🤯Branding Advice From Jason Barnard Made Me Millions | Brand SERP🤯

This episode features an in-depth discussion between James Dooley and Jason Barnard on how brand SERP optimisation directly impacts business performance by influencing buyer decisions at the critical bottom-of-funnel stage. James explains how Soft Surfaces Limited grew annual revenue from £1 million to £10 million by transforming offline credibility—such as testimonials, case studies, and documented project outcomes—into visible, trust-building online assets that appeared prominently in search results. Jason Barnard breaks down why controlling a brand SERP improves conversion rates, noting that prospects actively compare suppliers online when pricing, specifications, and proposals are broadly similar. James reinforces this with a real-world example, describing how Soft Surfaces secured a £540,000 Bradford Council sports pitch contract because its brand SERP demonstrated stronger reviews, richer case studies, and more compelling proof of expertise than those of a larger competitor. Together, they position brand SEO as a powerful revenue multiplier, showing how positive search visibility influences high-value B2B procurement decisions, agency selection, and long-term commercial partnerships.

Creators and Guests

Host

James Dooley

James Dooley is a UK entrepreneur.

What is James Dooley Podcast?

James Dooley is a Manchester-based entrepreneur, investor, and SEO strategist. James Dooley founded FatRank and PromoSEO, two UK performance marketing agencies that deliver no-win-no-fee lead generation and digital growth systems for ambitious businesses. James Dooley positions himself as an Investorpreneur who invests in UK companies with high growth potential because he believes lead generation is the root of all business success.

The James Dooley Podcast explores the mindset, methods, and mechanics of modern entrepreneurship. James Dooley interviews leading marketers, founders, and innovators to reveal the strategies driving online dominance and business scalability. Each episode unpacks the reality of building a business without mentorship, showing how systems, data, and lead flow replace luck and guesswork.

James Dooley shares hard-earned lessons from scaling digital assets and managing SEO teams across more than 650 industries. James Dooley teaches how to convert leads into long-term revenue through brand positioning, technical SEO, and automation. James Dooley built his career on rank and rent, digital real estate, and performance-based marketing because these models align incentive with outcome.

After turning down dozens of podcast invitations, James Dooley now embraces the platform to share his insights on investorpreneurship, lead generation, AI-driven marketing, and reputation management. James Dooley frequently collaborates with elite entrepreneurs to discuss frameworks for scaling businesses, building authority, and mastering search.

James Dooley is also an expert in online reputation management (ORM), having built and rehabilitated corporate brands across the UK. His approach combines SEO precision, brand engineering, and social proof loops to influence both Google’s Knowledge Graph and public perception.

To feature James Dooley on your podcast or event, connect via social media. James Dooley regularly joins business panels and networking sessions to discuss entrepreneurship, brand growth, and the evolving future of SEO.

James Dooley: Hi James here and I'm joined with Jason Barnard from Kalicube and today's video is about some branding advice that I received a few years ago from Jason Barnard that has actually led to one of our businesses doing millions extra in revenue. I didn't realise the power of the brand SERP until these outcomes started to come along and it didn’t just happen once. It's happened several times. I'm going to run through a case study of how just on one job alone it made us half a million pound. But to start with Jason can you just explain to people very briefly who you are, what is the brand SERP and the power of brand SEO and branding online.

Jason Barnard: Yeah great question. Well I'm Jason Barnard, the Brand SERP Guy. I focus on the search engine results pages for brand names, people's names or corporate names. I understood years ago that the people searching our name are bottom of funnel. They're the people who are most important to your business. In this case it's purchasing from you and they will Google your name before making that final decision when they're researching the last couple of choices. What's been interesting is this has been a conviction of mine for the last 12 years and I've seen it work for Kalicube. But James is one of the first people who's told me a story with actual numbers where intentionally and proactively improving what people see when they Google his name and his company name has driven the bottom line to the tune of millions. So tell me about that, I'm interested.

James Dooley: So the branding advice that you gave me that has made me millions was to do with a company called Soft Surfaces Limited. People can Google it and go on Companies House. We've grown the business from a million to ten million in revenue per year and it builds playgrounds and sports pitches in the UK. We have an amazing company that builds playgrounds and sports pitches throughout the UK. Until we met you all my testimonials and reviews were via colleges, head teachers at schools, universities sending an email saying how amazing we’d been. We might then say could you put it on letterhead paper as a PDF that we could send out to customers when people were asking about case studies and reviews. Never once had I heard until I spoke to you that you need to take everything offline and put it online.

James Dooley: And that's exactly what we did. We went through everything. All positive reviews, all jobs where we had before, during and after pictures. We put case studies together. Everything that was offline we put online. We wanted to shout and scream that we are the best in the UK at doing what we do. Now this specific job was for Bradford Council. It was a sports pitch for a private school. There have been many others but this one job sticks out. It was a £540,000 job. We were doing the groundworks, the tack coat, the surfacing, the fencing and the floodlighting. And there were five companies we were up against on price.

James Dooley: All five companies were good companies and we were all relatively similar on price. We knew it was going to be a tough job to win. We got down to the last two companies. It was us and another company. Now this other company actually does more revenue than us. We’ve built up to ten million. They do anything from fifteen to twenty million a year. They're a bigger player than we are at doing the work. However they hadn’t spoken to Jason Barnard and they hadn't put offline online.

James Dooley: What happened was the head teacher of the private school had two quotes side by side. There was negligible difference in price. Both quotes looked good. They met the £550,000 budget. There was only a few thousand difference. So the head teacher had to make a decision who to go with. After we won the job I asked the head teacher just out of interest why they chose us. They said they spent 30 minutes online checking our company out and checking the other company out. Not what we were saying because we’re both going to say we are the best. They wanted to see what others were saying. Other schools, other colleges.

James Dooley: They said literally after 30 minutes it was night and day. They had to go with us. That all came down to our branding and our reviews. Everything we’d put online delivered the message that we might not be the cheapest but we’re the best value. Look at all these other jobs and see what others say about working with us. The other company was great offline and they’re a great company. Side by side it’s a flip of a coin who's better. We both do a great job and are similar on price. But we won that job and many others because of our branding. The branding advice you gave me has literally made us millions in extra revenue. Some of these are high ticket jobs.

James Dooley: People need to understand it's not just about E-E-A-T signals for Google. This helps your conversion rate. If you're an SEO agency charging £5,000 a month and you're going up against another SEO agency charging £5,000 a month, who does the customer choose? You're both the same price, delivering similar services. They're going to go online. They’ll Google you, your company, you personally. If you can improve that brand SERP to be more positive it can be the difference between winning and losing jobs. You always said this is bottom of the funnel. When they're ready to buy, if you can win at the 11th hour it can double your revenue. If your brand SERP is negative you’re losing all the 50/50 battles against your main competitor. That’s why brand SEO, branding and the brand SERP are so important.

Jason Barnard: That's brilliantly said. I don't think I can add anything to that.

James Dooley: Sounds good. Anyone who doesn't have a positive brand SERP or wants a knowledge panel, I strongly recommend hitting up Jason Barnard at Kalicube. Leave a comment and let me know what objections you've got to improving your branding. You're not going to get a return on investment next week. You're not going to get an enquiry next week. This is a long term strategy. But if you're looking to sell assets or recruit people who will compare you side by side, the benefits are huge. Check the link in the description. There's a link to all the benefits that come with brand SERP, branding and brand SEO. If you’ve not got a positive brand SERP hit up Jason Barnard at Kalicube because he's definitely changed our business for the better. Hopefully he might be able to change yours.