How Much Should a Med Spa Spend on Marketing?

The honest answer to “how much should I spend on marketing?” is that the number matters far less than the order you spend it in. Most clinics we speak to are not underspending. They are spending in the wrong sequence, and it makes a healthy budget behave like a small one.

Ask ten agencies what a med spa should spend and you will get ten percentages. Somewhere between 5% and 15% of revenue is the usual answer, and it is not wrong exactly, it is just useless on its own. A clinic doing $40k a month with no offer and no follow-up will waste 10% just as efficiently as it would waste 5%.

So this is written the other way round. Not “what percentage”, but “what has to be true before each dollar does anything”. The benchmarks come first, because you will want to know where you sit. Then the method that gives you a number of your own.

What med spas actually spend: the benchmarks

The most quoted figure comes from the American Med Spa Association. Writing on AmSpa’s site, Growth99 reports that “AmSpa’s 2024 Medical Spa State of the Industry Report reveals that, on average, a medical spa invests about 7% of its revenue in marketing”, with budgets “ranging from 2% to 15%”. These are US practices, in US dollars.

The same Growth99 article works the average out in dollars. A medical spa at AmSpa’s average revenue of $1.39 million a year would spend about $5,800 a month at 5% of revenue, yet only a quarter of practices reach $5,000.

Where you sit in the range depends on your practice

AmSpa’s article scores a practice on three things: average spend per visit, how many new patients return within three to six months, and how full the treatment rooms are. It then gives two worked cases. Both are US examples and the figures are theirs.

The article adds that “larger practices should aim for the lower end of the range”. Read the two cases together and the pattern is plain. The practice with room in its calendar and patients who come back can afford to spend more on new ones. The practice that fills its calendar with low-value promotions gets more from fixing retention and pricing than from a bigger budget. Source: AmSpa, “How Much Should I Spend on Med Spa Marketing?”.

That matches what we see. A percentage tells you whether you are in the normal range. It does not tell you whether the money will work. The three questions below do.

The three questions that decide your number

Before any figure means anything, you need three of your own numbers. Most clinics we start with do not have them written down anywhere, which is itself the finding.

Turning those numbers into a monthly figure

Once you have the three answers, the budget for paid ads stops being a guess. Work it backwards from the clients you need:

1. New clients you want each month. Start from the empty slots in your calendar, not from a growth target pulled out of the air.
2. Divide by your close rate to get the booked consults you need. If you close half your consults, you need twice as many consults as clients.
3. Multiply by your cost per booked consult. If you have no history yet, in the accounts we run a booked consultation usually costs somewhere between $80 and $300, depending on the treatment.

Two checks keep that figure honest. First, Meta needs enough spend to learn who books. In the accounts we run, a campaign below roughly $1,500 a month rarely gathers enough data to optimise, so a smaller budget is better spent on the free work further down this page. Second, if the answer is more than a new client is worth to you, the fix is the offer or the close rate, not a bigger budget.

If you still want a percentage as a sanity check, the usual 5% to 15% of revenue is a reasonable frame, and AmSpa’s 7% average sits near the middle of it. Sit near the low end when your calendar is mostly full and repeat clients carry the revenue. Sit near the top when you are deliberately adding new clients, launching a treatment or opening a second room. Our budget calculator runs the same sum for you.

How to split the budget by channel

No public benchmark we could verify gives a reliable percentage split by channel for med spas. Agency blogs publish tidy splits, but none of them show where the numbers come from, so we have left them out. Here is what the verified data does say, and how we decide the split instead.

In Growth99’s 2026 survey of aesthetic practices, published on AmSpa’s site, 70% of practices named Instagram as their most effective platform, and only 7% said they use TikTok effectively (source). AmSpa’s own worked case puts $2,000 of a $4,000 to $7,000 monthly budget into Meta and Google ads, and expects around 65 new patient leads from it, six to eight of whom become clients (source, US).

We set the split by the job each channel does, in the same order as the rest of this page:

The split then follows the bottleneck. If consults are booked but not closed, money moves from ads to the consult and the offer. If the calendar is full of one-time clients, it moves to email, text and rebooking. Our guide to Facebook ads for med spas covers the paid side in more depth.

Med spa marketing budgets in Canada

Almost every benchmark published for med spas is American and in US dollars. If you run a clinic in Canada, three things change how you read them.

1. Convert the method, not the benchmark

A US average such as “$132 to acquire a new patient” was measured in US dollars, on US practices, in US ad auctions. It is a rough reference, not a target. The percentage method (5% to 15% of revenue) and the work-back method (clients needed, close rate, cost per booked consult) both carry over to Canada unchanged, because they use your own numbers in your own currency. After one month of ads, replace every assumed figure with what your account actually shows.

