How to Get More Handyman Business Leads in 2025

James Dooley and Kasra Dash explain the most effective ways for handyman businesses to generate consistent, high quality inquiries across the UK. They outline how an optimised Google Business Profile increases local visibility because strong review signals boost map rankings, how SEO service pages attract targeted calls because they match search intent, and how PPC campaigns bring in bottom of funnel traffic because users are ready to hire. They cover Facebook ads, organic social media, AI driven search visibility and tradespeople platforms, showing how each channel supports steady lead flow. They also compare exclusive lead generation companies with shared lead marketplaces because quality and competition levels differ. The pair highlight why inbound leads convert far higher than outbound and why real time lead delivery increases conversion rates because instant responses capture intent at its peak.

Creators and Guests

Host

James Dooley

James Dooley is a UK entrepreneur.

What is James Dooley Podcast?

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.

Kasra Dash: If you are a handyman looking for a consistent flow of inquiries for your company, this video is for you. Today, we're going to be breaking down all of the different strategies that have worked well for successful handyman companies. Companies that myself and James have worked with. We're going to break down exactly what you should be doing, what you should be avoiding, and where a lot of handyman companies go wrong and burn their marketing budget. So, James, take it away.

James Dooley: So step number one, what I'd be looking to do to grow is a Google Business Profile. If you already have one, I'd be making certain that I would be reaching out to all my existing clients to try to get as many five star reviews as possible. It's a great way for Google Business Profile to generate more leads. There's obviously getting citations, doing Google Business Profile posts, and uploading photos on there. So that's definitely step one that I would be doing to try to generate more local leads.

Kasra Dash: So step number two, this is to bolster your actual Google Business Profile. I would be creating dedicated service pages for each of your individual services as SEO optimised pages on your website. When you start doing that, it's going to help rank your SEO page, but it also increases the likelihood of your Google Business Profile showing up for those keywords as well. So you indirectly get more phone calls.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. And if you are looking for more local leads, another option is PPC lead generation. That's pay per click within Google or Bing where you're trying to target bottom of the funnel keywords to generate more inquiries. The difficult part is you need to team up with a good pay per click agency because there is click fraud and you need to build a negative keyword list so it's not people applying for jobs. PPC can work well but in the wrong hands it can waste a lot of money. But it's another way of generating local leads.

Kasra Dash: And then after that you've got meta ads as well, like Facebook and Instagram. The next time someone goes on Facebook, they might be scrolling and see your ad. You can set up Facebook ads in a few different ways. Option A is lead forms, which are really easy. They do not leave the Facebook platform. The issue is the quality might not be great, but you can add more questions to increase quality. Then you've also got conversion ads where they get sent to your website and fill out your contact form. So you've got a couple of options.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. Another way to grow more local leads is organic social media. Posting regularly on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram. Reddit and Quora are big nowadays too. Organic social media is a great way to generate more local leads.

Kasra Dash: With organic social media, it's more of a volume game. You want to make certain you're constantly uploading, whether it's a daily or weekly schedule. You might say you want to upload five videos a week and just stick to that. Especially with algorithms like YouTube and Twitter.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. What's your thoughts on using AI agents to automate and schedule posts on social media? Trying to leverage artificial intelligence is all the rage for generating more leads. Would you team up with an AI consultant to set that up?

Kasra Dash: You can definitely go down that route, setting up AI agents to crop videos and autopublish to YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. But another thing I’d focus on is AI search. A lot of people have started to move away from Google. Not everyone, because billions still use it. But more people are searching through engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Grok. If your brand isn't showing up in those, you will have an issue generating leads. So that's another thing I'd focus on.

James Dooley: And also, if you're looking for more business leads in the local area, something else I'd do is team up with tradespeople websites like Checkatrade, Bark, Builder Builder, TrustATrader, Rated People. These platforms can generate you more local leads. You should track your KPIs to see what return on investment you're getting. Track cost per lead, cost per acquisition, and the return. These platforms can work very well. Check out the links in the description because we do a lot of videos comparing Checkatrade with FatRank, Bark with FatRank, Rated People with FatRank, Builder Builder with FatRank. So Kas, what's your thoughts on lead generation companies as opposed to tradespeople companies?

Kasra Dash: With lead generation companies, you want to do your due diligence. If you're in a niche, make certain that lead generation company has generated leads in that industry before. Have a strategy call with them and say your budget and how many leads you ideally want, to make certain your KPIs align. You also want to know what type of leads they provide. Are they exclusive leads only going to you? Or are they shared leads, which a lot of tools use. When we’ve spoken to company owners that used those services, that’s their biggest pain point. It's a shared lead and it becomes a race to the bottom on price. So that's what I’d ask before partnering with a lead generation company.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. If anyone is interested in generating more local leads, I strongly recommend heading over to FatRank.com where we have a commission based lead generation service. You only pay a finder's fee on converted jobs. You've nothing to pay per lead. You have nothing to pay until you get paid. Until you convert that job on a pay per sale basis and you've completed the job and been paid. That's when you pay FatRank.com. So head on over to FatRank.com to see whether you qualify. But I want to expand further. What's your thoughts on inbound lead generation versus outbound lead generation?

Kasra Dash: I always prefer inbound. The conversion rate of getting the lead and actually converting them into a paying customer is a lot higher. The last stat I saw was something like 16.1 percent convert into a paying customer compared to 1.4 percent when it's an outbound lead.

James Dooley: Yeah, that's crazy. Ten to twelve times more conversion. You need a lot of volume for outbound, whether it's cold calling, cold email or LinkedIn. Sometimes you need more staff too. People think they're generating free leads, but there's still cost of email sending and the sales team converting them. So inbound leads are so much better.

Kasra Dash: But what's your thoughts on when people ask about real time leads? Is getting the inquiry instantly important?

James Dooley: Yeah, it's very important. The last stat we saw internally was that if you get a real time lead, it converts 60 to 65 percent higher. I think it was 63 percent. When we looked at the KPIs, responding under a minute massively changed conversion rates. We used to think five minutes was good. But under a minute made a huge difference.

Kasra Dash: I'm not saying every company must respond under a minute. But when partnering with businesses at FatRank, that's one area many fall short. They might be away for five days and no one picks up the leads. We still provide the leads, but they don't get responded to. So that's one nuance we look at.

James Dooley: The best thing I'd recommend to anyone wanting to scale their business and get a consistent flow of high quality leads is to fill out the form at FatRank. The team will tell you if you're the right fit or not and give feedback on what to do next. We hope you liked the strategies for handyman lead generation. If you are a handyman looking for more leads, head to FatRank.com, fill in the form, and hopefully we will generate you more handyman leads.