James Dooley Podcast

James Dooley and Dan Grant examine PPC lead generation and why cost-per-click advertising exposes UK businesses to financial risk by requiring spend long before any conversions are secured. They explain how inconsistent lead quality, click fraud, and poorly optimised landing pages often erode ROI, leaving companies overspending with little meaningful revenue to show for it. In contrast, they present their pay-on-performance model, where risk is completely removed from the business because payment only occurs after real profit is generated. The discussion highlights that traditional PPC demands precise keyword strategy, strong conversion journeys, and strict budget control, whereas the performance-based approach eliminates upfront costs and aligns incentives directly with revenue outcomes. Their analysis concludes that pay-on-performance succeeds because it focuses on ROI, not impressions, clicks, or vanity metrics.

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:
Hi so I've got Dan Grant here who's a director within FatRank and Promoo and today's video is about PPC lead generation. So companies that are generating leads via pay per click advertising in Google search. So Dan what's your initial thoughts on PPC lead generation.

Dan Grant:
Yeah so PPC obviously is something that a lot of companies do use. We've obviously dabbled in it ourselves in certain segments previously in the past. It's something that can really work very well. It's not one of those where you're not looking like you're going to get a lot of return on investment. You can really get quite a lot of money from doing PPC and doing it the right way.
My thing with PPC and what I've always thought though is you do have to know what you're doing to actually do the keyword research initially to actually rank for the right things. You want to actually also ensure that you've got enough budget because some niches require a bit more. One of the issues I've also found with it is you don't get any guarantee that you're going to convert the lead to begin with. So even though you might be getting this consistent flow of leads in, those leads might be low quality. You might not be converting on your website. So there are several ways you can trip up with PPC. But by and large if you do it properly it can be quite good. What do you think about it.

James Dooley:
I mean obviously we used to do quite a lot of PPC lead generation and we still do it for many niches throughout the UK. My main issue is there’s certain things like click fraud. So when people are clicking on your ads or it can be competitors clicking on your landing page and you're having to pay for every single click that someone does onto your website. That's annoying and it frustrates me with PPC lead generation.
The costs involved in it like you said. Certain companies do PPC leads and you've got to pay for every single lead whether they convert or don't convert. Some companies, the better companies, will refund a lead where the telephone number is 999 and the name is Donald Duck. But that lead generation company still had to pay for those clicks.
Then you’ve got certain issues with how good the conversion rate optimisation is of the website. So not only do you need to be good at keyword research, you also need to make certain that your messaging on your website and your contact form and your trust signals are good enough to get people from clicking through to the page to actually converting into an enquiry. And then maybe a percentage of those enquiries actually convert.
The better PPC agencies will go after the better converting keywords and know what to go for. But overall I think it's very high risk as a platform to be using Google AdWords as a sole lead generation approach.
How do you think PPC lead generation compares to the new model that we've moved to now. The pay on performance model. Obviously it's very risky for us as an agency but what's your feedback from what the clients have said on the pay per performance lead generation.

Dan Grant:
I think the initial feedback you get before you actually get the client on is that it's a bit too good to be true. They look at the model and say how can I generate leads to my website and not have any risk at all involved. Not pay for the leads and only pay when they're converted.
A lot of the time these companies are used to having to pay something up front. Whether it's PPC or paying for the lead normally like you would with a normal lead generation company. They're not used to having this setup where you're able to get the leads completely free with a consistent flow and it’s not until they're converted that you actually have to pay.
I think the system works really well. It's just explaining it properly to the client that there's no catch. We generate the leads.
The other part is we’ve already done all the work in the background. We've done the keyword research so we know we're going to rank for the right phrases. It's not going to be poor quality leads that aren't relevant. The fact there's no cost until they convert is a no brainer in terms of how that model works.
But it's that initial bit of explaining it to the client more than anything.

James Dooley:
For sure. I mean we use pay per click advertising for certain niches as part of the lead generation. On the pay on performance model that we've moved towards I think the main reason we moved towards it is that we became very frustrated when we were doing pay per click advertising on their website and their website wasn't built for conversion.
The leads it was generating at times they weren't converting because they were the wrong type of leads. And obviously we want to use different platforms like Facebook ads and SEO as well as PPC to find what might be the best platform for them for conversion.
At the end of the day a business owner should only care about one thing and that's return on investment. Not how much is it per click. Not how much is it per impression. Not how much is it per lead. Realistically the sole purpose should be ROI because you can get different types of quality leads.
So if you're a boiler installation company I could generate a lot of boiler repair and boiler servicing leads. But if they want boiler installation, they cost more. Just paying per lead or paying per click can be very dangerous and risky.
Us de-risking that for them allows us to do what we're good at which is generate leads.
The onboarding of clients is a lot easier. It's a no brainer for companies to do pay per performance over pay per lead and PPC lead generation.
Moving forward we can keep scaling in certain markets. One thing I would say is we are very selective with who we work with. If the company aren't good at conversion that's going to affect us. We could generate decent PPC leads on a pay per performance basis but if they don't convert them, we don't get paid.
So we've got to make certain they've got a sales team or at least someone that's going to respond to each enquiry very quickly.
Do you find quite a few clients that initially asked for PPC leads find it tricky to convert to pay per performance because like you said they sometimes feel it's too good to be true.

Dan Grant:
Yeah I think it's that and also some people have their ways and are set in them. They might have done PPC for eight years and gone to a PPC agency. Once they've had results from that they might not realise they could have got better results elsewhere.
People get stuck in their ways and don't want to try different things especially when things seem too good to be true.
Another part is if a company is going through a PPC agency they're paying a markup for that agency to carry it out. If they're not doing it themselves they're paying above what they should.
So to remove that cost, remove that stress and have the leads come for free can transform businesses. We've seen companies struggling and then we send them leads for a year or two and we've seen big changes.
But like you said the onus is on us to make sure the client is good enough at dealing with the leads. That they're managing the leads properly. That they give us a report every month to say what they have and haven't converted. There needs to be that transparency because if we're going to send them for free then we want that in return to build trust.
It can be challenging to convert certain clients stuck in their ways. But once they understand what we do and how the leads work it's usually quite simple from there.

James Dooley:
For sure. Viewers watching this video let me know your thoughts. Let me know in the comments. Is PPC leads the best converting leads you're getting at present. How does PPC compare to Facebook ad leads or organic SEO. Are you using a current lead generation company at present. Are the PPC leads converting for you. Is it a good return on investment.
Let us know in the comment section. And if you are interested in our pay per performance setup there's a link in the description. Check it out and see how that compares with current PPC lead generation.