5 Ways To Reduce CPL, Improve Conversion Rates & Capture More Demand In 2026

Where do your PPC leads go after they click?

Why are your paid marketing leads not converting into customers?

How do I stop losing high-intent clicks to my website?

As 2025 taught us, marketing was never meant to be easy.

Between shifting algorithms and AI search implementation, LLMs are suddenly changing your consistent buyer behaviors, and with the constant pressure to prove ROI, it’s easy to latch onto conventional wisdom, even when it’s wrong.

So, let’s bust some myths and update your PPC conversion strategies to fit the 2026 paid media audience’s newest behaviors.

Improve MQL-To-Close Rate By Optimizing Audience Qualifiers

The backlash against marketing qualified leads has reached a fever pitch. Scroll through LinkedIn, and you’ll find no shortage of hot takes declaring the MQL dead.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: the marketing qualified lead (MQL) isn’t to blame, the outdated marketer is.

Avoid Believing The Myth That “MQL Data Is Worthless”

MQLs are marketer-made lead delivery systems. They can be redefined to mean something. The problem isn’t the concept; it’s how we’ve been scoring them.

Examples Of Bad Marketing Qualified Lead Scoring

• +50 points for being imported from a purchased list
• +25 points for opening an email
• +25 points for clicking (even if it was to unsubscribe)

The Better MQL Scoring

• A decision-maker at a target account that matches your ICP.
• Has spent 60+ minutes on your site over two weeks.
• Subscribed to your newsletter and reads every email.
• Currently uses a competitor product.
• Started a free trial.

See the difference?

One approach games the system with vanity metrics. The other identifies genuine buying intent.

The fix isn’t abandoning MQLs, it’s rebuilding your scoring model around behaviors that correlate with closed revenue.

Start by mapping your highest-converting customers back to their pre-sale activities.

• What content did they consume?
• How did they engage?
• How long did their buying journey take?

What To Do: Rebuild Your MQL Model To Predict Which Leads Will Convert

Here’s an idea of a practical framework to follow.

1. Pull your last 50 closed-won deals and audit their marketing touchpoints.
2. Look for patterns in page views, content downloads, email engagement, and, critically, phone conversations.
3. The signals that predict revenue are often hiding in plain sight.
4. Once you find them, rebuild your scoring model to weigh those behaviors heavily while deprioritizing vanity metrics like email opens.

The companies getting MQLs right aren’t using off-the-shelf scoring templates. They’re continuously refining their models based on what converts in their specific funnel.

Identify Exactly Which Marketing Efforts Actually Drive Revenue

Here’s a question that never goes away: “How do you know the money you’re investing is generating revenue for the business?”

Stop Believing The Myth That “Attribution Is Garbage”

You can complain about attribution models being imperfect, but that won’t save you when leadership asks why you should keep your budget. Attribution isn’t garbage. It just requires a smarter approach.

The reality is that traditional attribution methods miss significant chunks of your marketing influence.

Consider this scenario: If say, 13% of your total influenced units came from email- but only 4% were captured through traditional attribution: what’s the impact?

It’s a 9-point gap of invisibility!

Instead: Combine Tracking Data With What Customers Tell You

A potential solution? Layer Self-Reported Attribution on top of your digital tracking.

When prospects tell you how they found you during a conversation, you’re capturing the brand awareness, word-of-mouth, and dark social touchpoints that pixel-based tracking misses entirely.

AI can now automatically surface these insights from call recordings, identifying when customers mention how they heard about your business. When you combine automatically captured attribution data with self-reported answers from actual conversations, you finally get a complete picture of what’s driving results.

The marketers who crack attribution aren’t chasing perfection; they’re layering multiple data sources to get progressively closer to the truth.

What To Do: Identify Which Marketing Efforts Are Actually Working

A starting point: add a simple “How did you hear about us?” field to your intake process, then compare those responses against your digital attribution data.

The gaps you uncover will show you exactly where your current tracking is falling short, and where your brand and word-of-mouth efforts are working harder than you realized.

Learn more about self-reported attribution and how it can transform your reporting →

Improve Conversion Rates By Learning & Implementing What Buyers Ask Before They Convert

There’s a goldmine sitting right under your nose: your customer conversations.

Most marketers hand off call data to sales and never look back. Big mistake.

Avoid This Myth: “Call Insights Are Only For Sales Teams”

Those conversations contain exactly what you need to create more personalized marketing communications and sharpen your strategy.

Literal Keys To Conversion Are Hiding In Your Sales Team’s Call Data

Think about what’s buried in your call recordings:

• Conversion signals for better targeting. When you understand what makes callers convert, you can build lookalike audiences and refine your ad targeting around those characteristics.
• Sentiment data for email segmentation. Callers who expressed frustration need different nurture sequences than those who were enthusiastic. Conversation intelligence can automatically score sentiment, letting you segment accordingly.
• Caller details for personalization. Names, pain points, specific needs—these details can feed directly into personalized follow-up campaigns.
• Term analysis for more relatable ad creation. What words do your best prospects actually use? Call transcripts reveal the language that resonates, helping you craft offers that speak directly to buyer needs.
• Keyword clouds for SEO and PPC. The phrases your customers use on calls often differ from the keywords you’re bidding on. Mining conversations for terminology can uncover high-intent search terms you’re missing.

