Two Google rules that shape a med spa campaign
A salon or a gym can bid on almost any search its clients type, and it can show ads again to people who visited its site. A med spa runs into limits on both. Google treats prescription drug names under its restricted drug terms policy, and it treats injections as health content. Those two rules decide which keywords you can bid on, which audiences you can build and how you plan for repeat visits.
You can still advertise every treatment you offer. It is easier to build around them from the first day than to fix disapproved ads after launch.
Drug names: fine in the ad, limited as keywords
Google's restricted drug terms policy covers prescription drug names in ads, landing pages and keywords. For campaigns that target the United States, the policy says: While you don't need to be certified in order to use prescription drug terms in ads and landing pages, you must be certified in order to keyword-target these terms.
So if your menu names a neuromodulator brand or a prescription weight loss medication, you can name it in the ad text and on the treatment page, as long as every claim is honest. What needs certification is adding that name as a keyword and bidding on it.
Read the certification types before you apply. The examples Google gives are online pharmacy, addiction services, telemedicine, health insurance and pharmaceutical manufacturer, and the same page says: Do not apply for a category that does not match your business model. If none of those describes your med spa, build your keywords around the treatment and your town.
Before you add a keyword, check it against the list of prescription drugs and active ingredients linked from that policy page. Searches written in plain treatment words look like this:
Injections put your ads in Google's health category
Google keeps a list of sensitive interest categories for personalized ads. Its health category includes invasive medical procedures, including cosmetic surgery, surgical procedures, or injections. Prescription drug names are a sensitive category of their own.
The rule that follows is short. Google's personalized advertising policy says advertisers promoting products and services that fall within sensitive interest categories are unable to use advertiser-curated audiences. In the Google Ads table, those audiences include Customer Match, your data segments (the lists once called remarketing) and lookalike segments.
For a campaign that promotes injections, that means:
- Do not upload your client email or phone list to Google Ads for it.
- Do not build an audience of people who visited your injectables page and show them ads later.
- Do use keywords and location, which are untouched. Google also says You can use predefined Google audiences, like in-market segments, because sensitive signals are already removed from them.
Repeat visits then come from your own follow up: a rebook prompt at checkout and a clear rebook link in the confirmation email. Use your ad budget to reach people who have not found you yet.
If your IV menu includes injections, read that health line the same way before you set up remarketing for those services.
Set your location to people who are really nearby
A med spa visit happens in your chair, so a click from someone far away is money spent on a person who will not come in. Google's location help explains that by default, location targeting includes both physical locations and locations of interest. Someone who once looked up your city can see your ad without being anywhere near it.
- Open the campaign, then Settings, then Locations.
- Add your town and the nearby towns your clients really drive from, or a radius around your address.
- Open Location options and choose the setting for people in or regularly in your targeted locations. Google calls it Presence.
- Exclude any nearby area you do not want to pay for.
After the first week, open the locations report. If many clicks come from places you never added, open the setting again and confirm Presence is selected.
Write ads and pages that describe the treatment
The FTC judges a health ad by the overall message conveyed by all elements of the ad, including the text, product name, and any charts, graphs, and other images. A photo can make a claim as easily as a headline can.
For a med spa ad and the page behind it, that means:
- Name the treatment and the visit. The area treated, how long the appointment takes and who performs it, using the title your state allows.
- Show a price or a starting price if your menu has one. A searcher who only wanted the cheapest option can skip the click.
- Leave out results you cannot back up. Words like permanent, painless and instant are claims, and so is a headline that promises a look.
- Treat before and after photos as claims. When results are not typical, the FTC says they should come with a clear and conspicuous disclosure of the results a typical consumer can actually expect. A small "results vary" line does not meet that.
Send each ad to a page about that one treatment, with the price, the booking button and the same words the ad used. If your ads point at your homepage today, read where your ads should point before you launch.
Block the wrong searches and count booked visits
Plenty of med spa searches come from people who want to learn the work or do it themselves. Add negative keywords like these before launch:
Then read the search terms report every week and add anything that does not fit. The negative keywords guide for IV ads shows how to keep the list growing, and the same method works for a med spa.
Decide what counts as a result before you spend. For a med spa that is usually a booked consult or appointment, or a call from the ad. Set those up as conversions so Google can tell good clicks from wasted ones, and judge the campaign on cost per booked visit: what you spent divided by the visits it booked. For the IV accounts we run, that is the number the owner gets every Monday, because it is the one figure that shows whether the spend is working. The Google Ads numbers guide shows where each figure lives in your account.
A setup order for your first week
- List every treatment you want to advertise and mark each one that names a prescription drug.
- Build one page per treatment with the price, a booking button and plain claims.
- Write keywords from treatment words and towns, and check each one against Google's drug list.
- Add your negative keywords.
- Set locations to Presence.
- Turn on conversion tracking for bookings and calls.
- Leave Customer Match and your data segments off any campaign that promotes injections.
- Launch, then check the search terms and each ad's policy status every day for the first week.
The short version
- You can name a prescription drug in a U.S. ad and landing page, but bidding on it as a keyword needs certification.
- Injections are in Google's health category, so Customer Match and remarketing lists are off for those ads.
- Set location targeting to Presence so you pay for people near your chair.
- Describe the treatment, the price and the booking plainly, and treat before and after photos as claims.
- Block training, jobs and DIY searches before launch.