Let's TalkLet's TalkPatient acquisition for dermatology and aesthetics, where the cash-pay side funds the practice and the imagery that sells it is the imagery the ad platforms restrict.
Dermatology practices usually market the practice and wonder why the high-value procedures do not fill. We will map your cash-pay procedures against what is actually being searched in your market, show you which ones have demand you are not addressing, and tell you what each consult should cost you.
Local conditions that change the plan, rather than the state name pasted into a template.
Texas UV exposure drives genuinely high medical dermatology demand - skin checks, lesion removal, skin cancer. That is good for the practice and awkward for the marketing, because medical visits are insurance-billed and consume the same chair time as the cash-pay aesthetic work. A single campaign fills the schedule with the lower-margin half and looks like it is succeeding.
Dallas and Houston carry injectables and laser density comparable to the largest US markets, while medical dermatology demand is spread statewide. That asymmetry means the right strategy differs by location in a way it does not in smaller states: a Dallas practice has to differentiate on the cosmetic side, a West Texas practice mostly has to be findable.
Dermatology wait times in Texas metros routinely run weeks for a medical appointment, which changes what a campaign should even ask for. Advertising for appointments a patient cannot get for six weeks produces enquiries that go elsewhere. The practices that convert advertise the cosmetic and self-pay work that can be scheduled quickly, and use recall for the medical side.
The board that governs your advertising depends on the licence you hold, not only on the state. These are the rules that bite in Texas.
Before-and-after photographs are the most persuasive asset a dermatology practice owns, and patients must consent before any use in advertising. Consent to treatment is not consent to marketing. Practices routinely discover their strongest case photographs were never consented for this purpose, which makes them unusable exactly when a campaign needs them.
The board defines a testimonial as an attestation or implied attestation to the competence of a physician's service, extending past patient comments to colleagues, friends, family, actors, models and fictional characters. For a cosmetic dermatology practice whose marketing leans on social proof, that is the most consequential rule in the state, and it is why we build campaigns that do not require it.
Copy promising clearer skin, reversal of ageing or specific results is a claim about outcome, and the board requires statements about quality and competence to be supportable by fact. Aesthetic marketing drifts into this naturally because it is the language the category uses. Mechanism, candidacy and what the treatment involves convert comparably and are defensible.
The same programme as everywhere, run against this state's rules.
No Texas dermatology practice in our case studies, and we will not imply one. The transferable evidence is the clinic group below: splitting demand by service line rather than running one campaign, and moving the conversion to the booked consult, cut cost per lead 57% in two weeks. For a dermatology practice the equivalent split is medical against cosmetic - two businesses sharing one waiting room that should never share a report.
Read the full case studyAlmost always, and the Texas sun-belt makes it more urgent rather than less. High medical demand means a shared campaign optimises toward the insurance-billed visit, which is cheaper to acquire and consumes the same chair time as the cash-pay aesthetic work. The account looks efficient while the cosmetic calendar stays empty. Separate campaigns, separate conversion events, separate reports.
With documented patient consent obtained for advertising use specifically, before the image runs - consent to treatment does not cover it. Separately, Meta restricts before-and-after imagery in paid placements regardless of what the board permits, so the practical answer is that results imagery belongs on your own site and organic channels while paid creative is built around demonstration and technique. Planned that way it performs comparably; discovered by rejection it costs a month.
Treat this as a question for your counsel, and treat it more carefully in Texas than elsewhere. The board's definition of a testimonial is unusually broad - implied attestations to competence, and comments from people other than patients - and Texas has taken a restrictive position for a long time. We build campaigns that do not depend on testimonials, which is a constraint in most states and closer to a requirement here.
Not if you advertise those appointments. Long medical wait times are normal in Texas metros, and running ads for a slot nobody can get produces enquiries that go to whoever can see them sooner. The better use of budget is the cosmetic and self-pay work that can be scheduled quickly, with recall and reactivation doing the work on the medical side where the patient relationship already exists.
Yes, more than in most states. Dallas and Houston have aesthetic density comparable to the largest US markets, so a practice there has to differentiate on the cosmetic side or lose the auction. In West Texas and the smaller metros, medical demand is strong and the competitive problem is mostly being findable - which is a cheaper problem and a different campaign.
The full service, and the neighbouring states we cover.
Which metro, which procedures, and what you are running now. We will tell you honestly whether we can help, and what the board rules mean for it.