How Surveyors Can Build Predictable Leads Every Month in 2026

James Dooley: If you're a surveyor looking to grow in 2026, but you're uncertain what digital marketing strategies to focus on, should you be teaming up with an SEO agency or a PPC agency for your surveying company?

These are all questions we get asked quite a lot when looking to scale your digital marketing efforts. But before we get started, Kasra, if someone owns a surveying company, what piece of advice would you give them?

Kasra Dash: For surveying-based companies, I would recommend checking profitability.

You want to know exactly where the leads are coming from, how much money you have spent per lead, and which channels the most profitable leads are coming from. Once you have those figures in place, digital marketing becomes a lot more predictable. You can switch off certain campaigns that are not working for your company or double down on campaigns that are working. So for surveyors, which channels would you recommend, James?

James Dooley: Branding or brand SEO and making certain that you look good online with a strong reputation.

Everything needs to start with a positive brand SERP around who you are and what you do. A SERP stands for search engine results page. Getting your branding right across the board can lead into other digital marketing strategies. It will improve your conversion rate on paid ads, social media and any leads you generate. If someone is deciding who to go with at the final stage, branding becomes very important. That is the first thing people need to get right for all digital marketing strategies.

Kasra Dash: My next strategy is AI visibility.

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 positive or negative? You also need to figure out what they say about your competitors and improve your own position. Some people call it AI SEO, some people call it GEO, and some people call it LLM optimisation. This is going to be a big thing in 2026 and in the years to come.

James Dooley: I think that is 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 FatRank or PromoSEO, which do commission-based lead generation services for UK companies looking to grow. It is important to look at your own digital marketing efforts to generate your own leads, but if you can also use freelancers and outsource some work, you get that diversification of leads. Head over to FatRank.com, fill in the form and see whether they can help you with a no-risk supply of enquiries. PromoSEO also does a very similar performance-based lead generation service. You might want to fill in the form there and check whether a third-party lead generation company can top up your enquiries and start generating leads for your business to grow in 2026.

Kasra Dash: Next on the list is Google Business Profiles and Google Maps listings.

This is 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 ranking, you are going to consistently generate leads. However, if you do not have a Google Maps listing at all, getting it to rank in position one can be difficult. You might have a 60 or 100-review deficit, and to get those reviews, you need leads first. It is like the chicken and the egg. I think it is good for personal branding and company branding, so always try to get the Google Maps listing, but you should also understand the pros and cons.

James Dooley: For certain. If you're in a local area, you want to try to get those local Maps 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 get it ranking better? If you are in a local area, you might want to create pages for your service and the area you cover, such as surveying services in Manchester. Hopefully, you can then share that on the Google Business Profile you mentioned. You want to get organic rankings because people are searching for the different services you offer. You could also create blog posts. There are different strategies you can use, but ideally you want good quality content, to build topical authority and to get third-party backlinks to power up the site and improve organic SEO rankings. That is another big part of your digital marketing strategy in 2026.

Kasra Dash: The next one ties back to what you were saying before, James, which is organic social media.

Organic social media is more of a numbers game. Try to create good content that your audience would actually view. I see this time and time again where brands have published maybe four or five posts on Instagram and have not been active for three years. That is not going to drive sales. If you can create how-to content, guides or before-and-after posts, people will see you on social media, 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, but it is very much a numbers game. You want to be consistently uploading, maybe not every day, but at least three or four times a week.

James Dooley: For sure. On the subject of social media, paid social ads are massive as well.

I am a massive advocate of the dollar-a-day strategy that people talk about. If you are taking the time to post regularly for organic social media, spend a few pounds on those posts and boost them. Get case studies, awards you have won and reputation-led content, then start boosting that. You can also run retargeting ads. If someone has clicked through to your website, you can run retargeting through paid social. You can run paid ads on platforms like Meta, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and even Reddit. 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, which is PPC.

That could be Google Ads, Bing Ads or sponsored results on other platforms. If you search for a service, PPC appears above local SEO. James and I have spoken to so many business owners who have spent £10,000, £15,000 or £20,000 on PPC and have not had a single result. Some might have had a few leads, but the leads were not good quality. Then you have 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 love it or hate it usually comes down to how it has been set up. There are so many nuances to PPC. For example, you need a proactive negative keyword list and a set of banned IPs because competitors could be clicking your ads, which is click fraud. You also need a high-converting landing page and you need to KPI your sales team. When a PPC lead comes in, it should be one of the first priorities for the sales team to contact. There are all these different nuances, and if you're not on the ball with PPC, it is probably not going to work for your business. However, if you have a well-refined sales team, a good landing page, an up-to-date negative keyword list and click fraud software, PPC will probably perform well for you. Again, just know the pros and cons of PPC.

James Dooley: For sure. There are certainly pros and cons.

There are benefits to using PPC to get instant leads, but the number of people we speak to who have burnt a lot of budget without getting enquiries is pretty scary. While we are on the subject of paid ads, we have spoken about paid social ads and PPC with Google or Bing. I am also going to throw paid ads on AI platforms into the mix. It is not fully rolled out as we are doing this video, but I know ChatGPT is looking to roll out ChatGPT ads. Claude, Perplexity and other LLMs might start rolling ads out in 2026. If you're one of the early adopters and innovators to get on there, you could get cheap leads or cheap contact form submissions. Paid AI listings and ads could be something to look out for 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 very much comes down to aftercare. Where are the customers you have dealt with previously? Are they raving and shouting about you? If they are, that is a very good resource for getting other people to recommend you. 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 generate a decent amount of leads and enquiries.

James Dooley: For sure. The added benefit of places like Reddit is that they are getting cited so much now in AI overviews.

When you spoke earlier about AI visibility, if you can get lots of people talking positively about your products and services, and you can get reviews on there, it will indirectly or directly help with AI visibility. The last one for me is tradesman websites, such as Checkatrade and Bark, or teaming up with a third-party lead generation company. Something I would say with all these practices, as Kasra touched on earlier, is to make sure you understand your KPIs and your ROAS, which is 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 things like organic social media or paid ads. Everything should have KPIs in place. This is exactly the same with tradesman websites like Checkatrade, Bark, Rated People and MyBuilder. These can all be amazing platforms for generating leads that produce a positive return on investment. If they do, you should continue using those platforms. There are also lead generation companies that can generate a lot of leads. They could be using organic SEO, PPC or social media ads to generate those leads. If they are getting you a positive return on investment, I am all for it as part of your digital marketing strategy. I want to repeat one more time with regards to FatRank and PromoSEO. They 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 just be one part of generating leads among many. You should be trying to generate your own leads too. You should never have a single point of failure, and you should be trying to get diversification. Make sure you head over to PromoSEO or FatRank lead generation service as part of your digital marketing efforts in 2026. Thank you very much, Kasra.