Why Most Surveyor Marketing Fails in 2026 And What Smart Owners Do Instead

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 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, what I would recommend is checking profitability. You want to know exactly where the leads are coming from, how much money you've spent per lead, and which channels the most profitable leads are coming from as well.

Once you actually have those figures in place, that's when digital marketing becomes a lot more predictable. You can switch certain campaigns off that are not working for your company or double down on certain campaigns as well. So for surveyors, which channels would you recommend, James?

James Dooley: Branding or brand SEO and making certain that you're looking good online and have a strong reputation.

I think everything needs to start with the foundations of a positive brand SERP for 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 that you're getting, the conversion rate will be better. If, at the 11th hour, they are deciding who they are going to go with, branding becomes very important. I would say that's the first thing people need to get right for all digital marketing strategies.

Kasra Dash: 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 positive or negative? Also trying to figure out what it says about your competitors and obviously trying to improve that is really important. Some people call it AI SEO, some people call it GEO, and some people call it LLM optimisation, but this is going to be a big thing in 2026 and in the years to come as well.

James Dooley: I think that's 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 Promo SEO, which do commission-based lead generation services for UK companies looking to grow. I think it's important to look at your own digital marketing efforts to generate your own leads, but also if you can use freelancers and outsource some as well, 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. Promo SEO also does a very similar performance-based lead generation service as well. You might want to fill in the form there and check whether you can get 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 Maps listings. This is 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 pro is that once it is ranking, you are going to consistently generate leads. However, to get from nowhere, let's say you do not have a Google Maps listing at all, to ranking in position number one, the issue is there might be a 60 or 100 review deficit. To get those reviews, you need leads. It is one of those chicken-and-egg situations. I think it is good for personal branding or branding of your company, so always try and get the Google Maps listing, but you should also know the pros and cons.

James Dooley: For certain. If you're in a local area, you want to try and 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 service pages for the areas you cover, like plumbing in Manchester, and create a page for that. Hopefully, you can then share that on the Google Business Profile you mentioned. Trying to get organic rankings is important because of the amount of search volume from people searching for different services that you offer. It could also involve blog posts that you could be doing as well. There are different strategies you can use, but ideally you want good quality content, build topical authority, and get third-party backlinks to power up the site and improve organic SEO rankings. I think that's another big part you need to be doing as part of your digital marketing strategies 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 maybe published four or five posts on their Instagram profile and then not been active for three years. That's not going to drive sales. But if you can do how-to content, guides or before and afters, people will see you on social media and click through to learn more about you and fill in the contact form. The caveat to organic social media is that, yes, it's free to do. It's 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: For sure. On the subject of social media, paid social ads are massive as well.

I'm a massive advocate of the dollar-a-day strategy people talk about. If you are going to be taking the time to post regularly, like you mentioned for organic social media, spending a few pounds on boosting those posts can help. Use case studies and any awards you've won to improve reputation 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. Different places like Meta, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest and even Reddit can all be used 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, which is PPC. Google Ads or Bing Ads, wherever.

That's basically the sponsored results. If you search for a service, it appears above local SEO. Both myself and James have spoken to so many business owners who have spent £10,000, £15,000 or £20,000 on PPC and not had a single result. Others may have had a few leads, but they were not quality leads. Then you have other businesses that have spent hundreds of thousands on it and say it is the best thing that's ever happened to their business. The reason why people either absolutely love it or absolutely hate it is probably down to how it has been set up. There are so many nuances to PPC. For example, having a proactive negative keyword list and making certain that you have banned IPs in place. Your competitors could be clicking on your ads, which is called click fraud. You also need a high-converting landing page and a sales team that is KPI-driven. When a PPC lead comes in, that should be one of the first priorities for the 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 really good sales team, a strong landing page, an up-to-date negative keyword list and click fraud software, then it will probably perform well for you. Again, just understand the pros and cons of PPC.

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

There are benefits to using PPC to get instant leads, but like you said, the number of people we speak to who have burnt through a large budget and not had quality enquiries is pretty scary. While we are on the subject of paid marketing, we spoke about paid social ads and PPC with Google or Bing. I'm going to throw paid ads on AI platforms into the mix. It is not fully rolled out as we are recording this video, but I know ChatGPT is looking to roll out ChatGPT ads. Claude, Perplexity and other LLMs might start rolling this out in 2026. If you're 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 become important 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, such as Reddit and Quora.

That very much comes down to aftercare. Where are the customers you've dealt with previously? Are they raving about you? If they are, then that becomes a very good source of recommendations from other people. Again, 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 as well.

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

When you mentioned AI visibility earlier, if you can get lots of people positively talking about your products and services and leaving reviews there, it will help with AI visibility. The last one for me is tradesman websites, such as Checkatrade, Bark, or teaming up with a third-party lead generation company. Something I would say with all these practices, and Kasra touched on this earlier, is making certain that 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 running 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 could all be amazing platforms for generating leads that provide a positive return on investment. If they do, you should continue using those platforms. There are certain lead generation companies out there 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 with regards to FatRank and Promo SEO. They do lead generation and 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 as well. You should never have a single point of failure and should always be trying to diversify. Make sure you head over to Promo SEO or FatRank lead generation services as part of your digital marketing efforts in 2026. Thank you very much, Kasra.