01The read
Nashville Aesthetic is a reputation-driven premium cosmetic practice, built on Dr. Dennis Wells, the AACD-accredited inventor of DURAthin no-prep veneers. Over 23 months it turned 2,337 tracked leads into 269 closed cases and $2.37M in case value at an $8,814 average. But that revenue is not evenly earned: 93% of it comes from people who already know the brand, arriving through organic search, direct visits, and referrals.
The spend does not follow the results. Google Ads takes 44% of the marketing budget yet drives only 9% of new patients; paid channels overall are 35% of lead volume and 6% of revenue. Meanwhile the SEO and influencer-video program, on a fraction of the budget, drives 38% of new patients and roughly 91% of digitally attributed production. Two independent data sources, GHL and the practice's own reporting, tell the same story.
Two clocks are also running. Dr. Wells is retiring and already not taking new patients, so the brand equity behind the best channels has to transfer to Drs. Weese, Bateman, and King. And the website is not ready to scale: the smile gallery is broken, the main cosmetic page 404s, and there is no online booking. The way to win is to reallocate spend to what already works, fix the conversion path, capture the missed calls, and transfer the brand before the founder exits.
02Performance by channel
From the live GHL pull, ranked by closed case value. The channels that cost the least (organic, direct, referral) produce nearly all the revenue and the largest cases; paid volume converts poorly.
| Channel | Leads | Booked | Closed | Case value | Book rate | Lead→sale | Avg case | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total | 2,337 | 552 | 269 | $2.37M | 23.6% | 11.5% | $8,814 |
Where the revenue is
Closed case value by channel
How well each channel converts
Lead to closed case, percent
03Budget vs return
The single clearest opportunity in the account. Trailing-twelve-month spend was $135,753 against a $128,100 plan. The largest line item returns the least. Below, budget share on the left, new-patient origination on the right.
Where the money goes
Trailing 12 months, $135,753 total spend
Where the patients come from
Share of new patients by source
The mismatch, in one line
Google Ads = 44% of spend, 9% of patients. On $59,657 of Google spend the practice tracked roughly $8,087 of production. The SEO and influencer-video program, at about $33,000 invested, drove 38% of new patients and roughly $126,637 of tracked production, about 91% of everything digitally attributed. Reallocating even a third of the Google budget toward SEO, referral, and reputation would move real revenue.
04The revenue barbell
This is a premium-case-capture business, not a volume business. The median closed case is only $1,198, but the top 27 cases carry the practice. Winning means landing more of the large veneer and full-arch cases, not more cheap leads.
Closed cases by size
269 won cases, grouped by case value
What this means for the plan
Every marketing dollar should be judged on whether it produces $15K-plus veneer, smile-makeover, and full-arch cases, the type Referral ($17,545 avg) and Direct ($10,441 avg) already deliver. Paid Social's $5,431 average and Google's $4,619 average show those channels are pulling smaller, lower-intent work, exactly the opposite of the target.
05The two operational leaks
Before spending another dollar on lead generation, two conversion leaks are wasting the leads already coming in. Both are fixable in weeks.
Leak 1: the phones
- 27% of inbound calls are missed (PeerLogic, Jan to Jun 2026). Answer rate 74%.
- New-patient calls convert to booking at just 40%, existing patients at 60%. Every missed call is a potential high-ticket cosmetic case walking to a competitor.
- In GHL, all 2,337 opportunities are unassigned, meaning no named owner is accountable for following up any single lead.
- Only 32% of leads reach a logged contact stage. The follow-up discipline is the gap, not the lead supply.
Leak 2: the website
- Audit verdict: Not Ready to Scale (5 red, 2 yellow, 0 green). SEO grade D+, brand "premium-blocked."
- The smile gallery is broken: all 23 before-and-after thumbnails fail to render. For a cosmetic practice, the proof is the gallery.
- No online booking widget. The main cosmetic page (/cosmetic-dentistry-nashville/) returns a 404, and All-on-4 is missing from nav and sitemap.
- No meta descriptions on the homepage or veneers page, no review or FAQ schema, and financing is vague with no CareCredit, Cherry, or Sunbit named.
06Market and competition
The demand is there and the local market is wealthy. The practice's job is to own the premium cosmetic position before the founder exits and before rivals close the gap.
Competitive set, from the marketing brief:
07Monthly trend
Lead volume is healthy and rising. Closed cases and revenue are steady but lumpy, normal for high-ticket cosmetic work where a single full-mouth case moves a month. The recent dip is partly timing: cases opened in the last 60 days have not finished closing yet.
