Pointing your ads at your Fresha or Treatwell booking page
Short answer: you can, and on Fresha it is either free or a second bill on top of the click, depending on which of two fresha.com links you paste into the ad. On Treatwell, its own pages do not say what happens to a paid click, so the safe place to send an ad is a page of your own with the Book Now button on it.
Why the advice sounds right
Plenty of salon marketing guides say it: if you are on Fresha or Treatwell, you do not need a website for your ads, just point them at your booking page. There is a fair point in there. The page already has your prices, your photos and your diary, and it takes the booking without you picking up the phone. If you have no website at all, it looks like the obvious place to send people.
What none of them do is the sum. You pay Google for the click. Then, if the booking finishes on the wrong kind of page, the platform can charge its new client fee on the same person. One client, paid for twice.
Fresha has two links, and they are charged differently
Fresha’s partner terms, read today, put it in two bullet points. Book Now links “generated within your Online Partner Profile will not apply a new client fee”. Links “otherwise generated on the Fresha Platform will apply a new client fee”.
Its help centre says the same thing more plainly. The links you make in the Link builder tab “won’t display other businesses in your area, and clients who book through them won’t incur any New client fee charges.”
The other link is the one you get by searching for yourself on Fresha and copying the address bar. That is your marketplace profile. Fresha’s pricing page charges a 20% one-time commission on brand new clients who discover you through the marketplace, with a minimum fee of £4 per client, and says its rates are exclusive of 20% VAT.
Then the line that matters most if you are about to paste a link into an ad. The partner terms say the partner “must ensure that it shares, copies or otherwise uses the correct button links”, and that Fresha is not responsible, for example for refunding a new client fee, if you use the wrong one. So the choice is yours, and nobody checks it for you.
What the wrong link costs on one booking
Take a £120 first colour from someone who found you through your ad.
Through a Link builder link, Fresha charges no new client fee. You keep £120, less whatever the click cost you.
Through your marketplace profile, 20% is £24, and VAT on that fee is £4.80. That is £28.80 gone, and you keep £91.20, less the same click.
The £4 minimum bites hardest at the cheap end. On a £15 fringe trim, 20% would be £3, so the £4 minimum applies instead, and with VAT it is £4.80. You keep £10.20, and the fee is nearly a third of the price.
The click costs the same whichever page it lands on. So the second charge is pure loss: you have already paid to find her, and then you pay again for having found her.
Treatwell’s list does not mention ads
Treatwell’s UK pricing page, read today, charges 35% commission on first bookings made by new clients it brings you from the marketplace, 0% on repeat bookings, and says all commissions and fees are subject to VAT. It also lists what it does not charge for: bookings made directly with you, including calls, texts, WhatsApps and clients you add yourself, and bookings through the Book Now button on your social media and your website.
A Google ad is not on that list. Treatwell’s pages do not say whether someone who clicked your ad and then booked on your Treatwell venue page counts as a client Treatwell brought you, and we are not going to guess. If it did, the same £120 colour would cost £42 in commission plus £8.40 VAT on it, and you would keep £69.60 before the click.
Two things to take from that. Ask Treatwell, in writing, before you spend a pound sending ads to a Treatwell page. And notice that the Book Now button on your own website is on the free list, in so many words.
The name on the ad is changing this month
There is a second reason to care where your ads land, and this one is Google’s.
Google’s business name rule, read today, says the name on an ad must be the domain, the recognised name of the advertiser, or an app being promoted. Its October 2026 policy update says Google will allow the business name and the destination domain to differ “in certain limited cases”, if three things are true: the name reflects the advertiser’s recognised name or brand, there is “a verified direct relationship between the advertiser and the domain owner”, and the advertiser’s services are directly offered on that domain. It adds that independent booking intermediaries do not qualify. Search Engine Roundtable reports that Google’s email to advertisers gives the date as 16 October.
An ad that says your salon’s name and lands on fresha.com or treatwell.co.uk is an ad where the name and the domain differ. Google’s page does not say whether being a Fresha or Treatwell partner counts as a verified direct relationship with the owner of that domain, so we are not telling you these ads will be approved or refused. What we can say is simpler: if the ad lands on your own website, the name and the address match, and none of this is your problem.
Where to send the ad instead
In order of preference:
- A page of your own with your booking button on it. Your website, carrying the Fresha button made in Link builder or Treatwell’s Book Now button. Both platforms put that on their free list, and the name on the ad matches the address. If that page is slow or vague, that is a different problem, and clicks but no calls covers it.
- No website, on Fresha: a Link builder link, never the profile. Fresha lets you make a link to specific services, so a colour ad can open straight on colour. Make it under Online booking, then Link builder, and paste only that.
- No website, on Treatwell: get the answer in writing first. Until you have it, assume a paid click to your venue page could be charged like a marketplace booking.
Whichever you pick, check it a week in. Fresha shows the channel each online booking came through in its Appointments tab, so you can see whether your ad bookings are finishing where you meant them to.
What we do with it
Salon Ads Studio builds a landing page for your ads rather than sending them to a marketplace profile, and we take no commission on bookings, ever. If you are not sure whether your Google listing has its own version of this problem, who gets paid when someone books from your Google listing walks through it. And the free assessment works out what your quiet days cost you in a year, before you have an account or hand over a card.
Fees and policy wording read off Fresha’s, Treatwell’s and Google’s own pages on 5 October 2026. Your own agreement is what binds you: Treatwell’s plan panels say its new client commission applies “subject to location”.
Questions people ask
Will my regulars be charged as new clients if they click the ad?
Not if Fresha already has them. Its help centre says the new client fee only applies when the client is not on your Clients list at the time of booking, first finds you on the marketplace, and confirms when booking that they have not visited before. So import your existing clients before any paid traffic goes near a Fresha page.
Can I make a Fresha link that books one stylist only?
Yes. Fresha's help centre says a Link builder link can be filtered to show a single bookable team member, as well as chosen services or locations. That suits an ad for one stylist's colour work or a chair renter with her own column, and it is still a Link builder link, so the no-fee rule above applies.
Does Fresha run ads on my salon's name itself?
Its partner terms give it the right to. They say Fresha may promote partner services through search engines, Google AdWords and keyword advertising using your business name, and allow pay-per-click advertising that quotes your trading name. They do not say it does this for any particular salon, so search your own name and look.
What happens to my ad if I change the salon's name on Fresha?
Fresha's help centre says your booking link carries the venue name you first set up with. If the name changes you ask Fresha for a new link, and the old one stops working. Any ad still pointing at the old link would open on a dead page, so change the link in the ad the same day.
