Your leads aren’t too few, they’re the wrong fit
In the last 6 months, every client that has approached us has stated that ‘not enough leads’ is the main reason they’re frustrated with their marketing performance.
When we get into the thick of it in our discovery process, the reality is that they get plenty of leads from their marketing. The real problem is that the inquiries arriving through the website don’t match the customer the business is built to serve.
Sales chases them anyway, close rates drop, and the assumption becomes ‘we need more traffic’. And the cycle continues, more irrelevant traffic and the problem gets worse, not better.
Why does our website generate leads that are the wrong fit?
Your website will be driving leads that are the wrong fit because your content, keywords and calls to action attract visitors whose budget, need or buying stage do not match your actual ICP.
I don’t want to point the finger, but a lot of SEO agencies will show positive results in the form of more traffic and more keyword visibility, often with the completely wrong and easy-to-rank-for keywords. Broad terms for content that doesn’t serve the ICP, or ranking service pages for keywords have no data or volume behind them.
All of that means the site collects enquiries from people the business was never set up to serve profitably.
As briefly touched on, the three most common reasons we come across are targeting high-volume low difficulty keywords to show an illusion of performance.
Second, the messaging on the site is way too vague and hard to follow. Either no one or everyone thinks they qualify for you products and services which means the site doesn’t filter anyone out.
Last, the calls to action on the site ask for way too little commitment, so a ‘Get a free quote’ button collects clicks from people with no intention or means to proceed.
Just one of these widens the top of the funnel in the wrong direction.
Should we prioritise lead quality or lead volume?
In most cases with online performance, lead quality should take priority over lead volume, for almost every considered-purchase and B2B businesses.
A smaller number of well-matched enquiries convert faster, costs less to service and returns a higher lifetime customer value. Chasing raw volume has never been a proven strategy, and will inflate reporting figures while burying the sales team in crap enquiries that were never going to close. Volume feels reassuring to the board and to management, because it’s easy to quantify and count. Quality is so much harder to measure, so it often gets ignored or neglected.
The table below sets out how the two approaches differ in practice:
| Factor | Volume-led Approach | Quality-led Approach |
| Primary metric | Total form fills | Sales-qualified leads and close rate |
| Keyword targeting | Broad, high-traffic terms | Specific, high-intent terms |
| Sales team experience | High workload, low conversion | Fewer conversations, more closes |
| Cost per acquisition | Looks low, is actually high | Looks higher, is actually lower |
| Reporting risk | Vanity metrics hide the problem | Fewer leads, better economics |
Yeah the volume-led column looks healthier on a dashboard or a report, but the quality-led column is where B2B businesses will make the most difference and see profit.
How do we tell a good-fit lead from a wrong-fit lead?
Simply put, a good-fit lead matches the business on budget, needs, decision-making authority and timing. On the other hand, a wrong-fit lead fails on at least one of these and often on several. The signal is not how positive, how much they’re worth or enthusiastic the prospect is, but how closely the enquiry maps to the customer the business already serves and serves well.
Practical markers of a good-fit lead:
- Names a specific problem the business solves
- Comes from an industry or company size already served successfully
- Shows evidence of intent, such as viewing a pricing or service page before converting
Wrong-fit lead markers:
- Asks only about price
- Requests services outside scope
- Comes from a job title with no buying authority
How do we stop our website attracting the wrong leads?
Stopping wrong-fit leads often means changing what your website says, or at least changing who it speaks to. Your website should attract fewer, better-matched visitors by targeting high-intent search terms, qualifying visitors through its copy and asking for a level of commitment that self-selects serious buyers.
Here’s a short step by step guide:
- Audit your keywords: Use GA4 and Google Search Console to see which queries bring in traffic and whether those queries signal buying intent or idle research. Rework and deprioritise content built around unnecessary terms.
- Tighten up your messaging: Rework your website copy to plainly state who the business is for and who it is not for. Naming your ideal customer, the typical project size and the sectors you serve most frequently. This will help your site become a filter for new buyers who don’t fit, so they disqualify themselves before they even fill in a form.
- Look at behaviour: Use a heatmap tool like Microsoft clarity to record sessions and screen recordings to see where wrong-fit visitors land, how they behave and which pages generate low-quality form films. If a single blog post drives most of the poor enquiries, fix that targeting.
- Adjust your calls to action: Replace low commitment ‘Get a free quote’ with a step that asks for a budget range, timescale or company details. This raises the barrier for entry, often enough to deter the tyre-kickers. Do remember to keep your forms tracked properly and compliant with Consent Mode if you’re using Google Analytics 4.
How do we measure lead quality instead of just counting leads?
Measuring lead quality means tracking what happens after they turn into a lead, not just how they arrive. Your core metric should become the percentage of enquiries that become sales-qualified. Then look at the close rate on those enquiries, and the revenue and lifetime value they generate. Lead count on its own tells the business nothing useful about fit.
In terms of what you can physically build, connect your CRM up to your website. Build out a reporting dashboard that collects this data automatically, reducing the work you need to do to spot trends and make informed decisions.
After that, you should be on the right track,
The bottom line
- Get the definition of your ideal customer right, every other improvement depends on this.
- Wrong-fit leads are a targeting problem, not a traffic problem.
- Adding more visitors to the top of a website that already attracts the wrong-fit buyers just gives the sales team more enquiries to waste time on.
- The fix is to attract fewer, better-matched visitors by targeting high-intent search terms and stating clearly who your business is for and who it is not for.
- Ask your visitors for a commitment higher than a standard ‘Get in touch’ CTA to a basic contact form. Force them to commit so it starts to filter out the enquiries that were never going to buy.
- Measure what happens after the leads arrive, not just the moment it does. Don’t focus on how many leads there are, but how many are closing and where they’re coming from.
We’ve got a lot more helpful content for you to review on our blog, and if you’re interested in getting more leads from SEO, we have a resource you can download. Thanks for reading.
Frequently asked questions
Does reducing lead volume hurt the business?
No, provided that the leads you will remove are unlikely to convert in the first place. Cutting enquiries that are the wrong fit frees up the sales team to spend more time on leads that will close. Which will often raise revenue even as the raw lead count falls.
How long does it take to improve lead quality?
Improve your messaging and call-to-actions, you could see an uplift in quality within weeks. Keywords and content changes reshape your strategy, these can work over a longer period, over two or three quarters.
Which single change matters most?
Define your ICP precisely and start speaking to them directly on your site. What do they want to hear, what do they want from you and what is going to help them commit and convert. Every other improvement from keyword targeting to lead scoring depends on clearly defining the ICP first
