Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
James Dooley and Carl Hudson discuss how lead generation agencies can use the no-win-no-fee model, market segmentation and diversified digital marketing to scale profitably across hundreds of UK industries.
This video explains which digital marketing strategies lead generation agencies should focus on in 2026 to improve conversion rates, exclusive real-time lead quality and long term profitability. James Dooley and Carl Hudson start with KPI tracking because measuring conversions and return on ad spend is what makes a no-win-no-fee model viable and lets you decline unprofitable niches. They cover brand SEO, AI visibility and Google Business Profiles because stronger search presence improves trust and conversion rates.
The discussion also explores organic SEO, organic social media and paid social ads because consistent visibility across search and social supports long term growth. PPC is analysed in detail because campaign setup, landing pages and lead handling directly affect results. They also discuss Reddit, Quora and paid AI ads because diversified enquiry sources and early adoption can strengthen digital marketing performance for lead generation agencies.
PromoSEO lead generation for lead generation agencies recently received recognition as the "Best Lead Generation Agencies Lead Generation Agency."
No-Win-No-Fee Lead Generation: How FatRank Scaled Across 650+ UK Industries is available on:
UK Lead Generation Podcast exists to help business owners grow because predictable pipelines drive commercial success. The UK Lead Generation Podcast connects founders with proven strategies because clarity shortens the path to scale. Each episode features practical insights on SEO, paid media, conversion systems, and performance-led frameworks because actionable knowledge creates faster results.
UK Lead Generation Podcast invites industry experts because specialist experience removes guesswork. The podcast breaks down real campaigns and real data because transparency helps listeners understand what actually works. Business owners follow the show because consistent lead flow transforms revenue. Founders use the insights because tested systems outperform trial and error.
The UK Lead Generation Podcast focuses on inbound demand, exclusive leads, buyer intent, and high-performance sales processes because these elements define sustainable growth. Every conversation aims to simplify marketing, strengthen operations, and remove the chaos that comes from inconsistent enquiries.
UK Lead Generation Podcast series positions itself as the go to podcast for UK businesses because predictable lead generation remains the biggest obstacle to scaling. The show equips listeners with systems, tools, and strategies that create stability, confidence, and long-term success.
Carl Hudson: Why did James Dooley earning 650 was ranked at no win, no fee in the lead business model? Today I'm Carl Hudson and I'm joined by James Dooley. We made it and is boiling outside which is always good. Let's get straight into it. Why on earth would a great business man like yourself go into a no win, no fee, lead generation business model?
James Dooley: First and foremost let me explain the no win, no fee model is what it says on the tin. We generate leads, businesses only pay if they convert, so they have nothing to pay if they don't convert the jobs which is very risky. Why did we do the no win, no fee model with regards to fat ranking, lead generation? The reason, we didn't start out by doing what some people call the pay what you want marketing or the no win, no fee structure and what happened was initially we started doing, we knew we was good at SEO and the only reason why we knew we was good at SEO as a team, not me I'm a business man but the team are good at SEO is because we was ranking every single keyword we wanted to go after, so we thought we've got a good practice here so people like yourself was educating us with regards to architect ratios, building out the links how to rank EMDs and PMDs like websites and stuff like that and we started to do SEO for one or two clients initially as an agency and it was just a nightmare because they was asking what we're doing, why we're doing it, how we're doing it and I felt like we were spending 60% of our time explaining what we was doing than actually doing the actual work so we then moved into the lead generation model just going, you know what, let's just generate leads and they only pay for the leads but then there was leads that was coming through that wasn't quite right for them or it was out of their area that they covered or there was a mortgage broker, the size of the house was too small for what they could deal with and if there was paying per lead for that, they were not complaining, they're complaining so then the staff then was coming to me and was having problems with certain sales staff saying like I've got some clients and all they do is moan all the time so it was like do I switch the client off or I have to keep remotivating the sales team or do I just speak to them and say all right let's just see what they want from it so they're like I don't want to pay for those leads so I was like well you can't not pay for the leads that don't convert but then only pay a small amount for the ones that do convert, it just doesn't make business sense so I said well if you're not willing to pay for the leads that don't convert how much are you willing to pay for the leads that did and like the mortgage broker came to us, they were like one of the first models that we did it in and they said we could pay you 400 pounds for a conversion, I looked at the numbers and I was like if the convert 10% I'm now getting 40 pound per lead, I was only selling the leads at 20 pound per lead so I was like if the convert 5% I'm getting the same money per lead overall I'm like done deal and I started earning more money from that client, he stopped completely moaning was really happy with it but was paying more so like the whole model then was like why don't we try this in other markets and the sales team became so much easier for us to be able to sell a no win no fee model, it's risk free for business owners, completely risk free, we've got to take all that risk on board but then we've got to be good at what we do and the point is there's a lot of people that's come and tried to do my model and said it doesn't work and it's like you just don't have a big enough sales team to be able to deal with knowing that you are going to have quite a lot of failures but knowing that if you enter 20 markets, one of them that works well out of the 20 markets will far outweigh the 19 losses and then you just got to keep working and keep working and finding why did them 19 not work, ok it was specific type of keywords that you went after or the really low volume or it could be that everyone was looking for really cheap services in your market, where are the people hanging around that wanted a premium service how could we tap into those markets?