Leads, closed cases, and case value by month
Bars are lead and closed-case counts (left axis). The line is monthly case value (right axis).
08What is winning, what is leaking
What is winning
- Organic search is the engine. 1,174 leads, 155 closed, $1.33M, and 38% of new patients on a fraction of the budget. The SEO and influencer-video program is the highest-ROI spend in the account.
- Direct traffic is the highest-quality flow. 246 leads convert at 26.8% with a $10,441 average case. Reputation, press, and word of mouth are doing the selling.
- Referrals are golden. 39 leads, $17,545 average case, the largest of any channel. Massively underused.
- Premium AOV. At $8,814 the average case is the second highest in the Wonderist five-practice cohort. The premium position is real and defensible.
Where it leaks
- Google Ads is misallocated. 44% of budget, 9% of patients, 4.3% close, $4,619 average case. The biggest line item buys the wrong intent.
- Paid Social is the weakest channel and growing. 279 leads, 2.9% close, worst book rate, and rising in the mix.
- The conversion path is broken. Missed calls (27%), unassigned leads (all of them), a broken smile gallery, and no online booking leak the good leads before they close.
- Founder concentration risk. The brand equity behind Direct and Referral is Dr. Wells, who is retiring. Without an active transfer, the best channels erode.
09How we win, next 90 days
Three phases. Fix the leaks first, reallocate spend to what already produces premium cases, then build the referral and brand-transfer engines this practice should already own.
10Channel playbooks
The one-line verdict and the specific move for each channel.
1,174 GHL leads · 155 closed · $1.33M · 38% of new patients · ~91% of tracked production. The single best-return spend in the account.
- Move reclaimed paid budget here. Build veneers, smile-makeover, and full-arch pillar pages.
- Protect rankings on Dr. Wells' name and cosmetic authority queries; begin transferring authority to the successor doctors.
246 leads · 66 closed · $689K · 26.8% close · $10,441 avg. Reputation converting itself.
- Feed it with PR, press, and podcasts so more people arrive already sold. Keep the site path frictionless so warm traffic books instantly.
39 leads · 10 closed · $175K · 25.6% close · $17,545 avg. Largest cases, tiny volume, the biggest untapped upside.
- Structured referral ask on every completed case plus a doctor-to-doctor cosmetic track. Doubling volume adds roughly $175K in high-margin case value.
44% of budget · 533 leads · 23 closed · 4.3% close · $4,619 avg · only 9% of patients. The biggest spend, the weakest return.
- Halve the budget now. Concentrate the rest on high-intent cosmetic and brand-defense keywords, routed to a dedicated cosmetic landing page with financing and proof.
- Gate any budget increase behind an 8%-plus close rate.
279 leads · 8 closed · $43K · 2.9% close · 24.7% book · climbing in the mix. Weakest channel on every measure.
- Pause broad lead-gen. Keep only retargeting of site visitors and lookalikes built from actual closed cosmetic patients. Reallocate the freed budget to SEO and referral.
1190-day targets
Concrete numbers to hold the plan against, each a move from today's measured baseline.
12Data notes and sources
- Primary channel data. Live pull from the Nashville Aesthetic GoHighLevel account (opportunities API), 2,337 records dated Nov 6, 2024 to Sep 30, 2026. Channel is the GHL opportunity source, normalized into six buckets and confirmed against per-lead UTM attribution.
- Revenue counts won cases only, using the value on each closed opportunity. Open opportunities carry a placeholder value and are excluded.
- Budget, ROI, phones, market, and competition are drawn from the Wonderist marketing brief (internal data through Jun 30, 2026) and the PeerLogic phone report (Jan to Jun 2026). Wonderist production reporting has known tracking gaps (Eaglesoft integration, free-consult capture) and is treated as directional.
- Website findings are from the cosmetic website and SEO audit (report date Apr 17, 2026).
- Cohort benchmark (average case $8,814, second highest of five) is from the Wonderist five-practice GHL portfolio report.
- Reconciliation. This fresh pull (2,337 leads, $2.37M, 269 cases) differs slightly from the portfolio report's earlier pull (2,297 leads, $2.19M, 262 cases) because they were taken on different dates with different close windows. Figures on this page use the fresh pull.
- Not available. Conversation and message bodies, calendars, and call recordings are scope-restricted on this account (opportunities and contacts only), so exact speed-to-first-human-touch and true show or no-show rates cannot be pulled from GHL directly. September 2026 is a partial month.