Why Most Businesses in Chelmsford Struggle With Digital Marketing in 2026 And How to Fix It

James Dooley: If you're a company based in Chelmsford and looking to grow with digital marketing strategies in 2026, should you be teaming up with a Chelmsford SEO agency or a Chelmsford PPC agency, or should you be looking to use an external lead generation service for the Chelmsford area? These are all questions we get asked quite a lot from business owners and entrepreneurs based in the Chelmsford area. But before we get started on what digital marketing strategies work best for Chelmsford based businesses, what bit of advice would you give anyone before they start to spend any money on digital marketing?

Kasra Dash: The biggest piece of advice that I would give to Chelmsford based business owners is to set up some KPIs before spending any money on digital marketing. You want these KPIs in place. You want to know how much money you are spending per campaign. You want to know how many leads have actually been generated per different channel. Maybe you're spending money on Facebook ads, PPC and SEO. Next, you want to figure out what the contact rates of those leads are. Is it five out of the last ten leads that you've been able to contact? Is it two out of the last ten leads? The last thing that I want to look at is, from the contacted leads, how many of those leads have you been able to actually sell your service to? Because that is the number one reason why we do digital marketing. We want to generate more revenue for the business. Once you have those figures in place, that is when I would start spending more money on digital marketing or potentially lowering certain budgets as well. Maybe you're spending money on Facebook ads and it is not that profitable for you. So James, what would be the number one reason or one of the main reasons why you would do marketing for a Chelmsford based business?

James Dooley: Step number one for me has got to be branding or brand SEO and making certain that you're looking good online. You've got a strong reputation. I think everything needs to start there. The foundations need to start with a positive brand SERP of who you are and what you do. A SERP stands for search engine results page. Getting that branding right across the board can then lead on to other things that you can be doing. It will improve your conversion rate on paid ads or social media. Any leads that you're getting will convert better because if at the eleventh hour they are deciding who they're going to go with, branding becomes very important. So I'd say that is the first thing that people need to get right for all digital marketing strategies. My next strategy is going to be AI visibility. I feel like more and more companies are actually looking into this. So what do ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok and Perplexity say about your brand or about your business? Is it a positive thing or is it a negative thing? Also trying to figure out what it says about your competitors as well. Obviously trying to improve that is really important. Some people call it AI SEO, some people call it GEO, some people call it LLM optimisation. This is going to be a big thing in 2026 and also in the years to come as well.

Kasra Dash: I think that is a huge strategy that people need to be looking at with regards to artificial intelligence. More and more people are obviously using AI. The next one for me is filling in the form at Fat Rank or Promo SEO, which do a commission based lead generation service for UK companies looking to grow. I think it is important to focus on your own digital marketing efforts to generate your own leads, but also if you can use some freelancers and outsource some as well, you have got diversification of leads. So head on over to fatrank.com, fill in the form and see whether they can help you with a no risk supply of enquiries. Promo SEO also do a very similar performance based lead generation service as well that you might want to fill in the form with there and just double check whether you can go and get a third party lead generation company to top up and start generating some leads for your business to grow in 2026. Next on the list is Google Business Profiles. So Google Map listings. This is like local SEO where you basically just try and get more reviews. You build out your Google Business Profile in your local area. There are pros and cons to this. I think the biggest pro is that once it is actually ranking, you are going to be consistently generating leads. However, to get from nowhere, like let's say you do not have a Google Maps listing at all, to get it ranking into position number one, the issue you've got is that there might be a sixty or one hundred review deficit. To obviously get those reviews, you need leads. So it is one of those things. It is like the chicken and the egg. I for one just think it is good for personal branding or for branding of your company. So always try and get the Google Maps listing, but you should always know the pros and cons to it as well.

James Dooley: Yes, for certain. If you're in a local area, you want to try and get those local map listings. For me, you need to be omnichannel and omnipresent. I think the next part is SEO in general. So organic SEO. Can you be building up your website to try and get your website ranking better? If you are in a local area, you might want to do your service with the area where you cover. So like plumbing in Manchester, create a page for that. Hopefully then share that on the Google Business Profile that you mentioned. Trying to get organic rankings matters because of the amount of search volume that people are out there searching for with different services that you offer, or it could be some blog posts that you could be doing as well. There are different strategies that you can be using, but ideally you want good quality content, build up topical authority, and try and get some third party backlinks to power up the site to get those organic SEO rankings. I think that is another big part that you need to be doing as part of your digital marketing strategies in 2026.

Kasra Dash: The next one, which ties back to what you were saying before, James, is obviously organic social media. Organic social media is more of a numbers game. Try to create good content that your audience would actually want to view. I see this time and time again where I look at brands and they've just published maybe four or five posts on their Instagram profile and they've not been active for three years. That is not going to drive you sales. But if you can do how tos, if you can do guides, maybe you can do before and afters. If you can do content like that, people will see you on socials and they will actually click to figure out more about you, then fill in the contact form. The caveat to organic social media is yes, it is free to do. It is not like PPC for example, but it is very much a numbers game. So you want to be consistently uploading, maybe not every day, but at least three or four times a week.

