B2B and local lead generation for UK growth-stage businesses — paid ads, paid social, SEO and marketing automation under one MBA-led practice. Most agencies sell you the channel they're best at and call it strategy. We audit first, recommend the mix, then ship it. Led by Phil Martin MBA — MBA plus 13+ years inside the UK home care software industry. Three engagement formats: a one-day Lead Generation Audit, a 90-day Lead Generation Sprint, or an ongoing Lead Generation Programme.
Founder-led lead generation agency based in Worcester, working with UK SMEs across home care, hospitality, trades, professional services and B2B SaaS. Specialism: matching the right combination of paid, organic and automation mechanics to your sector, budget and urgency — instead of selling whichever channel pays the agency the most.
Same MBA-led thinking applied at three depths. The right one depends on whether you need to know where leads should come from, get the mechanics set up, or run them as an ongoing programme.
Calendar-bound: max 4 active Programmes + 2 active Sprints at any time. Audits scheduled in monthly clusters. Waitlist when full. Direct entry to a single mechanic — Paid Ads, Paid Socials, SEO & Reputation, Marketing & AI — also fine if you know which channel you need.
Most agencies sell one channel and dabble in the others. Each of these has its own dedicated service page if you already know which mechanic you need — or the Audit decides the mix.
Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, YouTube. Highest volume of qualified leads when intent is high. £40–£250 cost per qualified lead in most UK B2B sectors at maturity. From £750/month management.
Meta for Business, LinkedIn, TikTok. Best for awareness building and audience growth. £15–£80 cost per qualified lead. LinkedIn for high-value B2B; Meta for local services and DTC; TikTok for younger demographics. From £750/month management.
Local SEO, content SEO, AI search visibility, reputation management. Slowest to build but lowest cost per lead at maturity (£8–£60). Compounds over time. Critical for local intent queries and trust-driven sectors. From £750/month.
Email automation, lead scoring, AI workflows. Converts the leads the other three channels produce. £5–£40 cost per closed customer against an existing list. The mechanic most SMEs underuse — and the one with the best ROI when set up properly.
UK benchmarks at channel maturity, B2B and B2C combined. Your actual CPL will vary with sector, geography and price point — these are anchors, not targets.
£40–£250 per qualified lead at maturity. Highest in regulated and high-LTV sectors (legal, finance, healthcare, SaaS). Lowest in B2C local services with clear intent.
£15–£80 per qualified lead for Meta in B2C and local; £80–£400 for LinkedIn in B2B (higher absolute cost but typically higher-value lead).
£8–£60 per qualified lead once the channel is mature (months 6–12+). The lowest CPL once running — and the channel that compounds while you sleep. But it pays nothing in month 1.
£5–£40 per closed customer against an existing list. Effectively free if the list is already in your CRM. The mechanic agencies undersell because there's no ongoing media spend to mark up.
Industry averages mislead. The right CPL is whatever the unit economics support at your price. Customer worth £5k LTV? A £400 CAC is healthy. Customer worth £50k LTV? £4k CAC is healthy. The Audit anchors CPL targets to your numbers, not to a benchmark report.
Cost per qualified lead is the front-half number. Cost per closed customer is the one that matters — typically 3–10× the qualified-lead cost depending on close rate. Every Sprint instruments the funnel end-to-end so you see both.
A short decision tree. The Audit answers this for your business with data; this is the back-of-envelope version.
Target audience is in someone's job title. LinkedIn paid for high-value B2B, Google Ads on intent keywords, SEO on long-tail buyer queries, email automation for nurture. Cost per closed customer £500–£15,000+ depending on sector.
Customers within a defined radius. Google Business Profile is the highest-converting surface — the map pack matters more than the blue links. Local SEO + review velocity + geo-targeted paid. Reviews are central to local intent ranking.
Increasingly: visibility in AI search (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Bing Copilot) when buyers ask buying questions. Plus AI in creative production, lead scoring, send-time optimisation, content personalisation. We use AI across the other mechanics rather than treating it as a separate channel — see Marketing & AI. For the full playbook, read how UK businesses get recommended by ChatGPT, Claude and Perplexity.
Avoid shared-lead marketplaces (Checkatrade, MyBuilder, Bark) that erode margin. Owned-channel lead generation — Google Ads with proper local geo-targeting, GBP optimisation, organic SEO on commercial keywords — keeps the customer relationship and the margin. Trade sectors are where the right setup compounds fastest.
UK domiciliary home care has its own pattern. Self-funder leads through paid + SEO + reviews; council and NHS pathway leads through relationships and reputation. Phil's 13+ years inside the sector means we know the difference. The Home Care Bundle includes lead generation in the integrated package.
Organic SEO and earned reputation are free in cash but expensive in time. Six to twelve months of consistent content production and citation building before the channel pays. Free lead generation tools sold by software vendors mostly capture top-of-funnel emails for cold sequences — high volume, low quality. The honest answer: nothing in pipeline is truly free.
