You Can’t Fix Lead Quality Until You Diagnose the Problem

I'm writing a book for business owners – working title: Profitable Google Ads.

I was at my favourite coffee shop typing the chapter about improving lead quality this morning. (I was also sipping the nastiest coffee on the planet. My son is a barista there and loves experimenting with flavours. But his mashup of espresso + orange juice was so horrible my teeth bled!)

An unexpected side effect of writing is that it highlights gaps in my own knowledge — things I know at a surface level but haven’t properly thought through. Today’s keep-Pete-humble moment was realising that people use the phrase "unqualified lead" to mean several different things.

When a someone says their leads are unqualified they might be saying:

• We've been getting bot spam with random letters in the form fields.
• We've been getting enquiries from job seekers.
• We've tried calling and emailing but got no response.
• The lead wants what we sell, but they don't want it now.
• The lead wants something we don't sell.
• The lead wants what we sell but they're out of our area.
• The lead wants what we sell but they can't afford it.

Figuring out exactly what's meant by "unqualified lead" is the first step to improving lead quality. If you don't know why the lead is unqualified, it's impossible to fix it.

Bot spam or job seekers? The fix starts with advertising where click fraud is less likely.

No response? It might be conversion fraud*, but it might also be a problem with how you handle new leads.

For example, I worked with a therapist who got very grumpy because his leads weren't responding. He'd get an enquiry from someone desperate for help at the lowest point in their life. A few days later he'd send a link to his calendar and ask the person to book. The email was ... functional. It had all the warmth and empathy of a parking ticket.

In this case you're not going to get more responses by changing the ads or keywords.

If it's a timing issue – the lead wants what you sell – but not right now, you don't have to lose them forever if you keep in touch till they're ready to buy.

And it's the same kind of thing for the other symptoms.

You fix the out of area problem by tightening your location targeting. You fix the affordability problem with ad copy that repels bargain seekers. You fix the mismatch between what you sell and what the lead wants with targeting and copywriting.

You've got to know why the lead is unqualified to apply the right fix.

And that means reviewing the leads individually and asking "Why wasn’t this lead a good fit?"

Was it a spam submission? Someone out of your service area? Someone who ghosted after the first contact? Someone who couldn’t afford you? Someone looking for something you don’t offer?

Diagnose first, then prescribe.

*Conversion fraud is when someone deliberately submits fake enquiries through your website forms. It might be a competitor trying to waste your ad budget, a bot pretending to be a real person, or even a lead generator trying to make it look like they’ve delivered results.

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