Dermatology sits awkwardly across two marketing categories at once. Half the practice is medical, where the patient is searching for a diagnosis, a biopsy or a treatment plan and the purchase is really a referral or an insurance question. The other half is aesthetic, where the patient is comparing providers on price, results and confidence, and the decision behaves like a considered consumer purchase. A marketing provider who treats the two identically will underperform on both. This page describes how the two halves differ, the claim substantiation rules a medical practice carries into its advertising, and the checks that separate a specialist from a general local agency wearing a healthcare page.
The medical half and the aesthetic half behave differently
Medical dermatology searches are led by symptoms and conditions, and the patient is usually anxious, in a hurry and constrained by insurance and referral rules. The pages that win are calm, specific and answer the question before selling the appointment, and the operational bottleneck is often appointment availability rather than demand. Aesthetic dermatology is the opposite: demand has to be created, the patient compares several providers, price transparency influences enquiry rates, and before and after imagery does much of the persuasion. A provider should be able to tell you which of the two your growth target actually depends on, and should propose different pages, different measurement and often different channels for each. A single blended programme sold at one price is usually a template with your logo on it.
Claim substantiation is the constraint, not the copy
The practice is the advertiser and carries responsibility for the claims made on its behalf. The FTC's health products compliance guidance sets out that objective claims about a treatment's effects need competent and reliable scientific evidence, and that testimonials and endorsements do not substitute for that evidence. Aesthetic marketing walks close to this line constantly, because the entire category is built on before and after results, expected outcomes and patient stories. The FTC's endorsement guides also require that endorsements reflect honest experience and that material connections are disclosed, which covers incentivised patient testimonials and staff appearing as patients. Ask any candidate who reviews clinical claims, whether the practice signs off copy before publication, and what they do when a client requests a claim the evidence will not support.
The local layer that most practices under invest in
For a practice with one or a few locations, the fastest movement usually comes from the least glamorous work: an accurate and complete business profile per location, consistent name, address and phone details, correct hours including holiday variations, and a genuine review flow. Google publishes structured data guidance for local businesses precisely so a practice can hand search engines its address, hours and service area in a form they read rather than infer. A provider who leaves this until month four while starting with a blog is sequencing the work around their revenue rather than your appointment book. Ask what they would do in the first thirty days, and whether any of it is visible to a patient searching today.
Vetting the provider on published evidence
Ask four questions before price. What is the smallest engagement they take, since the answer eliminates most of a shortlist in one email. Which parts of delivery are in house against subcontracted, particularly photography, video and paid media. Will they name two dermatology or aesthetic clients you can contact. And who owns the website, the ad accounts and the analytics property at the end of the term. Practices frequently buy a bundle marketed as digital marketing and SEO services without checking which components are actually staffed, and discover at renewal that the site they paid to build belongs to the agency. All four answers should arrive in writing, and a provider who resists putting them in writing has answered a fifth question you did not ask.
Questions people ask about dermatology marketing agency
Do I need a healthcare specialist or will a local agency do?
A specialist knows the claim boundaries, the condition led search patterns and the aesthetic buying journey without being taught, which saves months and reduces the chance of a compliance problem. A strong local generalist can be better value where the need is a clean business profile, a fast site, a review flow and a small number of well written service pages. Ask both to name the first ten pages they would build, then compare the lists rather than the pitches.
Can I publish patient before and after photographs?
Only with proper authorisation and careful framing. Patient authorisation for the use of identifiable images is a privacy matter separate from advertising rules, and the images themselves function as claims about expected results, which brings the FTC's substantiation expectations into play. Typicality matters: a striking outcome presented without context implies a result most patients will not get. Have the practice, not the agency, own that judgement.
Should aesthetic prices be published on the site?
Published prices reduce enquiry volume and raise enquiry quality, which is usually a good trade for a practice with constrained clinical time and a poor one for a new practice trying to fill a diary. A common middle path is publishing a starting price with the factors that move it, which filters out the price shoppers without deterring serious enquiries. Decide it as a capacity question rather than a marketing one.
What should the reported metric be?
Booked and attended consultations, split between medical and aesthetic, rather than form fills or calls of any length. Practices routinely pay for enquiry volume that never reaches the chair because nobody defined the metric at the start. Agree the definition, the source system and who reconciles it monthly, and insist the agency reports from your analytics and your practice management data rather than from a dashboard only they can see.