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

James Dooley: If you're a company based in York and you're looking for which digital marketing strategies work in 2026, are you confused about whether you should be using a local SEO agency based in York, a PPC company based in York, or a social media marketing agency based in York? Do they need to be specifically local to you? Or could you be looking at other digital marketing strategies like AI SEO and trying to get your company cited in ChatGPT or in Gemini, which powers the AI overviews within Google? There is a lot of noise and a lot of questions about what is working best. But before we get started, for York based business owners, what advice would you give to someone looking to grow in 2026?

Kasra Dash: For any York based businesses, even from our experience with the ones that have contacted us over the past couple of years, the biggest issue is that they do not have a predictable system. They are spending four, five or even £10,000 on different marketing channels and they do not know what they are getting back for that spend. So what I would be setting up are some KPIs. You need to know how much money you are spending on each different marketing channel. From those marketing channels, how many leads are you actually generating? Then from the leads, how many of those leads are actually contactable? If you phone them, how many are likely to pick up the phone? Then from the contactable leads, how many of those are actually turning into paying customers? That is the number one reason we do marketing, to get more customers for the business. Once you have that predictable system in place, digital marketing becomes easier because you can essentially switch certain channels off. Maybe you are spending £6,000 a month on Facebook ads, but Facebook ads are not generating any new enquiries, or the enquiries are low quality and not actually contactable. Whereas SEO, or maybe a lead generation company, could be doing a really good job for you. So you might end up doubling down on those campaigns instead. That is why KPIs are really important before spending any money on digital marketing. So James, for a York based business, what would you recommend as marketing strategy number one?

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 start with a positive brand SERP of who you are and what you do. A SERP stands for search engine results page. Getting that branding right across the board can then lead on to other things that you can be doing. It will improve your conversion rate on paid ads or social media. Any leads that you're getting will convert better because at the eleventh hour, when people are deciding who to go with, branding becomes very important. So I would say that is 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 do ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok and Perplexity say about your brand or your business? Is it a positive thing or is it a negative thing? You also need to figure out what those platforms say about your competitors and then work on improving your own visibility. Some people call it AI SEO. Some people call it GEO. Some people call it LLM optimisation. Whatever you call it, this is going to be a big thing in 2026 and in the years to come as well.

Kasra Dash: I think that is a huge strategy that people need to be looking at when it comes 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 offer a commission based lead generation service for UK companies looking to grow. I think it is important to focus on your own digital marketing efforts to generate your own leads, but if you can also use freelancers and outsource some work, then you get 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 offers a very similar performance based lead generation service that you might want to fill in the form for as well. Just double check whether you can go and get a third party lead generation company to top up and start generating leads for your business to grow in 2026. Next on the list is Google Business Profiles, so Google Map listings. This is like local SEO where you basically try to get more reviews and build out your Google Business Profile in your local area. There are pros and cons to this. I think the biggest advantage is that once it is ranking, you are going to be consistently generating leads. However, if you are starting from nowhere and do not have a Google Maps listing at all, getting it into position number one can be difficult. The issue is that there might be a sixty or one hundred review deficit. To get those reviews, you need leads. So it is one of those chicken and egg situations. I still think it is good for personal branding or company branding, so always try to get the Google Maps listing right, but understand the pros and cons as well.

James Dooley: Yes, for certain. If you are in a local area, you want to try and get those local map listings. For me, you need to be omnichannel 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 target your service with the areas you cover. So, for example, plumbing in Manchester. Create a page for that and then hopefully share it on the Google Business Profile. Trying to get organic rankings matters because of the amount of search volume out there for different services that you offer. It could also be blog posts that you create as well. There are different strategies you can use, but ideally you want good quality content, you want to build topical authority, and you want some third party backlinks to strengthen the site and get those organic SEO rankings. I think that is another big part of what you need to be doing as part of your digital marketing strategies in 2026.

