How to Get More Barn Conversion Leads in 2025

James Dooley and Kasra Dash break down the most effective lead generation strategies for barn conversion companies across the UK. They explain how to scale enquiries using Google Business Profiles, SEO service pages, PPC campaigns, Meta ads, organic social media, AI automation and AI search visibility. They also compare tradespeople platforms with specialist lead generation companies and highlight why inbound real time leads convert far higher than outbound methods. The video shows exactly how barn conversion businesses can build a consistent pipeline of high quality enquiries while avoiding costly marketing mistakes.

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.

James Dooley: If you are looking for a consistent flow of inquiries for barn conversions, this video is for you. Myself and James, we have dealt with a lot of different barn conversion companies, so we know exactly what type of marketing works to attract more customers and also which type of marketing you should also avoid. So, in this video, we're going to be breaking down all of the different marketing strategies.

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 me 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 and 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. The good thing is when you start doing that, it's going to help rank your actual SEO optimised page, but there's also a higher likelihood of your Google Business Profile ranking and showing up for those keywords as well. So you're indirectly going to get more phone calls as well.

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

Kasra Dash: Yeah. And then after that you've also got meta ads as well. So Facebook, Instagram, where the next time somebody goes on to Facebook they might be scrolling and they might see your ad. There are a few different ways you can set up Facebook ads. You've got option A which is lead forms which is really easy to do. They don't even leave the Facebook platform. They never click onto your website. The issue with lead forms is that the quality might not be great, but you can add more questions in to try and increase the quality of the lead. Then you've also got conversion ads as well where they get sent through to your website and they fill out the contact form on your website. So you've got a couple of different options there.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. And another way to grow more local leads could be organic social media. So posting regularly on Facebook, on Twitter, on YouTube, on Pinterest, on Instagram. There are lots of different platforms out there. Reddit is quite big nowadays and Quora is quite big if people have questions and you can answer them. Organic social media is another great way to be generating more local leads.

Kasra Dash: With organic social media, I would say it's more of a volume game. You want to try and make certain you're constantly uploading, whether it's a daily schedule or a weekly schedule. You might say, "Okay, I want to try and upload five videos a week." And you should stick to that, especially when it comes to algorithms like YouTube and Twitter.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. What's your thoughts on using any sort of AI agents if they can try to team up with someone to use things like NATN to automate and schedule posts on social media? What's your thoughts on leveraging artificial intelligence? It's all the rage nowadays for trying to generate more leads. Would you try to team up with an AI consultant to set that up?

Kasra Dash: Yeah. You can definitely go down that route where you're setting up AI agents to crop some videos and autopublish to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and stuff. But another thing I would be focusing on is AI search. A lot of people have started to move away from Google. Not everyone because there are billions still using it, but slowly people are starting to search in engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Grok. If your brand isn't showing up in any of those, you will have an issue generating leads on those search engines as well. So that's another thing I would be focusing on.

James Dooley: And if you're looking for more business leads in the local area, something else I'd definitely be looking to do is team up with some of the trades people websites. You've got ones like Checkatrade, Bark, Builder Builder, TrustATrader, Rated People. All these different platforms can generate you more local leads. What I would say is make certain you're tracking your KPIs to see what return on investment you're getting. You should be tracking not only the cost per lead but the cost per acquisition and how much that is getting you on a return on investment. Trades people websites can work very well. Check out the links in the description because we do a lot of different videos comparing Checkatrade with Fat Rank, Bark with Fat Rank, Rated People with Fat Rank, Builder Builder with Fat Rank. So now I've mentioned Fat Rank a few times. Kasra, what's your thoughts on lead generation companies as opposed to trades people companies?

Kasra Dash: With lead generation companies, I would say every single one you want to try and do your due diligence. Make certain that if you are in a specific niche, that lead generation company has actually generated leads in that industry before. I would also have a strategy call with them and say, "Okay, this is my budget, this is how many leads I ideally want" to make certain your KPIs align. You also want to make certain what type of leads they are. Are they exclusive leads? Are the leads only going through to yourself? Or are they shared leads, which is what a lot of other lead generation tools and companies do like Bark and Checkatrade. Whenever myself and James have spoken to company owners who've used those services, that's one of their biggest pain points. They say it's a shared lead and it's a race to the bottom of who's the cheapest. So that's something I would be asking lead generation companies before partnering with them.

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. That means you only pay a finders fee on converted jobs. You have nothing to pay on a 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 only have to pay FatRank.com. So head on over to FatRank.com to see whether you qualify. But I want to expand further. What is your thoughts on inbound lead generation versus outbound lead generation?

Kasra Dash: I always prefer inbound. The conversion rate of not just getting the lead but the lead converting into a paying customer and money coming into your business bank account is a lot higher. The last stat I saw was something like 16.1 percent end up converting into a paying customer as opposed to 1.4 percent when it's an outbound lead.

James Dooley: Yeah, that's pretty crazy. That's like 12 times more conversion.

Kasra Dash: Yeah. It's crazy how much more conversion that is. You need to do a lot of volume for outbound, whether it's cold calling, cold email or LinkedIn Sales Navigator. And sometimes you need a lot more staff to do it. People sometimes look at the cost thinking they want to generate free leads and they think they're generating free leads but there's still the cost of the email sending, the cost of the sales team trying to convert them and stuff like that. So yeah, I completely agree that inbound leads are so much better than outbound.

James Dooley: When people ask about local leads, they talk about whether these are real time leads. Is real time leads very important so as soon as they inquire it comes through to you straight away?

Kasra Dash: Yeah, it's very important. The last stat we saw internally was that if you're able to get a real time lead it converts 60 percent higher. I think it was 63 percent higher. And when we broke the KPIs down it was trying to respond within under a minute. We used to think five minutes was good and then when people responded in under a minute, the inquiry comes in, can you ring them or email them back saying thanks for the inquiry and get more information. I'm not saying every company needs to respond in under a minute. There are certain things that we look at at Fat Rank when partnering with businesses. That's one of the things businesses fall short on. They might be away for five days on holiday and they don't have somebody to pick up the leads and we're still providing the leads. There are different nuances that we look at. But the best thing I’d recommend to anyone looking to scale their business and get a consistent flow of high quality leads is fill out the form at Fat Rank. The team will tell you if you're the right fit or not and give feedback on what you should do next.

James Dooley: So I hope you like all the different lead generation strategies for your barn conversion business. If you are looking for a consistent flow of inquiries, make sure you head on over to FatRank.com and fill in the form and hopefully we can start generating you some more leads for barn conversions.