Imagine this.

100 leads → 70 opens → 20 clicks → 5 sales.

Everyone calls it 5%—I don’t

You’re running lead generation.

You spend hours to a few days getting everything set up. Then leads start to flow.

Your autoresponder email hits 100 leads. You can check open rate, track links clicked, and actions taken. Your CTAs are the same for everyone.

Let’s say:

70 people opened the email

20 people clicked

5 people took action

Now conversion is 5% from 100 leads.

Here’s how I approach it if I have at least a week of prep time. It’s simple (not always easy) and it works across niches and offers.

Conversion wasn’t actually 5% in the scenario above—it’s 25% click-to-sale (5 out of the 20 who clicked). If you’re running ads, sales is the only thing that matters before you start managing the fluff around non-conversions.

If you spend enough time brainstorming qualifying questions, you’ll come up with a few great ones. Less is more.

Once your questions are ready, use them in the intake form—either on a funnel page or directly in the Meta lead form.

(One of my best-performing setups is “Meta Lead Forms + Website” where I let Meta’s AI decide who’s likely to convert. Try it if you haven’t.)

Do the above enough times for one niche and you’ve got a solid framework before you start automations.

I didn’t plan it this way, but this has been my experience running my agency. I’ve used GHL for over two years and went deep on automations—until just recently went deep into testing automations which is simply human psychology transform into systems and funnels.

More clarity you have more you can enhance the experience for the clients.

Some of the best automations simply segment the audience based on qualifier questions. Even three questions with three options can create multiple useful segments.

Then decide the 1–3 segments you can afford to prioritise. Those get special care contacted and served ASAP.
The rest stay top-of-funnel and get nurtured, usually by email.

How do you reduce the top of the funnel and move people to the bottom where they’re a real match for sales?

You can retarget with new, segmented questions and CTAs built for those audiences. You can also send short surveys by email to learn more about them.

Anyway, this is just a recent experience helping a real-estate brand with lead gen. It takes times to strategise backend systems and workflows. It takes times to analyse them, test them further, learn and do deep work so not every campaign deserves this type of attention. However, if you have a grand slam offer you should be experimenting as long it allows you to before surfacing the offer.

This being said, running paid ads is not always possible for solopreneurs and I still think content game has space for every newbie as long as you are willing to publish weekly.

Many people are more receptive through content and will continue to be...in 2026 but you have to write and share it on social.

PS. I wanted to keep all my work on one platform that’s AI-enabled to turn ideas into LinkedIn posts, so I’m building thoughtforge.app. I tried Notion and it didn’t work for me—finding content, remembering when I posted, adding post links, checking analytics—by the time I’m halfway through, I’ve lost momentum. I want something that autosaves, can publish directly, and tracks everything in one place.