Getting better leads: what to tell your advertising account manager
Useful lead-quality feedback tells your advertising manager what people asked for, where the request falls outside your service, what follow-up happened and what remains unknown. Send a dated summary with a few factual examples and a clear question. That gives the team something to investigate without guessing why enquiries have not become customers.
Replace “bad leads” with something observable
An enquiry can fail to become a job for several reasons. The person may want a service you do not provide, be outside your area, misunderstand the offer, or still be waiting for a response. Putting everything in one rejection bucket hides the difference.
Google distinguishes a qualified lead from a later converted lead and lets businesses define the relevant steps in their own sales process. A form submission, useful conversation, booked visit and completed sale are different events. Agree what each means for your business before describing campaign quality.
This guide is about feedback after enquiries arrive. If you are still preparing to launch, use our companion advertising-brief checklist first.
Sort the feedback into four practical categories
These are review categories, not required VOCO pipeline stages. A record can have more than one issue. If you produce a summary count, choose one primary reason per record and note secondary issues separately so you do not double-count enquiries.
| Category | Useful observation | Question for the manager |
|---|---|---|
| Service | The person asked for a repair; our campaign is for replacement projects. | Does the ad or form make the intended service clear? |
| Area | The job is beyond our agreed service boundary. | Please check the location settings and how the service area is explained. |
| Contact | A call and email are logged, with no response yet. The contact details are not confirmed invalid. | Is there a pattern in delivery timing, form expectations or the follow-up handoff? |
| Interest | The person confirmed the right service and area but is planning for later. | Does the offer imply immediate availability or a different next step? |
No answer is not the same as no fit
Record the contact attempt and outcome separately. ‘No reply after the logged call’ is a fact. ‘Fake lead’ is a conclusion that needs evidence. A disconnected number, confirmed duplicate or explicit statement that the person did not enquire should be recorded specifically.
Your team should agree a realistic follow-up routine and an owner for it. Keep the next action visible rather than changing an unanswered lead to lost just to clear the board. Honour requests not to be contacted.
For property enquiries, distinguish interest in a listing from a request to sell a home. For a contractor, distinguish an estimate request from a confirmed booking. These distinctions help identify whether the message, next step or follow-up needs attention.
Send the reporting period and a fair sample
State when the enquiries arrived, when you reviewed them and which campaign or form they came from. Include the total reviewed and a few representative records. Do not send only the worst enquiry or compare yesterday's contacts with last month's completed jobs.
Use existing lead references in your private workspace where possible. A short reason and relevant service area are usually more useful than copying names, phone numbers, full addresses or an entire conversation into a separate message.
Flag missing records separately. If Meta reports enquiries that your team cannot see, ask for a capture or access check; missing information does not establish poor lead quality.
A feedback message you can adapt
The example below is entirely fictional. Its 14 enquiries illustrate a complete summary, not a target, benchmark or VOCO result. Replace the figures and observations with your own records.
- Campaign and period: roofing replacement enquiries received 19–25 October, reviewed on 26 October.
- Total reviewed: 14. Four confirmed replacement interest in our service area; three requested repairs we do not offer; two were outside the agreed area; five remain unassessed because we have not reached them.
- Follow-up: contact attempts and next actions are recorded on each lead. No appointments or sales are being claimed in this summary.
- Examples: records A and B asked for repairs; record C supplied a job location outside our boundary. These are fictional references—use your own private record references.
- Request: please check whether the replacement-only offer and service area are clear in the ad and form. Let us know what you find, what change you recommend and when we should review the next group.
Ask for an investigation before prescribing a fix
A pattern is a reason to check the campaign, not proof of its cause. Your manager can examine the offer, creative, form, destination, settings and enquiry handoff. Describe the business problem instead of assuming a smaller radius or a longer form will solve it.
Agree what will change, who owns it and when feedback will be reviewed. If there is an obvious factual error or broken contact route, flag it promptly. Otherwise, a small sample deserves a measured response rather than a promise that the next batch will be better.
Google's lead-generation guidance recommends mapping the path from enquiry to qualification and sale. Sharing those outcomes with an advertising platform is a separate measurement setup. A note or stage change in your pipeline does not by itself prove that Meta or Google received an optimisation signal.
How to give this feedback to VOCO
Keep the enquiry context in your VOCO lead pipeline using notes, tasks and follow-up stages. Send the short summary through support chat or email to your account manager. VOCO uses its own AI software to support advertising production and analysis; your manager reviews the work and handles campaign decisions within the agreed scope.
Your business handles customer contact, qualification, appointments and sales. Keeping those outcomes current gives the advertising team better context. It does not guarantee a particular lead cost or sales result, and advertising spend remains separate from the management fee.
Common questions
Should I wait until the weekly review to report a problem?
No. Flag a broken form, wrong offer or missing enquiries promptly. For broader quality feedback, use a consistent review period and show how much follow-up has actually happened.
Do I need a spreadsheet outside VOCO?
Not necessarily. Keep lead notes and next actions in the existing pipeline, then send a concise summary. Avoid creating extra copies of personal contact data simply to report a pattern.
Will the manager increase spend to fix lead quality?
More spend is not a diagnosis. First clarify the mismatch and investigate it. Any proposed budget change should respect the agreed spending authority and be considered separately from the quality feedback.
Sources & further reading
- About qualified leads and converted leadsGoogle Ads Help · Checked 26 October 2026
- Best practices for generating high-quality leadsGoogle · Checked 26 October 2026
- VOCO client lead pipeline and follow-upsVOCO · Checked 26 October 2026
- VOCO managed advertising, support and client responsibilitiesVOCO · Checked 26 October 2026
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Prepared with AI-assisted research and writing. Sources are checked before publication; this is not a claim of independent human review. VOCO’s recommendations are editorial judgement, not promises of results. Read our editorial standards or suggest a correction.