Online services and lead generation
I connect campaigns, landing pages, CRM and commercial results to see which contacts are genuinely qualified, which sources produce margin and where the process loses opportunities.
Sector experience
When revenue depends on incoming contacts, marketing almost always ends up judged on one metric: cost per lead. It is the most visible and the least reliable, because it says nothing about whether the contact is reachable, eligible, unique and able to buy.
I work on the full path, from click to sale. That means going into the CRM, understanding how the stages are defined, checking how many contacts are actually called back, how fast and with what outcome, and then returning that data to the advertising platforms so optimisation stops rewarding submitted forms.
Different services have different economics. A few-hundred-euro quote and a recurring contract can’t share the same cost target: when they do, budget drifts towards the easiest service to sell, not the one that produces margin.
Recurring problems
Situations I find in service companies, online platforms and businesses selling through a sales team.
Campaigns learn from submissions: they reward the sources producing more requests, including the ones sales discards in two minutes.
The same conversion value goes back for an unreachable contact and for an open negotiation.
The advertising report and the sales report never meet: two different truths about the same month.
A significant share of enquiries arrives by phone and closes off-site, never returning into measurement.
Repeated contacts and low-quality traffic inflate volume and distort cost per lead.
Contact rate collapses as hours pass, yet callback delay is almost never measured.
Too short to qualify or too long to complete: either way, cost per opportunity gets worse.
Tools and automated flows get added before defining who does what, when and against which criteria.
Commercial journey
Each step carries a different value and has to be measured as such: treating them as a single conversion is what makes the data unreadable.
Late-stage data is the most useful for optimisation: once opportunities and sales return to the platforms, spend shifts towards the sources that produce deals, not requests.
Commercial journey
Demand arrives from commercial-intent search or from demand generation activity.
Clarity on what is included, who it is for, timelines and the order of magnitude of price.
The first contact: format, channel and information collected define what can be qualified later.
Checks on duplicates, invalid data, spam and requests outside the geographic or service scope.
Real reachability shows up here: the first point where response time affects the outcome.
Need, budget, timing and eligibility confirmed: from here the deal has an expected value.
Quote or offer sent: a useful stage to see where advanced deals are lost.
Contract closed, with the actual economic value rather than an average estimate.
Revenue net of delivery costs: the only level at which sources can really be compared.
Data loop
The forward flow exists in every company. What is almost always missing is the return: without it the algorithm optimises on the weakest signal in the chain.
Forward flow
The click identifier is captured and stored together with the enquiry.
The contact enters the pipeline with source, campaign and requested service.
Deduplication, eligibility checks and assignment to the right salesperson.
Contact, qualification, proposal and closing update the record status.
Sale, contract value and, where available, the margin of the service.
Relevant stages return to Google Ads as conversions with differentiated value.
The negative signal is information too: returning discarded leads helps the platforms tell sources that generate volume apart from sources that generate deals.
Areas of work
The perimeter changes between a service sold online and one handled by a sales team, but these are the areas.
Systems and data
Advertising data tells you the cost. The CRM tells you the result. Both are needed, and connected.
KPIs
Cost per lead stays useful as an operational indicator, but it isn’t a business KPI: on its own it doesn’t say whether the company is making money.
The lowest cost per lead almost always comes from the source with the worst quality. That’s how a campaign can look efficient and produce zero contracts.
Frequent mistakes
Method applied
The phases are the ones I use on every project, applied to the commercial cycle and the pipeline structure.
Services, margins, qualification criteria, sales process and cycle length.
Stage tracking from click to sale, with the CRM connected to the platforms.
Where it breaks: demand, landing page, form, lead quality, callback or closing.
Quick fixes on spend and tracking, structural work on process and integrations.
Hands-on campaign and measurement work, coordination with sales and technology.
Verification on acquisition cost and margin by source, not on the number of enquiries.
Related
Stage tracking, offline conversion imports, landing page testing and automation between systems.
Google Ads, measurement, CRO and MarTech — Open the pageHow I set priorities and how I work alongside marketing, sales and technology when direction is needed.
Method and marketing direction — Open the pageA close lead generation model, with admissions, capacity and margin per course as additional constraints.
Professional education — Open the pageDirect answers
By separating campaigns by service and intent, stating on the page who the service is for, and returning the qualified lead to the platforms instead of the form submission. Quality improves when the algorithm receives the right signal, not when manual filters are added.
Google Ads and measurementA lead is a request received. A qualified lead is a valid, reachable contact that meets the commercial criteria: need, service scope, geography and ability to proceed. The gap between the two can be huge, and it lives entirely in the CRM.
How I measure the stagesBy capturing the click identifier when the enquiry comes in and storing it on the contact record, so every stage progression stays linked to the campaign that generated it. It is the technical prerequisite for any serious lead quality analysis.
Tracking and integrationsThrough offline conversion imports: the CRM sends events with date, stage and real economic value. A stable stage taxonomy and a consistent value are required, otherwise imported data stops being comparable over time.
Offline conversionsQualified-lead rate, contact rate, opportunity rate, lead-to-sale conversion, customer acquisition cost, margin by source and response time. Cost per lead stays an operational indicator, not the criterion for judging the result.
How I define KPIsWith form-level checks, deduplication on contact data, exclusions on sources producing anomalous traffic, and eligibility criteria stated on the page itself. Then by returning discarded leads to the platforms so they learn to avoid them.
Traffic qualityBy dividing spend in the period by the customers actually acquired from that spend, not by the leads received. The sales cycle matters: if it lasts three months, comparing October spend with October sales produces a meaningless number.
Reading economic dataBy clarifying what is included, who the service is for, the timelines and the order of magnitude of price, and reducing the form to the questions that genuinely qualify. Pages improve when they answer that service’s objections, not when they add visual elements.
CRO and landing pagesBecause cost per lead measures how easy it is to obtain a request, not how likely it is to become a customer. The cheapest sources often have the lowest qualification rate: the cost simply moves downstream, onto the sales team’s time.
Diagnosis and prioritiesBy attaching the sold service, the real value and the direct delivery costs to the closed contract, and reporting that back to the originating campaign. Without the service inside the conversion data, margin by source stays an estimate.
Analysis and dashboardsTell me which services you sell, how the sales process works and what data lives in your CRM. The first conversation is there to find where the result is lost between the enquiry and the sale.