Plastic Surgery Marketing Agency

The short answer

Plastic surgery marketing sells an elective, cash-pay procedure that patients research for months before contacting anyone. They compare surgeons on credentials and before-and-after results first, and on the practice second. Advertising is constrained in ways most categories are not: Meta's ad standards prohibit before-and-after imagery, several states restrict how board certification may be claimed, and the FTC's 2024 rule bans fake reviews and reviews bought on condition of positive sentiment. Because the research window runs months, attribution has to tie a surgery date back to first touch rather than last click.

average consult-to-surgery conversion across plastic surgery clients — verify with Tim

Consults that become booked surgeries

typical cost per booked surgery — confirm

Cost per booked case

average research window from first visit to consult request — confirm

Time from first site visit to consult request

The research cycle is months long and mostly invisible to you

A patient thinks about a procedure for months, saves galleries from several surgeons, checks credentials on the board website, reads RealSelf and Google reviews, and then books a consult or two. By the time they fill out your form they have already narrowed the list. Last-click attribution credits whatever they touched on the day they booked and tells you nothing about the months before.

That means the site is doing trust work, not conversion work. Procedure pages with real detail on technique, recovery, and candidacy get read end to end by people in month two. Thin pages built for keywords get skipped, and you never see it in the analytics because the visit still counts.

Galleries are the highest-value asset in the category, and they belong on your own domain where you control the presentation and the consent record.

The channels that work best are the ones with the tightest rules

Cosmetic surgery is visual, so every agency's instinct is before-and-after images on Meta and Instagram. Meta's advertising standards prohibit before-and-after images and prohibit ads that focus on a specific body part or imply negative self-perception. Practices run them anyway, get restricted, and lose the pixel history and the audience lists along with the account.

Google is looser on imagery and tighter on claims. Guarantees, outcome promises, and pricing that omits material terms get disapproved, and repeated violations move from disapproval to suspension.

The answer is not clever creative that slips past review. It is putting the persuasive material where it is allowed, on your own site and in organic social, and using paid to move qualified people there.

Plastic Surgery Marketing: how we run it for plastic surgery practices

A real page per procedure

Rhinoplasty, breast augmentation, tummy tuck, and mommy makeover are separate searches with separate objections. Each gets technique detail, candidacy, recovery timeline, and a gallery of your own cases.

Surgeon-first content and credential pages

Patients search the surgeon's name before they book. Bio, board certification, training, hospital privileges, publications, and press get built as pages that rank for that name instead of leaving Google to fill it with third-party profiles.

Paid search on procedure and near-me intent

Campaigns built by procedure with landing pages that match the query exactly, managed against booked surgeries. Cost per lead is reported and ignored as a decision input.

Paid social built to survive review

Creative written inside Meta's personal health and appearance rules, no before-and-after images in ads, no body-part focus. Gallery work stays on owned channels where it is allowed.

Consult tracking through to surgery date

Call tracking and CRM integration that follows a call to consult booked, consult kept, quoted, and scheduled. Reporting shows revenue by source with the multi-month lag accounted for, not a same-month snapshot.

Services

What we would run here

Search engine optimization

Other agencies report positions; we report phone calls. Every keyword we chase is one a family types when they are ready to place someone, and every call traces back to the page that earned it.

PPC management

Our best-fit accounts run $50,000 to $100,000 a month through Google. Run right, paid search is the only channel that produces admissions this month; run badly, it funds your competitors' research.

Social media marketing

Families check your Instagram before they call and again after the tour, and referral sources check it before they send anyone. That is the job social does in this industry; anyone selling it to you as an admissions channel is selling you something else.

Online reputation management

One angry post on a thin profile costs you calls you will never know you lost. We build the review volume that absorbs it and write the responses that will not get you fined.

Web design and development

Structure first, then speed, then the part that looks good. Most facility sites lose rankings to their own URL map and lose calls to a phone number buried in a hamburger menu.

Metrics and reporting

You have been sent a report full of numbers that went up while admissions stayed flat. We report calls, qualified calls, and cost per admission by channel, and we show the math.

Free audit

Want to see where your calls are going?

We audit your rankings, ads, and call tracking against the programs you compete with, then show you what is leaking. Yours to keep either way.

Prefer the phone? (561) 269-2833

Compliance

The rules that apply to this category

This is the part that catches agencies who have not worked in this category before.

Meta prohibits before-and-after images and body-part focus in ads

Meta's advertising standards on personal health and appearance ban before-and-after imagery, ads that zoom in on a specific body part, and creative that implies negative self-perception to sell a procedure. Cosmetic surgery ads also cannot target users under 18. Losing an ad account here costs more than the campaign, because the pixel history and audience lists go with it.

Board certification claims are regulated at the state level

Several states, California and Florida among them, restrict advertising board certified to boards recognized by the American Board of Medical Specialties or an equivalent, and require the certifying board to be named. Cosmetic surgery boards that sound similar to the American Board of Plastic Surgery are a disciplinary risk if advertised as equivalent. We check the exact wording against your state's medical board rules before it goes live.

FTC rule on consumer reviews and testimonials

The FTC rule effective October 2024 prohibits fake reviews, reviews from people with an undisclosed material connection to the practice, and buying reviews conditioned on positive sentiment. A patient influencer who received a discounted or comped procedure has to disclose it. Incentivized review programs sold to practices as reputation management are the exposure here.

HIPAA authorization for patient photos

Before-and-after photos are protected health information, and consent to be photographed for the chart is not authorization to publish. Marketing use needs a signed HIPAA authorization naming the channels, and it can be revoked, which means an image takedown process has to exist before the gallery goes up.

Written on this in more depth

No gate and no form. These go further than a services page reasonably can.

Plastic surgeon SEO

Plastic surgeon SEO built on procedure pages, before and after galleries, and board certification signals, tracked to consultation calls and bookings.

Sources

FAQ

Questions we get asked

How do you attribute a surgery to a marketing channel when the research takes months?

Tracked phone numbers, a consult field in the CRM that captures how they found you, and reporting that matches surgery dates back to first touch rather than last click. The lag is real, so month-one reporting shows consults and month-four reporting shows revenue. Any agency showing you same-month ROAS in this category is making it up.

Can we run before-and-after photos in ads?

Not on Meta. Their advertising standards prohibit before-and-after images outright. You can publish them on your own site and in organic social, and you can run ads that drive people there. Agencies that promise otherwise are planning to run them until the account gets restricted.

Is SEO worth it when RealSelf and directories dominate the results?

Yes, on procedure plus city terms and on the surgeon's name. Directories win generic head terms in most metros and it is not worth fighting them there. The pages that produce calls are specific procedure pages and the surgeon credential pages patients check before booking.

How much should a plastic surgery practice spend?

Our best-fit clients run $10,000 a month in SEO and $50,000 to $100,000 a month in paid media. Because cases are high-value and cash-pay, consult capacity sets the ceiling, not budget. If the surgeon has open consult slots, more spend usually pays.

Should we advertise prices?

Publish a starting-at range on each procedure page. Patients screen on affordability and will find a number somewhere, and it is better that it comes from you. In ads, any price claim has to include the material terms or Google will disapprove it.

We got burned by an agency that ran our Instagram into a ban. Can that be recovered?

Sometimes, through appeal, and sometimes not. The first thing we do is audit what is live against current Meta standards and pull anything that will trip review again. Rebuilding audience data after a disabled account takes months, which is the real cost.

Free audit

Find out where your calls are leaking.

We take apart your rankings, your ads, and your call tracking, then show you where the calls are going instead of to you. The audit is yours to keep whether we work together or not.

Prefer the phone? (561) 269-2833