A med spa consult is a comparison. People look at who performs the treatment. They wait. They ask a friend, and a lot of them now ask an AI tool the same question before they ever call you.
They also ask me what a consult should cost to generate. There isn’t one national answer I can stand behind. There is no med spa row in the US search benchmarks I use.
The two categories people borrow from are not the same business. In WordStream and LocaliQ’s 2026 industry set, beauty and personal care is about $39 a lead. In LocaliQ’s healthcare set, plastic and cosmetic surgery is about $103 a lead. A Botox consult is not a facial, and it is not an operating room. Depending on the offer, the city, and how fast someone calls back, it can behave like either. That spread is the point. A single target you found in a roundup is probably one of those rows, mislabeled.
Borrowing a dental target is no better. General dentistry in those sets sits around $73 or $85 a lead. That is a different kind of visit, with a different decision. I keep that detail in what US dental practices pay per new patient. If a dental practice is promoting veneers or Invisalign, those campaigns belong in this conversation, not in the exam average.
A lead, a consult, a treatment
A lead is a call, a form, or a message. A consult is someone who booked and arrived. A treatment start is someone who went ahead. Most reports stop at the lead, which is the cheapest place to stop and the least useful.
Here is an illustration, not a forecast. Four thousand dollars in a month. Twenty-five leads. About $160 each. Ten book a consult. Seven show up. About $571 per consult that actually happened.
Whether $571 is acceptable depends on what that visit is worth in your clinic. A single treatment and a membership are different cases. Fold them into one cost per lead and you will feed whichever offer is easier to advertise. Usually that is the one with the simpler page and the faster yes. It is not always the one you wanted to grow.
If the lead cost looks ordinary and very few people book, I look at speed of reply before I look at the ad. I look at whether the page says what a first visit includes, and whether the person on the phone can say who performs the treatment. A slow front desk will make a reasonable lead look expensive by the time anyone sits down.
What to separate before you spend more
Run the offers you care about as separate efforts. A consult for injectables, a package, and a membership do not belong in one ad group with one landing page and one target cost. The page should name the treatment, who performs it, and how to book. A homepage that says “wellness and beauty” makes the ad do all the explaining, and the ad is a bad place to do it. What I want on the site first is in med spa website pages to have before you advertise.
Search and social are different visits. On search, someone is already looking. On Instagram, they were scrolling. A low cost per lead on social can still be a weak month if nobody books. Most clinics need both, plus a Google listing that matches the site, once the page can catch the click.
Bring last quarter split by offer if you want this read against your clinic. Spend, leads, consults booked, consults that showed. That conversation is a consult. I will tell you what I would stop blending before anyone talks about raising the budget.
