How to Get More Tree Surgeon Leads in 2025
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What Does “How to Get More Tree Surgeon Leads in 2025” Talk About?
This episode of the James Dooley Podcast features James Dooley and Kasra Dash walking tree surgeons through a comprehensive set of marketing strategies designed to generate consistent, high-quality inbound leads in 2025. The hosts cover a broad range of tactics in a logical progression, starting with foundational steps like optimising a Google Business Profile by gathering five-star reviews, getting citations, and publishing regular posts. They then move into building SEO-optimised service pages, running PPC campaigns on Google and Bing, and using Meta ads on Facebook and Instagram through either lead forms or conversion-based campaigns.
The episode also explores organic social media growth across platforms including YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit, and Quora, with the hosts emphasising consistency and volume as key to working with platform algorithms. James and Kasra discuss the growing importance of AI search engines like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and Groq, and whether AI agents can be used to automate content scheduling. The conversation then turns to trades platforms like Check a Trade, Bark, Rated People, and Builder Builder, contrasting shared leads from those services with the exclusive, commission-based model offered through FatRank.com. The episode wraps up with a detailed comparison of inbound versus outbound lead generation and the significant impact of responding to leads in real time.
“The conversion rate of not just getting the lead, but the lead actually converting into a paying customer into money coming into your business bank account is a lot higher. The last stat that I saw for that was something like 16.1 percent end up converting into a paying customer as opposed to 1.4 percent when it's an outbound lead.”
— Kasra Dash
Who Are the Guests on “How to Get More Tree Surgeon Leads in 2025”?
James Dooley is a UK-based digital marketing expert and entrepreneur best known for founding FatRank, a performance-based lead generation company. He has extensive experience working with tradespeople and local businesses across a wide range of niches, helping them generate consistent inbound leads through SEO, PPC, and commission-based marketing models. James frequently produces comparative content evaluating lead generation platforms and is a recognised voice in the trades marketing space.
Kasra Dash is a digital marketing strategist and co-host who brings deep expertise in SEO, paid advertising, and lead generation across multiple industries. He has worked alongside James Dooley on numerous campaigns for tree surgeons and other trade businesses in the UK, and contributes sharp analytical thinking on topics such as AI search, Meta ads strategy, and the critical importance of lead response times. Together, they form a knowledgeable and practical duo focused on real-world results for small and medium-sized businesses.
What Are the Key Takeaways From “How to Get More Tree Surgeon Leads in 2025”?
Here are the key points discussed in this episode:
- Optimising your Google Business Profile with five-star reviews, citations, and regular posts is the single most important first step for generating local tree surgeon leads.
- Building dedicated, SEO-optimised service pages for each individual service indirectly boosts your Google Business Profile rankings, creating a compounding effect on visibility and phone calls.
- Inbound leads convert at roughly 16.1 percent compared to just 1.4 percent for outbound leads, making inbound strategies dramatically more cost-effective for tree surgeons.
- Responding to an inbound inquiry in under one minute can increase conversion rates by approximately 63 percent, making real-time lead response a critical operational priority.
- Shared leads from platforms like Bark and Check a Trade often trigger a race to the bottom on price, whereas exclusive leads from commission-based services align incentives and protect profit margins.
“Yeah, it's a shared lead and it's kind of a rat race down to the bottom of who's the cheapest basically.”
— Kasra Dash
Is “How to Get More Tree Surgeon Leads in 2025” Worth Listening To?
This episode is worth listening to because it delivers a genuinely structured, step-by-step marketing roadmap rather than vague generalisations. James and Kasra move logically from free and low-cost options like Google Business Profiles and organic social media, through to paid channels like PPC and Meta ads, and then into more advanced territory covering AI search engines and automated content publishing. The specific statistics they cite, including the 16.1 percent inbound conversion rate versus 1.4 percent for outbound, and the 63 percent lift from responding in under a minute, give listeners concrete benchmarks to evaluate their own operations against.
What makes this episode particularly valuable is the honest critique of popular trades platforms. Rather than simply promoting every option, Kasra and James clearly explain why shared leads from services like Bark and Check a Trade frustrate so many business owners, and they contrast this with the commission-based model at FatRank where payment is only required after a job is completed and paid for. Tree surgeons who have wasted money on underperforming lead sources will find this perspective refreshing and practically useful. The episode is concise, direct, and packed with actionable advice that can be implemented immediately.
Who Should Listen to “How to Get More Tree Surgeon Leads in 2025”?
This episode is ideal for:
- Tree surgeons and arborists in the UK looking to build a more consistent pipeline of inbound inquiries
- Small trade business owners who want to compare different lead generation platforms and understand the real cost of shared versus exclusive leads
- Digital marketing managers or agency professionals working with local trade clients who want a clear channel-by-channel breakdown
- Entrepreneurs and business owners curious about how AI search engines and AI agents are beginning to affect local service lead generation
Where Can You Listen to James Dooley Podcast?