Kasra Dash: The next one, which ties back to what you were saying before, James, is obviously 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 have only published four or five posts on their Instagram profile and then they have not been active for three years. That is not going to drive sales. But if you can do how to content, guides, and before and after posts, then people will see you on social media and they will click through to find out more about you and fill in the contact form. The caveat with organic social media is that yes, it is free to do. It is 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: Yes, for sure. On the subject of social media, paid social ads are also massive. I am a big advocate of the small daily budget strategy that people talk about. So if you are going to be taking the time to post regularly like you mentioned there for organic social media, then spending a few pounds on those posts and boosting them makes sense. Use case studies and any awards that you have won to build reputation and start boosting that content. You can also run retargeting ads. So if anyone has clicked through to your website, you can run retargeting, which is paid social as well. On different platforms like Meta, whether that is Facebook and Instagram, or Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, and even Reddit, you can run paid ads. I think paid social media is still an untapped market for digital marketing strategies.

Kasra Dash: The next one is probably a bit of a love hate relationship, and that is PPC. Google AdWords or doing it on Bing, wherever. That is basically the sponsored results. So if you search for a service, it appears above local SEO. James and I have both spoken to many business owners who have spent £10,000, £15,000 or £20,000 on it and not had a single result, or they might have had a few leads but the quality was poor. Then you get other people who have spent hundreds of thousands on it and say it is the best thing that has ever happened to their business. The reason people either absolutely love it or absolutely hate it is usually down to how it has 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 competitors could be clicking on your ads, and that is what is called click fraud. You also need to make certain that you have a high converting landing page and that you KPI your sales team so that when a PPC lead comes in, it becomes one of the first priorities they deal with. There are a lot of moving parts, and if you are not on the ball with PPC, it is probably not going to work for your business. However, if you have 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, then it will probably perform well for you. But again, just know the pros and cons of PPC.

James Dooley: Yes, for sure. There are certainly pros and cons. There are benefits to using it to get instant leads, but like you said, the amount of people that we speak to who have burnt through a lot of budget and not had the enquiries they expected is pretty scary. While we are on the subject of paid, we have obviously spoken about paid social ads and now about PPC with Google or Bing. I am going to throw paid ads on AI platforms into the mix as well. It is not fully rolled out as we are recording this video, but I know that ChatGPT are looking to roll out ChatGPT ads. Claude, Perplexity and other kinds of LLMs might start rolling that out in 2026. I think if you are one of the early adopters and innovators who gets on there early, you could be getting cheap leads or cheap contact form submissions. So it is something to look out for with paid AI listings and ads. I think that could be worth watching in 2026.

Kasra Dash: Next on the list, and this is a little bit out of your control, you obviously have forums where you can get your brand mentioned, like Reddit and Quora. That comes down to what your customers are saying after working with you. Are they actually raving about you? If they are, then that is a very good way of getting other people to recommend you as well. It is a little bit out of your control, but asking for reviews and asking customers to recommend you to friends and other people can obviously generate a decent amount of leads and enquiries too.

James Dooley: Yes, for sure. And the added benefit to places like Reddit is that it gets cited so much now in AI overviews. So when you spoke earlier about AI visibility, if you can get a good volume of positive discussion around the products and services you offer, along with some reviews on there, that is either indirectly or directly going to help your AI visibility. The last one for me is tradesman websites, such as Checkatrade, Bark, Rated People and MyBuilder, or teaming up with a third party lead generation company. Something I would say with all of these practices, and Kaza touched on this earlier, is making certain that you understand your KPIs and your return on ad spend. I think it is very important for business owners doing any sort of digital marketing to track how much time and effort is going into things like running organic social media or paid ads. Everything should have KPIs in place. The same applies to tradesman websites like Checkatrade, Bark, Rated People and MyBuilder. These can all be amazing platforms for generating leads that give you a positive return on investment. If they do, you should continue using them. There are certain lead generation companies out there as well that could generate a lot of leads. They might be using organic SEO, PPC or social media ads to generate those leads. But if they are getting you a positive return on investment, then I am all for using them as part of your digital marketing strategy. I just want to repeat one more time that Fat Rank and Promo SEO do lead generation and they guarantee a return on investment. It is a commission based lead generation service or a performance based lead generation service. So make sure you head over there and fill in the form. That can be one part of generating leads among many. You should be trying to generate your own leads as well. You should never have a single point of failure, and you should always be trying to get diversification. Make sure you head over to Promo SEO or Fat Rank lead generation service as part of your digital marketing efforts in 2026.

Kasra Dash: Thank you very much, Kazwell.