How much should a med spa spend on Google Ads?

Short answer: set your Google Ads budget by working backwards from the number of new patients you want each month, multiplied by what a booked patient costs you. Start with a budget large enough for Google to learn from, measure your real cost per booked patient for 60 to 90 days, then scale what works.

What is the right way to set a med spa ad budget?

Most practices pick a number that feels comfortable, or copy a figure from a forum. A better approach starts with the outcome you want:

• 1. Pick a goal: how many new patients per month do you want from Google Ads?
• 2. Estimate your cost per booked patient. If you have history, use it. If not, start with an estimate and replace it with real data after the first 60 days.
• 3. Multiply: new patients wanted times cost per booked patient equals your monthly ad budget.
• 4. Check it against patient value. If one new patient is worth far more than they cost to acquire, the budget is an investment, not an expense.

Your cost per booked patient depends on your area, your treatments, how competitive the searches are, and how well your team converts inquiries into appointments. That last part is often the biggest lever, which is why fast follow-up matters as much as the ads themselves.

What does that look like with real numbers?

Here is an illustrative example. Your numbers will differ, but the math works the same way.

Notice what happens if your team books 1 in 2 inquiries instead of 1 in 3: the same budget brings in 15 patients instead of 10. Improving follow-up is often cheaper than raising the budget. You can test your own patient value with the calculator on our med spa marketing page.

Is there a minimum budget that makes sense?

Google's bidding needs enough clicks and conversions to learn what works. A budget that only buys a handful of clicks a week makes it hard to tell good keywords from bad ones, so results stay unpredictable.

As a rule of thumb, your budget should be large enough to produce at least several real inquiries a week in your area. If it cannot, it is usually better to focus spend on one core treatment and one tight location than to spread a small budget across everything you offer.

What are the most common budget mistakes?

• Judging by cost per click. Cheap clicks that never book are expensive. Judge by cost per booked patient.
• Trusting a cost per lead that counts junk. Duplicates, spam and existing patients make results look better than they are. Here is how to find your true cost per lead.
• Targeting too wide an area. Paying for clicks from people who will never drive to you.
• Changing everything every week. Ads need time to settle. Review weekly, but make big decisions on 30 to 90 days of data.
• Raising the budget before tracking works. Fix tracking first, then scale.