You can listen to James Dooley Podcast on all major podcast platforms:
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You can also subscribe using the RSS feed: https://feeds.transistor.fm/james-dooley-podcast
What Are Listeners Saying About This Episode?
“Really practical episode. The breakdown of inbound versus outbound conversion rates was eye-opening and immediately made me rethink where I was spending my marketing budget. The bit about responding to leads in under a minute is something I've already acted on.”
“As someone who has tried Bark and Check a Trade and felt frustrated by the results, it was validating to hear James and Kasra explain exactly why shared leads create a race to the bottom on price. Great honest take on platforms that a lot of people are too polite to criticise.”
“I appreciated how they covered everything from Google Business Profile basics all the way through to AI search engines like ChatGPT and Gemini. It's not often you get a marketing episode that's this comprehensive without feeling overwhelming. Genuinely useful for any tradesperson trying to grow.”

James Dooley: If you are a tree surgeon and you are looking for a consistent flow of inquiries being built for your business and you want to know which marketing strategies actually work, which marketing strategies you should avoid, this video is for you. Myself and Kasra Dash, we've worked with a lot of different tree surgeons across the UK and we know exactly which marketing strategies work, which ones you should avoid and we're going to be breaking it down in this video. So, Kasra Dash, take it away.
Kasra Dash: So step number one, what I'd be looking to do to grow is a Google business profile. If you already have one, I'd be making certain that I would be reaching out to all my existing clients to try to get me as many five star reviews as possible. It's a great way of Google business profile to generate more leads. There's obviously getting citations and doing Google business profile posts and uploading photos on there. So that's definitely step one that I would be doing to try to generate more local leads. So step number two, this is kind of to bolster onto your actual Google business profile is I would be creating dedicated service pages for each of your individual services as SEO optimised pages on your website. Now the good thing is is when you start doing that it's also going to help first of all rank your actual SEO optimised page but there's also more likeliness chance of your Google business profile ranking and showing up for those keywords as well. So you're indirectly going to get more phone calls as well.
James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. And if you are looking for more local leads, another option that you could be doing is PPC lead generation. That's pay-per-click within Google or within Bing where you're trying to target the bottom of the funnel keywords that can try to generate you some more inquiries. The difficult part to this is you need to make certain you do team up with a good pay-per-click agency because there is click fraud and there's also needing to be build up like a negative keyword list so it's not people applying for jobs like a careers kind of job. So PPC can work well but it can in the wrong hands you can waste a lot of money but it's another way of generating local leads.
Kasra Dash: Yeah. And then after that you've also got like meta ads as well. So like Facebook Instagram where the next time when somebody goes on to Facebook they might be scrolling they might see your ad. Now there's a few different ways that you can set up Facebook ads. You've obviously got option A which is like lead forms which is like really easy to do. They don't even leave the Facebook platform like they never click onto your actual website. Now, the issue with lead forms is that the quality might not be great but you can obviously add more questions in to try and up that quality of the actual lead. Then you've also got conversion ads as well where that actually gets sent through to your website and then they fill out the contact form to you or on your website as well. So you've got a couple different options there that you can do.
James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. And then another way to grow more local leads could be organic social media. So posting regularly on Facebook, on Twitter, on YouTube, on Pinterest, on Instagram. There's lots of different platforms out there that you can be trying to get there. Reddit's quite big nowadays and Quora is quite big. If people have got questions and you can answer it. So organic social media is another great way to be generating more local leads for your business.
Kasra Dash: With organic social media, I would say that it's more of like a volumes game. So you want to try and make certain that you're constantly uploading whether it's for example a daily schedule or a weekly schedule. You might say, "Okay, I want to try and upload five videos a week." And you should just try and stick to that, especially when it comes to like algorithms like YouTube and Twitter and stuff.
James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. I mean, what's your thoughts on using any sort of AI agents if they can try to team up with someone to use like NATN to kind of automate and schedule posts on social media? Like what's your thoughts on that of using trying to leverage artificial intelligence? It's all the rage nowadays for trying to generate more leads. Would you try to team up with like an AI consultant to set that up?
Kasra Dash: Yeah. So, I mean, you can definitely go down that route where you're setting up AI agents to potentially crop up some videos and autopublish to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and stuff. But another thing that I would also be focusing on is AI search. So a lot of people have started to kind of move away from Google. Not everyone because there's billions of people still using it every single day. But there are slowly people starting to search in engines such as like ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Groq and if your brand isn't actually showing up in any of those you will have a little bit of an issue showing up and generating leads on those search engines as well. So that's another thing that I would be focusing on as a company.
