---
title: "Med Spa Marketing Budgets: Industry Data Shows Most Spas Are Under-Spending on a Growing Category"
summary: "AmSpa survey data and 2026 ad benchmarks reveal that the average med spa spends 7% of revenue on marketing — slightly below the cross-industry norm — while Beauty and Personal Care paid search costs dropped sharply and repeat patients already account for nearly three-quarters of visit volume."
url: "https://marketing-insights.endatasite.com/articles/med-spa-marketing-budgets-industry-data-shows-most-spas-are-under-spending-on-a-growing-category-1401b3fe"
publisher: "Marketing Insights"
section: "Industry Playbooks"
author: "Marketing Desk"
datePublished: "2026-09-28T21:28:00.480Z"
dateModified: "2026-09-28T21:28:00.480Z"
sources:
  - title: "Consults: Med Spa Aesthetics Demand Gen Budgets | Web Tonic™"
    url: "https://www.webtonic.io/blog/med-spa-aesthetics-demand-generation-statistics"
---

# Med Spa Marketing Budgets: Industry Data Shows Most Spas Are Under-Spending on a Growing Category

*AmSpa survey data and 2026 ad benchmarks reveal that the average med spa spends 7% of revenue on marketing — slightly below the cross-industry norm — while Beauty and Personal Care paid search costs dropped sharply and repeat patients already account for nearly three-quarters of visit volume.*

Medical spas may be leaving growth on the table. New data compiled from the American Med Spa Association (AmSpa), WordStream's 2026 search advertising benchmarks, and The CMO Survey 2026 show that most med spas budget at or below the broader industry average for marketing — even as the category tops $17 billion in annual revenue and paid search costs for the closest comparable category have fallen sharply.

## What AmSpa's Own Data Says to Budget

According to AmSpa's 2024 State of the Industry survey, the average medical spa invests about 7% of its revenue in marketing, with a documented range of 2% to 15% depending on business size, competitive intensity, and growth ambitions. AmSpa's own industry experts push the practical range higher: 7% to 10% for spas maintaining steady growth, and toward 8% to 12% for those actively chasing new-patient volume.

That average sits slightly below The CMO Survey 2026's cross-industry benchmark of 9.0% of revenue — a figure drawn from all industries, not aesthetics specifically. The gap suggests that, across the field, most spas are running lean relative to a broader business norm, not overspending.

## Paid Search Costs in the Closest Tracked Category Have Dropped Sharply

No major benchmark report tracks a med-spa-specific line item. The closest published proxy is WordStream's 2026 Search Advertising Benchmarks for the Beauty and Personal Care category, built from over 13,000 LocaliQ customer campaigns. That category posted notably favorable year-over-year shifts: cost per lead fell 34.95% — the largest decrease of any of the 23 industries tracked — click-through rate rose 18.21%, and conversion rate rose 32.34%, also the largest gain of any industry in the report. The cross-industry average conversion rate across all 23 industries stands at 8.18%.

The source analysis notes this is a beauty-category signal, not a med-spa-specific number, because injectables and energy-device treatments carry a materially higher average ticket than most advertisers within that broader category.

## Repeat Patients Are Already the Majority of Visit Volume

A key context for how any budget should be allocated: AmSpa reports that 73% of aesthetic patient visits are from repeat patients, at an average spend of $245 per visit. That means the existing patient base accounts for the majority of visit volume before a single acquisition dollar reaches a new-patient channel. A budget weighted entirely toward acquisition — without funding recall systems, rebooking automation, or loyalty programs — is, by the numbers, optimizing for the smaller side of the business.

## A Third Budget Pressure: Medical Oversight Costs

AmSpa also reports that 48% of med spas hired a medical director in the last year — a cost that competes directly with the marketing budget line in smaller practices. Any annual plan inside AmSpa's 7%–12% range must simultaneously fund new-patient acquisition, retention systems for the 73% repeat-visit base, and compliant medical oversight, making realistic budget allocation more complex than a single percentage figure suggests.

## Procedure Volume Has Held Steady Through Economic Headwinds

Demand resilience for the category is supported by procedure-level data from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons' 2024 Procedural Statistics report. Total minimally invasive treatment volume reached over 28.5 million procedures, up 1.5% year over year. Neuromodulator injections — Botox and its category peers — reached 9,883,711 procedures in 2024, up 4%, and represent more than double the volume of the next-largest minimally invasive treatment category. Skin resurfacing rose 6% to 3,703,305 procedures.

The concentration of volume in recurring, repeatable treatments — injectables, fillers, resurfacing — means demand generation plans can anchor to scheduled recall campaigns tied to typical treatment intervals rather than guessing at broad seasonal patterns.

## Cross-Industry Budget Expectations Are Rising in 2026

HubSpot's 2026 State of Marketing report, which surveyed over 1,500 global marketers, found that 79.2% of marketing teams expect at least a slight budget increase in 2026. Paid social media (37.4%) and video marketing (37.1%) ranked among the top areas where marketers plan to increase investment — both formats that align with how aesthetic treatments are typically marketed. The same report found that 73% of marketers say their budget receives more scrutiny than in the past, reinforcing why a range rather than a single figure is the more defensible planning anchor.

## What This Means for Med Spa Marketers

The practical read from the compiled data: under-resourcing is the more common risk for med spas, not overspending. Most spas already sit at or below the cross-industry 9.0% benchmark. At the same time, the 2%–15% spread in AmSpa's documented range is wide enough that the number alone is less useful than a budget split that accounts for acquisition, retention, and compliance costs together — sized against the actual patient mix, where repeat visitors already dominate visit volume.

## Sources

- [Consults: Med Spa Aesthetics Demand Gen Budgets | Web Tonic™](https://www.webtonic.io/blog/med-spa-aesthetics-demand-generation-statistics)

*Cite as: Marketing Insights, "Med Spa Marketing Budgets: Industry Data Shows Most Spas Are Under-Spending on a Growing Category", https://marketing-insights.endatasite.com/articles/med-spa-marketing-budgets-industry-data-shows-most-spas-are-under-spending-on-a-growing-category-1401b3fe (as of 2026-09-28).*