Cosmetic surgery searches are among the most expensive in healthcare and among the slowest to convert. The patient is spending a significant sum of their own money on something elective, often privately, and will research for months, consult more than one surgeon, and act when their life allows. An account measured on this month's consultations, with an intake that treats an enquiry as a lead to chase, will read as failing while working normally.
Separate procedure intent from research intent
Somebody searching for a named procedure with a city attached is far closer to acting than somebody searching what a procedure involves or what it costs. Both are worth reaching and they need different pages, different budgets and different expectations. Blended into one campaign, the expensive procedure searches subsidise research traffic that nobody is following properly.
Publish price ranges or pay for consultations you lose
Cost is the first question and most practices will not answer it online, so patients consult to find out and do not proceed. A realistic range per procedure, with what moves it and what is included, converts the right people and removes the consultations that were only ever a price enquiry. In a market with click prices this high, that filtering is worth more than extra volume.
Discretion is part of the service and part of the account
Patients may not want a follow-up call at work, a voicemail, or an advertisement following them on a shared device. Say explicitly how you will and will not make contact, offer a choice of channel, and consider excluding retargeting for sensitive procedures. This is both a privacy obligation and a conversion advantage with a cautious patient.
Before-and-after imagery is the most persuasive and the most governed
It needs specific, documented, revocable consent, must be representative rather than selected and retouched, and is restricted on some advertising platforms. Getting this right is a practice process rather than a marketing one, and getting it wrong is the error in this category that costs most.
Measure surgeries booked, not consultations
Consultations are easy to generate with a low price and a soft offer, and a practice can be busy with them while the operating schedule is empty. Agree at the start that the measure is procedures booked and their value, on a horizon of two or three quarters, and accept that the early months will look thin even when the account is working.
Questions people ask about plastic surgery PPC
Why are plastic surgery clicks so expensive?
Because the procedures are high value, elective and self-funded, so every practice in the market bids. That makes the settings and the intake matter more than the creative.
Should we publish prices?
Ranges per procedure with what moves them. Cost is the first question, and practices that withhold it pay for consultations that were only ever price enquiries.
Should we use retargeting?
Carefully, and for sensitive procedures often not at all. Advertisements following somebody on a shared device can disclose something private, and the cautious patient is your best prospect.
What should the account be measured on?
Procedures booked and their value over two or three quarters, not consultations. A practice can be busy with consultations while the operating schedule stays empty.