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If you’ve got a local business — or serve as a consultant or web designer for local businesses — then I am pretty confident you will want to read this 44-page guidance.Question: If I own a local business that trades with traditional goods and services, what good is the Internet to me?
Answer: If you live in a city of any size — especially in a place where new people are moving in — people are extremely using the internet to find local businesses. That may not be your method of research, but for many, basically younger people, the internet is their key to knowledge — both local and global.

In July 2004, Nielsen//NetRatings new MegaView Search service stated that 24.5 percent of searchers on major search engines conducted searches that were local in scope, averaging 4.5 searches per searcher. In November 2004, a Kelsey Group-BizRate.com study stated that more than 75 percent of respondents said they had conducted local searches and confirmed that 21 percent of all searches among respondents were local. Using the Internet to find local businesses is now actual tool and can only grow in frequency.

Some of the businesses that can be helped by local Internet marketing include: chiropractor, computer retailer, travel agent, locksmith, massage therapist, insurance agent, real estate agent, mortgage broker, maid service hardware retailer, plumber, auto repair, physician, dentist, florist, limousine service, accountant, auto dealer, lawyer, restaurant, and movers, among others.
Fortunately, for a local business you do not need a big, complex, and expensive website to be helpful. You are not competing with the best of the best nationally; you just need to submit yourself well to local residents and those within driving distance.
This guidance will explain how to use the internet to market a local or regional business. It’s not, however, created to be a dumped down guide for people who know nothing. I shall assume some understanding of how the Internet works (what a domain name is, etc.) and that you’re willing to teach yourself. There is much guidance that’ll explain the basics, so I would not cover all the basics here, but center on the exact Internet marketing methods that are helpful for local businesses.

Nor will this guidance describe all the traditional off-line ways to market your business. You will need to use many of these to market successfully locally — since the Internet is merely one piece (though a growing piece) of the local marketing puzzle. If you need a wonderful guidance on traditional local marketing I heartily recommend Jay Conrad Levinson’s Guerrilla marketing (third edition, Houghton Mifflin, 1999).
But little guidance approaches the Internet from a local marketing viewpoint. The guidance you are reading is created to be a brief, focused, no-hype how-to-do-it guide to marketing a local business on the Internet. It’s meant to be suggestive rather than comprehensive, since every aspect of the internet is changing — especially local Internet advertising — because expect to use this guidance as a jumping off point for the spots that interest you.
My hope for yourself is that you will teach yourself how to do effective Internet marketing for yourself local business and so increase many of new and returning customers 25 percent or like. How is that for a modest, but realistic target?