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

James Dooley: So, if you are a Derby based business and looking to grow in 2026, there's obviously a lot of different types of digital marketing strategies that you could be doing. There's a lot of noise out there with regards to trying to get your business cited and recommended by ChatGPT or the AI Overviews, which is powered by Gemini. But is that more important than organic SEO? Is PPC just as important? What marketing strategies should you be doing if you're a Derbyshire based business, specifically based within the Derby area. Today I'm joined with Kasra and we're going to talk through all different types of strategies that's going to help you get a consistent flow of enquiries. But before we get into the digital marketing strategies, Kasra, what bit of advice would you give to a business owner who's based in Derby?

Kasra Dash: So, the biggest piece of advice I would give to a Derby based business owner is go and set up some KPIs. Myself and James, we're going to be talking about a variety of different marketing strategies. That's not to say go and spend 100,000 on each different marketing strategy because that's not the best play. What you want to do is set up a set of KPIs to say, okay, how much am I spending? What am I getting in return? How many leads have I had? What are the conversion rates of those leads? How many of those leads have actually paid me and what's the actual profit of those leads as well? Because in some cases you might be spending money on Facebook ads, PPC, and also SEO, but maybe only SEO's been working for your business. So in that case you might just want to double down on SEO. So we're going to go over a variety of these different marketing strategies. Set up the KPIs first. So, James, take it away with the first marketing strategy.

James Dooley: So 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. Everything needs to start. The foundations need to start with a positive kind of brand SERP of who you are and what you do. So a SERP stands for search engine results page and getting that branding right across the board then can lead on to other things of what you can be doing. It will improve your conversion rate on paid ads or social media. Any leads that you're getting, the conversion rate would be good. If at the 11th hour they're going to decide who you're going to go with, branding becomes very important. So that's the first thing that people need to get right for all digital marketing strategies. My next strategy is going to be AI visibility. More and more companies are looking into this. So what does ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Perplexity say about your brand or about your business? Is it a positive thing or is it a negative thing? Also try to figure out what it says about your competitors as well. Trying to improve that is really important. Some people call it AI SEO, some people call it GEO, some people call it LLM optimisation, but this is going to be a big thing in 2026 and in the years to come as well.

Kasra Dash: Yeah, that's a huge strategy that people need to be looking at with regards to artificial intelligence. More and more people are 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. It's important to be looking at your own digital marketing efforts to generate your own leads, but also if you can use some freelancers and outsource some as well, you've got that 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 you some leads for your business to grow in 2026.

James Dooley: Yeah. And then next on the list is Google Business Profiles. So Google Map listings. This is like local SEO where you basically try and get more reviews. You build out your Google Business Profile in your local area. There are pros and cons to this. The biggest pro is that once it is ranking, you are going to be consistently generating leads. However, to get from nowhere, 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 with that is there might be a 60 or 100 review deficit. To get those reviews, you need leads. It's the chicken and the egg. For one, it's good for personal branding or for branding of your company. Always try and get the Google Maps listing, but always know the pros and cons to it as well.

Kasra Dash: Yeah, for certain. If you're in a local area, you want to try and get those local maps listings. For me, you need to be omni channel and omnipresent. The next part is SEO in general. 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 of where you cover. So like plumbing in Manchester, create a page for that. Hopefully then share that on the Google Business Profile. Trying to get organic rankings, the amount of search volume that people are out there searching for different services of what you do, or it could be some blog posts that you could be doing as well. There are different strategies you can be doing, 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. That's another big part that you need to be doing as part of your digital marketing strategies in 2026.

James Dooley: Yeah. And then the next one, which ties back to what you were saying before, is organic social media. Organic social media is more of a numbers game. Try to create good content that your audience would actually view. This happens all the time. Brands publish four or five posts on their Instagram profile and they've not been active for three years. That's not going to drive you sales. But if you can do how tos, guides, before and afters, content like that, people will see you on socials and they will click through to figure out more about you, then fill in the contact form. The caveat to organic social media is it is free to do. It's not like PPC, but it is a numbers game. You want to be consistently uploading, maybe not every day, but at least three or four times a week.

