Dermatology and medspa marketing for two very different patients: the one who has waited five weeks for an appointment, and the one who needs Botox by Friday.

No, and treat any agency that promises a specific number as a red flag. Google’s own guidance warns businesses to be wary of any SEO provider who guarantees rankings, and we will not sell one either. We commit to measurable visibility growth against your baseline scan, and to honest reporting on calls and profile interactions. The conversion from call to booked patient depends on your intake process, your availability and your pricing.

It needs to be handled deliberately rather than defaulted into. Google’s rules on primary versus secondary categories are specific, and so are its rules on practitioner profiles versus a single practice profile for multiple injectors. Both are frequently broken, and getting them wrong is a common cause of suspension in this vertical. We audit the existing structure before changing anything.

Yes, and we write inside FTC and board advertising constraints by default rather than producing template copy and hoping. All published copy goes to you and your medical director for review first. Your state board and the FTC are the authority on what is permitted; we are responsible for not putting you in front of them.

Yes, and recency matters more than most practices assume. Review signals are one of the strongest controllable local ranking factors. Roughly three in four consumers specifically look for reviews written within the last three months. For the aesthetic side specifically, close to half of patients say a provider’s social presence affects whether they book at all. That makes a stale profile a cosmetic-revenue problem, not just a ranking one.

Yes. Scope of practice and supervision requirements for non-physician injectors vary by state. How you represent who is actually performing a treatment needs to match that reality exactly, both on your Business Profile and your site. We are not your compliance adviser on this, but we default to accurate credential language, and we flag anything that looks like it is overstating a provider’s title.

You might be thinking a few hundred dollars a month should cover Google Business Profile management for a single location? The quick answer is no, not if you want real Map Pack visibility in place before a competitor claims it. Digital Handshake Media’s engagements start at a $1,000 USD a month floor. Most clients invest between $1,000 and $3,500 a month, depending on how competitive the local market is. There is also a $6,500 a month Premium Done-For-You tier for larger, multi-location practices. That fee covers our management work only; if paid search is part of the plan, ad spend is billed separately by Google. Set against the recurring value of one neuromodulator patient, or one new dermatology patient placed on an annual recall, that floor is a small number. Prices well below it usually mean thin, automated work: a listing claimed once and left alone.

The five channels in the table above carry this vertical, and none of them work alone. Google Map Pack visibility wins both the diagnostic search and the aesthetic search once it ranks, at close to zero incremental cost per patient. Physician and specialist referrals are free and high-trust, but they sit entirely outside your control, and do nothing for the elective side of the practice. Instagram and TikTok build the injector-specific reputation aesthetic researchers actively look for. They also take real time, plus documented consent for every image. RealSelf and dedicated review platforms are purpose-built for cosmetic decision research. Paid search and paid social buy instant volume, but stop the moment the budget does. Most practices need a mix weighted toward Map Pack and reputation first, with paid search filling gaps while organic visibility climbs.

A general practice is almost entirely insurance-driven. It rarely competes on anything but proximity and whether it is accepting new patients. A dermatology or medspa practice runs that same medical-necessity search, but alongside a second, elective search. That second search behaves like a cosmetic-industry purchase: researched for weeks, decided on photographic proof and injector reputation, and worth returning to every few months if the first visit goes well. It is also where most of the compounding lifetime value sits, since a trusted injector tends to keep a patient’s neuromodulator, filler and skincare spend in one place. Marketing a dermatology or medspa practice like a generic medical practice ignores that whole elective, self-pay half of the funnel.

Yes, in how budget and content get allocated, even though both sides share one Google Business Profile. The medical side is won on accurate new-patient status, insurance information and a real next-available date. The content that matters most there is practical, not persuasive. The cosmetic side is won on before-and-after photography, injector-specific reputation and active social presence, and the content that matters most there is proof. A campaign that spends the whole budget on one side starves the other. A combined practice needs both sides represented correctly on the same profile, not just whichever side is easier to market.

The engagement runs on a 12-week roadmap. It opens with a baseline geo-grid scan that shows exactly where your practice ranks across your service area today, for both medical and cosmetic search terms where relevant. Profile-level fixes, correcting categories, updating new-patient status, adding consented before-and-after photos, can show movement within the first few weeks. Prominence built on reviews and citations is usually clearest between weeks six and twelve. The re-scan at week twelve compares against that baseline so you can see the actual change, not a promise of one. After week twelve, the work continues month to month rather than stopping.

This page is about channel and budget strategy across all five channels in the table above, including how social reputation and RealSelf fit into the bigger picture. What Digital Handshake Media actually delivers is the local search side. That means Google Business Profile optimization, geo-grid visibility tracking, and citation cleanup. It also means the website and schema content built around how diagnostic, aesthetic and occasion-driven patients search, including before-and-after and results copy, written inside FTC and board constraints. Day-to-day Instagram and TikTok posting is typically handled in-house or by a dedicated social specialist. We factor how aesthetic patients actually use those platforms into what we build, but we are not your social media manager. Paid search and paid social can be added to a plan; the ad spend itself is billed separately by the platform.