Most lead-gen agencies are channel specialists. The combination of MBA discipline and 13+ years of UK service-business pattern recognition produces decisions that survive contact with how your business actually closes deals.
Unit economics. Customer lifetime value modelling. Funnel maths. CAC payback period. Cohort retention. The analytical toolkit that decides whether your acquisition spend is actually building a business or just buying revenue.
Phil spent 13+ years inside the UK home care software industry — selling, supporting and implementing for hundreds of domiciliary agencies. That's a wide cross-section of how UK service businesses actually generate leads (and where they consistently leak them). The patterns generalise across sectors with similar economics: trades, hospitality, professional services, B2B SaaS.
We run all four mechanics under one practice. The Audit recommends what fits your business, not what we have ad-buyer commission on. If the answer is 'organic SEO only', we'll tell you. If it's 'pause paid and fix the funnel first', we'll tell you that too.
Maximum 4 active Programmes and 2 active Sprints at once. Audits clustered monthly. When full, waitlist only. The named lead handles your account end-to-end — no account-management layer, no junior team running the work behind a partner.
Start with a Lead Generation Audit if you want a quick directional read on the right channel mix. Move to the 90-day Sprint when you need the mechanics shipped. Email the Principal directly if you already know which mechanic — we'll route you to the right service page and a faster proposal.
Lead generation is the set of marketing activities that produce qualified people who have signalled interest in buying what you sell. The signals vary by sector — a downloaded guide, a booked call, a webform completed, a phone enquiry, a quote requested.
The mechanics that produce those signals are paid ads (Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, YouTube), paid social (Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok), organic search (SEO), content marketing, email automation, and increasingly AI-driven outreach. Most UK SMEs use one or two of these and wonder why pipeline is patchy.
The mechanics work best in combination — paid generates quick volume, organic compounds slowly into low-CAC volume, automation converts what's already in the funnel. Lead generation done well is the system that orchestrates all of those toward the kind of lead your sales process actually closes.
UK benchmarks at maturity: £40–£250 cost per qualified lead from paid channels, £8–£60 from organic SEO, £15–£80 from paid social, £5–£40 from email automation against an existing list. Cost per closed customer is typically 3–10× the qualified-lead cost.
The right benchmark is not 'industry average' — it's what does CAC need to be for your unit economics to work at your price. If your average customer is worth £5,000 lifetime value, a £400 CAC is healthy. If they're worth £50,000, a £4,000 CAC is healthy. Most businesses set CPL targets that ignore lifetime value entirely; the Audit re-anchors the conversation.
The individual service pages — Paid Ads, Paid Socials, SEO & Reputation, Marketing & AI Automation — sell each mechanic on its own.
This page sells the integrated programme: an audit first to decide which mechanics fit your business, then a sprint to set them up coherently, then ongoing management across the mix. Most SMEs know they need leads but do not know which mechanic to invest in. The hub approach answers that question first and then runs the work.
Direct entry to a single mechanic is also fine — if you already know you need Google Ads, go straight to /paid-ads. If you're sure SEO is the bottleneck, go to /seo-reputation. The hub is for buyers who want one provider to figure out the mix.
One day of focused diagnostic, written brief within 5 working days. Covers:
Best for: an owner who knows pipeline is the bottleneck but doesn't know which mechanic to invest in next.
A productised 90-day setup across the mechanics the Audit recommended. Typical scope:
Outcome: by day 90 the mechanics are running, the dashboards show what's working, and the Programme takes over from there if you want continuity. £4,500 one-off.
Yes — and both are sectors where the standard playbooks fall down for specific reasons.
For UK home care: most lead-gen agencies sell paid ads aimed at families searching for residential care; domiciliary leads come from a different audience (self-funders, council referrals, NHS pathway) reached through different mechanics. Phil's 13+ years inside UK home care software gives the sector pattern recognition; the Home Care Bundle includes lead generation as part of the wider package.
For trades: most lead-gen agencies sell shared-lead marketplaces (Checkatrade, MyBuilder) that erode margin. Owned-channel lead generation (Google Ads with proper local geo-targeting, GBP optimisation, organic SEO on the right keywords) keeps the customer relationship — and the margin.
AI lead generation describes a few different things:
The honest answer: AI augments mechanics that already work; it does not replace strategy. We use it across paid creative, SEO content production, and automation. We do not run cold AI outreach tools because they damage brand and deliverability.
Local lead generation prioritises three mechanics: Google Business Profile (the map pack is the highest-converting surface in local search), local SEO (consistent citations across 50+ directories, location-specific landing pages, schema markup), and geo-targeted paid (Google Ads with tight radius and bid adjustments by postcode). Reviews are central — for local intent, review velocity and quality dominate ranking.
B2B lead generation prioritises LinkedIn paid, search ads on intent keywords, gated content with lead scoring, and account-based marketing for the higher-value segments.
The Audit determines which model fits your business; most have elements of both.