TGA Cosmetic Injectables Advertising

The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) has tightened the rules around advertising cosmetic injections and related products. If you’re a cosmetic clinic owner, you’ll know what I’m talking about. The way you market your business in Australia has now changed dramatically.

The change involves the restriction of cosmetic clinics from using common terms like ‘injectables’ and ‘filler’ to describe their services, procedures, and drugs in any marketing campaign. This means that these terms can’t be used on social media, websites, paid advertising, and any other form of marketing, promotion, or educational material or medium.

As a digital marketer who has worked with cosmetic clinics for years, this is definitely throwing a curve ball into the mix. Connecting with patients who search for these terms becomes more challenging.

Let’s take a look at how the new TGA advertising rules affect cosmetic clinic marketing and what the implications are for your cosmetic clinic.

What’s changed in the TGA guidelines?

Well, a lot. The updated TGA guidelines now mention that cosmetic clinics can:

“no longer expressly permit references to terms such as ‘wrinkle reducing injections’ or ‘dermal fillers’ where those terms would result in a reasonable consumer understanding the intention of the content is to promote the use or supply of a prescription-only medicine or good containing such as substance.”

And this is where the change is significant. The new guidelines now prohibit the use of key terms like:

• Wrinkle-reducing injections
• Injectables
• Injection clinic
• Dermal filler
• Anti-wrinkle treatment
• Dermal filler
• Biostimulatory filler
• Fat-dissolving injections.

These are the exact terms that potential customers use to find a local cosmetic clinic.

Before these changes, cosmetic clinics had more leeway in their marketing. They could use these terms, and the previous regulations only prohibited naming products like Botox.

However, the updated guidelines prohibit even these indirect references. This is part of the TGA’s ongoing efforts to prevent misleading promotions and protect consumers by limiting the direct advertising of prescription-only substances in cosmetic services.

What this also does, though, is make it harder for cosmetic clinics to market their services and to connect with clients who search for these terms.

What are the implications for your marketing?

Let’s take a look at your cosmetic clinic marketing and specifically, your website.

You advertise that you provide cosmetic injectables and anti-wrinkle treatments. Perhaps you’ve published individual service pages explaining your anti-wrinkle treatments and how patients may benefit.

You run Google ads and have finally figured out how to generate new patients for a low cost per lead.

And you’ve been madly blogging about dermal filler, fat-dissolving injections, and injectables in general.

Well, all that has to now stop. And the new rules came into effect as of May 2024.

The guidelines state that:

“Advertisers cannot use terms or phrases, even in indirect forms (like abbreviations or hashtags).”

It’s very broad and really limits how these procedures, services, and products can be marketed.

It basically limits the terms you can use to things like:

• Medical aesthetics
• Medical aesthetic clinic
• Cosmetic clinic
• Cosmetic medicine

From an SEO perspective, you’re limited to targeting only a fraction of the keyword search volumes that you could once target. All those customer keywords are now off limits.

Take a look at the Ahrefs screen shot showing the estimated monthly search volumes for ‘cosmetic injectables’. Normally I’d be excited about how I can get a cosmetic clinic ranking for these keywords. Now, we can’t touch them.

Also, here is another Ahrefs screen shot showing estimated monthly search volumes for variations on the keyword ‘dermal filler’. There are approximately 1,800 searches per month for the exact keyword ‘dermal filler’ and a total of 6,700 related searches for similar keywords.

That’s a lot of public interest.

From my perspective, it is a shame, even though I understand why the TGA is making these changes.

Here are the SEO implications of not being able to target specific keywords related to cosmetic injectables

Loss of keyword traffic

Keywords like ‘cosmetic injectables’ and ‘dermal fillers’ are high-traffic terms. Removing these keywords from your website will decrease your search visibility and organic traffic.

Reduced search engine ranking

Your previously optimised pages targeted by these terms will no longer rank as highly, leading to decreased organic traffic and fewer enquiries from these keywords.

Challenges with content relevance

Removing these terms from your website makes it harder to directly address the needs and interests of patients, resulting in less engaging and less effective content.

Despite this doom and gloom, there are positive marketing actions you can take to overcome this challenge.

You’ll need to be innovative in the content you post on your website, concentrating on general education pieces about common cosmetic issues while avoiding specific treatment or procedure references.