James Dooley: Yes, for sure. On the subject of social media, paid social ads as well are massive. I am a massive advocate of the small daily spend strategy that people talk about. So if you are going to be taking the time to post every day like you mentioned there for organic social media, just spending a few pounds on those posts and boosting them. So getting case studies, any awards that you've won as well for reputation, and starting boosting that. You can also be running retargeting ads. So if anyone has clicked through to your website, you can be running retargeting, which is paid social as well. Different places like Meta, so whether that is Facebook and Instagram, you've got Twitter, you've got YouTube, you can be running Pinterest, and you can even run places like Reddit as well for paid ads. I think paid social media is still an untapped market for digital marketing strategies.

Kasra Dash: The next one is probably a love hate relationship, and that is PPC. Google AdWords or doing it on Bing, wherever. That is basically the sponsored results. So if you search for a service, it is above local SEO. James and I have both spoken to so many business owners that have either spent £10,000, £15,000 or £20,000 on it and they've not had a single result, or they might have had a few leads and it has just not been of quality. Or you've got other people that have spent hundreds of thousands on it and they're like, it is the best thing that has ever happened to the business. The reason why people either absolutely love it or absolutely hate it is probably down to how it has been set up. There are so many different nuances to PPC. For example, having a really proactive negative keyword list, making certain that you have a set of banned IPs, like for example your competitors could be clicking on your ads and that is deemed as what is called click fraud. Making certain that you've got a high converting landing page, and making certain that you KPI your sales team. So when a PPC lead comes in, that is one of the first priorities that they actually take when it comes to contacting the lead. There are all of these different nuances, and if you're not on the ball with PPC, it is probably not going to work for your business. However, if you've got a really good, well refined sales team, you've got a really good landing page, you've got a well kept, up to date negative keyword list, and you are using click fraud software, at that point it will actually probably perform well for you. But again, just know the pros and cons to PPC.

James Dooley: Yes, for sure. There are certainly pros and cons. There are benefits of using it to get instant leads, but like you said, the amount of people that we speak to that have burnt a lot of budget and not had the enquiries and results that came through as part of the digital marketing is pretty scary. While we're on the subject of paid, obviously we spoke about paid social ads and now you've spoken there about PPC with Google or Bing. I am going to throw in the mix paid ads on AI platforms. It is not fully rolled out as we're doing this video, but I know that ChatGPT are looking to try and roll out ChatGPT ads. Claude, Perplexity and other kinds of LLMs might start rolling it out in 2026. I think if you're one of the early adopters and innovators to get on there, you could be getting cheap leads or cheap contact form submissions. So it is something to look out for in terms of doing paid AI listings and ads. I think that could be something to look out for in 2026.

Kasra Dash: Next on the list, and this is a little bit out of your control, you obviously have forums where you can get your brand mentioned in, like for example Reddit and Quora. That very much comes down to the after stage. Where are your customers that you've been dealing with previously? Are they actually raving and shouting about you? If they are, then that is a very good source for getting other people recommending you. So if you can get that, again, it is a little bit out of your control, but asking for reviews, asking for recommendations to friends and other people, that can obviously generate you a decent amount of leads and enquiries as well.

James Dooley: Yes, for sure. And the add on benefits to places like Reddit is that it gets cited so much now in the AI overviews. So when you spoke there early on about AI visibility, if you can try to get a positive lot of people talking about the products and services that you offer and some reviews on there, it is indirectly then going to help you, or directly actually is going to help you, with AI visibility. The last one for me is tradesman websites. So like Checkatrade, Bark, Rated People, MyBuilder, or teaming up with a third party lead generation company. Something I would say with all of these practices, and Kaza touched on this earlier, is making certain that you understand your KPIs and your return on ad spend. I think it is very important for business owners that are doing any sort of digital marketing to be tracking how much time and effort is being put into, let us say, running organic social media or running paid ads. Everything should have KPIs put in place. This is exactly the same then with tradesman websites like Checkatrade, Bark, Rated People and MyBuilder. These could all be amazing platforms for generating leads that could get you a positive return on investment. If they do, you should continue to be using those platforms. There are certain lead generation companies out there as well that could generate you quite a lot of leads. They could be using organic SEO, PPC or social media ads to generate you those leads, but if they are getting you a positive return on investment, again, I am all for it as part of your digital marketing strategies. But I just want to repeat one more time with regards to Fat Rank and Promo SEO. They do lead generation and they guarantee a return on investment. It is a commission based lead generation service or performance based lead generation service. So make sure you head on over there, fill in the form. That could just be one part of generating leads of many. You should be trying to generate your own. You should never have a single point of failure and you should be trying to get that diversification. But make sure you head on over to Promo SEO or Fat Rank lead generation service as part of your digital marketing efforts in 2026.

Kasra Dash: Thank you very much, Kazwell.