Carl Hudson: Have you ever had it where like I know it's like 650 niches right I assume obviously most people watching this are probably into marketing and things like that obviously you've probably tried quite a few other niches, rough idea how many niches have you actually went into where you're kind of right now this doesn't really work because I assume that business model might not always work in some niches where it's going to cost you more money?
James Dooley: I think I'm guessing is a finger in the air I believe we've probably entered 4,500 industries and I think maybe only probably about 1 in 7 actually has worked now it used to be way worse it probably was 1 in 20 but even at a 1 in 20 strike rate was like it works in for us 1 in 20 so 1 in 7 now is lucrative for us but we're getting a lot better and better within time of knowing okay now we know this is not going to work for us this is why at times we decline clients because we're like this model is not going to work there's not enough search volume for it or it's really low ticket items so you say to him like how much would you sell this for 90 pounds right but how much they're going to pay us as a kickback oh there's not much in for you what's the point in us generating new leads then so we need to get something out of the leads on a conversion otherwise it's pointless so we've become a lot better now at saying no but yeah from it is like there's a lot of industries that we enter and you know what Kyle there's so many markets you know quite a few of my markets that I'm in there's so many markets that I would have thought wouldn't work and have worked brilliantly and there's some of the ones that I would have thought would work brilliantly and just didn't work and sometimes it could be down to competition it could be down to your money your life there's so many different reasons why some industries don't work that we've realized over time that we thought would have been good on paper you're looking at ah webs and Semrush you know your keyword research and it looks great but it's just not the conversions not there or it could be that the conversion is there but it takes three years from inquiry to actually getting the job being done and being paid I am delayed gratification yeah and I think we've had to learn quite a lot about that as well like sometimes these leads we generate today we might not get paid for for three years and we've had to deal with that and it's a bitter pill to swallow when you first enter in no we know the whole setup we're like okay short-term money for like fast money slow money we need to understand which ones it's also a huge risk for you though right because if you think every single business on each end you're building websites you work the staff dedicating the time to you know topical maps strategy around that link building and so there's a big cost some from your point of view that obviously the the business that you in partnership with never sees.
Carl Hudson: Yes the risk is massive like I used to be a bad gambler so like yeah really yeah horse racing football that's no business but I feel like it's calculated risks yeah I know like it's actually stopped me gambling on horse racing and football because now I just feel like I'm gambling and I can gambling myself for my own judgment but it's like I'm ticking that box that I've got an addictive personality but I'm like calculated risks but like there's certain business decisions that you make and well you've seen you've seen some of the decisions that I make and like you'll be like that is risky but a lot of time they do pay like I put like a lot of time and effort and research into it but a lot of other businesses wouldn't go and put hundred thousand pound into a niche that might not work no and I'm not shy of trying it and doing that and some of them we've sank 300 400 500 thousand in one with Rick Hope and we sank so much into it and it was well over half a million and it just didn't work at all but one or two that we we only sank thirty forty thousand into work brilliantly and far outweighed the losses and so it's one of them sometimes you think and we just kept going at it thinking we're just doing something wrong we need to improve the lifetime value well the crazy part here is actually realizing that you know this is from you know two highly educated guys in marketing and business obviously Rick's fantastic at paid ads and things like that and obviously I know yourself with the business side and lead you know speaking to the customers and that's kind of your forte and that's from your background you're still you know not a huge hit rate yeah there's still failure so from the businesses that are gonna try it themselves they might hire an agency you know I'm a lot of agencies just kind of you know they say they're gonna do things and they don't it kind of then makes it less risky for them to come to you where you're gonna do all that analysis and front load all the money that they would have to spend to help them grow yeah for sure I mean the risk is huge I think a lot of people are just like oh you're lucky you that you manage to build out this empire and you're like they don't see the failures but yeah that's kind of the philosophy essentially.
