James Dooley: If you're a company based in Luton and you're looking to grow with digital marketing strategies in 2026, what different services or strategies should you be using? Should you be doing AI SEO with ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity or Gemini? Should you be trying to team up with a Luton based SEO agency or a PPC agency based in Luton? There are all different types of strategies that you could be using. But before people start spending money on digital marketing, Kazra, what advice would you give to business owners and entrepreneurs who are based in Luton?

Kasra Dash: The biggest piece of advice that I would give to Luton based businesses or business owners is to set up some KPIs. I want to know exactly how much money I am spending per channel. I want to know how many leads I am generating per channel and what the contact rates of those leads are. The last thing is how many of those leads have actually turned into paying customers for the business. Once I have those figures in place, digital marketing becomes a lot more predictable and a lot more enjoyable as well. So James, what would be the first digital marketing channel that you would recommend to a Luton based business?

James Dooley: Step number one for me has got to be branding or brand SEO and making certain that you are looking good online. You need a strong reputation. I think everything needs to start there. The foundations need to begin 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 are getting are more likely to convert because at the eleventh hour, when people are deciding who to go with, branding becomes very important. I would say that is the first thing people need to get right for all digital marketing strategies.

James Dooley: My next strategy is AI visibility. I feel like more and more companies are looking into this. 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 work out what it says about your competitors and then try to improve your own position. Some people call it AI SEO. Some people call it GEO. Some people call it LLM optimisation. This is going to be a big thing in 2026 and in the years to come.

Kasra Dash: I think that is a huge strategy people need to be looking at with artificial intelligence. More and more people are using AI. The next one for me is filling in the form at FatRank 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 use some freelancers and outsource some work as well, you get 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 offer a very similar performance based lead generation service that you might want to fill in the form for as well. It is worth checking whether you can use a third party lead generation company to top up and start generating leads for your business to grow in 2026.

Kasra Dash: Next on the list is Google Business Profiles, so Google Map listings. This is like local SEO where you try to get more reviews and build out your Google Business Profile in your local area. There are pros and cons to this. The biggest pro is that once it is actually 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, the issue is that there might be a sixty or hundred review deficit. To get those reviews, you need leads. It is one of those chicken and egg situations. Personally, I think it is still good for personal branding or company branding, so always try to get the Google Maps listing right, but know the pros and cons as well.

James Dooley: For sure. If you are in a local area, you want to try to get those local map listings. For me, you need to be omnichannel and omnipresent. The next part is SEO in general, so organic SEO. Can you build up your website to try to get it ranking better? If you are in a local area, you might want to target your service with the area you cover. For example, plumbing in Manchester. Create a page for that, then hopefully share that on the Google Business Profile. The goal is to get organic rankings because there is search volume out there for the different services 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 power up the site and get those organic SEO rankings. I think that is another big part of digital marketing strategies in 2026.

Kasra Dash: The next one, which ties back to what you were saying before, James, 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 brands 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 create how to content, guides or before and after posts, people will see you on social platforms and then 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, unlike PPC for example, but it is very much a numbers game. You want to be uploading consistently, maybe not every day, but at least three or four times a week.

James Dooley: 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. If you are taking the time to post every day, like you mentioned for organic social media, then it makes sense to spend a few pounds on those posts and boost them. Use case studies and any awards you have won as part of your reputation building and start boosting that content. You can also run retargeting ads. If anyone has clicked through to your website, you can run retargeting, which is paid social as well. Platforms like Meta, so Facebook and Instagram, plus Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and even Reddit can all work for paid ads. I think paid social media is still an untapped market for digital marketing strategies.

Kasra Dash: The next one is probably a love hate relationship, and that is PPC. Google AdWords or doing it on Bing, wherever. These are the sponsored results that sit above local SEO. James and I have spoken to so many business owners who have spent ten, fifteen or twenty thousand pounds on it and not had a single result, or they might have had a few leads but the quality has been poor. On the other side, you have 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 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, which is called click fraud. You also need a high converting landing page and you need to KPI your sales team so that when a PPC lead comes in, it becomes one of the first priorities they deal with. There are all these different nuances 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 strong 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, know the pros and cons of PPC.

James Dooley: 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 we speak to who have burnt a lot of budget and not had the enquiries they expected is pretty scary. While we are on the subject of paid, we have spoken about paid social ads and now PPC with Google or Bing. I am going to throw in paid ads on AI platforms as well. It is not fully rolled out as we are recording this video, but I know that ChatGPT is looking to roll out ChatGPT ads. Claude, Perplexity and other LLMs might start rolling it out in 2026. If you are one of the early adopters and innovators who gets on there first, you could be getting cheap leads or cheap contact form submissions. It is something to look out for with paid AI listings and ads. I think that could be something to watch in 2026.

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

James Dooley: The add on benefit to places like Reddit is that they get cited so much now in AI overviews. So when you were speaking earlier about AI visibility, if you can get positive discussion around the products and services that you offer, plus some reviews on there, it is either indirectly or directly going to help you with 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. It is very important for business owners doing any sort of digital marketing to track how much time and effort is being put into 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 could all be amazing platforms to generate leads that produce a positive return on investment. If they do, you should continue using them.

James Dooley: There are certain lead generation companies out there as well that could generate 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, then I am all for it as part of your digital marketing strategies. I just want to repeat one more time that FatRank and Promo SEO do lead generation and they guarantee a return on investment. It is a commission based lead generation service or performance based lead generation service. Make sure you head over there and fill in the form. That could be one part of generating leads among many. You should be trying to generate your own 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 the FatRank lead generation service as part of your digital marketing efforts in 2026.

Kasra Dash: Thank you very much, James.