Paid advertising for aesthetic & skin clinics

Paid ads for aesthetic clinics: what to run, what to budget

If you have already decided to advertise, the useful questions are narrower than "does marketing work". They are: which platform, how much, and what will get the account shut down. This page answers those three for aesthetic and skin clinics, including the numbers we will not pretend to know until we have looked at your market.

Ad spend goes direct to the platform. We take no percentage of it.

A calm, well-lit treatment room in an aesthetic clinic
The channels

Three places your money can go, and what each one is for

Most aesthetic clinics need more than one, but almost never all three at once, and almost never on day one.

Meta: Facebook and Instagram

For the patients who have not decided yet

This is where most aesthetic budget belongs, because most aesthetic demand is not being searched for. Somebody considering a treatment is scrolling, comparing clinics, and judging you on whether you look competent and human. Meta reaches them before a search query ever exists. The service in detail, including how we handle campaign structure and creative: get chosen →

Google Search

Smaller volume, higher intent, defends your name

Search volume for aesthetic treatments is thinner than clinics expect, and the terms that do get searched are competitive. Where Google earns its place is at the two ends: people searching a specific treatment with a location attached, and people searching your clinic by name after they have seen you elsewhere. That second one matters more than it sounds. If a competitor is bidding on your name and you are not, you are paying for their discovery in lost bookings. The search side in full: get found →

Retargeting

Cheapest audience you have, and the one most clinics ignore

People who visited your treatment page and did not enquire are the warmest audience available and usually the cheapest to reach again. Most clinics we look at are not running this at all. It is not a strategy on its own, but it is the first thing we would switch on once there is enough traffic to make it worth doing.

The money question

What it costs, and what we will not guess

We would rather be blunt about this than publish a cost-per-enquiry figure that sounds authoritative and turns out to be wrong for your town. Here is what we can say honestly before we have seen your market.

  • A workable minimum, agreed for your market. The platforms need enough data to optimise, and below a certain spend you are paying for a learning phase that never finishes. We set that floor with you on the call, based on your area and treatment mix, rather than publishing one number for every clinic.
  • We take no percentage of ad spend. Our fee is fixed whatever you spend, so we have no incentive to talk your budget up.
  • Budget for the learning phase. Meta campaigns typically need 30 to 45 days to move through Meta's own learning period before performance settles. That first month is not wasted, but it is not representative either, and judging a campaign on week two is how good campaigns get switched off.
  • Expect results to land in the back half of the first 90 days. We set that expectation at onboarding rather than after you have asked why month one looked flat.

What we will not do is quote you a cost per enquiry from a webpage. It moves with your city, your treatment mix, your prices and how many clinics near you are bidding on the same thing. On the call we will look at your actual market and give you a range with the reasoning attached, including telling you if the numbers do not work at the budget you have in mind.

On a marketing retainer, the promise is: if we don't make you more than we cost you, you don't pay our fee until we do, assessed quarterly against an enquiry value we agree with you at onboarding. Ad spend stays payable.

Before you spend anything

The four things that get an aesthetic ad account restricted

Aesthetics sits in the strictest corner of ad policy. An account suspension costs far more than a rejected ad, because rebuilding trust with a platform takes weeks you do not have.

Naming a prescription-only medicine

In the UK, prescription-only medicines cannot be advertised to the public. That directly catches the brand names aesthetic clinics most want to put in an advert. Compliant clinics advertise the consultation, the practitioner and the treatment area instead. It is a real constraint, not a stylistic preference, and it is the single most common thing we see clinics getting wrong in ads they wrote themselves.

Before-and-after imagery

Meta's policies restrict before-and-after images and pictures implying an unexpected or unlikely result. This is the rule clinics are most surprised by, because the imagery that converts best in a consultation room is often the imagery you cannot run in a feed. There are ways to show credible proof without breaking it, and getting that right is most of the creative job.

Copy that implies you know something about the reader

Meta prohibits advertising that asserts or implies knowledge of somebody's personal health or physical characteristics. Copy written in the second person about a person's body tends to trip this, even when the intent is friendly. It is one of the easiest ways to lose an account and one of the easiest to avoid once you know it exists.

Claims nobody checked

Every health and appearance claim in an ad needs to survive scrutiny before it runs, not after a complaint. Eva, our co-founder, is an Associate Nutritionist and checks every health claim before a campaign goes live. Where a claim sits in a grey area, we flag it and offer a version that says the same thing safely.

Platform policy and advertising rules change regularly, in both the UK and US. We check the current position for your treatments before planning spend rather than relying on what was true last year.

Someone browsing a clinic on their phone
Measuring it properly

Clicks are not the number that matters

An aesthetic clinic can have a beautiful click-through rate and an empty consultation diary. The only figures worth reporting are enquiries, consultations booked, and how many of those turned into treatment. That means tracking has to be set up before the money starts moving, not reverse-engineered in month three.

It also means the enquiry has to be answered. An aesthetic enquiry that gets a reply in five minutes books; the one that waits until tomorrow books somewhere else. We build AI infrastructure for fast first responses and follow-up, because paying for enquiries that nobody answers is the most expensive mistake in this whole channel.

You are ready for paid ads if

  • You are an established clinic with a team, not a single practitioner
  • You are primarily private-pay, in the UK or US
  • Somebody can respond to an enquiry the same day, every day
  • You have a monthly ad budget set aside, separate from any agency fee
  • You want proof something converted, not a report full of impressions

Not sure paid ads are the right starting point? The wider picture for your specialty: marketing for aesthetic clinics →

"Eva has been managing my Facebook and Instagram since January 2025, and the results have been amazing."

Lesley Reid
Lesley Reid Nutritional Health

Read more testimonials →

Straight answers

Common questions about paid ads for aesthetic clinics

Should we start with Meta or Google?

For most aesthetic clinics, Meta, because most of your demand has not turned into a search query yet. The usual exception is a clinic with an established name that is already being searched for, where defending the brand terms on Google is cheap and immediately worth it. We will look at your search volume on the call rather than guess from the specialty.

What is the minimum we should spend?

Enough for the platform to learn, which depends on your market more than clinics expect. Below a workable level the campaign never gathers enough data to optimise, and you end up paying for a learning phase that never finishes. We set the floor with you on the call, based on your area, your treatment mix and what nearby clinics are bidding on. Whatever the figure, it is spend only, paid direct to the platform, and sits separately from any fee.

Do you take a percentage of our ad spend?

No. Our fee is fixed regardless of what you spend, which means we have no reason to push your budget up and no reason to hide what a campaign is actually costing you.

Can we run before-and-after photos?

Not freely. Meta's rules restrict before-and-after images and images implying an unexpected result, and advertising rules around cosmetic treatment imagery are tight in general. There are compliant ways to show credible proof, and working out which ones fit your treatments is part of the creative work rather than an afterthought. We check current policy for your specific case before building anything.

Our ad account got restricted before. Can you fix it?

Sometimes, and we will be honest about the odds when we look at it. What we can do reliably is stop it happening again, which usually comes down to the four issues on this page: naming prescription-only medicines, restricted imagery, copy that implies knowledge of the reader's body, and claims nobody checked before publishing. If an account is beyond recovery we will say so rather than take a retainer to keep trying.

Want the numbers for your market?

One 30-minute call. We'll look at what your area actually costs, and tell you honestly whether the budget you have is enough.

Book a discovery call
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