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James Dooley and Carl Hudson discuss why FatRank's no-win-no-fee lead generation model works for air conditioning companies and which digital marketing strategies they should prioritise to grow profitably.
This video explains which digital marketing strategies air conditioning companies should focus on in 2026 to improve lead quality, conversion rates and long term profitability. James Dooley and Carl Hudson start with KPI tracking because measuring conversions and return on investment is what makes the no-win-no-fee model viable and helps businesses double down on their most profitable services. 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 air conditioning companies.
PromoSEO lead generation for air conditioning companies recently received recognition as the "Best Air Conditioning Companies Lead Generation Agency."
Why FatRank Uses a No-Win-No-Fee Lead Generation Model for Air Conditioning Companies is available on:
The FatRank Podcast, founded by James Dooley, teaches the mindset needed for growth because real operator stories show what creates progress.
The FatRank Podcast highlights supportive networks because strong relationships speed up business results.
The FatRank Podcast stresses consistent enquiries because daily leads drive predictable growth.
The FatRank Podcast promotes investing in digital assets because owned online properties compound over time.
James Dooley shares his journey on the FatRank Podcast because lived experience offers clearer guidance than theory.
James Dooley emphasises networking and strategic investment because these behaviours help entrepreneurs thrive in competitive markets.
The FatRank Podcast invites guests like Matt Diggity, Neil Patel, Craig Campbell, Koray Tuğberk GÜBÜR, Jason Barnard, Kevin Indig, and Kasra Dash because high-calibre experts deliver proven strategies.
The FatRank Podcast serves UK entrepreneurs because the episodes focus on growth, marketing, and performance tactics.
Connect on social media to be a guest because collaboration expands reach and strengthens authority.
Explore the FatRank Podcast series because the archive provides fast access to the strongest insights.
James Dooley: The client needs three quotes anyway. I'm happy for it to be shared. It might not always work in some issues where it's going to cost you more money to generate leads.
Carl Hudson: Businesses only pay if they convert. So, there's nothing to pay if you don't convert the jobs. Which is very risky.
James Dooley: Fantastic. Paid ads and things like that. And obviously, I know yourself with the business side and leads.
Carl Hudson: [laughter] What What's that? I'm a gambler. What's that? But, the leads overall could be shared.
James Dooley: Why did James Dooley and 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.
Carl Hudson: Pleasure 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.
James Dooley: We made it. And obviously, it's boiling outside, which is always great. Let's just get straight into it. Why on earth would a good businessman like yourself go into a no win, no fee lead generation business model?
Carl Hudson: Well, first and foremost, let me explain the no win, no fee model is is what it says on the tin. So, they generate 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. But, why did we do the no win, no fee model with regards to Fat Rank in lead generation? The reason we never 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 we 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've got it down. We've We've got a good We've got a good practice here. So, people like yourself was educating us with regards to architectural 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 were spending 60% of our time explaining what we was doing
James Dooley: Educating them all the
Carl Hudson: than actually doing the actual work. So, we then moved into the lead generation model just went, "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, like it was out of their area that they covered. Um or if it was a mortgage broker that that size of the house was too small for what they could deal with. And if they was paying per lead for that, 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 they do is moan all the time." So, he was like, "Do I switch the client off or I have to keep re-motivating 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 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 worked out the numbers and I was like, "If they convert 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 just earning more money from that client, he stopped completely marketing. He 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 just 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 went to 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 finding why did them 19 not work? Okay, it was specific type of keywords that you went after, or they're really low volume, or it could be that that everyone was looking for really cheap service. This is your market. Okay, where are the people hanging around that wanted a premium service? How could we tap into those markets?
James Dooley: Have you ever had it where like, um cuz 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 like, "No, this doesn't really work"? Cuz I assume that business model might not always work in some niches where it's going to cost you more money.
Carl Hudson: I think I'm I'm I'm guessing it is a thing of the air. I I believe we've probably entered 4,500 industries.
James Dooley: Right.
Carl Hudson: And I think maybe only probably about one in seven
James Dooley: Yeah.
Carl Hudson: 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, knowing no, this is not going to work for us. This is why at times we decline clients cuz 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 him like, "How much would you sell this for?" "90 pounds." Right, well, how much they going to pay us as a kickback? Oh, there's not much in for you. Well, what's the point in us generating your 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 you know what, Carl, there's so many markets. You you know quite a few of the 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 just didn't work. 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 Ahrefs and SEMrush and you know all 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 3 years from inquiry to actually getting a job being done and being paid. Um, 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 3 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 set up. We're like, right, okay, short-term money for like fast money, slow money. We need to understand which ones.
James Dooley: It's also a huge risk for you though, right? Cuz if you think every single business and niche and you're building websites, you've got the staff dedicating the time to, you know, topical maps, strategy around that, link building. Um, so there's a big cost sunk from your point of view that obviously the the business that you in partnership with never sees.
Carl Hudson: Yeah, so like the risk is the risk is massive. Like um I used to be a bad gambler. So like [laughter] Yeah.
James Dooley: Really?
