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

James Dooley: If you're a Hull based business and looking to grow in 2026 with digital marketing strategies, but you're uncertain what type of digital marketing channels you should be using, should you be trying to get cited in the AI Overviews, which are powered by Gemini, or trying to get cited by ChatGPT? Should you be trying to outsource to a Hull based SEO agency, a PPC agency that's based in Hull, or trying to get a lead generation service that can provide you with more enquiries in the Hull area? Before spending any sort of money, Kasra, what advice would you give to a business owner or entrepreneur in the Hull area?

Kazra Dash: For business owners based in Hull that are looking to scale out their digital marketing, one thing that I would do before spending any money is set up some KPIs. You want to figure out how much money you're spending per channel. How many leads have been generated per channel. From the leads that have also been generated, how many of them have actually been contactable? Is it five out of the last 10 leads? Is it 10 out of the last 10 leads? What is that rate looking like? Last but not least, out of the contacted leads, how many of those have you actually been able to convert into paying customers for your business? Once you have those figures in place, digital marketing becomes a lot more fun. You can scale certain campaigns up. You can turn certain campaigns off as well. So, James, for a Hull based business, what would be some marketing strategies they should take a look at?

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 kind of brand SERP of who you are and what you do. A SERP stands for search engine results page, and getting that branding right across the board can then lead on to other things 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 eleventh hour they're going to decide who they're going to go with, branding becomes very, very important. So I'd say that's the first thing 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 does 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, but this is going to be a big thing in 2026 and also in the years to come as well.

Kazra Dash: Yeah, I think that's 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'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. Yeah. Then 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. Now there are pros and cons to this. I think the biggest pro is that once it is actually ranking, you're 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 ranked into position number one, the issue you've got with that is there might be, let's say, a 60 or 100 review deficit, and to get those reviews, you need leads. So it's one of those things. It's like the chicken and the egg. I for one just think it's 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: Yeah, 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 omni channel 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 of 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, the amount of search volume that people are out there searching for different services that you do, or it could be some blog posts that you could be doing as well. There are different strategies on there that 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. I think that's another big part that you need to be doing as part of your digital marketing strategies in 2026.

Kazra Dash: Yeah. Then the next one, which kind of ties back to what you were saying before, James, is obviously organic social media. Organic social media, I think, is more of a numbers game. So try to create good content that your audience would actually 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's 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, that way 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's free to do. It's 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: Yeah, for sure. On the subject of social media, paid social ads as well are massive. I'm a massive advocate of the dollar a day strategy that people talk about. So if you are going to be taking the time to be posting every day, like you mentioned there for organic social media, just spend a few pounds on those posts and boost them. So get case studies, any awards that you've won as well for reputation, and start 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, whether that's Facebook and Instagram. You've got Twitter, you've got YouTube, you can be running Pinterest, 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.

Kazra Dash: Yeah. The next one is probably a love hate relationship, and that is PPC. Google AdWords or doing it on Bing, wherever. That's basically the sponsored results. So if you search for a service, it's above local SEO. Now, both myself and James have spoken to so many business owners where either they've spent 10, 15 or 20,000 on it and they've not had a single result, or they might have had a few leads and they just have not been of quality. Or you've got other guys that have spent hundreds of thousands on it and they're like, it's the best thing that's ever happened to my business. The reason why people either absolutely love it or absolutely hate it is probably down to how it's been set up. There are so many different nuances to PPC. Like for example, having a really proactive negative keyword list, making certain that you have a set of banned IPs. Your competitors could be clicking on your ads, and that's deemed as what's called 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, that is one of the first priorities 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's 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 probably perform well for you. But again, just know the pros and cons to PPC.

James Dooley: Yeah, 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 stuff that's come 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'm going to throw in the mix paid ads on AI platforms. It's 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's something to look out for with paid AI listings and ads. I think that could be something to look out for in 2026.

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

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. The add on benefits to places like Reddit are that it's getting 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 volume of people talking about the products and services that you do, and some reviews on there, it's indirectly going to help you, or directly actually is going to help you, with AI visibility. Then the last one for me is tradesman websites. So like Checkatrade, Bark, or teaming up with a third party lead generation company. Something I would say with all of these practices, Kaza touched on earlier about making certain that you understand your KPIs and your return on ad spend. I think it's very important for business owners doing any sort of digital marketing to track how much time and effort is being put into, let's say, running organic social media or running paid ads. Everything should have KPIs in place. This is exactly the same then with tradesman websites like Checkatrade, Bark, Rated People and MyBuilder. These could all be amazing platforms to generate leads that could get you a positive return on investment. If they do, you should continue to use 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 or PPC or social media ads to generate those leads, but if they are getting you a positive return on investment, again, I'm 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's a commission based lead generation service or performance based lead generation service. So make sure you head on over there and fill in the form. That could just be one part of generating leads out 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.

Kazra Dash: Thank you very much, James.