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

**James Dooley:** If you are a company based in Southampton and looking to grow in 2026, but you're uncertain which digital marketing strategy you should be using to get the highest return on investment, whether you're looking for more leads or more exposure online, should you be doubling down on AI SEO, also known as GEO or LLM optimization? Should you be trying to get your brand name or company name cited and recommended in ChatGPT or Gemini, which powers the AI overviews in Google? Is that more of a branding strategy, or is it going to get you a return on investment? Today, I'm joined with Kasra and we're going to talk about all the different types of digital marketing strategies for Southampton-based businesses. Should you be using a local PPC agency based in Southampton, a local SEO agency based in Southampton, or what should you be doing moving forward to get the highest exposure? Before we get started on the different types of digital marketing strategies for businesses based in Southampton, what bit of advice would you give to business owners and entrepreneurs? **Kasra Dash:** The biggest piece of advice that I would give to business owners based in Southampton is that, prior to spending any money on digital marketing, you want a predictable system. You would probably want a KPI system in place where you know exactly how much you're spending every single month on PPC. You need to know how many leads are actually being generated from each of the channels you're spending on. Maybe you're spending money on Facebook ads, PPC, and SEO. You want to make certain that all three of those channels are actually generating revenue for your business. That's the number one reason we do marketing. Once you know that, you then want to figure out, from Facebook ads, SEO, and PPC, how many leads have actually been generated from each channel, and what the contact rates of each of those channels have been as well. For example, you might have generated 300 leads on Facebook, but you've not been able to contact any of them. On the other hand, you might have been spending a lot of money on SEO and been able to contact all of the leads from SEO. You want to be able to dig deeper into all of those separate channels. Once you know all of the leads and contact rates, the last step is to understand how many of those contacted leads, the people who have actually replied to you by email, phone, or whatever method, have turned into paying customers or clients for your business. Once you have that in place, digital marketing becomes a lot more predictable. You can turn off certain campaigns or channels, and you can double down on things like SEO or PPC. But let's get back to the actual different digital marketing channels for Southampton-based businesses. What would your first recommendation be, James? **James Dooley:** Step number one for me has got to be branding or brand SEO and making certain that you're looking good online and that you've got a strong reputation. I think everything needs to start there. The foundations need to begin with a positive brand SER of who you are and what you do. A SER stands for search engine results page, and getting that branding right across the board can then lead on to the 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 will be better if, at the 11th hour, someone is deciding 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 AI visibility. I feel like more and more companies are looking into this. What does ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, and Perplexity say about your brand or your business? Is it positive or negative? And also, what does it say about your competitors? Trying to improve that is really important. Some people call it AI SEO, some call it GEO, some call it LLM optimization, but this is going to be a big thing in 2026 and in the years to come as well. **Kasra Dash:** 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 inquiries. Promo SEO also do a very similar performance-based lead generation service, so you might want to fill in the form there as well and double check whether you can get a third-party lead generation company to top up and start generating some leads for your business to grow in 2026. **James Dooley:** And then next on the list is Google Business Profiles, so Google Map listings. This is like local SEO, where you basically just try to get more reviews and 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, let’s say you do not have a Google Maps listing at all, to ranking in position number one, the issue is that there might be, let’s say, a 60 or 100 review deficit. To get those reviews, you need leads. So it's one of those chicken-and-egg situations. I do think it’s good for personal branding or for the branding of your company. So always try and get the Google Maps listing, but you should always know the pros and cons as well. **Kasra Dash:** 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. I think the next part is SEO in general, so organic SEO. Can you build up your website to try and get it ranking better? If you are in a local area, you might want to do your service pages with the areas that you cover. So, like plumbing in Manchester, create a page for that, and hopefully then share that on the Google Business Profile like you mentioned. Trying to get organic rankings is huge because of the amount of search volume out there for different services, or even blog posts, that people are searching for. 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 of what you need to be doing as part of your digital marketing strategies in 2026. **James Dooley:** The next one, which kind of ties back to what you were saying before, Kasra, is 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 published maybe four or five posts on their Instagram profile and then not been active for three years. That’s not going to drive you sales. But if you can do how-tos, guides, maybe before and afters, content like that, people will see you on social media and click through to figure out more about you and fill in the contact form. The caveat to organic social media is that, 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. **Kasra Dash:** 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 post every day like you mentioned there for organic social media, just spending a few pounds on those posts and boosting them can make a difference. So getting case studies, any awards that you've won as well for reputation, and boosting that content can work really well. 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, YouTube, Pinterest, and even places like Reddit for paid ads. I think paid social media is still an untapped market for digital marketing strategies. **James Dooley:** 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. If you search for a service, it’s above local SEO. Now, both myself and Kasra have spoken to so many business owners that have either spent £10,000, £15,000, or £20,000 on it and not had a single result, or they might have had a few leads and they’ve just not been of quality. Then you’ve got other people who’ve spent hundreds of thousands on it and say it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to their 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. For example, having a really proactive negative keyword list, making certain that you have a set of banned IPs because your competitors could be clicking on your ads, which is what’s called click fraud. You also need a high-converting landing page and to 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 so many 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, a really good landing page, a well-kept and 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. **Kasra Dash:** 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 inquiries and results 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 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, doing paid AI listings and ads. I think that could be something to look out for in 2026. **James Dooley:** Next on the list, and this is kind of a little bit out of control, you do obviously have forums where you can get your brand mentioned, like Reddit and Quora. That very much comes down to the after-fact side of things. 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 source of 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 and asking for them to recommend you to friends and other people can obviously generate you a decent amount of leads and inquiries as well. **Kasra Dash:** 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 there early on about AI visibility, if you can get a positive number of people talking about the products and services you offer and some reviews on there, it’s indirectly, or directly actually, going to help you with AI visibility. And 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, based on what I touched on earlier, is making certain that you understand your KPIs and your return on ad spend. It’s 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’s say, running organic social media or 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 to generate leads that could get you a positive return on investment. And 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, 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. **James Dooley:** Thank you very much, Kasra.