Volume or quality: assessing leads in B2B campaigns.

For an industrial equipment maker we work with, social media went from 24 leads a month in July 2025 to 191 in August 2026. Volume is no longer the problem. Quality is the next step.

What we saw

Analysing three months of leads, the share of low quality or invalid contacts rose in one month. The data did not point to a single cause: one campaign had a much smaller sample, another changed its geographic targeting, and repeated contacts stayed stable.

Why it happens

When a platform only receives the form submission as a signal, it looks for the people most likely to fill in forms. Without feedback on which leads became opportunities or sales, it cannot tell a cheap submission from a real buyer.

What we recommend

• Add one or two qualifying questions to the form, such as the need and the timing
• Make the business context clear in the ad and in the form
• Record the status of each lead: qualified, not qualified, unreachable, opportunity, client
• Move the decision metric from cost per lead to cost per qualified lead
• Send quality signals back to the platforms through the CRM and the Conversions API
• Change one thing at a time and observe for three to four weeks

Leads are only useful when sales can work them.