Lead Generation
Your cost per lead just dropped. That is usually a warning sign.
Optimised for pipeline and closed revenue, not form submissions.
-41%
Lower cost per sales-qualified lead
The challenge
An algorithm optimising for form submissions will find the people most likely to fill in forms. They are not the people most likely to buy. Within weeks, cost per lead drops, volume rises and the sales team quietly stops following up because quality has fallen apart. The marketing dashboard shows progress while the pipeline stands still. This is not poor execution — it is the system doing exactly what it was told, based on an instruction no one intended to give.
Our process
Our approach
Connect results back to the CRM
The fix is structural: lead outcomes must flow from your CRM back into the ad platforms as valued conversion signals. Sales-accepted leads, qualified opportunities and closed deals are each imported with a value that reflects their worth. The algorithm then optimises for revenue rather than enquiry volume.
Agree the stages before measuring them
Marketing-qualified, sales-accepted and opportunity mean different things in most companies — sometimes different things to different people in the same company. We agree written definitions with sales at the outset, including who owns each handover and what disqualifies a lead. It is unglamorous, and it prevents most disagreements later on.
Use friction to your advantage
Longer forms, qualifying questions, budget and timeline fields and phone-first routes all lower lead volume and raise lead quality. Whether that trade-off is worth it is an economic question, not a matter of taste. We test form length and qualification depth against downstream conversion, not submission rate.
Treat speed of first response as a media factor
How quickly a new enquiry gets a response directly affects conversion, so it is part of media performance whether or not the agency controls it. We measure it, report on it and include it in our advice on channel mix and lead volume — there is no value in buying more enquiries than your sales team can contact quickly.
Deliverables
What you receive
Written lead stage definitions agreed with your sales team, covering marketing-qualified, sales-accepted, opportunity and disqualification criteria
Offline conversion imports from your CRM into Google Ads, Microsoft Ads and LinkedIn, with a value set for each stage
Bidding reconfigured to optimise for sales-accepted leads or opportunities rather than form submissions
Call tracking set-up with call outcomes logged against source wherever the phone is a major enquiry channel
Cost per sales-accepted lead and cost per opportunity reported by campaign and channel, alongside cost per raw lead
Lead quality reviews based on sales feedback, with actions taken at campaign and keyword level
A form and qualification testing programme, judged on downstream conversion rather than submission volume
Industries
Sectors where we deliver this
SaaS
Demand capture and creation for B2B software, measured on payback time rather than lead volume.
Finance
Acquisition for regulated firms, where every advert is itself a regulated document.
B2B
Paid acquisition for high-consideration purchases with long sales cycles, narrow keyword pools and offline conversions.
Common questions
Our CRM data is disorganised. Will this still work?
It works as long as your CRM records outcomes in some form. If opportunities are logged inconsistently, the first step is fixing the essential data — a dependable stage field and a dependable source field. We can work with imperfect data. We cannot work with missing data, and we will be clear about which situation you are in.
Sales say the leads are poor. Marketing say sales do not follow them up. Who is right?
Usually both — which is why closed-loop data matters more than the debate. Once lead outcomes are tracked by source, campaign and keyword, the discussion moves from opinion to evidence. Sometimes it clears the media. Sometimes it does not.
Will our lead volume fall?
Very likely at first, and that is the intention. If cost per lead goes up while cost per opportunity comes down, the programme is working. We agree that trade-off with you in advance and report both figures throughout, so there are no surprises.
Do you also manage lead nurturing and email?
We handle acquisition and the handover point. On nurture sequences, lifecycle email and sales enablement we will advise and coordinate with whoever owns them, but we do not claim them as our speciality.
Begin with an audit.
The audit has a clear scope and a clear output, and it stands on its own — no obligation to continue. If it shows your current setup is working well, that is a perfectly valid result and we will tell you so.