Direct to consumer skincare is everywhere now. Hims, Hers, Curology, Nurx, Apostrophe, plus a wall of serums with a QR code and a 20 year old with great skin telling you to buy them. They offer prescription tretinoin by mail, acne plans in minutes, and pricing you can see before you commit. For a dermatology practice watching new patient numbers flatten, it can feel like the whole market is being pulled onto a phone screen.
So let us answer the real question honestly. Can you compete with that? Yes, but not by trying to become a skincare startup. You compete by being great at the things an app physically cannot do, and by killing the friction that sends patients to the app in the first place.
Why patients are drifting to online skincare
Here is the uncomfortable truth: patients are rarely choosing an app over a dermatologist on the medicine. They are choosing it on the experience. The online brand wins the moment of decision because it is easier to say yes to.
Think about how it actually goes. Someone notices breakouts on a Sunday night. The online option takes two minutes, no phone call, clear price, product at the door by Thursday. The local dermatologist? New patient appointments are weeks out, the only way to book is a call during office hours, and the website is clunky on a phone. The patient is not rejecting you. They are picking the path with less friction while they are motivated.
That matters because intent is perishable. A patient ready to deal with their skin tonight will not wait three weeks for a slot they have to call to reserve. This is the same pattern we see across specialties, and we broke it down for eye care in how optometrists compete with online glasses sellers. The product is different. The lesson is identical: convenience is a feature, and right now the online brands own it.
What online skincare genuinely cannot do
Now the good news, and it is a big one. The online brands are strong at exactly one slice of dermatology: routine, low risk, cosmetic concerns handled with a standard product. That is a real slice, but it is a thin one compared to what a real practice does.
An app cannot look at your back and catch a melanoma. It cannot do a full body skin exam, biopsy a changing mole, freeze a precancer, excise a skin cancer, or treat the complex cases that do not fit a one size plan. It cannot build a relationship with a patient it watches over years. And it cannot take responsibility when a photo through an app misses something that a trained eye in a room would have caught.
This is your real advantage, and most practices undersell it. The Skin Cancer Foundation notes that early detection gives melanoma survival rates above 99 percent, and the American Academy of Dermatology keeps pushing the same message: see a board certified dermatologist for anything beyond the basics. That message is marketing gold, and it is true. You are not selling a cream. You are selling a trained eye and a safety net.
Where dermatology practices actually lose the patient
Here is the part that stings. Most practices do not lose patients because the medicine is better online. They lose them before the patient ever evaluates the medicine, at three very fixable points.
They are hard to find. When someone searches dermatologist near me or tretinoin for acne, the online brands have spent years dominating those results. If your practice is buried on page two with a half finished Google profile, you were never in the running.
They are hard to book. If the only way in is a phone call during business hours, you lose every patient who decided at night or over a weekend. The app took a booking while your office was dark.
They do not look trustworthy online. A slow, dated website with stock photos and six old reviews loses to a slick brand with thousands of ratings, even when your care is far better. Patients judge what they can see, and online that is your website and your reviews.
Run this quick test on your own practice
On your personal phone, search your specialty plus your city, like dermatologist in your town. Do you show up near the top? Then open your own website and try to book a new patient appointment as if it were 9pm on a Sunday. If you cannot find yourself easily, or cannot book without a phone call, that is exactly the gap the online brands are walking through. It takes five minutes and it tells you where your patients are leaking.
How to compete without becoming a skincare startup
You do not need to launch a subscription box or discount your way to the bottom. You need to win the moment of decision and lean hard into what only you can do. A few moves that actually move the needle:
Be findable first. Strong local SEO and a complete Google Business Profile put you in front of the patient at the exact second they search, instead of ceding that space to a national brand. This is the highest leverage work most practices skip, and it is the core of our dermatology SEO work: showing up for the searches that end in a booking.
Make booking as easy as the app. Real online scheduling, open day and night, on a fast site that works on a phone. If a patient can book you in the same two minutes it takes to sign up for Curology, a huge chunk of your friction disappears. A practice website built to convert, not just to exist, is the difference, which is the whole point of our dermatology websites.
Show the proof the apps fake. Real before and afters, real reviews, real faces from your team. Social content that shows actual results and real patient care beats polished stock every time, and it is where patients now scout you before booking. That is the job of ongoing dermatology social media done right.
Own the skin cancer message. Put it on your homepage, in your content, in your posts. Remind people that a mole check is not something you order online. Annual skin exams, suspicious spots, anything changing: that is a reason to see a human, and it is a steady source of visits an app will never take from you.
Use their own tools. Add your own virtual visits for simple follow ups so convenience is not only the brand's weapon. Teledermatology is a tool you can offer too, on top of the in person care only you provide.
Where EtherealMinds fits, honestly
If patients already find you first, book you in seconds, and see glowing recent reviews, you are in good shape and you do not need us for this. Where we help is when the care is excellent but the online experience is losing to brands with a fraction of your training.
We treat this as one connected dermatology patient acquisition system, not a pile of separate tactics. The point is simple: be the easiest and most trustworthy option the moment a patient decides to act, so they book the dermatologist instead of defaulting to a subscription. We only work with healthcare, only in the United States, and if an honest look says your real problem is wait times or staffing rather than marketing, we will tell you that too. For the fundamentals that apply to any skin practice, we also put together a broader guide on how to market a dermatology practice.
Our honest take
Online skincare brands are not going away, and for mild, routine stuff, plenty of patients will keep using them. That is fine. Chasing that patient to the bottom on price is a losing game anyway. The patients worth winning are the ones who need a real exam, a procedure, a diagnosis, or a dermatologist who knows their history. Those patients are choosing based on who is easy to find, easy to book, and clearly trustworthy online. Right now the apps are beating a lot of excellent practices on exactly those points, not on the medicine. Fix the finding and the booking, shout about the skin checks only you can do, and you stop losing patients you should have had all along.
Losing patients to an app that cannot even check a mole?
Book a free strategy call. We will look at how easily patients find and book your dermatology practice, where the online brands are catching them first, and what it would take to win those patients back. No pressure and no package pushed on you, just a clear read on where your growth is leaking.
Book a free strategy call →