Dermatology Marketing That Treats Medical and Cosmetic Patients as Two Different Audiences
A patient searching for melanoma screening decides differently than a patient comparing Botox against the med spa two blocks away. Most marketing plans treat “dermatology” as one audience and quietly serve neither half well.
We run two separate query sets — one built around your medical patients, one built around your cosmetic patients — because AI answer engines and search results already treat them as two different questions. Your marketing should too. One scan, two scorecards, run every month.
Free. All we need is your practice name.
Two Practices, One Building
Every dermatology practice with a cosmetic line is really running two practices at once. The medical side is insurance-adjacent and decided on clinical trust. The cosmetic side is cash-pay and decided partly on price, partly on confidence in the result. A single undifferentiated marketing plan optimizes for neither.
Medical dermatology loses to indifference
A patient searching for a Mohs surgeon or the best local melanoma screening isn't comparing you against a med spa. They're comparing you against other board-certified dermatologists. Often that comparison happens on a referral, from a primary care physician who found you, or didn't, through the same public information a patient would find.
A procedure page that reads like a generic services list doesn't answer the specific question being asked. It doesn't name melanoma, doesn't name Mohs surgery, doesn't say anything a competing dermatology practice's page couldn't also say. So it doesn't get named, and the referral goes somewhere else instead.
Cosmetic dermatology loses to med spas
A patient comparing Botox providers is asking a genuinely different question. Increasingly, an AI tool is the one answering it. The competitor isn't only the practice across town — it's the aesthetics-focused med spa that isn't a medical practice at all.
That med spa carries none of your clinical credentials, and it often invests more in the exact comparison content patients are reading before they choose. It doesn't need to win on safety or training. It only needs to answer the comparison question first.
Neither problem is solved by treating “dermatology” as one keyword category. They're solved by treating them as the two separate marketing problems they actually are, with two separate answers. Most practices only ever get one of those answers, and usually don't know which one is missing.
What We Actually Do
This is the same entity-consistency, structured-data and extractable-content work described in our approach to AI search visibility, run separately for your medical and cosmetic patients instead of as one undifferentiated pass.
Scan, in two parts
One query set built around your medical patients — Mohs surgeon near me, best melanoma screening, acne specialist. A separate query set built around your cosmetic patients — Botox vs med spa, laser, filler. These are different questions with different competitors, so we never blend them into one score.
Diagnose against the right competitor for each
Medical queries get compared against other dermatology practices and dermatologic surgery programs. Cosmetic queries get compared against the specific local med spas you actually lose cash-pay patients to, not a generic industry benchmark. Two scorecards, two competitor sets, named by name.
Fix what's actually thin
Medical procedure pages get rebuilt around the specific condition. A referring physician and a worried patient both need clinical clarity, not a marketing summary. Cosmetic pages get rebuilt to make a specific, honest case for a medical practice over a med spa: real credentials, real safety framing, nothing invented.
Rescan monthly, both sets separately
You see your medical citation count and your cosmetic citation count move independently, because they're independent problems with independent fixes.
[FIRSTHAND: A real before/after example belongs here — one medical page rewrite, one cosmetic-vs-med-spa page rewrite, and what actually changed on each.]
The Same Three Tiers. A Different Query Set.
We run the same engagement tiers for every specialty. The price and the structure don't change. What changes is the input. Your scan runs the medical and cosmetic questions from the Method section above, not a generic template. Every deliverable below applies to both sides of your practice. Not just whichever one happens to be easier to market.
| Tier | Price | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Visibility | $1,500/mo | Solo or single-location practices finding out where they stand today, medical and cosmetic both. |
| Growth | $3,500/mo | Practices with a real cosmetic line competing directly against named local med spas. |
| Market Leader | $7,500/mo | Multi-location dermatology groups running medical and cosmetic care across several sites. |
Full feature breakdown and annual pricing are on our pricing page.
We Turn Down More Practices Than We Take On
Fewer than 20 reviews
A thin review profile undercuts both sides of this work before it starts. Fix reputation first, on either the medical or cosmetic side — ideally both.
Need results in 30 days
AI citations tend to move fast. Patient volume moves slower. Neither one moves inside a month.
Won't change the website
Rebuilding thin medical and cosmetic pages is most of this work. Take the pages off the table and there isn't much left to do.
Looking for the cheapest option
Plenty of agencies charge less to run one generic scan. What they skip is exactly the medical/cosmetic split this page is built around.
Medical-only, no cosmetic line at all
The med-spa-competition half of this page doesn't apply to you. A plainer medical-only approach, using only the medical query set, probably serves you better. We'll tell you that directly on the first call, not after you've signed something.
More on who we are and how we work is on our about page.
How the First Ninety Days Run
Month 1
We run the full two-part scan first. Then we build your medical and cosmetic competitor maps. That includes naming the specific local med spas you're actually losing cosmetic patients to, not a generic list of nearby dermatologists.
Months 2–3
Content and entity fixes on both procedure sets. Your review response system goes live. Structured data gets corrected across your medical and cosmetic listings separately, not folded into one blended profile that hides which side needs the work.
Ongoing
Monthly rescans of both query sets, reported separately. You see whether the medical side or the cosmetic side needs attention this month. Neither number gets averaged into the other.
Before You Ask
We're primarily insurance-based. Does this even apply to us?
Yes, on the medical side alone. The cosmetic-specific work only runs if you actually have a cosmetic line — a medical-only practice uses the medical query set and nothing else. You're not paying for a comparison problem you don't have.
Our cosmetic patients already come from Instagram. Why does this matter?
Instagram reaches people already following you. This addresses patients who haven't heard of you yet and are asking an AI tool or a search engine to name someone. Those are two different audiences, at two different points in the decision, and most practices only have a plan for one of them.
How do you handle before-and-after content given advertising rules?
We build cosmetic content around credentials and safety framing rather than image-led comparison claims. Any before-and-after use follows your own state board's and platform's consent and disclosure rules — we don't set those rules ourselves, and you should confirm your specific obligations with your own counsel.
We compete with med spas that aren't run by a doctor at all. How is that a fair comparison?
It isn't, which is exactly why we treat it as its own problem instead of folding it into generic dermatology marketing. A med spa's whole marketing budget is often built around exactly this comparison. Treating it as a footnote is how practices keep losing it.
Do you work with medical-only practices with no cosmetic side?
Yes — the medical query set and method described above run on their own, at the same three tiers.
What happens if we stop?
The work is month to month. If the results stop moving, you can leave without a penalty or notice period. Specific terms are confirmed in writing before you start.
See What AI Says About Your Practice
Fifteen questions, split across your medical query set and your cosmetic query set, one free report, free to run. Nothing gets averaged together, and nobody has to call you first.
Also run a dental practice as part of a multi-specialty group? Swap medical/cosmetic for emergency/elective and the same logic holds. See our dental marketing page.