“We need more leads” is the most common thing a business owner tells us. Perhaps half the time, more leads is the wrong goal.
Where the information goes
Picture a year: 1,000 form submissions, 300 of them worth a conversation, 75 real opportunities, 20 customers. Almost everyone measures the 1,000, because it is the easiest number to count and it arrives immediately.
The trouble is that the 1,000 and the 20 are not the same shape. Tuning everything around form fills means tuning around a number where the overwhelming majority never became anything. You get very good at collecting submissions.
When volume genuinely is the answer
Volume is right when you already close a healthy share of what comes in, there is room in the calendar, and the real constraint is that not enough people know you exist. New in a market, or newly expanded, usually qualifies.
Then the moves are the obvious ones: fewer form fields, broader search terms, more places to be found. Take the friction out and let more people through.
When quality is the answer
Quality is right when the week is spent disqualifying people. Busy and unprofitable is the tell. So is a sales conversation that keeps ending on price, or on a job you do not even do.
Then the moves invert: qualifying questions on the form, price and scope signalled in the copy before the form, and real outcomes fed back to wherever the leads come from. An ad platform can only optimise toward what you tell it a good result was, and by default you are telling it that a form fill is a good result. Google supports importing offline conversions for precisely this reason, so the system can learn which clicks became customers rather than which became submissions.
Write down what a good lead is
Most businesses cannot say it out loud. Job type, rough size, area served, timeline, and how they intend to pay. Four or five lines. Until that exists on paper, nobody can tell you whether a lead was good, and every argument about lead quality is really an argument about feelings.
The trap
Search Engine Land put it well in a recent piece on this exact tension: “Don’t let the easiest metric to measure become the definition of success.”
Submissions are easy to count. Customers are not. Watch both, with revenue behind them, or the reporting will improve every month while the business stays where it is. If it turns out that people are arriving and leaving, that is a different problem, and we covered it in why a good-looking site still does not get calls.
Frequently asked questions
Should I focus on more leads or better leads?
It depends on where you are. Volume is the right goal when you already close a healthy share of what comes in, there is room in the calendar and not enough people know you exist. Quality is the right goal when the week is spent disqualifying people, calls keep ending on price, or you are busy and unprofitable.
What counts as a good lead?
Whatever you write down. Job type, rough size, area served, timeline and how they intend to pay: four or five lines. Until that exists on paper, nobody can say whether a lead was good.
How do I get an ad platform to bring better leads?
Tell it what a good result was. By default a form fill counts as one. Google supports importing offline conversions so the system can learn which clicks became customers rather than which became submissions.