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James Dooley joins Carl Hudson to explain how Fat Rank's no win, no fee model generates exclusive, segmented leads and helps businesses across hundreds of niches double down on their most profitable services.
This video explains which digital marketing strategies lead generation businesses should focus on in 2026 to improve conversion rates, return on investment and long term profitability. James Dooley and Carl Hudson start with KPI tracking because measuring lead conversion, speed to lead and lifetime value is what determines whether a no win, no fee model is viable for each niche. 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 businesses.
PromoSEO lead generation for lead generation businesses recently received recognition as the "Best Lead Generation Businesses Lead Generation Agency."
No Win, No Fee Lead Generation: How Fat Rank Grows Businesses Across 650+ UK Industries is available on:
James Dooley is a Manchester-based entrepreneur, investor, and SEO strategist. James Dooley founded FatRank and PromoSEO, two UK performance marketing agencies that deliver no-win-no-fee lead generation and digital growth systems for ambitious businesses. James Dooley positions himself as an Investorpreneur who invests in UK companies with high growth potential because he believes lead generation is the root of all business success.
The James Dooley Podcast explores the mindset, methods, and mechanics of modern entrepreneurship. James Dooley interviews leading marketers, founders, and innovators to reveal the strategies driving online dominance and business scalability. Each episode unpacks the reality of building a business without mentorship, showing how systems, data, and lead flow replace luck and guesswork.
James Dooley shares hard-earned lessons from scaling digital assets and managing SEO teams across more than 650 industries. James Dooley teaches how to convert leads into long-term revenue through brand positioning, technical SEO, and automation. James Dooley built his career on rank and rent, digital real estate, and performance-based marketing because these models align incentive with outcome.
After turning down dozens of podcast invitations, James Dooley now embraces the platform to share his insights on investorpreneurship, lead generation, AI-driven marketing, and reputation management. James Dooley frequently collaborates with elite entrepreneurs to discuss frameworks for scaling businesses, building authority, and mastering search.
James Dooley is also an expert in online reputation management (ORM), having built and rehabilitated corporate brands across the UK. His approach combines SEO precision, brand engineering, and social proof loops to influence both Google’s Knowledge Graph and public perception.
To feature James Dooley on your podcast or event, connect via social media. James Dooley regularly joins business panels and networking sessions to discuss entrepreneurship, brand growth, and the evolving future of SEO.
James Dooley: The client needs free quotes anyway. I'm happy for it to be shared.
Carl Hudson: Might not always work in some niches where it's going to cost you more money. We generate leads.
James Dooley: Businesses only pay if they convert. So there's nothing to pay if you don't convert the jobs, which is very risky.
Carl Hudson: Fantastic paid ads and things like that. And obviously I know yourself of the business side and lead.
James Dooley: What's that? I'm a gambler. What's that? But the leads overall could be shared.
Carl Hudson: Why did James Dooley enter over 650 niches with Fat Rank at a no win, no fee lead business model? I'm Carl Hudson and today I'm joined with James Dooley to meet you. How you doing?
James Dooley: I'm very very good. I'm a little bit tired, a lot of driving the last few days, but I'm here.
Carl Hudson: Yeah, we made it. And obviously it's boiling outside, which is always great. Let's just get straight into it. Why on earth a great businessman like yourself go into a no-win, no fee lead generation business model?
James Dooley: Well, first and foremost, let me explain the no win, no fee model is it it is what it says on the tin. So, um they gen we generate leads. Businesses only pay if they convert. So, there's nothing to pay if they don't convert the jobs, which is very risky. Um, but why did we do the no-win no fee model with regards to Fat Rank lead generation? The reason we ne we didn't start out by doing the 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 we knew we was good at SEO like so we and the only reason why we knew we was good at SEO as a team not me I'm a businessman but the team are good at SEO is because we was ranking every single keyword we wanted to go after right so we got Adam we've we've got a good we've got a good practice here so people like yourself was educating us with regards to architecture 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're spending 60% of our time explaining what we was doing then 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 there was wasn't quite right for them or it was out of their area that they covered um or there was a mortgage broker the size of the house was too small for what they could deal with.