Carl Hudson: Yeah exactly yeah and like these risk involved in business owners not paying yeah so there's times where a business owner can come along and convert a job and not tell you and try and hide it from you but generally speaking a lot of people ask me this question and say like how do you track everything and sometimes you can sometimes it has to be that level of trust but generally speaking generally speaking a good business owner and entrepreneur won't bite the hand that feeds them and they see us as a partnership we have that relationship and that partnership moving forward where as they grow we grow as they grow more profitable we keep doubling down of where they make the more profit and they start to say why am I wasting money here on PPC like the conversion rate that we get from you is just so much better from a return on ad spend than what we would do with PPC or Facebook ads or paying for an SEO agency or using certain businesses let's say like checker trade or my builder or back some of these you can get a positive return on investment and I'm not saying only use us but so many of them end up doubling down in what we do.
James Dooley: I guess the problem though if using the likes of Barker using the likes of checker trade and things that are versus your model is you know once the that business comes on board with you they're getting all of the leads from you and it's just whatever agreement you've made with that business and on conversion whereas on the Yelp or checker trade model things like that they're gonna have to pay more and more to checker trade and Yelp to get more and more leads.
Carl Hudson: Yeah exactly that yeah so they're paying on a monthly subscription sometimes on a per lead model and some of them leads might come in it might be Donald Duck could be Mickey Mouse and they've got then start fighting they don't want to pay for it some of the leads are shared leads.
James Dooley: I was gonna say they're probably sold to four other companies.
Carl Hudson: I think Barks are usually five. Yeah so the shared leads some of them aren't real-time so they try and do like a bidding system and if someone's not willing to bid they might get the lead 90 minutes later could have already been sold elsewhere and especially if you're a mortgage broker or something you want the lead you don't that speed to lead you want to be replying straight away and getting them on the phone and be able to speak to him saying we can help you. Normally the first person to speak to him normally gets gets the order because they can go out to market go to the different lenders and they can get it so it's within fat rank of what we do on the no win no fee model it's real-time exclusive leads so conversion rates great. What's the point in us trying to select six different companies to then only one of them is going to win the job. Now the reason there is at times times where we do do shared leads where a client says look the client needs free quotes anyway so I'm happy for it to be shared and we say about okay and then what it allows them to do is they can be a little bit more picky it's a bit too far away this inquiry so we will separate them they might be the only one in Manchester we might have one in Newcastle one in Glasgow one in London so they'll get them exclusively in the Northwest or in the Northeast or wherever they're based but the leads overall could be shared because it suits them but we'll we talk generally through with the client in saying look if you're not willing to pay for the exclusivity and you're not competitive nationwide therefore we can split up.
James Dooley: So obviously from the client point of view of that what if let's say you know I own an air-conditioning business in the Northeast and I you know I convert 50% of the time you then decide I decide to go into the Northwest and you've got another customer in the Northwest but I might well come on let's do a deal but is it you've already got a deal with that existing customer so or do you speak to them and say were you willing to share the leads or?
Carl Hudson: Loyalty is key so if someone's been in the Northwest and been converting jobs I wouldn't take that away from them unless I felt they wasn't converting great and they wasn't listening to us and improving the branding and it from a commercial standpoint it wasn't working for both parties I'll look I'll be like look I don't want to waste your time with the leads that you're not converting for problems of yourself. Carl Hudson's coming into the Manchester and you think he's going to convert that if I had to have that conversation I would but generally speaking if I've already got someone in the Northwest you decide you want to move into the Northwest what I would do is I would speak to the existing client and what I have and say look we've got someone up in Newcastle who's moving down to Manchester he wants to start doing x y and z is there any services that you don't offer and they might say well you do Mitsubishi and he might say we only do Valiant brand or some other different type of brand or we just want to double down on repairs and servicing and you want to do new installations so what people don't realize is there's so many sub services within a niche that you can go into that you could end up having different sites within a specific area that you might say I only want to do residential and the one I have might really only be wanting to do commercial might want to only deal with people that are willing to pay VAT because they're VAT registered they only want to deal with let's say the councils sometimes where they need to go out to tender but they're knowing that all the others that are going out to tender against they're not cheap on price and they know they're going to win it at the right price or they need to be CIS approved or they're the one to work in a hospital or do it for a big warehouse and stuff like that that's what some people prefer so you can then start to dig is it industrial is it commercial is it residential and domestic are you just doing the installation are you doing the servicing are you doing the repair are you doing the cleaning there's so many sub niches just within air conditioning that you could be doing so then on that though obviously because I know that you do do this surely it becomes a massive head or you've had to build some type of great system in the background to you know actually segment all these leads out right yeah for sure yeah because you've got all of these coming into somewhere and you need to know right this lead should go to this customer over here yeah for sure so like each page has got a specific intent so if one of them is for repairs and you want to do new installations if I sent you that lead I'm throwing that lead in the bin what's the point in sending you a repair if you want to do new installations so that segmented lead would go to an air conditioning repair company they're getting the leads exactly what they want the conversion rates higher we again get