I’ve been obsessed with fake leads a.k.a. contact form spam since 2010. At one time the system I built was defending against 250 000 fake leads every month. Keeping ahead of the bots and click farms was like a challenging chess match.
The problem popped up on my horizon again this week. I’ve been working on the SalesMotor form handling system. It allows users to embed a form on their websites and have the lead go directly into SalesMotor.
That’s convenient, but the main reason for this is so we can work out which ads were responsible for which leads. We use this info to optimise Google and Facebook ads to generate leads who are more likely to turn into sales.
There are a lot of options for preventing fake leads filling your inbox but they all fall into one of two approaches:-
Preventing fake leads from submitting the form is the most popular approach.
I think it’s wrong if you’re paying for online advertising.
It’s like putting a sticker over the check engine light on your dashboard. No light = no problem. No fake leads = no fake traffic.
If you’re paying for online advertising you need to know how much fake traffic you’re paying for. (I’ve seen suggestions that between 10% and 35% of Google Ads clicks are not from people interested in what you sell.)
A better way is to allow anyone - legit or not - to submit your form and then filter the junk out. It’s the only way to you know if you’re paying for fake leads. This is how we do it in SalesMotor.
If you’re concerned about fake leads you’re welcome to use SalesMotor, free till the end of the year.
After that it’ll cost from $99/month. I’ve priced it so it should pay for itself from the savings on fake leads or the increase in sales to leads.
If you’d like to use it please contact me or take a look at the (very much a work-in-progress) website at www.salesmotor.net
Over the last few years I've done deep work with a handful of clients to increase the number of sales they made from their Google and Facebook leads. I've put what I've learned into a 9-lesson email course.
You’ll learn:-
My experience has been that it will deliver more sales if:-
Why we lost sales. Losing potential sales always hurts. But, if you know why you lost the sale you can make changes that'll help you win more sales down the line.
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