UK Lead Generation Podcast

Kasra Dash: I'm joined with James. We've obviously invested in a lot of businesses throughout the years, and one thing that we've always kind of homed in on is how to improve lead quality — how to get rid of the crappier leads, the leads that cause you more headaches, and generate more of the actual quality. So what are some things that you recommend to people?

James Dooley: There's lots of different things that you can go through. The first thing is: are they shared leads or exclusive leads? Generally speaking, exclusive leads are better than shared leads because you're the only one that's going to get it. You're not up against your competition, it's not a price race to the bottom. Exclusive leads make it a better type of lead.

The next part could be an SQL lead — a sales qualified lead. Can you pre-qualify those leads into being hot leads that are specifically what you're looking for? So, are they earning over X amount? Are they looking to buy a mortgage over £300,000? That’s what that mortgage broker might want. And if it falls below that threshold, they might not be able to help them. So if you can pre-qualify and generate sales qualified leads, that's a lot better.

And then the third one, before you kind of expand on it, would be a longer contact form — asking more questions upfront. Yes, it will slightly affect conversion rate on the website, but the more data you get, the more you can segment and give it to the right company for what they’re specifically looking for.

Kasra Dash: So let's tackle the first one you mentioned — exclusive leads or shared leads — because that’s probably where I would start. For anybody that doesn’t know the difference, a shared lead could be going out to five of your competitors. It might be on platforms like Checkatrade, Bark, or premium Yelp listings. Those platforms are notoriously known for giving the same lead to multiple businesses. If I'm a roofer and James is a roofer, we're both going to get the same lead because we’ve signed up to the same service. And again, we're just fighting for the cheapest price at that point.

I personally don't like doing that. I always like to make the most net profit as I can. So figuring out what platform the actual leads have come from — that’s super important. Whether it's SEO, PPC, Facebook ads, Twitter, Pinterest — wherever the case is.

I would definitely, if you haven’t already, set up tracking on your contact form to actually figure out where the leads are coming from. Is it your GMB? And the reason for that is it’s important going into step number two, because as soon as you know — okay, I’ve had ten inquiries, five came from a premium directory, and I've not closed any of those — you then might allocate more budget into local SEO because you know exactly where the converted inquiries are coming from.

The next thing you touched on was the actual contact form. Having more questions in your contact form is super important. Like James mentioned, it can definitely increase cost per lead. You might go from a £5 CPL to £25 CPL by adding eight or nine more questions. But at that point, that person is way more attuned to actually speaking to your sales reps and closing.

You don’t want to just look at cost per click or cost per conversion because those can be vanity metrics. There are certain clients you'd happily spend more on because there’s more profit margin or fewer headaches in that type of inquiry. I'd happily spend £150 on that type of client.

There was one other thing you mentioned that's really important: if you're teaming up with a lead generation company, the best lead gen companies will ask you a lot of questions. It's so important for them to ask where you make your money and what the best type of lead is for you.

What they can do then is focus on the correct keywords — not just the cheap ones — but the ones with the right commercial intent. We ask a lot of questions. In fact, we've asked so many that some clients said, “I was borderline saying I can't be bothered answering anymore.” But we want to live and breathe your industry.

And the difference between that and other lead generation companies is that many just care about volume. It’s not about the quantity of inquiries — it's about the quality and conversion. I don’t want to fill up a salesperson on £50,000 a year with 50 average leads. I'd sooner give them five quality leads they're going to convert three or four out of. That’s what I want to do.

James Dooley: Yeah, definitely.

Kasra Dash: So a few other things to touch on — how to improve your lead quality. If you're running PPC, adding more negative keywords can definitely help. A lot of people will spend a couple grand a month on PPC and will never even set up a negative keyword list.

Do you want to go through why that's important?

James Dooley: So if someone's an accountant going after keywords like "accountants Bolton," people searching might be looking for jobs, careers, courses, apprenticeships — but you're running the ads for customers, not for new staff. So anything coming through that doesn’t match your intent needs to be added to the negative keyword list.

If there are brands you don’t work with — add them. If someone types in "boiler" and they're looking for funding but you only do installations — add that too. There are lots of things you can load into your negative keyword list to make sure you're not wasting volume on leads you won’t convert.

A good example: a company installing double-glazing windows spent £15,000 over 3 months on PPC. When they checked what keywords they were showing up for, they were appearing for “Windows 11” and “Windows 10.” They set it and forgot about it. Obviously, you can't sell double-glazing windows to someone searching for a computer operating system.

Kasra Dash: Another thing is setting up retargeting. Retargeting leads are usually high-converting because they’ve already searched for your product or service — they may have just forgotten to inquire. Retargeting pushes them back to your contact form.

James Dooley: I think we've gone through everything now on improving lead quality in 2025. If anyone’s got questions, leave a comment. If you're doing something different to improve lead quality, let us know. And if you're looking for more quality leads, check out FatRank.com, fill in the form, and see whether you qualify for the lead generation service. Thanks for watching.