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

**James Dooley (0:01):** If you are a business owner based in Liverpool, Merseyside within England and you’re looking to grow in 2026, today we’re going to talk about a lot of different types of digital marketing strategies. Should you be doing SEO, social media — whether that’s Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram — or should you be looking to try to get your brand mentioned in the large language models, which could be ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Perplexity? There’s lots of noise out there with what you should and shouldn’t be doing. There’s a lot of money being wasted on digital marketing strategies that are not really getting you the ROI that you should be getting. Before I get started… Kasra, with regards to bits of advice on how they can be getting more inquiries — if you’re based in Liverpool within Merseyside, what bit of advice would you give to a business owner before they started spending any sort of money on marketing? --- **Kasra Dash (1:01):** Yeah. So, Liverpool-based businesses — the number one issue that I see is they have maybe spent a load of money on PPC and they’ve not actually had that return back. So they’ve maybe spent £15,000 on PPC and they’ve had a handful of leads, and the leads they’ve actually had have not been that great quality. If you set KPIs up in place, it will actually be acting as like a precautionary so you know before you spend that £15,000 that these leads aren’t great quality. A few things I would be looking at: * How much money I’m spending * How many leads that money has actually resulted in * What have the leads quality been like — are they genuinely interested or are they time wasters? * Can you actually contact the leads? * And the last thing for the sales team: how quickly they contact those leads If you’re spending money on PPC, Facebook ads, SEO, or a lead generation company, you want to make certain your sales team is jumping on those leads very quickly. Because if your speed-to-lead is slow, you’re not going to end up closing that lead. It doesn’t matter how much money you’ve spent — they may have went with one of your competitors. So set up those KPIs before you actually spend money on any of the marketing strategies that myself and James are going to go into. So, James — let’s go back to the marketing strategies. What marketing strategy would you recommend first? --- **James Dooley (2:36):** So step number one for me has got to be **branding / brand SEO** and making certain that you’re looking good online and you’ve got a strong reputation. I think everything needs to start — 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 lead on to other things. 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 they’re going to go with. Branding becomes very, 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**. I feel like more and more companies are actually looking into this. So what does ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, Perplexity say about your brand or your business? Is it a positive thing or is it a negative thing? And also trying to figure out what it says about your competitors as well — and obviously trying to improve that’s really important. Some people call it AI SEO, some people call it GEO, some people call it LLM optimization — but this is going to be a big thing in 2026 and the years to come as well. --- **Kasra Dash (4:01):** Yeah, I think that’s a huge strategy that people need to be looking at with regards to artificial intelligence — more and more people 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 inquiries. Promo SEO also do a very similar performance-based lead generation service as well — fill in the form with them too and double check whether you can get a third-party lead generation company to top up and start generating you some leads for your business to grow in 2026. --- **Kasra Dash (5:00):** Yeah. And then next on the list is **Google Business Profiles** — Google map listings. This is like local SEO where you basically try and get more reviews, and you build out your Google Business Profile in your local area. There’s pros and cons to this. The biggest pro is that once it is actually ranking, you’re 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 position number one, the issue is there might be a 60 or 100 review deficit. And to get those reviews, you need leads — so it’s the chicken and the egg. I think it’s good for personal branding or branding of your company. Always try and get the Google Maps listing, but you should always know the pros and cons as well. --- **James Dooley (5:55):** 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 **omnichannel and omnipresent**. The next part is **SEO in general** — organic SEO. Can you be building up your website to 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, and then share that on the Google Business Profile. Trying to get organic rankings — there’s the search volume of people searching for services, and it could be blog posts too. Ideally you want good quality content, build up topical authority, and get some third-party backlinks to power up the site to get those organic SEO rankings. That’s another big part of digital marketing strategies in 2026. --- **Kasra Dash (6:56):** 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 your audience would actually view. I see brands publish four or five posts on Instagram and then 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, click through to learn more, and fill in the contact form.

The caveat is: yes it’s free, 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.

--- **James Dooley (7:54):** Yeah, for sure. On the subject of social media — **paid social ads** as well is massive. I’m a massive advocate of the “dollar a day” strategy. If you’re taking the time to be posting regularly for organic social media, just spending a few pounds on those posts and boosting it. Boost case studies, any awards you’ve won for reputation. You can also run **retargeting ads** — if anyone has clicked through to your website. Paid social could be Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest — you can even run Reddit ads as well. Paid social media is still an untapped market for digital marketing strategies. --- **Kasra Dash (8:49):** Yeah. The next one is probably a love-hate relationship: **PPC** — Google AdWords or Bing. That’s the sponsored results above local SEO. We’ve spoken to so many business owners that have spent £10k, £15k, £20k and they’ve not had a single result — or they’ve had a few leads and they’ve not been quality. And then other guys spend hundreds of thousands and they’re like, “It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to my business.” The reason people love it or hate it is probably down to how it’s been set up. There’s so many nuances, like: * proactive negative keyword lists * banned IPs (competitors clicking your ads = click fraud) * high-converting landing pages * KPI’ing your sales team so PPC leads get contacted quickly * click fraud software If you’re not on the ball with PPC, it’s probably not going to work. But if you’ve got a well-refined sales team, a good landing page, a well-kept negative keyword list, and click fraud software — it can perform well. Just know the pros and cons. --- **James Dooley (10:34):** Yeah, for sure — there’s certainly pros and cons. There’s benefits of using it to get instant leads, but like you said, the amount of people we speak to that have burnt a lot of budget and not had the inquiries come through is pretty scary. While we’re on the subject of paid — we spoke about paid social ads and PPC — I’m going to throw in paid ads on **AI platforms**. It’s not fully rolled out as we’re doing this video, but I know 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, you could be getting cheap leads or cheap contact form submissions. So it’s something to look out for — paid AI listings and ads in 2026. --- **Kasra Dash (11:33):** Next on the list — and this is a little bit out of control — you do have forums where you can get your brand mentioned, like Reddit and Quora.

That comes down to: where are your customers? Are they raving and shouting about you?

If they are, that’s a really good resource of other people recommending you. Again it’s a bit out of your control, but asking for reviews and asking people to recommend you to friends can generate a decent amount of leads and inquiries. --- **James Dooley (12:15):** Yeah, for sure. And the add-on benefit to places like Reddit is that it’s getting cited so much now in the AI overviews. So when you spoke earlier about AI visibility, if you can get a lot of people talking about your products and services — and reviews on there — it indirectly or directly helps with AI visibility. And then the last one for me is **tradesman websites** — like Checkatrade, Bark — or teaming up with a third-party lead generation company.

Something I would say with all of these practices: Kasra touched on earlier making sure you understand your KPIs and your ROAS (return on ad spend).

It’s very important for business owners doing any sort of digital marketing to track how much time and effort is being put into organic social media or paid ads. Everything should have KPIs. And it’s the exact same with tradesman websites like Checkatrade, Bark, Rated People, MyBuilder. These can be amazing platforms to generate leads with a positive ROI — and if they do, you should keep using them. There’s certain lead gen companies too that can generate you a lot of leads — they might be using organic SEO, PPC, or social ads — and if they’re getting you a positive ROI, I’m all for it.

But I want to repeat again: **Fat Rank and Promo SEO** do lead generation and guarantee a return on investment.

It’s a commission-based or performance-based lead generation service — so head over there, fill in the form. That could be one part of generating leads of many. You should generate your own, never have a single point of failure, and you should diversify. Make sure you head over to Promo SEO or Fat Rank as part of your digital marketing efforts in 2026. **James Dooley (14:26):** Thank you very much, Kasra.