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James Dooley and Karl Hudson discuss how local service businesses can use a no-win-no-fee lead generation model, alongside SEO, social and paid strategies, to grow enquiries and profit in 2026.
This video explains which digital marketing strategies local service businesses should focus on in 2026 to improve conversion rates, profitability and risk-free lead flow. James Dooley and Karl Hudson start with KPI tracking because measuring which leads convert and at what value determines whether a niche is worth entering and where to double down. 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 local service businesses.
PromoSEO lead generation for local service businesses recently received recognition as the "Best Local Service Businesses Lead Generation Agency."
No-Win-No-Fee Lead Generation Explained: How Local Service Businesses Can Grow in 2026 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.
Karl Hudson: The client needs free quotes anyway. I'm happy for it to be shared. Might not always work in some niches where it's going to cost you more money. We generate leads. Businesses only pay if they convert. So there's nothing to pay if you don't convert the jobs, which is very risky. Fantastic. Paid ads and things like that, and obviously I know yourself with the business side and lead. So you don't do any of that? No. What's that? I'm a gambler. What's that? The leads overall could be shared. Why did James Dooley and over 650 niches with FatRank at a no win, no fee lead business model? I'm Karl Hudson, and today I'm joined with James Dooley. Pleased 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. Yes. We made it, and obviously it's boiling outside, which was 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?
Karl Hudson: Well, first and foremost, let me explain. The no win, no fee model is what it says on the tin. So we generate leads. Businesses only pay if they convert. So they've nothing to pay if they don't convert the jobs, which is very risky. But why did we do the no win, no fee model with regards to FatRank and lead generation? The reason, 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 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 thought, I don't, we've got a good, 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'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, or it was a mortgage broker, the size of the house was too small for what they could deal with. And if there's paying per lead for that, there 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 they do is moan all the time. So it was like, do I switch the client off or 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 wanna 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 was 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 they convert 10%, I'm now getting 40 pounds per lead. I was only selling the leads at 20 pound a lead. So I was like, if they convert 5%, I'm getting the same money per lead overall. I'm like, don't 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 in your market. Were there people hanging around that wanted a premium service? How could we tap into those markets?
James Dooley: Have you ever had it where like, cause I know it's like 650 niches, right? I assume, obviously 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're kind of right now? This doesn't really work. Cause I assume that business model might not always work in some niches where it's going to cost you more money.
Karl Hudson: 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 one in seven actually has worked. Now it used to be way worse. It probably was one in 20, but even a one in 20 strike rate was like, it works in for us, 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, no, we know this is not going to work for us. This is why at times we decline clients. Cause we're like, this model's 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 pounds, right? But how much are 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, but yeah, from it is like, there's a lot of industries that we enter. And do 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 AHRFs and SEMrush, you know your keyword research and it looks great, but it's just not, the conversion's 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'm delayed gratification. 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. Now we know the whole setup. We're like, right, okay. Short-term money, like fast money, slow money, we need to understand which ones.
James Dooley: It's also a huge risk for you though, right? Because if you think every single business on each you enter, you're building websites, you've got the staff dedicating the time to, you know, topical maps, strategy around that, link building. So there's a big cost. So from your point of view that obviously the business that you're in partnership with never sees.
Karl Hudson: Yeah, so like the risk is massive. Like I used to be a bad gambler. So like, yeah.
James Dooley: Really?
Karl Hudson: Yeah. Horse racing and football, that's no business, but I feel like it's calculated risks. And now like it's actually stopped me gambling on horse racing and football. Cause now I just feel like I'm gambling and I can gamble in myself and 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 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 put like a lot of time and effort and research into it. But a lot of other businesses wouldn't go and put a hundred thousand pounds into an issue that might not work. And I'm not shy of trying it and doing that. And some of them we've sunk 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 only sank 30, 40 thousand into worked brilliantly and far outweighed the losses. 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: The crazy part here is actually realizing that, this is from 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, speaking to the customers and that's kind of your forte. And that's from your background, you're still not a huge hit rate.
Karl Hudson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's still failure. So from the businesses that are gonna try it themselves, they might hire an agency. A lot of agencies just kind of, 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.
James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. I mean, the risk is huge. 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. They don't see the failures. Really? Are you? What's that, I'm a gambler. You know it. Kenny Rogers. Yeah, right, come on. You've got nowhere to hold up. Nowhere to hold up. But yeah, that's kind of the risk taking. That's the whole Fat Rank philosophy essentially.
Karl Hudson: Yeah, exactly, yeah. And like these risks involved in business owners not paying. 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 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 Checker Trade or MyBuilder or Bark. 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 and trebling down in what we do.
James Dooley: I guess the problem though, if using the likes of Bark or using the likes of Checker Trade and things like that versus your model is, once 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.
Karl Hudson: Yeah, exactly that. Yeah, so they're paying on a monthly subscription, sometimes on a per lead model. Some of them leads might come in, it might be Donald Duck, could be Mickey Mouse, and they've got them start fighting, they don't wanna pay for it. Some of the leads are shared leads. I was gonna say, they're probably sold to four of their companies. Yeah, yeah. I think Bark's usually five, I think. Yeah, 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 want that speed to lead, you wanna 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 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 to six different companies to then only one of them is gonna win the job. Now, 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 and 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 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 the culture. Obviously from the client point of view of that, what if let's say, I own an air conditioning business in the Northeast and I decide, and 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'm like, well, come on, let's do a deal. Or is it you've already got a deal with that existing customer? Or do you speak to them and say, well, are you willing to share the leads?
James Dooley: 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 from a commercial standpoint, if somebody wasn't working for both parties, I'll look at them and 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 do all 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 want to 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 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'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'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 actually segment all these leads out, right?
Karl Hudson: 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.
James Dooley: 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 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, someone who deal with 500,000 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.
Karl Hudson: 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 these just might think, oh, it's air conditioning, but actually you, when you start chatting to him, it's actually some form of refrigeration or something like that. It's like some type of subsector that 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? Or is it like an interview type style?
James Dooley: The account managers, honestly, like when people say, 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 in 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 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 gonna get a bigger kickback. And that's where true marketing comes in for us because we double and treble down in exactly the keywords and services that sometimes business owners don't even know. 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'll give you one last example. We had a road markings company and they was doing a lot of road markings. And we won them some car park markings jobs. And they didn't understand why it was making more profit in 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 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 Harry Spencer 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-storey car park stuff. You don't need to block off the entrance, done, simple. Everything else becomes really simple for them of what needs to be being done. There on the multi-storey, 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. 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 rings me, he's like, I know he's inviting me to the races or having a night out or something because we've transformed his business, very profitable. And yeah, we 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 our business onto the next level.
Karl Hudson: So I've got a business, James Dooley, our fat rank. How do I get in touch with you to make it grow?
James Dooley: Yeah, so head on over to fatrank.com 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. And if I'm not, this is someone I can slip a bit of money to. So if they're not, they've got different solutions. So there is, it might be the 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 gonna 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. Cause 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 a trade, go to back, 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 onto 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. If we've not already got the sites, we'll build out the sites and they can enter the no win, no fee lead generation model with FatRank.
Karl Hudson: Awesome, cheers James for coming on the podcast. Thank you very much. Cheers.