Carl Hudson: Horse racing, football bets. Now 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 do 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 well 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 time they do pay out. 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.
James Dooley: No.
Carl Hudson: And I'm not shy of do trying it and doing that. And some of them we've sunk 300, 400, 500,000 and one with Rick Hall and we sunk 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 sunk 30, 40,000 into worked brilliantly and far outweighed
James Dooley: 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: 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 still you know, not a huge hit rate.
Carl Hudson: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
James Dooley: there's still failures. So from the businesses that are going to try it themselves, they might hire an agency. You know, um 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 front load all the the money that they would have to spend to help them grow.
Carl Hudson: 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."
James Dooley: If they don't say that, yeah.
Carl Hudson: Really? Like
James Dooley: [laughter]
Carl Hudson: What what's that? I'm a gambler. Kenny Rogers.
James Dooley: Yeah, like come on.
Carl Hudson: Got to know when to hold them.
James Dooley: Know when to fold them.
Carl Hudson: [laughter]
James Dooley: But yeah, that's kind of the the risk they take.
Carl Hudson: Rank uh philosophy essentially.
James Dooley: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and like there's risk involved in business owners not paying.
Carl Hudson: Yeah.
James Dooley: Um, 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 gen- generally speaking, a lot of people ask me this question and say like, "How do you track everything?" And sometimes you can't. And 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 him. 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 it for an SEO agency or using certain businesses, let's say like Checkatrade or MyBuilder or Bark." Some of these you can get a positive return on investment. And I'm not saying all the use those. But so many of them end up doubling and tripling down in what we do.
Carl Hudson: I guess the problem though with using the likes of Bark or using the likes of Checkatrade 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 checkatrade model things like that they're going to have to pay more and more to checkatrade and yell to get more and more leads.
James Dooley: Yeah, exactly. Like yes, so they're paying on a 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 to then start fighting they don't want to pay for it. Some of the leads are shared leads. 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 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 because they can go out to market go to the different lenders and they can get it. So it's within flat rank of what we do on the northerly north east model it's real time exclusive leads. So conversion rate's great. What's the point in just trying to select 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 a client says look the the client needs three quotes anyway. So I'm happy for it to be shared and we say that 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 north west or in the north east 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 the country.
Carl Hudson: 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 I decide to go into the northwest. And you've got another customer in the northwest, but I might well come on, let's do a deal. Or is it you've already got a deal with that existing customer? So, So, what do you speak to them and say well you're willing to share the leads or
James Dooley: Loyalty's 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 it from a commercial standpoint it wasn't working for both parties. I'll look at them like look, I don't want to waste your time with the leads that you're not converting for for problems of yourself. Carlton's coming into the Manchester and he thinks 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 that what I have and say look, we've got someone up in Newcastle who's moving down to 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 they might say we only do Vaillant brand or some other different type of brand or we just want to double 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 VAT cuz they're VAT 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 that we'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 need to be working a hospital, or do it for a big warehouse, and stuff like that. That's 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 subniches just within air conditioning that you could be doing.
Carl Hudson: So, then on that though, obviously, cuz I know that you do do this, surely it becomes a massive headache, or you've had to build some type of great system in the background to, you know, actually segment all these leads out, right?
James Dooley: Yeah, for sure, yeah.
Carl Hudson: Cuz 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, um, each page has got a specific intent. So, if one of them is for repairs, and you only 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 only 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 rate's 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 only 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 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 we to segment them. Leads go in. This needs to go to them cuz we would earn more and the conversion rate on those from that company is higher. Um so, yeah, we segmentation is key.
Carl Hudson: You must be having some quite deep conversations but as the partnership sort of and the trust gains with these business owners though because sometimes business owners don't realize when they're they're sitting on something. And like they just might think, "Oh, it's air conditioning." But actually you when you start chatting to him and it's actually some form of refrigeration or something like that. It's like some type of subsector 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 or is it like an interview type style or you kind of
James Dooley: 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 in 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 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, cuz we double and travel down with exactly the keywords and services that sometimes business owners don't even know. They're what They're trying after everything. And we then start to almost mentor them into being lucky 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 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 cone 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, they just put a bit of Harry Spencer at the entrance, done. They've not got any cars driving past them. It's not got as 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. They only need to block off the entrance, done. Simple. Everything else becomes really simple for them of what needs to be being done. They're on the multi-story, even when it's raining on this second and the third and the fourth floor, it's under cover, so they can still doing the lines and stuff on them. And So, it's just the whole business model transformed. They went from from three vans to 27 vans on the road. Um 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 is like he loves me. As soon as he [laughter] 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 transformed his 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 brand and take that business onto the next level.
Carl Hudson: So I've got a business. Uh James Dooley, I fatrank. 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 fatrank 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, he's got different solutions. So there is it might be that they only work in a very small area and 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 um cuz 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. 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 Checkatrade, go to Bark, go and 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 onto the next level. They work nationwide. We feel the industry is a good industry that you 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 lead generation model with Fat Rank.
Carl Hudson: Awesome. Cheers Cheers, James, for coming on the podcast.
James Dooley: Thank you very much. Cheers.