UK Lead Generation Podcast

James Dooley:
If you are a scaffolding business and you want a consistent flow of enquiries being built for your website and your business, this video is for you because we're breaking down the strategies you should be doing as a company and also which marketing strategies you should avoid. So, Kasra, take it into strategy number one. Step one for growth is a Google Business Profile. If you already have one, reach out to all existing clients to get as many five-star reviews as possible. It’s a great way for generating more leads. Getting citations, doing Google Business Profile posts and uploading photos are important. That’s definitely step one for generating more local leads.

Kasra Dash:
Step two, which strengthens your Google Business Profile, is creating dedicated service pages for each service as SEO-optimised pages on your website. When you do this, you help those pages rank, and you increase the likelihood of your Google Business Profile showing up for those keywords. That indirectly gets you more phone calls.

James Dooley:
If you want more local leads, another option is PPC lead generation. That’s pay-per-click within Google or Bing where you target bottom-of-funnel keywords that can generate enquiries. The difficult part is you need a good pay-per-click agency because of click fraud and the need to build a negative keyword list so people applying for jobs don’t waste your budget. PPC can work well, but in the wrong hands you can waste a lot of money. But it’s another way of generating local leads.

Kasra Dash:
And then you’ve got Meta Ads on Facebook and Instagram. When someone goes onto Facebook, they may see your ad. There are different ways to set up Facebook ads. Option A is lead forms, which are easy and keep people on the platform. The issue is the quality might not be great, but you can add more questions to improve it. Then you’ve got conversion ads where users are sent to your website to fill out your contact form. So you’ve got a couple of options.

James Dooley:
Another way to grow local leads is organic social media—posting regularly on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram. Reddit and Quora are big nowadays if people have questions and you can answer them. Organic social media is another great way of generating local leads.

Kasra Dash:
With organic social media, it’s a volume game. You need to upload constantly—daily or weekly. For example, upload five videos a week. Stick to that, especially with platforms like YouTube and Twitter.

James Dooley:
What are your thoughts on using AI agents to team up with someone who can use tools like N8N to automate and schedule posts on social media? Using artificial intelligence is all the rage for generating more leads. Would you team up with an AI consultant to set that up?

Kasra Dash:
You can definitely set up AI agents to crop videos and autopublish to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and more. But another thing I’d focus on is AI search. People are slowly moving away from Google. Billions still use it, but some are now using engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Groq. If your brand isn’t showing up in those engines, you’ll struggle to generate leads there. That’s another area to focus on.

James Dooley:
If you’re looking for more business leads locally, team up with tradespeople websites. You’ve got Checkatrade, Bark, Builder Builder, TrustATrader, Rated People. These platforms can generate more local leads. Track your KPIs to see your return on investment. Track your cost per lead, cost per acquisition and the return. These platforms can work very well. Check the links in the description because we compare Checkatrade with Fat Rank, Bark with Fat Rank, Rated People with Fat Rank, Builder Builder with Fat Rank. Since I’ve mentioned Fat Rank a few times, Kasra, what are your thoughts on lead generation companies compared with tradespeople companies?

Kasra Dash:
With lead generation companies, do your due diligence. Make certain that if you’re in a specific niche, that company has generated leads in that industry before. Have a strategy call with them. Share your budget and the number of leads you ideally want. Check whether the leads are exclusive or shared. Shared leads are what many tools and companies do, like Bark and Checkatrade. When myself and James speak to company owners who’ve used those services, one of their biggest pain points is shared leads—it becomes a race to the bottom on price. Those are things I’d ask lead generation companies before partnering.

James Dooley:
If anyone wants more local leads, head to fatrank.com where we have a commission-based lead generation service. You only pay a finder’s fee on converted jobs. Nothing on a pay-per-lead basis. You only pay once you’ve been paid for the job. Head to fatrank.com to see whether you qualify. What are your thoughts on inbound lead generation versus outbound?

Kasra Dash:
I always prefer inbound. The conversion rate of a lead becoming a paying customer is much higher. The last stat I saw was around 16.1% converting for inbound versus 1.4% for outbound.

James Dooley:
That’s crazy—10 to 12 times more conversion. You need a huge amount of volume for outbound like cold calling, cold email or LinkedIn Sales Navigator. You often need more staff too. People think they’re generating free leads, but email sending costs, sales team costs—it all adds up. I agree inbound is much better. What about real-time leads? Are they important?

Kasra Dash:
Yes, very important. The last stat we saw internally was that real-time leads convert around 63% higher. We found responding in under a minute makes a big difference. We used to think five minutes was good, but under a minute is ideal.

James Dooley:
I’m not saying every company needs to respond in under a minute. At Fat Rank we look at these factors when partnering with businesses. Some are away for days and have no one to pick up leads. There are little nuances we look at. But the best recommendation for anyone looking to scale and get a consistent flow of high-quality leads is to fill out the form at Fat Rank. The team will tell you if you're a good fit or not, and give feedback on next steps. I hope you like the lead generation strategies.