Here is how you can maximise your online marketing inline with TGA guidelines

The TGA states that the following types of information are unlikely to be considered advertising:

• Information about the risks that may be associated with using cosmetic injectables
• Information about training courses or training material for health care professionals.
• Educational information for patients that is purely factual and balanced (communicates risks and benefits) and is non-promotional in nature is also unlikely to be considered advertising.
• Examples include ‘before’ and ‘after’ care instructions.

So publishing content in relation to the points above should be ok.

More generally, though, you’ll need to switch your focus to a broader marketing approach.

Here’s how.

Shift to broader keywords

You can optimise for broader, compliant terms like:

• Cosmetic clinic (14,000 searches/month)
• Cosmetic clinic Sydney (swap out for your town or city)
• Beauty clinic (if there is overlap in your service offering)
• Skin clinic (151,000 searches/month)

*Note: these search volumes cover the term and all keyword variations, which include other competitor and brand name keywords.

While these can still drive traffic, they may attract a more general audience. They are also harder to rank for as they are more competitive, and most other cosmetic clinics will be competing to rank for the same term.

Content diversification

Many clinics are switching up their focus and now working on educational content. This includes blogs about treatment safety, the benefits of professional consultations, or aftercare tips. Keywords related to these areas can improve SEO performance by targeting long-tail keywords.

Prioritise local SEO

Local SEO strategies, such as targeting ‘cosmetic clinic in [city]’ or ‘aesthetic services near me,’ can help clinics attract geographically relevant traffic while adhering to TGA guidelines.

If you’re a multi-site business and have clinics in different cities or towns, this should be easy to see on your website. Each location should have its own dedicated page on your website, optimised for a version of ‘cosmetic clinic + city’.

Google Maps

As a local business, be sure that you have set up your Google My Business profile. This will help you to show up in the Google map pack for local-based search.

Authority building

It’s more important than ever to ensure the content you are publishing is factual, useful, and value-driven. This is especially so given Google’s recent ‘Helpful Content Update’ algorithm update.

This update prioritises content created for users over content aimed solely at search rankings. What I’m seeing is low-quality, unoriginal, or AI-generated content being deranked and not showing up in search anymore. The content that does show is like a reward for the websites.

So for a cosmetic clinic, think about writing detailed blogs and guest articles that can be published on other websites. This helps with:

• Link building and getting other websites to link to your
• Establishing your credibility and expertise online, as you’ll be published as the author of the content
• Improved search engine rankings, especially if your content is education-based or discusses common skin concerns using matching keywords
• Differentiating you from competitors, who may not be investing as much time and effort into marketing
• Building brand credibility to help foster a positive perception of your brand or business.

What education keywords can you target?

When it comes to the keywords you can target, you might have to think outside the box a little bit.

Think about treatment-type keywords or keywords that people type in to address a problem.

Instead of your cosmetic injectables service page, which previously focused on cosmetic injections and advertised the targeted use of anti-wrinkle injections, you may want to configure and repurpose this page. The new focus could switch to keywords like ‘how to get a slimmer face’ or ‘forehead line treatment’.

This approach not only ensures compliance with the TGA’s rules but also strengthens your website’s SEO, driving organic traffic and building trust with potential patients over time.

Here are a couple of different key words you could publish new content around:

• how to get a slimmer face
• broken blood vessels on nose
• bow-shaped lips
• how to get rid of jowls
• forehead lines
• facial sweating
• neck rejuvenation

Key points:

• The TGA has tightened rules on advertising cosmetic injections and related products in Australia.
• The updated guidelines prohibit the use of key terms like ‘wrinkle-reducing injections,’ ‘injectables, ‘injection clinic, dermal filler, anti-wrinkle treatment, dermal filler, ‘biostimulatory filler, and ‘fat-dissolving injections.
• This limits the marketing of cosmetic injectables and anti-wrinkle treatments, limiting SEO visibility and keyword traffic.
• A unique challenge is posed for digital marketers and content creators working with cosmetic clinics, as they struggle to connect with patients who search for these terms.
• A broader marketing strategy is needed that combines local SEO, educational content, and practitioner authority building.

Grow your clinic’s marketing strategy today

Stay compliant with TGA guidelines while attracting clients effectively. Let us redesign your website and create tailored SEO content that highlights your expertise and boosts your visibility.

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Marshall Thurlow

Marshall Thurlow is Director and Founder of Orion Marketing Pty Ltd. He is a digital marketer with expertise in SEO, website design, content marketing and project management. With over 15 years of experience spanning government, not-for-profit and the private sector, he is well equipped to lead teams to success. He is a big proponent of environmental sustainability, critical thinking and progressive issues.