Almost every dermatology practice is two businesses sharing a waiting room. The medical side is largely insurance funded, referral influenced and capacity constrained; the cosmetic side is cash pay, discretionary, price sensitive and competes with medical spas. They have different economics, different buyers and different regulatory exposure, and a single marketing plan serves neither of them well.
Decide which side the budget is for before anything else
If the medical clinic is already full, marketing that produces more medical appointments buys you a longer wait list rather than revenue. If cosmetic capacity is idle, that is where growth is. This sounds obvious and is routinely ignored, because agencies propose what is easy to rank for rather than what the practice can serve. Ask for the plan to be stated as which service lines it is trying to fill.
Cosmetic claims are advertising claims, and they are substantiated or they are not
Before and after imagery, outcome claims and any suggestion of typical results sit inside advertising law. The FTC's endorsement guides govern testimonials and require that results which are not typical be presented honestly, and health-related claims need substantiation. This is the area where dermatology marketing most often drifts, because the imagery is persuasive and the temptation is to show the best case without saying so.
Patient stories are protected health information first
A patient's before and after photograph, or their story, is information about their care, and using it requires a written authorization rather than a verbal yes. This is a privacy obligation separate from the advertising rules and it applies to the cosmetic side as much as the medical. Any agency that treats patient imagery as content to be gathered casually is creating exposure the practice carries.
Competing with medical spas on the cosmetic side
For injectables and laser work, a dermatology practice competes with providers that are cheaper, more aggressive with promotions and often better at social media. The dermatologist's advantage is clinical, so the content that works says who administers the treatment, what their training is, what happens if something goes wrong and who manages it. That is an argument a medical spa cannot make, and most practices under-use it.
The practitioner page is the highest value page you have
Patients search for named dermatologists, referrers check credentials, and the biography page is what appears for a name search. It should carry qualifications, board certification, conditions and procedures, languages, and where the person trained. Most practice websites treat these pages as a formality. They are frequently the highest intent page on the site.
Questions people ask about dermatology marketing
Should the cosmetic services have their own website?
Sometimes, particularly where the cosmetic brand would be undermined by sitting inside a medical practice site, or where the practice wants to market it separately. The cost is splitting authority across two domains and doubling the maintenance. A separate, well structured section of one site achieves most of the benefit for most practices.
Can we use patient before and after photographs?
With a written authorization from the patient covering that use, and with the presentation meeting advertising standards, including honest treatment of whether the result is typical. Verbal consent is not sufficient and a general consent to treatment does not cover marketing use.
How do we market medical dermatology when we are already busy?
Usually by shifting the mix rather than the volume: attracting the conditions and procedures you most want to treat, improving referral relationships with primary care, and making scheduling easier for the appointments that are worth most. That is a different brief from generate more patients and produces a different plan.
Are online reviews a risk for a dermatology practice?
Responding to them is, because any detail about the person's care, including confirming they were a patient, can be a disclosure of protected health information. The safe response acknowledges the feedback and invites contact offline, and says nothing else. Practices have faced enforcement for responding in detail.