Dylan VanasFounder & 2x 8-Figure Entrepreneur Empowering Growth

Your $3 Leads Are Keeping You Broke

Name: Your $3 Leads Are Keeping You Broke
Uploaded: 2026-05-13T15:01:35+00:00
Duration: 1 min 33 s
Channel: Dylan Vanas
Description: In this YouTube monologue, Dylan Vanas challenges the common marketing brag of ultra‑low cost‑per‑lead (CPL) numbers, especially sub‑$3 leads from Tier‑1…

13 May 2026 · 2 min

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1:33

In this YouTube monologue, Dylan Vanas challenges the common marketing brag of ultra‑low cost‑per‑lead (CPL) numbers, especially sub‑$3 leads from Tier‑1 countries. He argues that such cheap leads often lack valid contact information or purchase intent, using a personal story where his team spent over $250,000 on a funnel that generated $1.28 leads but failed to close sales. Vanas outlines a systematic funnel‑optimization framework that starts with cost‑per‑click, then progresses through cost‑per‑lead, qualified lead, booked call, showed call, qualified prospect, and finally cost‑per‑sale. He stresses the importance of tracking actual purchases and, ideally, customer lifetime value (LTV) rather than obsessing over low CPL. The overall message is that focusing on cheap, “toothless” leads keeps businesses broke, and marketers should instead optimize deeper funnel metrics that directly drive revenue.

Chapters

Your $3 leads is what's keeping you broke. It's always funny to me when someone's bragging about their lowest cost per leads. I get leads for $1.25. I'm like, yeah, like, does their phone number work? It's like, yeah, all the numbers work. Okay. Does their email work? Yeah, all the emails work. Okay. Do they have teeth? If you're getting under $3 leads for any T1 country and the contact info is valid and the lead has all their teeth, teach me the sauce. The reality is the $3 leads don't buy things. Yeah, it sounds good in theory to reduce your cost per lead. I used to have a funnel that I spent over a quarter million dollars on this one specific ad, and we were getting leads like $1.28. We didn't realize how broken our funnel was until 3 or 4 weeks later. We're a quarter million dollars into running this funnel and I'm like, hey, sales team, why are you not closing anyone? And they're like, oh, our leads, like, they're kind of broke. I'm like, yeah, that's because you're optimizing for the wrong thing. Whatever the campaign is, we need to look as far deep in the funnel as you can and optimize for that. So if you can track purchases, but even better if you can track lifetime value, track lifetime value and then optimize for that. But most people, if you don't have enough data, you start with clicks. Okay, what's my cost per click and how can I optimize that? Then you go down the funnel and then you go, okay, optimize for cost per click. Now I'm going to optimize for cost per lead. Then I'm going to optimize for cost per qualified lead. Then I'm going to optimize for cost per whatever your funnel is, book call. And then after optimizing for cost per book call, then you optimize for cost per showed call, cost per qualified prospect, and then you go cost per sale. That's the funnel. That's literally how you optimize a campaign. So that's how you optimize from $3 toothless leads to a multimillion-dollar company. Every time I hear someone brag about $3 leads, I just laugh at their face. My question for them is, did they have an email that worked and a phone number that worked? And if so, my next question is, did they have all their teeth?