The 2026 Digital Marketing Strategy That Actually Works for Oldham-Based Companies

James Dooley: If you're a company based in Oldham and looking to grow in 2026, but you're uncertain which digital marketing strategies you should be doubling down on to get more customers or more enquiries, today I am going to talk through the different channels and platforms you could be using. Should you be teaming up with a local SEO agency based in Oldham or a PPC agency based in Oldham? Should you be trying to find a lead generation service that specialises in generating Oldham enquiries? These are all questions we get asked quite a lot from business owners and entrepreneurs based in the Oldham and Greater Manchester area. But before we get started on what digital marketing strategies people should be using to grow their business, Kazra, what advice would you give before they start spending any money on digital marketing strategies?

Kasra Dash: For Oldham based businesses, going back to previous conversations we have had with Oldham based companies, the biggest issue we see is that they do not have a predictable system in place. Some companies are spending £10,000 on PPC and at the end of it they are saying they have not had any leads, or that the leads they did generate were not good quality. You need to make certain that you have a predictable system in place for situations like that, otherwise you are just burning money. The first thing I would look at is how much money has been spent per digital marketing campaign. Let us say you are spending money on PPC, Facebook ads and SEO. You need to know exactly how much money is going into all three of those channels. The next thing you want to do is work out how many leads are being generated by all three of those channels, and separately as well. After that you need to look at the contact rate. For example, PPC might have some great contact rates, whereas Facebook leads might not be contactable for two or three days, or you might not be able to get hold of them at all. They might fill in a form and then forget about you. So you need to know what the contact rate is. The last thing, and probably the most important, is from the contacted leads, how many are actually turning into paying customers. Leads generated and paying customers are two completely different things. You also want to know how much money you have actually got back and what your return on spend looks like. If you have spent £1,000, have you lost money or made money? What have the profit margins been? Once you have that system in place, marketing becomes much more fun and much more predictable. You can then scale campaigns or channels up. Maybe you are spending £2,000 a month on Facebook ads and getting good results, so you increase it to £4,000. James, for Oldham based businesses, what would you recommend as the first marketing channel they should look at?

James Dooley: Step number one for me has got to be branding or brand SEO and making certain that you are looking good online and have 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 you can be doing. It will improve your conversion rate on paid ads or social media. Any leads you are getting will convert better if, at the eleventh hour, they 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 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 should also work out what these platforms say about your competitors and then try to improve your own position. Some people call it AI SEO, some call it GEO and some call it LLM optimisation. This is going to be a big thing in 2026 and in the years ahead 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 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 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 use a third party lead generation company to top up and start generating you some leads for your business to grow in 2026. The next one 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 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 one hundred review deficit. To get those reviews, you need leads. It is one of those chicken and egg situations. I think it is still good for personal branding or company branding, so always try to get the Google Maps listing, but know the pros and cons as well.

James Dooley: For certain. If you are in a local area, you want to try to get those local map listings. For me, you need to be omni channel 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 area you cover. So, for example, plumbing in Manchester. Create a page for that. Hopefully then share that on the Google Business Profile as well. When trying to get organic rankings, there is search volume out there for the services you offer, or it could be blog posts that you could be doing 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 to 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 have not been active for three years. That is not going to drive sales. But if you can do how to content, guides or before and after posts, people will see you on social media and they will click through to figure 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. You want to be consistently uploading, 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 massive advocate of the small daily budget strategy that people talk about. If you are going to be taking the time to post every day like you mentioned for organic social media, then just spend a few pounds on those posts and boost them. Use case studies and any awards that you have won for reputation and start boosting that content. You can also be running 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. That is basically the sponsored results. If you search for a service, it is 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 and the quality has not been good. 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 absolutely love it or absolutely hate it is probably 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 deemed as click fraud. You also need a high converting landing page. You need to KPI your sales team so when a PPC lead comes in, that 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 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 to 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, obviously we have spoken about paid social ads and now 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 doing 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. I think if you are one of the early adopters and innovators to get on there, 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, then that is a very good source for getting other people to recommend you as well. It is a little bit out of your control, but asking for reviews and asking people to recommend you to friends and other people can generate a decent amount of leads and enquiries.

James Dooley: The add on benefit to places like Reddit is that it gets cited so much now in AI overviews. So when you were speaking earlier about AI visibility, if you can get a positive volume of people talking about the products and services you offer and 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, so sites like Checkatrade, Bark, 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 be tracking how much time and effort is being put into running organic social media or paid ads. Everything should have KPIs in place. This is exactly the same then with tradesman websites like Checkatrade, Bark, Rated People and MyBuilder. These could all be amazing platforms to generate leads that get you a positive return on investment. If they do, you should continue using those platforms. 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. 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 Fat Rank 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 on 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 as well. You should never have a single point of failure and you should be trying to get that diversification. Make sure you head on over to Promo SEO or the Fat Rank lead generation service as part of your digital marketing efforts in 2026.

Kasra Dash: Thank you very much, James.