A lead generation agency promises enquiries for your sales team. The trouble is that almost any agency can produce enquiries; cheap leads are the easiest thing in digital marketing to manufacture. The question that matters is how many of those leads your team can actually close, and that depends on choices the agency makes long before the lead arrives.
The two kinds of lead generation agency
Lead sellers. They run campaigns from their own accounts and sell you leads at a fixed price each. You never see the ads or the data, and the same lead is sometimes sold to several businesses. We wrote about this model in pay per lead agencies.
Lead generation partners. They run campaigns in your own ad account, to your own landing page, with leads going into your own CRM. You own the data and the audience, and the agency is judged on what the leads turn into.
For most businesses that sell something valuable, the second model is the one to choose.
What separates good leads from cheap ones
The form asks enough. A form with only name and phone produces volume and very little intent. Adding a budget band, a timeline or a qualifying question cuts volume and raises the share of leads worth calling. Lead form ads vs landing pages covers the trade-off.
The campaign optimises for the right event. If the platform is told to find form-fillers, it finds form-fillers. If it is fed back which leads qualified or bought, it finds more of those.
The follow-up is fast. Leads go cold in minutes. A good lead generation agency treats instant WhatsApp replies and quick callbacks as part of the job, because without them the best leads still go to a competitor. Why leads do not answer calls explains the rest.
Questions to ask a lead generation agency
- Whose ad account and CRM will the leads go into?
- What will the form ask, and why?
- What will you optimise for: leads, qualified leads, or sales?
- How will we feed back which leads were good?
- What does a case study look like in cost per qualified lead or cost per sale, not cost per lead?
- What would make you tell us to stop?
Red flags
A guaranteed cost per lead with no mention of quality. Leads delivered by spreadsheet from an account you cannot see. A report that leads with lead count and never mentions how many converted. Contracts that lock you in before any results. And an agency that never asks what happens after the lead arrives.
How we run lead generation
In your accounts, to a target cost per qualified lead, with the follow-up built in. The lead generation page explains the setup, and the B2B lead generation page covers longer sales cycles.
Questions people ask before hiring
What does a lead generation agency do?
It runs campaigns, usually on Meta and Google, to produce enquiries for your sales team. The good ones also shape the form, the landing page and the follow-up, because those decide lead quality.
Is pay per lead a good model?
It is predictable, but the leads usually come from the agency's own account and are sometimes sold to more than one buyer. Running campaigns in your own account gives you the data and better quality control.
How do I measure a lead generation agency?
By cost per qualified lead and cost per sale, using feedback from your sales team. Cost per lead alone rewards the agency for volume rather than buyers.
Why are my leads poor quality?
Usually because the form asks too little, the campaign optimises for form fills rather than qualified leads, or follow-up is too slow. All three can be fixed.