How to stop “pulling levers” and start generating quality leads

What makes audiences sit up, lean in, and convert?

Lead generation has been stripped down to gating everything to get more prospects in your funnel. But we’ve never stopped to think about what it could be. Instead of going for more, modern marketers are chasing better.

And they’re doing it by focusing on lead behaviors, asking prospects what they actually want, and then creating content to meet those leads where they are.

They’re testing and iterating, creating intentional friction to drive away the wrong people and reel in the hot leads. But most importantly, they’re making lead gen more human by making it about the leads—not themselves.

Think quality, not quantity. Behavior, not demographics. And just the right amount of friction.

Read on to get the breakdown of this new approach to marketing and lead gen, and get the play-by-play for leveling up your lead gen.

The "more is better" era has come and gone. You're not looking for more... you're looking for better.

And while every marketer has felt the pull of those flashy vanity metrics—10,000 new leads, that brand video going viral, record-high registrations—volume isn't the same as value.

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.

Full-service digital agency, SmartBug Media discovered this when, despite healthy lead volume, they saw their sales team wasting 76% of their time on prospects who’d never convert.

The problem? “Leads from target companies looked perfect on paper,” says Stephen Lackey, SmartBug’s VP of Marketing, “but they were often from wrong departments with no buying authority.”

To understand the true value of your prospects, stop looking at who they are. Start watching what they do.

Most marketers qualify leads by checking demographic boxes. Do they look like our ICP? Do they fit the profile?

‍But demographics only tell you who someone might be—not how ready they are to buy. That’s what Stephen realized. The stronger signal isn’t age, title, or company size. It’s behavior.

Signals like how someone interacts with your form—what they click, how fast they respond, where they hesitate—tell you far more than a static profile ever could.

Relying on old-school qualifiers is a bit like boiling the ocean and hoping for a few good lobsters. Modern lead gen doesn’t leave it to luck. It adapts in real time to what your best prospects actually do.

Traditionally, “qualified leads” were judged by surface-level traits like company size, industry, or job title. But none of those tell you whether someone is genuinely ready to buy.

A better way is to look at behavior. Did they come back to your pricing page more than once? Play with your ROI calculator? Download an asset? Ask timeline questions during a demo? These kinds of actions paint a much clearer picture of intent.

Not all conversions are created equal. To find high-value leads that'll actually move the needle, you need to be able to quickly separate the serious buyers from the looky-loos.

The results speak for themselves

When SmartBug switched to behavioral qualifications—instead of the constant hunt for more, more, more—they saw:


• 40% more qualified leads
• 24% faster sales follow-up
• 2.3x better close rates

Template: The 2-week 
conversion test

Think of this as your quick-start experiment to prove what better lead qualification can do. Follow this setup, track the shifts, and see how quickly your lead quality tightens up.

Week 1: Setup

Day 1-2: Choose your conversion point

Pick one high-value action: a demo request, pricing page visit, or free trial signup.

Day 3: Add one qualifying question to your existing form

• Instead of: "Company size?"
• Try: "When do you need a solution?"
  
  • Today
  • This quarter
  • Just researching

Day 4: Set up tracking

Tag responses in your CRM or analytics platform to measure quality by answer choice.

Days 5-7: Launch your A/B test

Show the new question to 50% of your traffic and compare results.

Week 2: Monitor

Track these metrics:

• Daily conversion rates for your A/B test 
• Total form completions (expect an initial dip here as you refine your process)
• Quality of leads passed to sales (track by qualification answer and sales team feedback)
• Time from lead to first meaningful sales conversation

What success looks like:

• 15%-25% fewer total leads, but 40-60% higher sales acceptance rate
• "Today" respondents convert to demos 3x faster than "Just researching"
• Sales reports spending less time on unqualified prospects

Red flags to watch out for:

• Conversion rates drops more than 25% 
• No meaningful difference in lead quality by answer type (your question isn't discriminating enough)
• High abandonment right at the new question (poor question placement or wording)

Week 3: Decision point

If successful: Keep the question and consider adding a second behavioral qualifier


If mixed results: Test different question wording or placement


If poor results: Try softer friction (optional question vs. required)

Want to see how we do it? We use a customizable Lead Capture Form Template to adapt our qualifying criteria based on campaign goals. No more boiling the ocean. Just the lobster you actually want.

