Local marketing is an incredibly important, but often overlooked part of marketing.  It is important to remember that most businesses are small businesses which don’t have the substantial marketing budgets that major companies have.  The tactics these mega companies use also aren’t the ones that will work for small businesses.  For a long time, many of these businesses relied primarily on door hangers and the yellow pages.  In the internet generation there are better, more cost effective ways of marketing locally.

A recent comScore study said that search engines are the primary sources for seeking local services at 31% (above the yellow pages at 30%, online yellow pages at 19%, and local search at 11%).  While the margin between search engines and the yellow pages is small, in the coming years that gap is only going to widen.  A simple ad in the yellow pages won’t draw in business the way it used to.  People aren’t looking in the yellow pages.  They’re searching businesses nearby on their Google or Mapquest maps.  They’re searching for the type of business and their city or county name or zip code.  They’re using their mobile phone to download apps that tell them what they want to know.  For this very reason, small businesses need to learn to use search to their advantage.

Some tactics for where to start building up local followings and using search in your favor:

• Build a good Web site, one that imparts information and answers as many of the questions you get as possible without giving it all away.
• Encourage customers to submit reviews to sites like Citysearch, Yelp, etc.  Getting a few bad reviews is normal, but if your company is sound, the good reviews will follow.  If people see that one company has 20 or 30 reviews and another has zero, most people are more apt to visit the company with the reviews.
• Start SEM.  You can start small, targeting just the metro area, a certain city, or a radius around that city.  Build out specific keywords for your business.  Use company branded keywords, specific industry terms, anything that people associate with your company.  Avoid broad based keywords like “cars” or “restaurant” because those clicks will be expensive and not well targeted to your specific customer base.
• Start a company blog, Twitter account, or build out fan pages on Facebook or Myspace.  Find a sounding board for fans of your business to gather, share information, and keep your company top of mind and at the top of the search engines.

Start with these tips and buzz will grow.  Most companies in the current economy are focusing heavily on finding new customers, but these tips will help you to maintain brand loyalty as well as reaching out to your market.