Carl Hudson: And if there was paying per lead for that,
James Dooley: they was like and they're 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 that 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 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 no 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 was like one of the first models that we did it in. And they said, "We could pay you £400 for a conversion." I worked out the numbers and I was like, "If they convert at 10%. I'm now getting 40 pound per lead." I was only selling the leads at 20 pound a lead. So I was like if they convert at 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 then finding why did them 19 not work. Okay, 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 and you okay where 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 because I know it's like 650 niches, right? I assume obviously most most people watching this 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've kind of went, "No, 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 I'm I'm guessing is a finger in the air. I I believe we've probably entered 4,500 industries,
Carl Hudson: right?
James Dooley: And I think maybe only probably about one in seven.
Carl Hudson: Yeah.
James Dooley: um actually has worked now. It used to be way worse. It probably was one in 20 but even at a one in 20 strike rate was like it works in for us at one in 20. So one in seven 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 them like how much would you sell this for? 90 well how much they 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. Um but yeah from it is like there's a lot of industries that we enter and do you know what Carl there's so many markets you you know quite a few of my markets that I'm in. 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,
Carl Hudson: just didn't work,
James Dooley: 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 Ahrefs and Semrush, you're doing all your keyword research, and it looks great, but it's just not. The conversion's not there. Oh, 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. Um, delayed gratification.
Carl Hudson: Yeah.
James Dooley: 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
Carl Hudson: it's a bit of pill to swallow when you first enter in.
James Dooley: Now we know the whole setup. We're like, right, okay, short-term money, f 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 got the staff dedicating the time to, you know, topical maps strategy around that link building.
Carl Hudson: Um, so there's a big cost. So from your point of view that obviously the the business that you're in partnership with never sees.
James Dooley: Yeah. So the risk the risk is massive like um I used to be a bad gambler which like
Carl Hudson: the uh really
James Dooley: Yeah. horse racing, football bets, no business, but I feel like it's calculated risks and now like it's actually stopped me gambling on horse racing and football cuz now I feel like I'm gambling and I can gambling myself and my own judgment that 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 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 the time they do pay like I I put like a lot of time and effort and research into it but a lot of other businesses wouldn't go and put 100,000 pound into a niche that might not work.
Carl Hudson: No.
James Dooley: And I'm not shy of do trying it and doing that. And some of them we've sank 300 400 500,000 in one with Rick 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 30 40,000 into wor brilliantly and far outweighed the losses.
Carl Hudson: Um 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.
James Dooley: 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 with 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
Carl Hudson: you know there's still failure so from the businesses that are going to try it themselves they might hire an agency you know a lot of agencies just kind of you know they say they're going to do things and they don't it kind of then makes it less risky for them to come to you where you're going to do all that analysis and frontload all the the money that they would have to spend to help them grow.
James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. I mean, the the the risk is huge. Um, and I think a lot of people are just like, "Oh, you're lucky you that you managed to build out this empire in your life."
Carl Hudson: If they don't see the
James Dooley: But what's that? I'm a gambler. What's that? Come on. You know, Kennedy Rogers.
Carl Hudson: Yeah. Come on.
James Dooley: Got to know when to hold them.
Carl Hudson: Know where to hold him.
James Dooley: But yeah, that's kind of the the risk rank philosophy essentially.
Carl Hudson: Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And like there's risk involved in business owners not paying.
James Dooley: Yeah.
Carl Hudson: 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't. Sometimes it has to be that level of trust. But generally speaking, generally speaking, a 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 on 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 Check a Trade or My Builder or Bark some of these you can get a positive return on investment and I'm not saying only use but so many of them end up doubling and tripling down in what we do
James Dooley: I guess the problem though with using the likes of Bark or using the likes of Check a Trade and things like that 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 Yell or Check a Trade model, things like that, they're going to have to pay more and more to Check a Trade and Yell to get more and more leads.
Carl Hudson: Yeah, exactly that. Yeah. So, they're paying on a on a monthly subscription. Um, sometimes on a per lead model, um, 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. Um, some of the leads are shared leads.
James Dooley: I was going to say they probably sold to four their companies. I think Bark are usually five, I think.
