General Business: Local Marketing

Find the local websites. There are a few around me that if I needed to advertise I would go to grnow.com , weRgr.com , mlive.com

Seach the little free "events" circulars at bars and stuff. They usually have good resources to find other advertisers, or you could advertise in there themselves.

It depends on what you're doing. If you're in an area of expertise where you can give general knowledge to the public that will in turn generate leads, then I suggest doing free seminars on a monthly or quarterly basis.

One example: if you're an SEO expert, give an SEO 101 course to small business owners free of charge. Hook up with your local small business groups to advertise. Usually they have monthly lunch meetings for stuff like that and are always looking for good speakers. It's a good way to establish yourself in the community and to soft market your services.

Posted By: letutor

The problem with offering free seminars is that the people are there because it's free.

I see the potential but I think it would be hard to convert a lot of these people?

I don't agree. There's free stuff going on right now probably right down the road from me. I'm not there because whatever it is...I don't know of it, and I havent actively searched for it.

If there was a free seminar on how to groom a dog - I wouldnt go. If there was a free SEO seminar I probably would.

Well you made it sound like ppl just go because its something free to go to.

And yes I do think ppl would give you enough leads or be direct customers to warrant a half hour to an hour lunch seminar for some very connected local business ppl.

This type of marketing's success has many variables, some of which have already been described above. Basically, this works well if:

a) local people in your market need your product/service
b) they will get something out of understanding the basics, but leave realizing that they need an expert's help to fully realize the benefits of using such product/service
c) you can easily attract these people to a seminar, through existing communication channels (eg. business networks, chamber of commerce, non-profits, etc.)

It depends on what exactly it is that you're trying to market?

If you're trying to start a local service-oriented site like Craigslist, they simply networked out in one town (SF), and then expanded. Their "expansion" simply consists of adding a new town to the database (with little marketing in the respective town).

Word of mouth referrals? With PropertyPix I plan to give my clients $50 if they refer 5 people to me that end up as closed sales ($10/lead). They get a heavily discounted service, I get additional revenue for cheap (especially for example, if they only get me 3 leads that end up as closed sales. no payout then.)