Leads & Sales

Lead Generation

In short

Lead generation is the process of making potential customers aware of your offer and capturing their contact details, for example through ads and funnels.

Also known as: lead gen, lead-gen

Lead generation covers everything you do to make potential customers aware of your offer and capture their contact details. The goal isn't an immediate sale but a qualified contact your sales team can follow up with – typical for agencies, recruiting, real estate, insurance and coaches.

How lead generation works

A typical flow in performance marketing:

  1. Ad: A campaign on Meta, Google, LinkedIn or TikTok reaches the target audience.
  2. Offer: A free call, a calculator, a checklist or a webinar gives people a reason to leave their details.
  3. Capture: A landing page form, a multi-step funnel (e.g. built with Heyflow or Perspective) or lead ads right on the platform.
  4. Qualification and sales: The lead is assessed, contacted and ideally turned into a customer.

Example

A coach invests $3,000 in Meta ads for a free strategy call. Result: 100 leads ($30 per lead), 25 calls held, 5 programs sold at $2,000 each. The lead generation brought in $10,000 in revenue – a ROAS of 3.3.

Making lead generation measurable

The biggest challenge: the ad platform only sees the lead, not the sale that follows. If you only optimize for cost per lead, you quickly end up with lots of cheap but poor contacts.

LeadMetrics uses a tracking script to attribute every lead to the campaign, ad set and ad it came from. Leads from funnels like Heyflow or Typeform, as well as from Meta Instant Forms and LinkedIn Lead Forms, are included. Combined with CRM and payment data, you see which ads bring in revenue, not just leads. See how this works in practice for agencies and recruiting.

Common mistakes

  • Offers that are too broad: A giveaway brings lots of leads but hardly any buyers.
  • Slow follow-up: Leads that get a call days later have often gone cold.
  • No feedback to the platform: Without data on closed deals, the algorithm optimizes for volume instead of quality.

Ready for better tracking?

Try LeadMetrics free for 10 days and see which campaigns actually drive revenue.
Start a 10 day trial

Frequently asked questions

In performance marketing mainly Meta, Google Ads, LinkedIn and TikTok – combined with landing pages, multi-step funnels or native lead forms on the platform. Which channel works best only becomes clear once you measure deals and revenue per channel.

Guides on this topic

Tracking7 min read

Campaign Tracking with UTMs and Click IDs: Setup Guide

Set up clean campaign tracking: a UTM naming convention, dynamic parameters in Meta and Google Ads, click IDs, common mistakes and how to test it all.

Read guide
Metrics8 min read

Measure Real ROAS in Lead Generation: From Click to Closed Deal

How to measure real ROAS in lead generation: attribute CRM revenue to campaigns, read CPL, CPA and ROAS correctly and send deal values back to Meta and others.

Read guide

Articles on this topic

Related terms

All terms

Lead

A lead is a potential customer who has shown interest and shared their contact details with you, for example through a form, a funnel or a lead form.

Cost per Lead

Cost per lead (CPL) is the average amount you pay to acquire a single lead: ad spend divided by the number of leads generated.

Lead Ads

Lead ads are ads with a built-in form that let users submit their contact details right inside the ad platform without having to visit a website.

Sales Funnel

A sales funnel describes the stages a prospect goes through from first contact to purchase, and how many people drop off at each stage along the way.

Performance Marketing

Performance marketing is online advertising focused on measurable results like leads, purchases or revenue, and continuously optimized based on those numbers.

CRM · Customer Relationship Management

A CRM (customer relationship management) is a system for managing contacts, leads, deals and all communication with prospects and customers in one place.