In this video Eric Deeran explains why focusing on the lowest cost per call (CPC) when running ads on platforms like Meta and Google can backfire. Platforms are incentivized to deliver the cheapest calls, which often come from unqualified prospects who are unlikely to become clients. Deeran argues that advertisers should instead aim for the cheapest qualified cost per call. He outlines how to achieve this by adding friction to lead forms—using conditional logic, BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing) questions, and creative that attracts the right audience—so that low‑quality leads never trigger the tracking pixel, allowing the algorithm to learn from higher‑quality signals. He shares a side‑by‑side test: a broad, low‑friction campaign produced a low CPC but had a 30‑40% show rate and 10% close rate, while a gated campaign with 3‑4 BANT questions had a 3‑4× higher CPC but achieved 80‑85% show rates and 40‑50% close rates, resulting in a lower cost per client and higher ROI. Deeran emphasizes that high unqualified lead volume wastes time and money, and that when show or close rates are low, the root cause is usually lead quality, not sales technique. He advises monitoring qualified lead percentages, adding form friction when unqualified rates exceed thresholds, and aligning creative to attract the right prospects.
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I got this question from a couple clients and I figured it'd be helpful to post here as well. But a lot of people ask, well, Eric, why don't I want the cheapest call? Or like, I want to get the cheapest cost per call, like why would I not want to optimize for that? And I think it's a good thought, but the problem is, is what a lot of people are not realizing is when you're advertising on platforms like Meta, like Google Ads, they are incentivized to get you the cheapest cost per call possible. And while that's great, it's typically not the actual thing that's going to get you to where you want to be as far as getting more clients, getting calls and getting more leads that are actually qualified. Because when you're optimizing for the cheapest cost per call, you're basically finding the people who like are the most unlikely to buy, right? Because this is what I tell our clients all the time is like everybody on, you know, all your ads gurus and all your people online are always telling you, hey, I want to get— you want to get the cheapest cost per call, here's how you get the cheapest cost per lead, here's what you can do. Whereas like, What we try to do is we're not actually trying to get the cheapest cost per call. I'm trying to get the cheapest qualified cost per call, which is very different. It's a very different thing. And the way you do that is by having conditional logic baked into your form. You do that by having creative that attracts the right types of people. You do that by gating and not letting the right, like the wrong types of people through the funnel so then they don't hit the pixel and then they don't trigger that event to send back to Meta or Google or whatever ad platform you're on. And when you do that, you can train your pixel or your algorithm to find you better quality people. And it's interesting because we've done a test between running ads where we were trying to get the cheapest cost per call, and you think that, hey, you know, if I get the cheapest cost per call or cost per lead, I'll get more leads, which means I should be a net positive at the end of the day. But we've run a test where we ran one campaign where it was like just trying to get the cheapest cost per call possible. And then I had another campaign where we basically tried to run, like we ran it at a gated form where we had like 3 to 4 questions in there following a BANT framework, so budget, authority, need, timing. And so when we had questions like that, obviously the cost per call was more expensive. But when we compared those two campaigns side by side and we said, okay, let's take a look at like what actually closed, the ROI on the campaign where we had more questions, it had a higher cost per call and a higher cost per lead, actually had a higher ROI than the campaign where we were just running it broad open because even though you're getting lots of leads, you're training the pixel around the wrong types of people and so it can't optimize to get you the cheapest cost per call that's qualified, right? And then you end up taking a bunch of calls that are unqualified, dealing with a bunch of issues like— and worst of all, it's not even that the— it's not even bad that the leads were bad. What's bad is that you wasted your time on leads that were never gonna close in the first place. And that's a waste of time, that actually costs you real money because you could have spent that time on a call with somebody who is more qualified and then close them. But when we looked at those two campaigns, we said, okay, even though my cost per call is like 3 to 4 times higher on the one where we had all the friction, which conventional logic would be like, oh my God, that's not good, that's like, that's really bad, we need to do something about it. But when I look at what the cost per client, like how much it costs me to acquire a client on that campaign, it was significantly cheaper than the one where we just ran it wide open. So like, all this to say, don't always try to get the cheapest cost per call. Get the cheapest cost per qualified call. And also remember that whatever results you're getting in your campaign is what Meta is going to optimize more for. And so if you don't like the results, or like what we tell our clients is like, if 80% of the people you're talking to are not qualified, or we say 80% should be qualified, 20% are typically not gonna be qualified 'cause you can never get 100%. But if you're like 50/50 or like, 80% of people you talk to are unqualified, then you need to add more friction to that form. And as scary as it is to be like, oh my God, my cost per lead is going up, or my cost per call is going up, or like, you know, I'm paying more per lead. You also have to remember that most of the time on the back end, they turn into clients at a higher rate. And then last thing too, between the two campaigns, when we ran it broad open, like with almost no friction on the form, our show rate was like 30-40%. Our close rate was like 10%. Very, very bad. And then when we ran it on the qualified calls or the qualified campaign where we had more friction, our show rate was like 85-80%, and then our close rate was like 40 or 50% on those. And so that kind of— I'm going to go on a side tangent for a second as well, but like that kind of leads me into my next point where like if you're dealing with show rate issues or close rate issues and you have good closers or you yourself are closing the deals and you know that you're doing a good job on sales calls, and if you have a show rate issue but like people are You feel like you're doing all the best practices to get people to show. Most of the time, it's just because your leads are shitty. Like, shitty leads don't show up. Shitty leads don't close. Like, I think so many people have no logic or they're not having enough friction on that form, and then they're like racking their brain. They're like, well, how do I get them to show? Or like, what do I need to say to close them? I'm like, you weren't going to close them in the first place. They weren't going to show in the first place because they were shitty leads. Like, They're just bad. They're just bad leads. And so like, that's why you're not getting like, fix the leads issue. Don't fix the show rate issue or the close rate issue. And so really look at like, what is the true bottleneck? Because a lot of times like the close rate and show rate are just like ancillary and typically you just need better quality leads because they'll show up at a better rate. And then the way you get better quality leads is also by having better creative. And that's a whole other tangent I made a video on as well. So hopefully that helps. Just wanted to dump my thoughts on that. If this was helpful, let me know in the comments and we'll see you in the next one. See you guys.
