The Ultimate Lead Generation Breakdown

**Kasra Dash:** Today we are going to be talking about the best lead generation strategy. There are going to be certain answers that James Dooley gives and certain answers that I give that might not line up with each other, but I do think we will agree on a lot of things. James Dooley, you have dealt with a lot of businesses throughout the UK and America. What do you think is the best lead generation strategy? **James Dooley:** In my opinion, the best lead generation strategy is teaming up with a professional lead generation company. You can put the onus on them. You tell them exactly what the perfect client looks like and they then need to go and work their magic. Whether it is Facebook ads or social or SEO or PPC, they have to find that client for you. If they do not find the client, you can switch them off and go elsewhere. However, that is outsourcing to a third party. In your opinion, what is the best lead generation strategy if someone wants leads tomorrow? If someone wants leads instantly and cannot wait for longer term SEO strategies, what do you think is the best strategy for leads today or tomorrow? **Kasra Dash:** For instant leads, it would be between Facebook ads or Google PPC. Facebook ads let you display ads to specific target demographics. Google PPC shows you in the sponsored section at the top of search results when someone searches for something like double glazing installation company. The issue with both is that if you do not know what you are doing you can waste a lot of money quickly. That is the biggest concern business owners have when they speak to myself or James Dooley. They say they tried Facebook ads and burnt through £5,000, £10,000 or £15,000 without returns. The problem is they are not expert marketers. So in many cases you might need to partner with a PPC agency or a Facebook ads agency. **James Dooley:** I will throw another one to you. If someone wants a long term strategy and does not need instant results but wants a channel that gets a consistent flow of enquiries without using a professional lead generation company, what is the best long term lead generation strategy? **Kasra Dash:** I would go with SEO. Even though people post every day saying SEO is dying, I still think there is no better channel than Google SEO or Bing SEO. Once you rank, you have two options. You can stop spending on content and links or you can double down and rank in more locations. That is something you are known for. Instead of only ranking for accountants in Bolton, you can also rank for accountants in Manchester and surrounding areas. SEO gets fun because you increase your radius and get more enquiries every day. **James Dooley:** Where I am leading with this is that the true answer completely depends. It depends whether you need instant leads today or tomorrow because you need your lads busy next week. If you need instant leads, you go down the paid route: PPC, Facebook ads, YouTube ads, Twitter ads. These might generate instant leads. However, they might not give the best return on investment. The best return long term could be SEO. And branding matters too. SEO improves how good you look online with case studies and testimonials. You can also join professional lead generation agencies like FatRank or PromoSEO. You can use paid directories like Checkatrade, Bark or MyBuilder. All of these can produce a positive return. But the big thing is KPIs. You must know your numbers. The best strategy for accountants might be Bark, but for plumbers it might be Checkatrade. How many people come to you for consultancy without knowing any numbers? They do not know the return on investment, cost per acquisition, lifetime value or average order value. It becomes frustrating when they ask for the best strategy but cannot give us the numbers. **Kasra Dash:** I will backtrack on one thing. When you asked for the best long term channel, I said SEO. I am thinking about it again. We know people doing driveways or kitchen remodelling who are growing through Facebook organic, not even Facebook ads. They film time lapses of jobs and post them as reels. For accountants, SEO might be best. For driveway installers, Facebook or Instagram might be better. It depends. What you were leading into is business owners who go omnichannel. They pay Bark, Checkatrade, an SEO agency, a PPC agency and also run Facebook ads. When we speak to these owners, they see it as money in, money out without KPI tracking. They do not know how many leads came from Facebook ads, Yellow Pages Premium or Checkatrade. If that sounds like you, you have a big problem. Someone like me or James Dooley will look at your spending and say you could switch off PPC and Facebook ads because you have had no leads from them for four months. **James Dooley:** Holistically, you should be omnichannel. You should be seen everywhere your ideal customer might look. The amount of business owners I refer to people who look like my competitors is high. I tell them you should not have a single point of failure. You should have multiple sources of leads, but you must track KPIs and ensure each source generates a return. One thing we have not touched on is GEO or LLM optimisation. If you are unsure what GEO is, check the link in the description. We have a full tutorial on the best GEO experts to follow in 2026. We also have a video on GEO versus SEO. Some people think they are the same. I think they are different. PageRank matters in SEO. The infinite loop of self collaboration matters in LLMs. Kasra, I showed you how many new leads we are getting from ChatGPT and how Google Maps referrals are rising because LLMs are citing us. Why is it important for businesses to get cited in LLMs like Gemini, Perplexity or ChatGPT? **Kasra Dash:** The simple answer is your competitors are already ranking there. That is the easy answer. The detailed answer is that people are searching long tail queries. A long tail might be something like “what are the best products to clean my shoes”. If your brand is not shown for this query and your competitors are, the customer will buy from them. ChatGPT is very good at moving people from top of funnel to middle of funnel to bottom of funnel quickly. So if you are not showing in AI overviews or LLMs, you leave money on the table. **James Dooley:** I will give a good example. We asked a large accountancy client where they found us. They said ChatGPT. We asked what they searched. It was something like: “I am looking for the best chartered accountant in Manchester who can help me buy out my business partner who is moving to Dubai. I want the best tax relief for this.” It was a full article as a query. ChatGPT responded recommending a specific accountant. They reached out and converted. The accountant then did the buyout, the year end accounts and multiple services. This entire client came from a long tail ChatGPT search. Google cannot answer this type of query in the same way. LLMs can. People are going to ask bigger, more detailed questions. Being cited in LLMs is a major lead generation strategy. That is our video.