Ask a med spa owner what people search to find them and the answer is usually "med spa near me." It's a reasonable guess. It's also the smaller half of the story. The client who books a lip flip next Tuesday probably never typed the word "spa" at all. She typed "lip flip," or "lip filler near me," or, three weeks earlier, "thin lips."
That changes how the account gets built. A Google Ads account for a med spa isn't organized around the category. It's organized around the menu, and around how far along each client is when she searches.
A Client Searches the Result First and Your Spa's Name Last
People move toward a treatment in stages, and each stage produces different searches. Here is one client's path, using real monthly search volumes from our example market, Miami. Your market's numbers will differ. The shape of the path won't.
- Unaware of a fix. She sees a trend on her phone and searches "glass skin" (260 searches a month). She isn't thinking about a treatment, or about you.
- Aware of a problem. A few weeks later it's personal: "crows feet" (590). She knows what bothers her. She hasn't picked a solution.
- Aware of a solution. Now she's reading about one: "how long does botox last" (260). She's comparing, checking, deciding whether it's worth it.
- Aware of the service. Then the search that matters most to your budget: "botox close to me" (2,900). She's decided on the treatment and wants someone nearby.
- Aware of you. Finally she types a spa's name, maybe yours, maybe a competitor's, after a friend's recommendation or a second look at reviews.
Each stage calls for a different marketing goal. Early on, the job is to be noticed. In the middle, it's to be the practice that answered her question well. At the end, it's to be easy to book. One ad can't do all three, which is why the rest of this guide builds the account stage by stage instead of all at once.
One Treatment Alone Draws as Many Searches as "Med Spa Near Me"
In the example market, "med spa near me" and "laser hair removal near me" tie at 2,400 monthly searches apiece. That's one treatment matching the entire category word, and it's far from the only one:
- "Botox close to me" and its variants: 2,900
- "Lip filler near me": 880
- "Microneedling near me": 880
- "HydraFacial near me": 880
- "IV therapy near me": 2,900
Keyword Planner reports close variants with identical numbers ("botox close to me" and "botox closest to me" both show 2,900), so we never add variants together. Even counted conservatively, the treatment searches outnumber the category searches many times over.
The category word also carries baggage. The bare phrase "med spa" pulls 2,900 a month, and in Keyword Planner's results it sits among day-spa searches like "massage near me," at 90,500. Some of the people searching for a spa want a massage and a robe, not a medical treatment. Chapter 5 deals with keeping those searches out of the account.
The practical takeaway: plan campaigns and ad groups by treatment line (injectables, lasers, skin, body, weight loss) and treat "med spa" as one more search, not the organizing idea.
"Crow's Feet" and "Double Chin" Come Before Any Treatment Name
Problem searches are where a lot of future clients start. In the example market, "crows feet" draws 590 searches a month, "double chin" 480, "fine lines" 390 and "dark spots" 260. The clicks are cheap. Keyword Planner's top-of-page estimates for these run from under a dollar to about $9.
Cheap isn't the same as ready. Someone searching "double chin" might end up with Kybella, a skin-tightening treatment, a weight-loss program or nothing at all. She hasn't chosen yet, and a "Book Your Kybella Consult" ad asks her to skip three steps. The honest goal at this stage is awareness: be the name she remembers when she does choose. That's work for video, content and later campaign types, not the first dollars of a new account.
"How Long Does Botox Last" Is a Question for Your Page, Not Your Ad Budget
Once a client has a treatment in mind, she starts researching it. Someone typing "how long does botox last" (260 a month here) wants facts before a phone number. "Lip filler before and after" draws 260, "botox side effects" 140 and "is microneedling worth it" 50.
These searchers are closer, but they're asking questions, and the best answer to a question is a page. A treatment page that plainly answers how long results last, what it feels like, what it costs and who does the injecting will earn some of this traffic for free in organic results. It also does double duty. The same page becomes the landing page your ads point to, and Chapter 4 explains why Google judges your ads partly by it.
