Key facts
- Practices grow on two engines: medical dermatology, acne, eczema, rashes, and skin-cancer screening that's insurance-billed, and cosmetic dermatology, Botox, fillers, laser, and peels, that's high-margin cash-pay.
- The cosmetic side is the profit growth lever in most practices, and medical visits also feed cosmetic conversions inside the same existing patient base.
- Patients research providers heavily and read reviews before booking, since choosing a dermatologist is a high-trust, high-consideration decision even for a routine visit.
- Healthcare and aesthetic ad creative is restricted on Meta and Google, so paid campaigns need careful, HIPAA-aware setup, while organic search, reviews, and local listings carry heavier weight than in most niches.
- Nothing is quoted privately: management on the ad account is a tenth of spend, floored at $600 with no markup, SEO pages cost $50 once past ten, and a site rebuild falls between $1,500 and $20,000+.
How patients actually choose a provider
A patient with a new mole or stubborn acne searches 'dermatologist near me' and picks largely from the map pack and the reviews attached to it, since a skin concern feels personal enough that word of mouth and star ratings carry more weight than a polished ad. If a practice isn't visible there, another clinic gets the visit without ever being compared against it.
The cosmetic side runs on a quieter, separate decision. A patient considering Botox or a laser treatment is often already a medical patient at your practice, or a new patient specifically shopping cosmetic providers, and that decision moves on trust in the injector and clear, non-alarming pricing rather than urgency.
Both sides eventually run through the same front door, but they need different landing pages and different tone: medical content that answers a health worry plainly, and cosmetic content that shows real results without leaning on hype.
Channels, in order, and why
HIPAA-aware Google Ads come first, split into a medical campaign and a cosmetic campaign from day one, since combining them under one generic 'dermatologist' ad tends to underperform both. Careful creative and compliant tracking matter here more than in most niches, since health and aesthetic ads get flagged quickly without it.
Building the map pack presence for 'dermatologist near me,' plus pages for the specific conditions and cosmetic treatments the practice wants to grow, is the channel that takes longest, but organic and reviews carry unusually heavy weight here while paid creative stays restricted.
Patients check ratings before booking either a skin check or a cosmetic consult, so reviews and AI search visibility underpin both sides of the practice at once. Recall email comes last in sequence; its job is turning a one-time medical visit into years of care and nudging existing patients toward the cosmetic services they haven't tried yet.
A budget band in plain words
Running two modest, separate Google Ads campaigns, one medical and one cosmetic, puts management near the $600 monthly floor per campaign, plus whatever gets spent on the ads. Pages covering the conditions and treatments the practice wants to grow price out at $50 each once a single-location practice commits to ten.
A site that doesn't separate medical and cosmetic menus clearly, or skips online scheduling, is worth an early rebuild, priced as one of eight fixed packages from $1,500 up to $20,000 or beyond. Adding a fuller cosmetic treatment menu and more than one provider tends to push the SEO page count higher than what a solo, medical-focused practice would need.
Weeks 1 to 12: what actually happens
The opening month is entirely compliant setup: HIPAA-aware call and form tracking gets set up before any ad runs, the website gets fixed so medical and cosmetic services have separate menus with online scheduling, the first Google Ads campaign launches for medical visits alongside a separate one for the practice's highest-margin cosmetic services, and reviews get requested from the last month's patients across both sides of the practice.
The middle stretch shifts to publishing and watching the numbers: the first SEO pages go live, one per condition and one per cosmetic treatment, ad spend shifts toward whichever campaign is converting at the lower cost per booked patient, review requests start firing automatically after each visit, and the medical-versus-cosmetic booking split gets checked along with the compliant ad account's health.
The final month builds recall and the cosmetic nurture: the annual skin-check recall sequence launches, a cosmetic nurture sequence goes out to existing medical patients who haven't tried Botox, filler, or laser yet, remaining SEO pages get finished, and the practice finishes the quarter with a clear cost per booked patient split between medical and cosmetic, with a recall system already pulling lapsed patients back in.
The numbers to watch
Cost per booked patient, tracked separately for medical and cosmetic visits, shows which side of the practice is actually earning back its ad spend, since the two have very different margins and shouldn't be judged on one blended number. Map-pack ranking for 'dermatologist near me' and for each cosmetic treatment targeted shows whether SEO is gaining ground.
Patients weighing either a medical or cosmetic booking read whatever star rating and review count they find first, so both deserve a place on the weekly checklist, not just an occasional glance. Recall and win-back response rate tells you whether the reminder system is actually bringing lapsed patients back rather than just sending emails nobody opens.
Ad account health, meaning whether campaigns are running without restriction flags, is worth checking specifically in this niche, since a flagged account silently burns budget without producing a single booking.
What we would charge to run this
Each campaign is managed at 10% of the budget assigned to it, with a $600 monthly floor and no markup on top of actual Google spend. Condition and cosmetic-treatment SEO pages run $50 apiece, once the practice commits to at least ten a month.
Where the current site doesn't separate medical and cosmetic menus or offer online scheduling, a rebuild is priced as one of eight fixed packages, from $1,500 up past $20,000 depending on scope. Nothing is charged upfront, and exact numbers arrive in a free proposal within 48 hours.
The whole arrangement runs month to month, so the practice can judge the plan on results rather than a long commitment.
Related questions
The two attract different patients with different urgency and very different margins, so combining them under one campaign usually means one side quietly starves the other of budget. Separate campaigns let each be judged on its own cost per booked patient.
Health and aesthetic creative, especially anything implying a medical claim or showing certain before-and-after imagery, trips restrictions on both platforms. Careful wording and a compliant landing page setup from the start avoid the account limits that come from getting this wrong.
A nurture email sequence sent to existing medical patients, introducing cosmetic services with real results and clear pricing rather than a hard sell, tends to work better than mentioning it once during a medical visit and hoping the patient remembers.
The structure stays the same, but a solo practice can likely run with fewer SEO pages, perhaps ten to twelve covering the core conditions and one or two cosmetic treatments, while a multi-provider practice offering a fuller treatment menu will need a larger page count.
Weeks 9 to 12 is the right timing, since recall works best once there's an established patient base from the first two months of new bookings, rather than trying to recall patients who haven't been seen yet.
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