Friction as a feature: How to get better leads. 

A common marketing pitfall is mistaking volume for value. 

‍More email addresses. More webinar signups. More PDF downloads. 

These don’t directly translate to more long-term customers.  

“It’s easy for businesses with a product-led growth model to get a ton of volume. Except, a lot of that volume is trash,” says Meg Gowell, Typeform’s Director of Growth Marketing. “They’re leads who won’t buy, or they’ll buy and churn.” 

Exacerbating this problem is the fact that many marketers don’t distinguish between different types of conversions—even when individuals’ behaviors and lifetime value vary dramatically. 

Not all conversions are created equal. Below, Meg walks through her approach to getting high-value leads that actually move the needle. 

There is no magic lever

Here’s how most non-marketing execs view growth marketing:

“Boards and CEOs are always wondering: What’s the one precise marketing lever we can pull?” says Meg. “As if the marketing team can just go into a back room, pull a lever, and triple sales.” 

Reality, unfortunately, is a lot messier. 

While single-metric focus (“add this CTA everywhere so we can get more emails”) can lead to short-term gains, it also leads to long-term churn. The results are low-quality leads, wasted sales resources, and diminished ROI. 

The strategic friction approach 

If everyone is a high-priority lead, no one is a high-priority lead. 

(Also, if everyone is a high-priority lead, your sales team will be very burnt out and confused and probably mad at you.) 

Introducing a higher barrier to entry to MQL status helps you more efficiently allocate your attention. 

To do this, Meg isn’t afraid to create a little friction. 

“You don’t want just anybody coming in,” she explains. “But you don’t want to lose your best potential customers by making it too hard to get started either.” 

By introducing—and continuously re-adjusting—some friction, you spare your sales team from combing through reams of leads going nowhere fast, and instead focus your efforts on truly high-potential prospects. 

Here are Meg’s considerations for getting into that juuust right Goldilocks zone. 

Remember your ICP is a person, not a company 

Traditionally, marketers rank conversions based on firmographic information (company size, industry, revenue, location). But these signals alone can be misleading. 

A lead from a target company might look perfect on paper—but if they’re in the wrong department or lack decision-making power, even “positive” firmographic signals can be worthless. 

(For example, that SDR probably isn’t going to be buying your cloud-based graphic design suite for the whole company. They probably just wanted to make a prettier email.)

Dig into behavior, not just demographics 

What steps do your prospective customers take that demonstrate a genuine need for your solution? 

“At Typeform, we use ‘question creation’ as a conversion rubric for Facebook,” says Meg. “Rather than looking at everyone who signs up for Typeform, we look at who’s signed up and also created a question in a form. And we know the more questions you create, the more likely Typeform can really help you.” 

Brainstorm with your team: What actions indicate a high-quality lead? 

Constantly reevaluate who qualifies

Remember when we said reality was messy? 

This is the messy part. 

“Qualifying behaviors won’t be static,” says Meg. “You have to constantly look at the data to figure out what a good prospect really looks like.” 

Some changes that may alter your criteria include: 

• You launch a major website redesign that changes how users interact with key features. 
• Seasonal patterns—like holiday shopping, or Q4 budget flush—temporarily shift user behavior. 
• The product team decides to auto-create a first project for every new user—so “creating a new project” is no longer a qualifying event.
• You used event registration as a qualifying event, but now your event is passed. Instead, you may want to look at who actually attended the event, who engaged with event content on social, who opened the follow-up email, and other attendee behaviors.

Know when to remove friction entirely

Part of a strategic friction strategy is knowing when to eliminate friction entirely. This is where Meg’s zero-click paid social strategy comes into play.  

“I believe in having paid social that isn’t all gated, but offers something immediately consumable in the platform where you see it,” she explains. 

Giving away some gold for free serves two purposes: 

1. It builds brand awareness and trust before asking for anything in return 
2. It helps you identify what content resonates with your audience before investing in lead capture around similar topics

By observing how users engage with zero-click content, you can make more informed decisions about where to dial up friction in your funnel. 

Growth marketing: Not dead, just different 

One of the most valuable benefits of a more nuanced approach to conversions?  

Longevity. 

Both for your company, and for marketers writ large. 

“There’s this common narrative right now that marketing is dead. None of us know what we’re doing and all the channels suck,” says Meg. “Marketing isn’t dead. It’s just not as easy as it used to be.” 

As our industries have become more crowded—with competitors, with influencers, with AI-generated marketing collateral—it’s harder than ever for marketers to stand out. Successful marketers are the ones who:

• Question longstanding assumptions (like “all conversions are good conversions”) 
• Think critically about customer behavior, not just background 
• Constantly reevaluate their qualification criteria 
• Know when to dial up the friction to gain access to something, and when to give the good stuff away for free  

As budgets tighten and competition increases, marketers who rely on the “easy wins” of pure volume are struggling. “People who have been doing the more advanced version of growth marketing are still seeing results,” says Meg. “It’s the people who only did the easy version who get priced out of the market.” 

Four equations to drive quality, not quantity  

For marketers looking to level up their approach to conversions, there are a few simple equations to keep in mind: 

Behavior > demographics. Your highest-potential leads are gorillas, and you’re Jane Goodall. Observe their behavior. Where do they go? What do they look for? How many bamboo shoots do they eat in a day? (Bamboo shoots here being gated content downloads.)

Ship to iterate > Wait to perfect. Meg is a firm believer in shipping first and asking questions later. There’s a lot to learn from a campaign or CTA that you’ve already published—and no new data from projects still sitting in your drafts. 

Multichannel > single levers. “Growth marketing isn’t just one thing. It’s a 2+2=8 kind of scenario,” explains Meg. True growth comes from orchestrating multiple channels and tactics simultaneously, rather than searching for a silver bullet solution. 

Some friction > No friction. Strategic “barriers to entry” for qualified leads filter out low-value users, while streamlining experiences for high-value prospects. 

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