What to ask an agency before it runs your Botox ads

The second half of January is when injector practices take the hardest look at their marketing. The holiday rush is over, the clients treated in October and November start coming due in February, and every agency that wants the account has sent a deck.

Most of those decks were built for any local business. An injector practice sells a prescription drug, the ad platforms treat it as one, and federal regulators have told patients exactly what to check before they book. An agency that has not worked with that will build campaigns that never serve, audiences Google will not accept and captions Meta will reject.

Five questions that sort agencies quickly

We would put them to any agency you are considering, ourselves included.

Which keywords will you bid on?

Listen for “botox near me” in the answer. Google’s restricted drug terms policy lets advertisers in the US use prescription drug terms in ads and on landing pages without certification, but says they must be certified to keyword-target those terms. Its list of prescription drugs and active ingredients names “botox,” “botulinum toxin,” “dysport” and “xeomin.” The certification types Google offers as examples are online pharmacies, addiction services, telemedicine, health insurance and pharmaceutical manufacturers, and it tells advertisers not to apply for a category that does not match their business.

A good answer bids on the words people use for the treatment (“wrinkle relaxer,” “forehead lines,” “lip filler”) and puts the brand name in the ad copy and on the page. Be wary of a keyword list built on drug names, which tends to sit disapproved while the budget waits.

How will you bring past clients back if Google will not take your list?

The Botox Cosmetic label gives the duration of effect on frown lines as approximately 3 to 4 months, so the campaign that earns an injector the most is the rebook. Plenty of agencies would upload your client list to Google and advertise to it. For injections that route is closed. Google’s Health category for personalized advertising covers invasive procedures, injections among them, and advertisers in sensitive categories cannot use customer lists, remarketing segments or lookalike audiences.

The answer you want is a rebook sequence in your own CRM, sent by text and email on each client’s last treatment date, with a real person reading the replies.

What will your Instagram and Facebook ads say?

Two Meta policies settle most of this. The first covers personal attributes: ads may not assert or imply things about the person seeing them. Meta’s own examples mark “Ready to upgrade your skin to look younger?” as not allowed and “Our new lotion and creams fight wrinkles like never before!” as fine. A caption built on the viewer’s flaws gets rejected however good the photo is.

The second covers prescription drugs. Meta lets advertisers promote them only when they are actively certified with LegitScript and have obtained authorization from Meta, among other conditions. That is why most practices advertise the treatment, the result and the injector rather than the brand.

Meta also took away detailed targeting options tied to health topics in January 2022, so an agency that promises to reach “people interested in Botox” is describing a setting that no longer exists.

Ask for three sample headlines. If one asks the reader whether they are tired of looking tired, you have heard enough.

Where will my injectors’ credentials and product source appear?

These are the exact things regulators tell patients to check. FDA’s alert of April 16, 2024, on counterfeit Botox found in multiple states, tells patients to ask whether the provider is licensed and trained to give the injection and to confirm the product came from an authorized source. It also reminds providers that federal law requires them to buy prescription drugs only from authorized sources.

The CDC health advisory that followed counted 22 people in 11 states with adverse effects, and all of them reported injections by unlicensed or untrained people or in non-healthcare settings, including homes or spas. Then in November 2025, FDA announced 18 warning letters to owners of websites illegally marketing unapproved and misbranded botulinum toxin.

California’s Medical Board goes further on its page about medical spas: patients should ask where the supervising doctor is, and whether the injector is really supervised or working alone with a paper-only supervisor.

So a good agency puts each injector’s license type, the medical director’s name and a plain statement about where product comes from on your site and your Google profile. A weak one opens with a price per unit.

How will you get reviews?

Google takes down reviews that a business paid for with a discount, free service or other perk, under its Maps content policy, and the FTC rule announced in August 2024 outlaws rewards that depend on the review being positive. “Twenty-five dollars off your next syringe for a five-star review” falls foul of both.

The answer to hope for: every client asked at the same point in the treatment cycle, with a direct link, and every review answered by someone who sounds like your front desk rather than a template.

The first quarter, and the report that proves it

For most injector practices the sequence runs like this:

• Weeks one and two: an audit of the Google profile, the site, phone and DM handling, and both ad accounts for policy flags.
• Weeks three to six: rebook sequences, review requests, and pages covering credentials, supervision and product source.
• Weeks seven to twelve: Google campaigns on treatment terms and Meta campaigns written to its rules.

Ask to see a sample monthly report before you sign. One page is enough when it shows calls and DMs that came in and how many were answered, appointments booked and kept by source, rebooks from the sequence and new reviews. A report that leads with impressions and reach is measuring the ads, not the practice.

Give the phone numbers as much weight as the ad numbers. CallRail’s January 2025 report put healthcare’s missed-call rate at 32%, worse than any other industry it measured.

What to do this month

• Export your active Google keywords and flag every drug brand name on the list.
• Check whether a customer list is attached to any Google campaign that promotes injections.
• Pull every client whose last neurotoxin appointment was more than four months ago and who has nothing booked.
• Read your last ten Instagram ad captions for anything that comments on the viewer’s appearance.
• Add each injector’s license type and your medical director’s name to the site and the Google profile.
• Take these five questions into every agency meeting this quarter.

An agency that answers all five well has run injector accounts before; one that stumbles on the first two has not. Our own answers are on the injector practices page, and the search side is laid out under campaigns that respect drug-term rules.