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

James Dooley: If you are a company based in Sunderland and looking to grow in 2026 but are uncertain which digital marketing strategies you should use, this discussion is for you. If you want more enquiries and more customers in the Sunderland area, should you be working with an SEO agency based in Sunderland, a PPC agency based in Sunderland, or a freelance lead generation service that can generate more enquiries for your Sunderland-based business? Before spending any money, Kazra, what should business owners and entrepreneurs in Sunderland understand first?

Kazra Dash: The number one thing I always recommend to Sunderland-based business owners is setting up KPIs. First, you need to know how much money you are spending on digital marketing. Next, you need to know how many leads are being generated. Then, out of those generated leads, you need to measure how many you have actually been able to contact. Has it been five out of the last ten? Has it been ten out of the last ten? Last but not least, you need to know how many of those leads have converted into paying customers for your business. Once you have all of those KPIs in place, digital marketing becomes much easier and much more predictable. So, James, what are some digital marketing strategies Sunderland-based businesses should be looking at?

James Dooley: The first thing has to be branding or brand SEO and making sure you look good online. You need a strong reputation. I think everything starts there. The foundation needs to be a positive brand SERP that shows who you are and what you do. A SERP stands for search engine results page. When you get that branding right across the board, it supports everything else you do. It improves your conversion rate on paid ads and social media. Any leads you generate are more likely to convert because when customers make that final decision, branding matters. That is the first thing people need to get right for any digital marketing strategy. My next strategy is AI visibility. More and more companies are looking into this now. What do ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok and Perplexity say about your brand or business? Is it positive or negative? You also need to understand what these platforms say about your competitors. Then you need to improve your presence. Some people call it AI SEO. Some call it GEO. Some call it LLM optimisation. Whatever term people use, this is going to be a big factor in 2026 and beyond.

Kazra Dash: I agree. That is a huge strategy people need to look at with artificial intelligence becoming more widely used. The next option is filling in the form at Fat Rank or Promo SEO, which offer a commission-based lead generation service for UK companies looking to grow. It is important to work on your own digital marketing efforts so you generate your own leads, but if you can also use freelancers and outsource some of that work, you get diversification in your lead sources. Head 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 offers a similar performance-based lead generation service. It is worth checking whether a third-party lead generation company can top up your enquiries and help your business grow in 2026.

James Dooley: Next on the list is Google Business Profiles, so Google Map listings. This is local SEO where you focus on getting more reviews and building out your Google Business Profile in your local area. There are pros and cons to this. The biggest advantage is that once it ranks, you are likely to generate leads consistently. The issue is getting from nowhere to position one. If you do not have a Google Maps listing at all, there may be a review deficit of sixty or even a hundred reviews. To get those reviews, you need leads first. It is the classic chicken and egg problem. Still, it is good for company branding, so I think every business should try to build out its Google Maps listing while understanding the pros and cons.

Kazra Dash: Definitely. If you are targeting a local area, you want to try to get those local map listings. For me, businesses need to be omni-channel and omnipresent. The next part is SEO in general, so organic SEO. Can you build up your website to rank better? If you serve local areas, you might want service pages built around those areas. For example, plumbing in Manchester. Then you can share that page on the Google Business Profile like you mentioned. There is a lot of search volume out there for different services, and there is also room for blog content. The goal is good quality content, building topical authority, and getting third-party backlinks to power up the site and improve organic SEO rankings. That is a major part of digital marketing in 2026.

James Dooley: The next strategy, which ties into what you said earlier, is organic social media. Organic social media is more of a numbers game. You need to create good content that your audience will actually want to watch. I see brands all the time that have published four or five posts on Instagram and then gone quiet for three years. That is not going to drive sales. If you can publish how-tos, guides, before and after content, and useful posts like that, people will see you on social media and click through to learn more about you and fill in the contact form. The caveat is that while organic social media is free compared with PPC, it is still a numbers game. You need to be consistent. Maybe not every day, but at least three or four times a week.

Kazra Dash: Yes, and on the subject of social media, paid social ads are also massive. I am a big advocate of the low daily spend strategy people talk about. If you are already taking the time to post regularly for organic social media, it makes sense to spend a few pounds boosting those posts. Push case studies, awards you have won, and reputation-based content. You can also run retargeting ads so that anyone who has clicked through to your website sees your brand again. That falls under paid social too. Platforms like Meta, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and even Reddit can all be used for paid ads. Paid social media still feels like an underused area in digital marketing.

James Dooley: The next one is PPC, and it is probably a love-hate relationship for most businesses. Google Ads or Bing Ads are basically the sponsored results that appear above local SEO when someone searches for a service. Both of us have spoken to loads of business owners who have spent £10,000, £15,000 or £20,000 and had no result at all, or only a few poor-quality leads. On the other side, some businesses have spent hundreds of thousands and say it is the best thing that has ever happened to their business. The difference usually comes down to setup. There are so many moving parts in PPC. You need a really proactive negative keyword list. You need banned IPs because competitors might click your ads, which is click fraud. You need a high-converting landing page. You need a sales team that treats PPC leads as a priority. If you are not on the ball with PPC, it is probably not going to work. If you have a strong sales team, a good landing page, an up-to-date negative keyword list, and click fraud software in place, it can perform very well. You just need to understand the pros and cons.

Kazra Dash: Exactly. PPC can get you instant leads, but loads of businesses have burnt serious budget and still not had the quality enquiries they expected. While we are talking about paid marketing, after paid social and PPC, I would also throw in paid ads on AI platforms. It has not fully rolled out yet as we record this, but I know ChatGPT is looking at launching ads. Claude, Perplexity and other LLMs may also start doing this in 2026. If you are an early adopter and get on these platforms first, you could end up generating cheap leads or cheap contact form submissions. That is definitely something to watch in 2026.

James Dooley: Next on the list is something a bit less controllable, which is getting your brand mentioned on forums like Reddit and Quora. This depends on where your customers are and whether they are talking positively about you. If they are already recommending you, that is a strong source of social proof. It is slightly out of your hands, but asking for reviews and asking customers to recommend you to other people can still generate a decent number of enquiries.

Kazra Dash: Yes, and one of the extra benefits of places like Reddit is that they get cited so much in AI overviews now. Going back to AI visibility, if you can get a lot of positive discussion around your products and services and some solid reviews on those platforms, it can help with AI visibility either indirectly or directly.

James Dooley: The last one for me is tradesman websites. That means places like Checkatrade, Bark, Rated People and MyBuilder, or teaming up with a third-party lead generation company. Something important across all of these channels, which you mentioned earlier, is understanding your KPIs and your return on ad spend. Business owners doing any type of digital marketing need to track how much time and effort is going into things like organic social media or paid ads. Everything needs KPIs. The same applies to tradesman websites. These platforms can be excellent for generating leads and getting a positive return on investment. If they do that for your business, keep using them. There are also lead generation companies out there that can generate a lot of leads using organic SEO, PPC or social media ads. If they are getting you a positive return on investment, I am all for it as part of a wider digital marketing strategy. I just want to repeat one last time that Fat Rank and Promo SEO offer lead generation and guarantee a return on investment. It is a commission-based or performance-based lead generation service. Make sure you head over there and fill in the form. That can be one part of your wider lead generation mix. You should still be generating your own leads as well. You should never have a single point of failure. Diversification is key. But definitely look at Promo SEO or Fat Rank lead generation services as part of your digital marketing efforts in 2026.

Kazra Dash: Thank you very much.