Open the door to the right prospects… not all the prospects.

After all, if everyone is a high-priority lead, no one is a high-priority lead.

Raising the bar for Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) status helps you focus where it matters: on prospects with real intent.

But to do this, you have to introduce a little friction.


You don’t want the floodgates wide open, but you also don’t want to make things so difficult that qualified prospects give up. The goal? Find your friction sweet spot.

Build trust, not walls

Rob Brooks from Double Denim Marketing discovered the power of asking questions strategically: "You don't overwhelm prospects with too many questions at once. Keep your ask simple, then build."

When Rob flipped this switch, conversion rates jumped from 7.75% to 19.35%.

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

Your move:

Ask yourself these questions to get clear about where you need more friction (and where you might need less.)

1. Where do qualified leads drop off?

2. Where do unqualified leads flood in?

3. What one question would disqualify 50% of poor fits?


Adding even a single qualifying question like, "When do you need a solution?" can filter out researchers from ready buyers.

Ready to put this into practice? Use Typeform’s customizable Marketing Lead Generation Quiz to assess behavioral signals—not just collect contact info.

Give first, gate second

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

When you give away gold for free, you:

1. Build brand awareness and trust before asking for anything in return 

2. Identify what content resonates with your audience before investing in lead capture around similar topics

No forms, no friction. Just see what performs and gate accordingly.

Your move:

Pick one piece of your best-performing content. Ungate it for 30 days and promote it on social. Track which topics drive the most engagement, then create gated assets around those themes.

Your audience knows more than you think. Just ask them.

Emily Kramer built MKT1, a 60,000-subscriber marketing newsletter with one counterintuitive move: admitting she doesn't know everything.

Most of us aren’t subject-matter experts in our clients’ industries. We don’t know everything about their audience or the workflows. But our clients do...so ask.

"Marketers get so hung up on being the authority that they're scared to ask questions," says Emily, founder and gen marketer at MKT1. "But being 'business vulnerable' got me 25% more engagement for half the effort."

‍When teams prioritize appearing authoritative over genuine audience connection, they miss opportunities to create content that truly resonates.

They get stuck creating generic assets that are over-reliant on guesswork, SEO keywords, and competitor analysis. (And there's nothing readers love more than a vague, bland listicle.)

So get vulnerable and curious. Because when it comes to understanding your audience, there are no wrong questions—only the risk of not asking any at all.

“Ask not what your audience can do for you…”

At the end of the day, the best lead generation is a two-way street. Don’t just ask prospects for what you need—like email addresses to feed your CRM. Ask them what they need from you.

You may be surprised by the answers.

The results

When Emily made audience listening a core part of her content process, she saw a 25% boost in engagement and grew to 60,000 newsletter subscribers—all while cutting her content creation effort in half.

Your move:

Start with simple, direct audience engagement. Ask your audience what they need and create content that reflects those insights. Turn your audience into co-creators.

Speaking of which, are you getting what you need from this guide?

Don’t wave the white flag just yet.

Marketing is evolving. Sure, the "easy" growth hacks are gone, but for marketers willing to ask uncomfortable questions, add strategic friction, focus on behavior over demographics, and talk to their audience, the opportunity has never been greater.

New math for modern marketing

No pop-quiz, we promise. But here’s your handy cheat sheet for prioritizing quality over quantity and results over rhetoric.

Your move:

Stop counting leads. Start counting customers.

The marketers who win in 2026 won’t be the ones with the biggest lists—they’ll be the ones who know why someone raises their hand in the first place.

Because audiences don’t need another form. They need a moment that feels personal. A question that makes them think. A conversation that earns their trust.

When you focus on behavior over demographics, thoughtful friction over empty speed, and real signals over vanity metrics, your funnel gets quieter—but smarter.

‍
Smaller—but stronger.
Less crowded—but far more qualified.

Lead gen isn’t about getting more people through the door.
It’s about inviting the right ones in—and giving them a reason to stay.

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