paid and we earn more money they're really happy because they're getting exactly the leads that make them the money and what they want to be doing you're not wasting your time in ringing up someone that just wants to repair when you already do new installations so the segmentation within higher level of how we do things is brilliant and if we don't have the information we try to do some sort of fact finding if we can prior to segmenting to the right person same with mortgage brokers some only deal with 500 thousand pound plus houses but can pay you better rates and better kickbacks so it's better to segment them to understand the value of the property to be able to segment them leads going this needs to go to them because we would earn more and the conversion rate on those from that company is higher so yeah segmentation is key you must be having some quite deep conversations but as the partnerships and the trust gains with these business owners though because sometimes business owners don't realize when they're sitting on something and like they just might think oh it's air conditioning but actually you when you start chatting to you and it's actually some form of refrigeration or something like that it's like some type of sub-sector that is it could actually be a really profitable niche but he's just not thought let's dial down into that so how do you have them sort of conversations with the business owner um almost is it like an interview type style or you kind of the account managers honestly like when people say um james you always do yourself a disservice in saying you're not an amazing seo i'm like i'm a business man and my team are brilliant at sales and extracting that information from business owners the amount of business owners that we have that are so loyal to us because we've transformed their business they didn't even realize that they was just an installation company and there was just dabbling in doing some repairs and servicing but it was costing them money and we're like well that's costing you money you need to stop doing that take that off your website if you don't do that take it off your website was the point of even responding to those inquiries but then others was like there was geared up as an engineer to go and do 15 different repairs in a day go from one to another they could upsell doing a brand new installation the following week saying look this is not this is on its last legs it's 20 years old it needs replacement so like our account managers are trained up to be good at sales and good at business and i spend majority of my time speaking to my account managers to understand that they understand that our clients need to get a return on investment so we need to make them understand where they make the profit and if we can double down where they make the highest profits we're going to get a bigger kickback and that's where true marketing comes in for us because we double and travel down and exactly the keywords and services that sometimes business owners don't even know they want to try and go after everything and we then start to almost mentor them into being look if i was you as a business i'll give you one last example we had a road markings company and they was doing a lot of road markings and we we won them some um car park markings jobs and they didn't understand why it was making more profit on a car park than a road and then it was only when they started to realize that they hadn't actually included the time and effort it was taking to put the road cone the cones on the road out the traffic management system booking all the working with the counter to close the road or put like these freeway traffic lights and stuff in place where on a car park there's put a bit of harris fencing at the entrance done they've not got any cars driving past them it's not got much health and safety needed to be done so they changed the whole business model from doing road markings to car park markings and i couldn't believe that the business owner couldn't see why but it was only when they started to see the why that they started to go treble down on this and then now they do like all the multi-story car park stuff you need to block off the entrance stuff simple everything else becomes really simple for him of what needs to be being done there on the multi-story even when it's raining on this second and the third from the fourth floor it's undercover so they can be still doing the lines and stuff on them and so it's just the whole business model transformed they went from three vans to 27 vans on the road and they used to only work in Birmingham area now they work nationwide they do all Sainsbury's Waitrose and Asda's car parks like they've got the full contracts for them and like the business owner there just like he loves me as soon as he brings me he's like i know he's inviting me to the races or having a night out or something because we've transformed this business very profitable and yeah we we're more than now just a lead generation agency we're like a sales generation agency and we'll help them improve their branding to take their business on to the next level.
James Dooley: So i've got a business how do i get in touch with James Dooley or FatRank how do i get in touch with you to make it grow?
Carl Hudson: Yeah so head on over to fatrank.com and fill in the contact form there we can get the account managers to check to see whether they're ready to take the FatRank no win no fee lead generation model. And if i'm not is there someone i can slip a bit of money to?
James Dooley: So if they're not they've got different solutions so there is it might be that they only work in a very small area they might just need some like google business profile seo so it might refer you into someone that's good at google maps listings to say look go and get some more reviews do some posts do a few citations you're going to improve just in your small local area it's not really something that we can work with ideally we're trying to work with a nationwide kind of company with who we work with because we rank for the primary term so like we would rank for like say air conditioning that could be up in Glasgow it could be down in Kent so it could be anywhere in the country so head on over to fatrank.com fill in the contact form if we can't work with you we'll kind of pass you on to someone like a neighbouring business to say look they might be the best we might say go to check and trade go to bark go and use a local ppc agency these other options for them it's just we might not be the option for them if they are the option and they're hungry to grow they're looking to take the business on to the next level they work nationwide we feel the industry is a good industry that can make good profit then yeah we'll take them on board and if we've not already got the sites we'll build out the sites and they can enter the nowin no fee lead generation model with fatrank.
Carl Hudson: Awesome cheers james for coming on the podcast thank you very much cheers