Google & Meta Ads for Med Spas

Growth-focused med spas commonly put somewhere between $2,000 and $10,000 per month into paid media depending on market size and how many treatment lines they're pushing, with the spend split across Meta and Google. Aesthetics is a crowded auction in most metros, with injector-dense markets like Florida, Texas, and Southern California at the expensive end. The sustainable way to set budget is against client lifetime value: recurring tox and membership revenue means a med spa can outbid competitors who only count first visits.

Mostly no, and this catches nearly every med spa off guard. Meta's policies restrict before-and-after imagery in ads along with anything framed around negative self-perception, and Google scrutinizes transformation claims for cosmetic procedures. Your website, organic Instagram, and Google Business Profile can still showcase full galleries, so the play is a handoff: run compliant creative in the ads, injector video, testimonials, single-result imagery, and let the gallery do the closing once the click lands on your own property.

Instagram and Facebook usually drive the most volume because aesthetics is visual and demand can be created, not just captured; Google Search converts at the highest rate because it catches people already deciding; and TikTok is earning a place for spas targeting clients in their twenties and thirties. The honest answer is that the platforms compound rather than compete. Social builds familiarity with your injectors and results, search harvests the intent that familiarity creates, and measuring them together is the only way the budget split makes sense.

Positioning does the filtering. Ads leading with discounts recruit clients who leave for the next discount, while ads leading with injector credentials, natural-looking results, and consultation quality attract clients choosing on trust. Structural choices help too: promoting memberships rather than one-time deals selects for relationship-minded clients, and consultation-first funnels for bigger treatments let your team sell value in person. Deal-seekers exist in every market and some volume from them is fine; the mistake is building the whole acquisition engine in their image.

For the right spa, yes, with caveats. TikTok's audience skews younger, so it performs for preventative tox, lip filler, and skin treatments aimed at clients in their twenties and thirties, and much less for higher-age-bracket treatments. The platform rewards native-feeling video, an injector talking to camera beats anything produced, and it enforces its own restrictions on cosmetic procedure ads, including age targeting. We treat TikTok as a growth layer once Meta and Google are performing, not as the foundation.

Depending on market and treatment, med spas typically pay somewhere from $50 to $300 to acquire a new client through paid ads, with consultation-based treatments at the higher end and offer-driven bookings at the lower. Isolated, those numbers mean little. A $200 acquisition cost on a client worth $1,500 in her first year is excellent; $75 for a one-time discount redeemer who never returns is expensive. We report acquisition cost against treatment value and rebooking, which is the only version of the number worth managing.