What To Do: Turn Customer Communication (Calls, Chats, Emails) Into Marketing Intelligence

The shift here is mindset.

Stop thinking of call data as a sales asset and start treating it as a marketing intelligence feed. When you analyze trends across hundreds of conversations (not just individual calls) you uncover patterns that can reshape your entire strategy.

Conversation Intelligence can automatically transcribe and analyze calls, surfacing these insights without requiring hours of manual listening. They can even generate aggregated summaries across campaigns, highlighting the questions prospects ask most frequently, the objections that come up repeatedly, and the language that signals buying intent.

The data is there. You just need to start using it.

Give More Attention To SMS Marketing (Open Rates Up To 98%)

Don’t Fall For Myth #4: “Texting Is Irrelevant to Marketers”

Why? Because text messages have a 98% open rate.

Compare that to email’s 20% average, and it’s clear why dismissing SMS as “not a marketing channel” is leaving conversions on the table.

What To Do: Capture More High-Intent Leads With Texting

Giving your buyers choice in how they communicate with you boosts conversion. Period.

Here are two immediate ways to put texting to work:

1. Click-to-text from your marketing assets. Add trackable click-to-text links in your emails, ads, and website. When a prospect clicks, their native messaging app opens with a pre-populated message to your business. You capture the lead, they get instant communication, and you maintain full attribution visibility.
2. Local Services Ad (LSA) message leads. If you’re running Google Local Services Ads, you can receive SMS leads directly through the platform. These are high-intent prospects who chose to message instead of call—often because they’re at work, in a waiting room, or simply prefer texting. Missing these leads because you’re not set up for SMS is like leaving the front door locked during business hours.

The key is tracking these text interactions with the same rigor you apply to calls and form fills. When every channel is measured, you can finally see the complete picture of what’s driving results.

The bottom line: your prospects have communication preferences, and those preferences increasingly skew toward texting. Meeting them where they are isn’t just good customer experience; it’s a competitive advantage. The businesses that make it easy to text will capture leads that competitors lose.

Reduce Missed Leads & Lower CPL With AI Voice Assistants

Let’s get personal for a second:  your leads aren’t being answered, and you should care more than anyone.

Stop Thinking “AI Voice Assistants Aren’t for Marketers”

Over 50 million customer calls go unanswered every year.

That’s not just a sales problem-that’s hundreds of millions of dollars in marketing investment generating leads that never convert because nobody picked up the phone.

Think about it.

You spend a significant budget driving calls through paid ads, SEO, and local listings. When 30% of those calls go unanswered (the current average), you’re effectively lighting a third of your budget on fire.

What To Do: Ensure Every Inbound Call Converts To A Lead

AI voice assistants solve this by ensuring every call gets answered, 24/7. But they do more than just pick up:

• Never miss a lead again. Voice assistants answer, capture, and qualify inbound calls around the clock, even when your team is focused on other customers or the office is closed.
• Drive better outcomes. You can confidently extend ad windows into evenings and weekends, knowing leads will be handled. Early adopters have seen answered calls increase by 44% and client ROI improve by up to 20%.
• Lower your cost per lead. When every call converts to a captured lead, your CPL drops and your campaign efficiency improves. Plus, consistently answering calls helps your responsiveness scores on platforms like Google’s Local Services Ads.
• Prioritize follow-up. AI assistants can capture caller intake details, assess intent, and score leads, so your team knows exactly which opportunities to prioritize when they return to the office.

This isn’t about replacing human connection. It’s about plugging the leaks in your funnel so the leads you worked so hard to generate actually have a chance to convert.

The combination of AI voice assistance with call tracking creates a system where every lead is captured, every conversation is logged, and every marketing dollar can be tied back to results.

Explore how Voice Assist transforms missed calls into revenue →

Moving Forward: Market With Confidence

These five myths share a common thread: they take real challenges and use them as excuses to give up.

The marketers who will win in 2026 aren’t the ones who throw their hands up, they’re the smart ones who know how to adapt.

Your 2026 Marketing Action & Attribution Plan

1. Redefine your MQLs around behaviors that actually predict revenue.
2. Layer self-reported attribution onto your digital tracking to capture the full buyer journey.
3. Mine your call data for targeting, personalization, and keyword insights.
4. Add texting as a tracked communication channel your buyers actually prefer.
5. Deploy AI voice assistants to ensure no lead goes unanswered.

The tactics aren’t broken.

The execution just needs an upgrade.

Want the complete playbook?

Watch our webinar: 2026 Forecast—5 Expert Marketing Strategies You Need to Refine by Q2 →