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

James Dooley: If you're a company based in Oldham and looking to grow in 2026, but you're uncertain which digital marketing strategies you should be doubling down on to get more customers and more inquiries, today we’re going to talk through the different channels and platforms you could be using. Should you be teaming up with a local SEO agency in Oldham or a PPC agency based in Oldham? Should you be trying to find a lead generation service that specialises in Oldham inquiries? These are all questions we get asked quite a lot from business owners and entrepreneurs based in the wider Greater Manchester area. But before we get started on what digital marketing strategies people should be using to grow their business in the Oldham area, Kasra, what advice would you give before they spend any money on digital marketing? Kasra Dash: For Oldham-based businesses, going back to previous conversations we’ve had, the biggest issue we see is that they do not have a predictable system in place. Some companies are spending £10,000 on PPC and then saying, “We’ve not actually had any leads,” or “The leads we did generate haven’t been very good quality.” You want to make sure you’ve got a predictable system in place so you’re not just burning money. The first thing I would look at is how much money is being spent on each digital marketing campaign. Let’s say you’re spending on PPC, Facebook ads, and SEO. You want to know exactly how much is being spent across all three. The next thing you want to know is how many leads are being generated by each of those channels separately. Then you want to work out the contact rate. For example, PPC might have great contact rates, while Facebook leads might not be contactable for two or three days, or sometimes not at all because they’ve filled in a form and then forgotten about you. The last, and probably most important, thing is how many of the contacted leads are actually turning into paying customers. Leads generated and paying customers are two completely different things. You also want to know how much money has come back in and what the return on spend is. If you’ve spent £1,000, have you made money, lost money, or just broken even? What are the profit margins? Once you have that system in place, marketing becomes much more fun because it becomes predictable. You can scale certain campaigns up. For example, if you’re spending £2,000 a month on Facebook ads and getting great results, you might increase that to £4,000. So James, for Oldham-based businesses, what would you recommend as the first marketing channel they should look at? James Dooley: Step number one for me has got to be branding, or brand SEO, and making sure that you’re looking good online and have a strong reputation. Everything needs to start there. The foundations need to begin with a positive brand SER, showing clearly who you are and what you do. SER stands for search engine results page. Getting your branding right across the board then supports everything else you do. It will improve your conversion rate on paid ads and social media because when someone is deciding who they’re going to go with at the eleventh hour, branding becomes very important. So that’s the first thing people need to get right for all digital marketing strategies. My next strategy would be AI visibility. More and more companies are looking into this. What does ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and other AI tools say about your brand or business? Is it positive or negative? And what are they saying about your competitors? Some people call it AI SEO, others call it GEO, and some call it LLM optimisation. Whatever you call it, this is going to be a big factor in 2026 and beyond. Kasra Dash: I think that’s a huge strategy people need to be looking at with the rise of artificial intelligence. The next one for me is filling in the form at Fat Rank or Promo SEO, which offer commission-based lead generation services for UK companies looking to grow. It’s important to build your own digital marketing channels and generate your own leads, but if you can also use freelancers or outsource some of the lead generation, then you get diversification of leads. Head 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 offers a similar performance-based lead generation service, so it’s worth checking both. James Dooley: Next on the list is Google Business Profiles, or Google Maps listings. This is like local SEO, where you’re trying to get more reviews and build out your Google Business Profile for your local area. There are pros and cons to this. The biggest benefit is that once it ranks, it can consistently generate leads. However, if you’re starting from nothing and trying to rank in position one, you could be facing a review deficit of 60 or even 100 reviews. And to get those reviews, you need leads. So it becomes a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation. That said, I still think it’s great for personal branding and for branding your company. So always try to get your Google Maps listing sorted, but be aware of both the pros and the cons. Kasra Dash: If you’re in a local area, you definitely want to get those local map listings. For me, you need to be omni-channel and omnipresent. The next part is SEO in general — organic SEO. Can you build up