Healthcare competitor analysis for clinics and med spas

Healthcare competitor analysis for a clinic depends on who pays. Self-pay services such as aesthetics, private physiotherapy and weight management compete like retail: on price lists, packages, offers, availability and reviews. Insurance-led services compete on network participation, waiting times and reputation. Most clinics are a mix, so split your services before you pick rivals.

The general local checks (map pack, Google Business Profile, location pages) are in our guide to competitor monitoring for local businesses. This page covers what is specific to clinics, med spas and physio practices.

Split self-pay from insured

Say you run a med spa in Scottsdale offering injectables, laser and a medical weight programme. Your injectables rivals are three med spas and a dermatology practice within fifteen minutes' drive. Your weight programme rivals include telehealth companies advertising nationally, which you will never meet but whose prices your clients have already seen.

Read their treatment price lists

Many self-pay clinics publish a price list, and its conventions make changes easy to miss.

• Per unit or per area for injectables. A switch from per unit to per area pricing can be a price rise in disguise.
• Per syringe for fillers, often with a second-syringe discount.
• Per session and per course for laser, physio and body treatments. Watch the course discount, not just the session price.
• Membership plans with a monthly fee that converts into treatment credit.
• Consultation fees, and whether they are credited against treatment.
• New client offers, often the most frequently changed line on the page.

New treatments matter as much as prices. A rival adding a page for a new device or a new programme has made an investment and will probably advertise it. Our guide to tracking a competitor's pricing page covers how to catch these changes automatically.

Availability is a competitive signal

Many clinics now take bookings online, and the booking page shows their diary.

Once a week, check each rival's next available slot for one standard appointment, such as a new patient physio assessment or a consultation. Only look. Never make bookings you do not intend to keep.

A rival with next-day availability every week has spare capacity, and spare capacity often turns into an offer within a month or two. A rival booked three weeks ahead can raise prices or add a practitioner, and you should expect one of the two.

Health ad rules shape what rivals can run

Health is one of the most regulated ad categories, which changes how you read a rival's ads.

Meta. The health and wellness policy requires ads for cosmetic procedures and for weight loss products and services to target people 18 or older. Before and after images are allowed for cosmetic procedures in ads targeted to adults. Weight loss ads must indicate the time taken to achieve noticeable results, and health ads must not claim to cure incurable diseases or promise specific outcomes within a set time.

Google. The healthcare and medicines policy restricts ads for prescription drugs, unproven or experimental treatments and addiction services, requires certification for online pharmacies and telemedicine providers, and varies country by country.

United Kingdom. Botulinum toxin is a prescription-only medicine and cannot be advertised to the public under CAP Code rule 12.12. The ASA's guidance for clinics is to promote the consultation, not the product.

Two practical consequences. A rival's ads vanishing may be a disapproval, not a change of strategy. And a rival naming a prescription medicine in a public ad is a compliance risk to avoid, not a tactic to copy. This is a summary of platform policies, not legal advice.

Read their live ads in the Meta Ad Library, and their Instagram grid alongside, where much of a clinic's results content lives. Our Instagram competitor analysis guide covers what to count.

Reviews: results, practitioners and pressure

Clinic reviews name practitioners and describe results, so read them for three things: which practitioners attract praise (a departure moves clients), how satisfied people are with results, and complaints about pressure to buy packages.

Google reviews matter everywhere. Some UK clinics collect Trustpilot reviews too. Specialist platforms such as RealSelf for aesthetics, Zocdoc and Healthgrades in the US, and Doctify in the UK carry reviews that general tools do not read, so check those by hand.

In the US, how you reply to reviews is also a privacy matter. Our dental competitor analysis covers a federal settlement over review replies, and the lesson applies to any HIPAA-covered clinic.

A healthcare competitor analysis routine for clinics

Where Figo helps

Ours, so judge accordingly. Figo checks each rival once a week for changes to their published prices and offers, new treatment pages, new Meta, Google and TikTok ads, Instagram and Facebook posts, Google rating and review count, Trustpilot rating where a profile exists, and Reddit threads genuinely about them.

It does not read RealSelf, Zocdoc, Healthgrades or Doctify, and it cannot see booking availability, so the weekly diary check stays manual.

A single-practitioner clinic with two rivals does not need it. Figo starts at $49 a month for three competitors, and makes more sense for multi-site clinic groups, med spa chains and the agencies that market them.