Lead generation campaigns: what to set up before the first euro

How does a paid lead generation campaign work?

It is a chain of seven links, and each one can break on its own:

1. Offer. What you sell, to whom, and why someone should ask now.
2. Ad. A Google search ad, a Meta ad on Facebook or Instagram, or both.
3. Form. On your own landing page, or Meta's instant form inside the app.
4. System. Every inquiry lands in one place, usually a CRM, with its source attached.
5. Callback. A named person calls or writes back, fast.
6. Outcome. Sales marks the inquiry as qualified, an opportunity, won or lost.
7. Feedback. That outcome goes back to Google and Meta, so their bidding learns from sales, not from form fills.

Most guides stop at link 3. Links 4 to 7 decide whether the campaign pays. That's why our lead generation advertising is reported by cost per inquiry and cost per opportunity, not by clicks.

What has to be ready before the first euro of ad spend?

Six things. If one is missing, the ads still run, but you pay for inquiries you can't judge, can't count or don't answer in time.

1. A written definition of a qualified lead and of an opportunity, agreed with sales.
2. A channel chosen for how your buyers search: Google for existing demand, Meta for new demand.
3. One form and one place every inquiry lands, with a privacy notice.
4. Tracking that works under EU consent rules, plus a server-side count.
5. One named person who calls back within the hour, during set hours.
6. The sales outcome fed back to the ad platforms, and one number to judge it on: cost per opportunity.

The sections below take them in that order.

What counts as a qualified lead?

Write it down before launch, with the person who will make the calls. A form fill is not a lead. A lead is an inquiry that matches what you sell, from someone who can buy it, in an area you serve.

A useful definition has three parts. The fit: the service asked for, the location, the company size or budget you can serve. The contact: a reachable phone number or email. The intent: the person expects a call or an offer.

Then define the next stage. An opportunity is a lead that sales has spoken to and that has a concrete next step, such as a site visit, a quote or a demo. If you already use a CRM pipeline, this is one of its stages; our post on designing your sales process in a CRM shows how to name them.

Without these two definitions, the campaign gets judged on cost per form fill. That number rewards cheap, vague inquiries.

Google Ads or Meta ads for a service business?

Choose by how your buyers behave, not by which platform is cheaper per click.

Many service businesses start with Google if people already search for the service in their area, and add Meta once the follow-up works. We run both as Google Ads management and Meta Ads management.

On Meta, the form type matters. Meta's default instant form, "More volume", is built to be submitted quickly on a phone. The "Higher intent" type adds a review screen before the person submits. If every inquiry gets a call anyway, the extra step filters out some accidental submissions.

Where should every inquiry land?

In one system that sales already works in, with the source of each inquiry attached. That is usually a CRM. A shared mailbox works for a test of a week or two. It stops working when two people answer the same inquiry and nobody can see who called whom.

Connect the form to that system directly, not through a forwarded email. Our PolisaSave project is built this way: one submission of the quote form creates the lead in the CRM and sends the conversion to Meta in the same step. The site keeps no database of its own. For TeleFinder, every completed inquiry becomes a lead in a CRM, tracked from first contact to a signed deal.

The form also needs a privacy notice. GDPR Article 13 is the EU rule on what you tell people when you collect their data. At that moment you tell them, among other things, who you are, why you collect it, how long you keep it and what rights they have. Our post on recruitment ads covers the form questions and the privacy notice in more detail.

One more rule catches many campaigns. An inquiry is not permission to send marketing email. Under the ePrivacy Directive (the EU law on cookies and marketing email), Article 13, marketing email to individuals needs their prior consent. The exception covers only existing customers, for your own similar products. So answer the inquiry, and add a separate, unticked box if you want to send a newsletter. How the rule applies to business addresses differs by country. In the UK the same rule is regulation 22 of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR).

What tracking does a lead generation campaign need in the EU?

Two layers: browser tracking that follows the visitor's consent, and a server-side count that doesn't depend on the browser.

The browser layer is the Google tag and the Meta pixel. They store or read information on the visitor's device. Under the ePrivacy Directive, Article 5(3), that needs consent unless it is strictly necessary for the service. In the UK it is PECR regulation 6. So a consent banner comes first, and some visitors will refuse.

Google adds its own requirement. Advertisers who show ads to users in the European Economic Area have to send Google verifiable consent signals for conversion measurement and audience targeting. They send them through consent mode, a Google tag setting that passes on the visitor's banner choice. Google asked for this before March 2024. Without it, your EEA conversions and audiences are at risk, and the bidding learns from less data.

The server layer closes the gap. Meta's Conversions API sends events from your server or CRM to Meta, and Meta removes events the pixel already counted, so nothing counts twice. Google's enhanced conversions for leads take the details the person typed into your form and hash them, meaning they scramble them one-way before they leave your site. Google uses them to match the inquiry to the ad click. Both still need a legal basis and a privacy notice that mentions them. They are not a way around consent.

Count inquiries in your own system too. The CRM number is the one you trust when Ads Manager and Google Ads disagree, and they will.

How fast should you call a new lead back?

Within the hour, by a named person, during hours you have set in advance. The best-known evidence is old and American, and we found no newer primary study.

In 2011, the Harvard Business Review published an audit of 2,241 US companies that received a test inquiry through their website. 37% responded within an hour, and 23% never responded. Among those that did respond, the average was 42 hours.

The same study found that firms that tried to reach the person within an hour were nearly seven times as likely to qualify the lead as firms that tried an hour later. They were more than 60 times as likely as firms that waited 24 hours or more. "Qualify" meant a meaningful conversation with a decision maker.

Ads run on weekends and evenings, so decide before launch who covers those hours. Write a short script: confirm the request, ask the one or two questions from your lead definition, and book the next step. If nobody can call within the hour, schedule the ads for the hours when somebody can.

How do you know if paid lead generation works?

Judge it on cost per opportunity: ad spend divided by the number of opportunities sales opened from those inquiries. Cost per lead comes second. Cost per click tells you very little.

An illustration, with made-up numbers to show the arithmetic. Campaign A brings 40 inquiries at €25 each and 4 become opportunities, so each opportunity costs €250. Campaign B brings 20 inquiries at €40 each and 8 become opportunities, so each costs €100. On cost per lead, A looks better. On what sales can use, B is.

To get that number, sales has to mark each inquiry in the CRM, and the marks have to go back to the ad platforms. Google calls this importing offline conversions, and enhanced conversions for leads matches them to the click. On Meta, the Conversions API accepts events from a CRM. Once the platforms see which inquiries became opportunities, they can bid for more of those instead of more form fills.

Be careful with published benchmarks. The cost-per-lead and conversion-rate figures that rank today come from vendors' own data, mostly in the US. We found no EU-wide figure from a primary source, so we don't quote one. Your own number arrives in the first weeks of running.

What we do, and what we don't

We set up the campaigns, the landing page or form, the tracking with consent and server-side events, and the handoff into your CRM. Then we report cost per inquiry and cost per opportunity every month. The offer, the price and the callback stay with you. We don't report clicks and impressions as results, and we don't count raw form fills as leads.

If you want inquiries rather than traffic, tell us the offer. A person replies within one working day. The first call covers your offer, your sales cycle and who follows up.