James Dooley: Yeah. And also, if you're looking for more business leads in the local area, something else that I would definitely be looking to do is team up with some of the trades people websites. So you've got certain ones like Check a Trade, you've got Bark, you've got Builder Builder, you've got Trust the Trader, you've got Rated People. All these different platforms can generate you more local leads. What I would say is making certain you're tracking your KPIs to see what return on investment that you're getting. You should be tracking not only the cost per lead but the cost per acquisition and how much is that getting you on a return on investment. But trades people websites like those platforms can work very well. I would say make certain you check out the links in the description because we do quite a lot of different videos in comparing Check a Trade with Fat Rank or Bark with Fat Rank, Rated People with Fat Rank, Builder Builder with Fat Rank. So now obviously I've mentioned Fat Rank a few times Kasra Dash like what's your thoughts on lead generation companies as opposed to trades people companies.
Kasra Dash: Yeah. So with lead generation companies I would almost say that every single lead generation company you want to try and do your due diligence. So make certain that if you are in a specific niche that lead generation company has actually generated leads in that industry before. I would also maybe even have like a strategy call with them and say like okay this is my budget this is how many leads I ideally want etc to make certain that if your actual KPIs do align with that lead generation company you also want to make certain what type of leads are they. Are they exclusive leads? Are the leads only going through to yourself? Or are they for example shared leads which that's what a lot of other lead generation tools and lead generation companies do like for example Bark and Check a Trade and stuff. Whenever myself and James have spoke to company owners that have used those services, that's one of their biggest pain points where they say, "Yeah, it's a shared lead and it's kind of a rat race down to the bottom of who's the cheapest basically." So that's a couple things I would be asking lead generation companies before partnering up with them.
James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. I mean, if anyone is interested in generating more local leads, I strongly recommend heading over to fatrank.com where we have a commission based lead generation service. That means you only pay a finders fee on converted jobs. You've nothing to pay on the pay per lead. You have nothing to pay until you get paid until you convert that job on a pay per sale basis and you've got done completed the job and been paid. That's when you only have to pay fatrank.com. So head on over to fatrank.com to see whether you qualify. But I want to kind of expand a little bit further. So what is your thoughts on inbound lead generation versus outbound lead generation?
Kasra Dash: So, I always prefer inbound. The conversion rate of not just getting the lead, but the lead actually converting into a paying customer into money coming into your business bank account is a lot higher. The last stat that I saw for that was something like 16.1 percent end up converting into a paying customer as opposed to 1.4 percent when it's an outbound lead.
James Dooley: Yeah, that's pretty crazy. That's like a 12. Well, yeah. It's 10 to 12 times more conversion.
Kasra Dash: Yeah.
James Dooley: Like it's crazy how much more conversion that is. You need to do a lot of volume for kind of outbound whether it's cold calling or cold email or like LinkedIn sales navigator and stuff like that. And sometimes you just need a lot more staff to do it as well. And people sometimes don't they're looking at the cost going I want to generate free leads and they're like they think they're generating free leads but there's still cost of like the email sending still cost of then the sales team try to convert them and stuff like that. So yeah, I completely agree with you that inbound leads is so much better than kind of outbound leads. But what's your thoughts then on some people ask the question that come through that want local leads and then they talk about are these real time leads like is real time leads very important to get so soon as they inquire it comes through to you straight away.
Kasra Dash: Yeah, it's very important. And I think the last stat that obviously we this was internally that we saw was if you are able to get a real time lead it converts 60 percent higher than was it 60 or 65 percent. I think 63 percent higher. And when we came and got the KPIs down it was like trying to respond within under a minute and it was like what we used to think five minutes was good and then when people respond in under a minute. So inquiry comes in can you either ring them or email them back saying thanks a lot for the inquiry and then getting more information. Yeah, it was pretty. So I mean I'm not saying that every company needs to respond in under a minute. There are certain things that we obviously look at at Fat Rank when we're looking to partner up with businesses. That's one of the things that a lot of businesses they kind of fall short on where they might be away for five days on holiday and they don't have somebody to pick up the leads and we're still providing the leads. So there's all these little different nuances that we look at when we are partnering up with companies. But the best thing that I would recommend to anyone that's looking to scale their business that's looking to get a consistent flow of in high quality leads is just fill out the form at fatrank.com. The team will tell you if you're the right fit or if you're not and we'll also tell you and give you feedback why you're not the right fit and what you should do as your next steps. So, we hope you like the different strategies for generating more leads for a tree surgeon business. Make certain you do head on over to fatrank.com where hopefully we can start to generate you more tree surgeon leads.
Creators & Guests
Host
James Dooley is a UK entrepreneur.