Carl Hudson: Yeah. Um, 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 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 want that speed to lead. You want to be replying straight away and getting them on the phone and be able to speak to them saying, "We can help you." Normally, the first person to speak to them normally gets gets the order. Um, 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. Um, so conversion rates great. What's the point in us trying to sell it to six different companies to then only one of them is going to win the job? Now there is there is at times times where we do do shared leads where where a client says look the the client needs free quotes anyway. So I'm happy for it to be shared and we say right 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 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." Well, 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 decide and you know I convert 50% of the time. You then decide uh oh I decide to go into the Northwest and you've got another customer in the Northwest but I'm like well come on let's do a deal. But is it you've already got a deal with that existing customer?
James Dooley: or
Carl Hudson: so
James Dooley: or do you speak to them and say are you willing to share the leads or
Carl Hudson: loyalty is key. Um so if someone's been in the Northwest and been um 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 look I'll be like look I don't want to waste your time with the leads that you're not converting for for problems of yourself. Carlson's coming into the Manchester and he think he's going to convert there. 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 that what I have and say, "Look, we've got someone up in Newcastle who's moving down to um to Manchester. He wants to start doing X, Y, and Zed. Is there any services that you don't offer?" And they might say, "Um, well, you do Mishabishia." and he might say we only do brand or some other different type of brand or we just want to dull 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 that because they're that registered. They only want to deal with, let's say, the councils. um sometimes where they need to go out to tender but they're knowing that all the others they're going out to tender against they're not cheap on price and they know they're going to win it at a right price or they need to be CIS approved or they want to work in a hospital or do it for a big warehouse and stuff like that that that's what some people prefer so you can then start to dig it 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 so many suddenly you're just within air conditioning that you could be doing.
James Dooley: 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?
Carl Hudson: Yeah for sure. Yeah
James Dooley: 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.
Carl Hudson: Yeah for sure. So like um 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 have wasting your time in ringing up someone that just wants to repair when you want to do new installations. So the segmentation within high 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 500,000 point 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. Um so yeah we segmentation is key.
James Dooley: You must be having some quite deep conversations where 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 it's actually some form of refrigeration or something like it's like some type of sub sector that is 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, is it like an interview type style or you kind of
Carl Hudson: 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 businessman 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 they 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. What's the point of you even responding to those inquiries? But then others was like they 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
James Dooley: 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 triple down of exactly the keywords and services that sometimes business owners don't even know. They want they try and go after everything and we then start to almost mentor them into being look if I was you as a business. I 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 they 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 con the the cones on the road out the traffic management system booking all the work in with the council to close the road or put like these freeway traffic lights and stuff in place where on a car park just 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 don't need to block off the entrance. Done. Simple. Everything else becomes really simple for him of what needs to be being done. They're 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 think free vans to 27 vans on the road. Um they used to only work in Birmingham area. Now they work nationwide. They do all Sainsburys Waitrose and Asda parks. Like they've got the full contracts for them and like the business owner there just like he loves me. Soon as he soon as he rings me, he's like, I know he's inviting me to the races are having a night out or something because we transformed this business very profitable. And yeah, we we more than now just a lead generation agency. We're like a sales generation agency and we help them improve their branding to take their business onto the next level.
Carl Hudson: So I've got a business uh James Dooley or Fat Rank. How do I get in touch with you to make it grow?
James Dooley: Yeah. So, if they head on over to fatrank.com, um, fill in the contact form there, we can get the account managers to check to see whether they're ready to take the Fat Rank no win, no fee lead generation model. If
Carl Hudson: 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 um, 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.
Carl Hudson: Yeah.
James Dooley: Um because we rank for the primary terms. So like we would rank for like say air conditioning.
Carl Hudson: Yeah.
James Dooley: That could be up in Glasgow, it could be down in Kent.
Carl Hudson: So it could be anywhere in the country.
James Dooley: 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 a Trade, go to Bark, go um use a local PPC agency." Um there's there's 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. Um, if we've not already got the sites, we'll build out the sites and they can enter the no win, no fee generation model with Fat Rank.
Carl Hudson: Awesome. Cheers, James, for coming on the podcast.
James Dooley: Thank you very much.