Kasra Dash: Yeah, for sure. On the subject of social media, paid social ads as well is massive. A lot of people talk about the dollar a day strategy. If you are taking the time to be posting regularly for organic social media, spending a few pounds on those posts and boosting it can help. Get case studies, any awards that you've won for reputation, and start boosting that. You can also run retargeting ads. If anyone's clicked through to your website, you can run retargeting, which is paid social as well. Different places like Meta, Facebook and Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest. You can even run places like Reddit as well for paid ads. Paid social media is still an untapped market for digital marketing strategies.

James Dooley: Yeah. The next one is a love hate relationship, PPC. Google AdWords or doing it on Bing. That's the sponsored results above local SEO. We've spoken to so many business owners that have spent 10, 15, 20,000 on it and they've not had a single result, or they might have had a few leads and it's not been quality. Then you've got other people that have spent hundreds of thousands on it and they say it's the best thing that's ever happened to their business. The reason people either love it or hate it is down to how it's been set up. There are so many different nuances to PPC. For example, having a proactive negative keyword list. Making certain that you have a set of banned IPs. Competitors could be clicking on your ads and that's click fraud. Making certain that you've got a high converting landing page. Making certain that you KPI your sales team. So when a PPC lead comes in, it is one of the first priorities they take when it comes to contacting the lead. If you're not on the ball with PPC, it's probably not going to work. However, if you've got a well refined sales team, a good landing page, a well kept up to date negative keyword list, and you are using click fraud software, then it will probably perform well for you. But know the pros and cons to PPC.

Kasra Dash: Yeah, for sure. There are pros and cons. There's the benefit of instant leads, but the amount of people that burn budget and do not get enquiries is scary. While we're on the subject of paid, we spoke about paid social ads and PPC with Google or Bing. Paid ads on AI platforms is another one. It's not fully rolled out as we're doing this video, but ChatGPT are looking to roll out ChatGPT ads. Claude, Perplexity, other LLMs might start rolling it out in 2026. If you're an early adopter and innovator to get on there, you could be getting cheap leads or cheap contact form submissions. It's something to look out for in 2026.

James Dooley: Next on the list, and this is a bit out of control, is forums where you can get your brand mentioned, like Reddit and Quora. That comes down to where your customers are. Are they raving and shouting about you? If they are, that's a good resource of getting other people recommending you. It's a little out of your control, but asking for reviews and asking people to recommend you to friends can generate a decent amount of leads and enquiries as well.

Kasra Dash: Yeah, for sure. The add on benefit to places like Reddit is that it's getting cited so much now in the AI Overviews. When you spoke about AI visibility, if you can get a positive amount of people talking about the products and services of what you do and some reviews on there, it's indirectly going to help you, or directly help you, with AI visibility. The last one for me is tradesman websites. So like Checkatrade, Bark, or teaming up with a third party lead generation company. With all of these practices, it comes back to understanding your KPIs and your return on ad spend. It's important for business owners to track how much time and effort is being put into running organic social media or paid ads. Everything should have KPIs in place. It's the same with tradesman websites like Checkatrade, Bark, Rated People, MyBuilder. These can be amazing platforms to generate leads that get you a positive return on investment. If you do, you should continue using those platforms. There are lead generation companies that can generate you a lot of leads using organic SEO, PPC, or social media ads, and if they get you a positive return on investment, that's part of your digital marketing strategies. I just want to repeat one more time about Fat Rank and Promo SEO. They do lead generation and they guarantee a return on investment. It's a commission based lead generation service or performance based lead generation service. Head on over there, fill in the form. That could 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. You should get diversification. Make sure you head on over to Promo SEO or Fat Rank lead generation service as part of your digital marketing efforts in 2026.

James Dooley: Thank you very much, Kasra.