Some of these searches can be worth an ad later, once the account has data to show which ones turn into bookings. They aren't where a new account starts.
Treatment Plus a Place Is Where the Booking Happens
The searches that pair a treatment with a location are the ones that produce bookings: "laser hair removal near me," "botox close to me," "lip filler miami." The searcher has decided what she wants and is choosing who does it.
Keyword Planner's bid estimates show where the competition sits. "Laser hair removal near me" carries a top-of-page range of $6.09 to $47.72 in the example market, and "weight loss injections" runs $4.91 to $23.29, far above the problem searches. More advertisers are bidding for these clicks, and the reason to join them is simple: this is the searcher who is choosing a provider now.
This is where a new account starts. Chapter 6 builds the first campaign around exactly these searches, with exact match and manual bids, so every dollar goes where the booking happens and the tracking from Chapter 1 has real bookings to learn from.
Price Searches Run Through Every Stage, Not Just the Last One
One kind of search refuses to sit in a single stage: the price question. In the example market, "laser hair removal cost" draws 590 searches a month, "sculptra cost" 260, "lip filler cost" 210, "microneedling cost" 170 and "botox cost" 140. The weight-loss drugs pull even more price searching: "ozempic cost" 390 and "tirzepatide price" 260.
Some of these people are early, checking whether a treatment is even in reach. Some are late, comparing two practices they've already shortlisted. The words alone don't say which. That's why a price search isn't automatically a high-intent search, and why it rarely belongs in the first campaign.
What price searches do tell you is what your page has to answer. Look at the treatment pages in the example market and the pattern is clear. One publishes a full price menu, injectables included. One quotes a package, Botox "up to 30 units" for a set price. One publishes only membership prices. One explains why it won't quote a per-area Botox price before an exam. Each of those is a real choice, and each one shapes who clicks. A client who searched "botox cost per unit" and lands on a page with no number anywhere has one obvious next move, and it isn't booking with you.
Chapter 13 comes back to prices from a different direction, when Google's own automation starts writing them into ads.
Your Spa's Name and Your Injectors' Names Belong in Their Own Campaign
The last stage is the client who already knows who she wants. She searches your spa's name, your injector's name, or your spa plus a treatment. She is one step from booking, and the only question left is whether your listing is the one she sees.
Clients search by name more than most owners expect. In the example market, one national laser chain's name alone draws 1,300 searches a month, and several local practices' names draw between 700 and 1,300 each. Your name searches deserve a campaign of their own from month one. They're usually cheap, they protect you from a competitor bidding on your name, and they give Google early, high-quality bookings to learn from.
Keeping them separate matters. Mixed into a treatment campaign, your name searches make that campaign look far better than it is, and you can't tell which part of the account is actually finding new clients.
Each Stage Has Its Own Google Channel, and Search Comes First
Google's campaign types line up with the stages:
- Search meets the service-aware and most-aware client, the one typing a treatment and a place, or your name.
- Performance Max reaches across Google's channels at once, and it works best after months of clean booking data. Chapter 10 covers it.
- Demand Gen and YouTube reach people before they search, the problem-aware and unaware clients. Chapter 11 times them to each treatment's season.
The order matters as much as the list. Build from the center out. A new account starts with Search on treatment-plus-place searches and your name, earns bookings, and only then spends on the outer rings, where each click is further from a booking. A practice with a very large budget can run several rings at once. Most med spas can't, and shouldn't try in the first months.
Next: Price the Click on the Visits That Follow
Knowing which searches to meet raises the next question: how much a click is worth paying for. For a med spa the answer depends on something most budgets ignore, which is how often a new client comes back. Chapter 3 works out what a returning client is worth and what that means for your budget.
Every chapter, in the order you'd launch it, sits on the Google Ads for Med Spas guide home. Chapter 1, on tracking the booked visit, comes first for a reason: none of the stages above can be measured without it.
The med spa accounts we manage under our Google Ads management start at the center ring, with treatment searches near the spa and the spa's own name, and grow outward only after the bookings prove the core.
