost cosmetic click can never draw from the medical allowance. Then judge each against its own measure: kept new-patient visits against open slots on the medical side, treatments bought against spend on the cosmetic side. One shared cost-per-lead number favors whichever side produces cheaper leads, whatever those leads are worth.
What counts as a conversion for a medical dermatology visit?
A new-patient visit that was kept, meaning the person arrived, rather than a form submitted or a call received. Insured visits carry no sale price at the front desk, so set a planning value per kept visit from your own collections and use the same value every month. Name the conversion neutrally, such as new_patient_visit_kept, with no condition in the name.
Do I need the patient's permission to post a laser result on my website?
If the photo could identify the patient, and the practice is covered by HIPAA, written authorization is needed before marketing use, and a face-to-face conversation and a nominal gift are the only exceptions the rule lists. In Ontario, the CPSO policy also requires the patient's express consent to that specific use and requires showing the patient the final images first.
Written by
Alexander Cheberko
Marketing Analytics & Conversion Tracking Engineer, US and Canada, run remotely
- Media buyer on Google Ads and Meta Ads from October 2023 to September 2025, nearly $700K in spend.
- Set up patient conversion tracking for a New York medical practice (anonymized).
- Upwork Top Rated, 5.0 from 20 reviews.