2. The ad rules change what your money can buy

Botox and other prescription drugs fall under Section C.01.044 of Canada’s Food and Drug Regulations. If a person advertises a prescription drug to the general public, they “shall not make any representation other than with respect to the brand name, the proper name, the common name and the price and quantity of the drug” (Justice Laws). Health Canada lists before-and-after pictures, procedure videos and testimonials about therapeutic benefits as common problems in Botox marketing (Health Canada).

For a budget, that means two things. First, the before-and-after creative that many US agencies build campaigns on is off the table for injectables, so more of your creative budget goes into video of you, the consult and the experience. Second, the offer has to carry the ad. Ontario nurses also have the College of Nurses of Ontario’s guideline to follow, which we cover in the CNO aesthetic guideline and what it changes for advertising. In British Columbia, read BCCNM’s advertising rules for aesthetic nurses.

3. Sales tax sits on top of fees

If your agency or freelancer charges GST or HST, the rate depends on your province. The Canada Revenue Agency lists 13% HST in Ontario and 5% GST in Alberta and British Columbia, with provincial sales tax on top in some provinces (CRA rate table). Ask your accountant how it applies to your business, and put it in the budget before you compare quotes.

Two worked monthly budgets in CAD

These are examples built to show the method. They are not client data, and every number is an assumption you should replace with your own.

Eight new clients at CA$900 each is CA$7,200 of first-year value for CA$1,750 a month. The ad line also clears the roughly $1,500 floor we use for Meta. If her real cost per booked consult comes in at $200, the same eight clients would need CA$3,200 in ads, and the total would pass 16% of revenue. That is the signal to work on the offer and the close rate before spending more.

Twenty new clients at CA$1,500 each is CA$30,000 of first-year value. Before management, the clinic sits a little above AmSpa’s 7% average. With a management fee added it may land between 10% and 15%, which is normal for a clinic that is deliberately adding a second room’s worth of clients. Once that room is full, the plan moves toward the low end of the range and the money shifts to retention.

Run your own version in the budget calculator, then compare it with what you spend today.

The order that makes a budget work

We run these in a deliberate sequence for every clinic, and the sequence matters more than the totals. It is the same order laid out in our med spa marketing guide, applied to money rather than tactics.

What the money actually pays for

“Marketing budget” usually hides four different costs. When you compare quotes or plan your own spend, separate them, because they behave very differently:

• Ad spend. The money that goes to Meta or Google. It is the only part that buys reach directly, and it is the part to scale up or down with your calendar.
• Management. Whoever builds and runs the campaigns, the offer and the follow-up, whether that is you, a staff member or an agency. This is a fixed cost, so a small ad budget with a large management fee is upside down.
• Creative. Photos and short videos of you, your room and your process. A few hours of filming a month usually covers it, and raw phone video often outperforms a studio shoot.
• Tools. Booking software, a CRM, email and text. Mostly small monthly fees, and they are what turns enquiries into booked consults, so they are rarely the place to save.

A quote that does not say how much of the monthly fee reaches the ad platform is not a budget you can judge. If you are comparing agencies in the US, our comparison of US med spa marketing agencies notes which ones publish their prices.

What to expect from the first ninety days

A budget conversation that ignores timing sets everyone up to be disappointed, so here is the honest shape of it.

Paid ads can produce booked consults inside the first two to three weeks, provided the offer is ready. They also stop the moment you stop paying, which is exactly why they are second in the order and not first.

Search and content take longer. New pages on an established site typically need weeks before Google trusts them enough to rank on competitive terms, and on a newer or neglected site it takes longer still. Anyone promising you first-page rankings in thirty days is either targeting terms nobody searches or is not being straight with you.

Referrals and reviews are the cheapest source of new clients you have and the one most clinics leave entirely to chance. Making them deliberate costs nothing but a system.

Signs you are spending in the wrong order

• You can name your monthly spend but not your cost per booked consult.
• Traffic is up and bookings are flat. That is an offer or consult problem, and more traffic will not fix it.
• You are paying for content and social while your busiest months still arrive by luck.
• Your agency reports impressions, reach and engagement, and cannot tell you how many people booked.
• You have never been shown a number that connects spend to revenue.

If two or more of those are true, the problem is not the size of the budget.