your website and get it ranking better? If you’re targeting local areas, you might want service pages combined with locations you cover. For example, “plumbing in Manchester.” Then you can share that page on your Google Business Profile as well. There’s a lot of search volume out there for services, and there are blog opportunities too. Ideally, you want good quality content, strong topical authority, and third-party backlinks to help power up the site and improve organic rankings. That’s another big part of your digital marketing strategy in 2026. James Dooley: The next one, which ties into what you’ve just said, is organic social media. Organic social media is very much a numbers game. I see this all the time where a brand has posted four or five times on Instagram and then not touched it again for three years. That’s not going to drive sales. But if you can post how-tos, guides, before-and-afters, and useful content your audience actually wants to see, then people will click through, learn more about you, and fill in your contact form. The caveat is that while organic social media is free, it is still a numbers game. You need consistency — ideally posting at least three or four times a week. Kasra Dash: On the subject of social media, paid social ads are also massive. I’m a big advocate of the dollar-a-day style strategy people talk about. If you’re already taking the time to post every day on social media, then spending a few pounds boosting those posts can really help. You can boost case studies, awards, and other trust-building content. You can also run retargeting ads so that anyone who has visited your site keeps seeing your business across social platforms. Platforms like Meta, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, and even Reddit can all be used for paid ads. Paid social media is still a very underused digital marketing strategy. James Dooley: The next one is the classic love-hate relationship — PPC. That means Google AdWords or Bing Ads. These are the sponsored listings that sit above local SEO results. We’ve both spoken to loads of business owners who have spent £10,000, £15,000, even £20,000 and had nothing back. Others have spent hundreds of thousands and said it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to their business. The difference usually comes down to how well it’s set up. There are a lot of moving parts with PPC. You need a proactive negative keyword list, banned IPs because competitors can click your ads, a high-converting landing page, and a sales team that treats PPC leads as a top priority. If you’re not on top of it, PPC probably won’t work. But if you have a strong sales team, a good landing page, and everything managed properly, it can perform very well. Kasra Dash: There are definitely pros and cons. And while we’re on the topic of paid traffic, another thing to keep an eye on is paid ads on AI platforms. It’s not fully rolled out yet, but ChatGPT appears to be moving toward ads, and Claude, Perplexity, and other LLMs may also roll out ad products in 2026. If you’re one of the early adopters, you could end up getting very cheap leads or cheap contact form submissions. So that’s definitely something to watch. James Dooley: Next on the list — and this is a little more out of your control — is getting your brand mentioned in forums like Reddit and Quora. That really comes down to what your customers are saying after dealing with you. Are they raving about you? Are they recommending you? If they are, that can become a very strong source of lead generation and brand visibility. It’s not completely controllable, but encouraging reviews and recommendations can make a big difference. Kasra Dash: And the added benefit of places like Reddit is that they’re now getting cited heavily in AI overviews. So when you were talking earlier about AI visibility, positive chatter about your business on Reddit can indirectly — or directly — help with that too. The last one for me is tradesman websites. So platforms like Checkatrade, Bark, Rated People, and MyBuilder, or teaming up with a third-party lead generation company. Something I’d say with all of these is what I touched on earlier — understanding your KPIs and your return on ad spend. Business owners need to track how much time and money is going into things like organic social media or paid ads. Every activity should have KPIs attached to it. That’s the same with tradesman websites. They can be amazing platforms for generating leads and can give you a strong return on investment. If they do, then keep using them. There are also lead generation companies that can deliver a lot of leads through SEO, PPC, or social ads. If they’re generating a positive return, then I’m all for it as part of a broader digital marketing strategy. And I’ll say it one more time — Fat Rank and Promo SEO both do lead generation and guarantee a return on investment. It’s commission-based or performance-based lead generation. So make sure you head over there, fill in the form, and look at it as one piece of your lead generation strategy. You should always be trying to generate your own leads too. Never have a single point of failure. Diversification is key. James Dooley: Make sure you head on over to Promo SEO or Fat Rank lead generation services as part of your digital marketing efforts in 2026. Thank you very much, Kasra.