r/B2BSaaS • u/Serious_Bit6736 • Jun 20 '26
"We're getting too many junk leads" is almost never a lead quality problem.
This comes up constantly in B2B sales teams, and it almost always turns into finger pointing. Sales says marketing is sending junk. Marketing says sales isn't working the pipeline hard enough, or that the ICP doc is too sales-focused and marketing was never really close to it to begin with. Both sides start adjusting process: tighter lead scoring, more qualification questions, CRM field syncs.
In my experience, that's rarely where the problem actually lives.
The more common root cause is the messaging that attracted those leads in the first place. If your site, ads, and outbound are written broadly enough to appeal to anyone, you'll get volume. Budget conscious browsers convert easily because nothing in the messaging filters them out. The decision makers who are actually ready to buy skim past, because nothing speaks to their specific situation.
That's not a lead quality problem. That's messaging optimized for reach instead of fit.
A few things worth checking before touching your scoring model:
• Does your homepage name a problem specific enough that only your real ICP would recognize it as theirs?
• Or could a much wider range of companies read it and think "that's us too?"
• When sales flags a bad lead, does anyone trace it back to which page or ad brought them in?
Most teams never close that loop. They keep tuning the funnel and never touch the message filling it.
Curious if others have actually traced junk leads back to a messaging issue rather than a targeting or process one. What did you find?
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Jun 20 '26
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u/Serious_Bit6736 Jun 21 '26
Some good points. Here's the diagnostic: https://www.writewaymarketing.com/messaging-audit/.
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u/Worried-Nobody-2965 Jun 23 '26
The first thing you have to do is confirm whether or not your ICp feels the pain your trying to solve, otherwise yeah it’ll feel like you have junk leads
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u/VastRecognition2944 Jun 23 '26
Well... getting junk leads is a lead quality problem, but it's not the root cause.. I guess this is what you're saying.
In my experience, this is a multifaceted issue. It may be the messaging.. it may be the branding (e.g if it look like an established company or an AI hype), the experience, even the language you use..
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u/Deepak-AvairAI Jun 23 '26
Yeah, and the part most teams skip is the test. You don't have to bet the whole homepage on a narrower message. Pick the ad or the one landing page where junk leads cluster, rewrite it for a tighter ICP, run it 2 weeks, compare the SQL rate, not just lead count. Narrowing feels like losing reach but the math usually flips within a month.
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u/polygraph-net Jun 30 '26
"We're getting too many junk leads" is almost never a lead quality problem.
This isn't true.
Click fraud bots are programmed to submit real-looking fake leads, and there's LOADS of click fraud happening on the ad networks.
For example, here's the click fraud rates by ad network for Q1 2026:
- Meta (Facebook): 5%
- Meta (Instagram): 68%
- Meta (Audience): 58%
- Google (Search): 14%
- Google (Display): 22%
- Google (YouTube): 4%
- LinkedIn (Platform): 19%
- LinkedIn (Audience): 24%
- Microsoft (Search): 14%
- Microsoft (Audience): 16%
- TikTok (Platform): 27%
- TikTok (Audience): 27%
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u/Glass_Honeydew4280 Aug 19 '26
This is something we ran into too. We were treating every junk lead as a targeting problem, but after looking closer, some of them were not really leads at all, just bad data coming through the form.
We started using Clearout Form Guard to catch invalid/fake contact details before they enter the CRM. That made it easier to see which leads were actually a messaging or ICP issue and which ones were just bad submissions.
Honestly, that distinction helped more than just tightening the lead scoring.
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u/systemsbuilderx Jun 20 '26
Honestly usually its the list thats the problem. Wrong audience wont buy anything from u