Marketing a med spa on a small budget

If the sum above comes out higher than you can spend right now, start with the work that costs time rather than money. These are the moves that fill a calendar with almost no ad spend:

• Rebook before they leave. The cheapest client is the one already in your chair. Our guide to client retention covers the habits that make it automatic.
• Ask every happy client for a review, the same way every time, and reply to each one.
• Keep your Google Business Profile current with photos, services and your current offer. For a local clinic it is often the first thing a new client sees.
• Send a win-back message to clients you have not seen in six months, with a reason to come back this month.
• Run a two-sided referral credit, so the client who refers and the friend who books both get something.

Our list of med spa marketing ideas has more of these, including quick ones for a slow week. Add paid ads once the offer and the follow-up are ready to turn clicks into consults.

If you are deciding where the money should go before you decide how much, our overview of which channels actually pay for a med spa covers the trade-offs.

Doing it yourself versus handing it over

Both work. They fail for different reasons.

Running it yourself is cheaper in cash and expensive in attention, and attention is the scarcer resource when you are also the person injecting. It works when you genuinely want to own the machine and have time to learn it. That is what our injector business coaching is for: we build the systems with you and teach you to run them, rather than keeping the keys.

Handing it over costs more per month and buys back your calendar. It works when the practice is past the point where the owner can be the marketing department too. That is the med spa marketing side of what we do for clinics in Toronto and across Ontario, and across the rest of Canada.

What does not work is paying for the second while expecting the involvement of the first, or paying for neither and hoping referrals hold.

Common questions

Is there a minimum worth starting with? For paid ads, yes. In the accounts we run, a Meta campaign below roughly $1,500 a month rarely gathers enough data to optimise, so below that level the money does more in reviews, rebooking and referrals. Above that floor, the right figure comes from working back from what a client is worth to you and how many you need.

Should the budget change month to month? Yes, and it should follow your calendar rather than the calendar year. Spending the same amount in your busiest month and your quietest is a good way to overpay in one and underinvest in the other.

What about seasonality? Aesthetics has real seasonal swings, and they differ by service mix and by market. The point of building a system is that the quiet stretches stop being a surprise you react to.

What percentage of revenue should a med spa spend on marketing? The usual range is 5% to 15% of revenue, and AmSpa’s 2024 report puts the US average at about 7%. The low end suits a clinic whose calendar is mostly full and whose revenue comes from repeat clients. The top end suits a clinic deliberately adding new clients or launching a treatment. A better way to set it is to work back from the new clients you need, your close rate and your cost per booked consult.

How much do med spas spend on advertising? On average, about 7% of revenue goes to marketing, within a range of 2% to 15%, according to AmSpa’s 2024 report. In dollars, Growth99’s 2026 survey found 52% of practices spend under $2,500 a month on marketing and 25% spend $5,000 or more.

What is a reasonable marketing budget for a med spa? One that sits inside 5% to 15% of revenue and buys new clients for less than they are worth to you in their first year. If a new client is worth $1,200 and costs you $200 to win, the budget is reasonable at almost any size. If they cost more than they are worth, fix the offer or the close rate before adding money.

What is the 70/20/10 rule in marketing, and does it work for a clinic? It is a common rule of thumb: put about 70% of the budget into what already works, 20% into improving or extending it, and 10% into tests. For a clinic, the 70% is the offer and channel already booking consults at a cost you are happy with, often Meta ads to one proven offer. The 20% might go to a second treatment offer or better follow-up. The 10% is one experiment at a time, such as a new video format or Google search ads. It only works once you know your cost per booked consult, because that is how you tell what “already works”.

How much should a med spa spend on ads each month? Work it out from the clients you need: new clients wanted, divided by your close rate, times your cost per booked consult. In the accounts we run, that cost usually lands between $80 and $300. Below roughly $1,500 a month, Meta rarely has enough data to optimise, so a smaller budget is better spent on reviews, rebooking and referrals first.

How much money does a med spa make? AmSpa’s data puts the average US medical spa at $1.39 million in annual revenue, but Growth99’s 2025 survey found 60% of practices generate less than $500,000 a year (source). Owner pay depends on costs and structure. For the solo side, see our guide to how much nurse injectors make.

How do you market a med spa on a small budget? Start with what costs time rather than money: rebook clients before they leave, ask every happy client for a review, keep your Google Business Profile current, send a win-back message to clients you have not seen in six months, and run a referral credit that rewards both sides. Add paid ads once the offer and follow-up are ready.

Do US med spa budget benchmarks apply in Canada? The method does, the dollar figures less so. Benchmarks such as cost per lead were measured on US practices in US dollars. Use the 5% to 15% range and the work-back method with your own CAD numbers, and remember that Canadian rules on advertising prescription drugs limit the before-and-after creative many US campaigns rely on.