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The urgency copy that sells skin checks is named in the guidelines.

Don't delay. Act now before it's too late. Time is running out. Ahpra lists those phrases specifically as advertising that may be unlawful where it is linked to unsubstantiated claims a person's health may suffer. They are also the entire skin check advertising playbook.

The compliance problem at the centre

There is no screening program, so be careful how you sell screening.

Ahpra's guidelines name, as a risk area, advertising that recommends regular check ups for a health condition or prevention of disease where there is no clinical or therapeutic need. Australia has no national skin cancer screening program, and Cancer Council's own public guidance is self examination plus a conversation with your doctor about your risk level rather than a routine clinic booking.

That does not make skin check advertising unlawful. Australia has the highest melanoma incidence in the world and more than 3,000 non melanoma skin cancer treatments are paid for by Medicare every day, so the demand is real and serving it is legitimate. What it means is that the copy has to sell access and expertise rather than manufacture urgency about a condition the patient has not been told they have.

What the terms cost

Australian dermatology and skin keyword costs.

From Medical Marketing Group's Q3 2026 Australian benchmarks, derived from Google keyword planning data. Note how many terms Google declines to price.

KeywordSearches per monthTop of page bidAverage CPC
dermatologist near me33,100$4.62$3.52
dermatologist27,100$5.32$4.78
skin check near me8,100$5.09$4.13
skin cancer check5,400$5.40$4.74
skin cancer clinic near me4,400$4.16$3.41
eczema treatment5,400$2.15$2.20
skin tag removal12,100Withheld by GoogleNot published
mole check1,900Withheld by GoogleNot published
skin cancer screening590Withheld by GoogleNot published

Google publishes pricing on only 7 of the 17 core terms in this set. Volumes for the withheld terms come from third party clickstream estimates, so no cost per click exists to quote for them at all.

Structure

Four campaigns, because there are four buyers.

Skin checks, suburb radius
Tight geography, because nobody drives an hour for a bulk billed check. Heavily seasonal, peaking in January from a September trough. Built for availability, not for fear.
Specialist dermatology, whole metro
A completely different radius, because with 661 dermatologists nationally patients genuinely travel. Condition led, essentially non seasonal, and the page needs to help the reader get a referral rather than push a booking.
Regional and rural, deliberately
Melanoma incidence runs at 62 per 100,000 in inner regional Australia against 47.9 in major cities, while 91 per cent of dermatologists practise in capital cities. Where a practice offers teledermatology or visiting clinics, this is the least contested demand in the category.
Cosmetic, quarantined
Since 2 September 2025 higher risk non surgical cosmetic procedures carry their own advertising rules, including asset identification and adult content flagging on social. A clinic doing both medical and cosmetic work now carries two compliance perimeters, which is an argument for account separation rather than a stylistic preference.
Decide the free question before you build anything
Free skin check near me and free skin cancer check near me are among the fastest rising Australian queries in this category, and bulk billed skin check sits in the top related queries. For a bulk billing clinic that is the entire strategy. For a private billing clinic those are negative keywords, and expensive ones if left in. This is the first question we ask a dermatology or skin cancer client, because getting it wrong wastes budget in a way no amount of later optimisation recovers.
Two ways to write the same skin check ad

Urgency versus access.

Named in the guidelines

  • Don't delay, book your skin check today.
  • Act now before it's too late.
  • Time is running out on your annual check.
  • One in three Australians will get skin cancer. Book now.

Says more, risks less

  • Skin checks available this week in [suburb].
  • Full body check, 30 minutes, bulk billed for eligible patients.
  • Dermoscopy and mapping, results explained the same visit.
  • Concerned about a specific spot? We can look at it Thursday.
Straight answers

Questions clinic owners actually ask

Can a skin cancer clinic advertise annual skin checks?
With care about the framing. Ahpra names, among its risk areas, advertising that recommends regular check ups for a condition or for prevention of disease where there is no clinical or therapeutic need, and Australia has no national skin cancer screening program to point to. Advertising availability, expertise, equipment and process is safe. Instructing the general population to attend annually, or implying their health will suffer if they do not, is the version that runs into the guidelines. In practice the compliant version also converts better, because it answers when can I be seen rather than how frightened should I be.
Should a skin cancer clinic and a dermatologist run one Google Ads account?
No, and the reasons are structural rather than tidiness. The conversion actions are not comparable, since a bulk billed skin check and a specialist referral are worth completely different amounts. The geography is different, because a skin check is a suburb radius business and a dermatologist draws from a whole metropolitan area. The conversion event is different, because one books directly and the other arrives as a referral weeks later. And since September 2025, if either does higher risk cosmetic work, that carries its own advertising rule set.
Can I mention a prescription medication on my dermatology landing page?
Not on a page you are sending Google Ads traffic to. Google's healthcare and medicines policy restricts prescription drug terms in ads, keywords and landing pages, and specifies that ads targeting Australia may not use prescription drug terms in the ad or its destination. That destination clause means the landing page counts. Since the highest intent medical dermatology searches are frequently about specific prescription treatments, this is the defining copy constraint in the vertical, and it is the reason condition led rather than treatment led pages work better here.
What is a realistic cost per lead for an Australian dermatology clinic?
The most credible Australian figure is Medico Digital's $53.30 cost per acquisition, drawn from analysis of more than $11 million in Australian healthcare ad spend, alongside a $3.04 average cost per click. We would attach a caveat to it that they do not: the dermatology slice of that dataset was around $72,000, which is the smallest cell in their table and therefore high variance. Medical Marketing Group models $30 to $45 from keyword data, but that is arithmetic applied to click prices rather than observed cost per lead. Anything quoting United States dermatology figures, which show a much lower cost per lead, is quoting a different healthcare system.
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