Potential customers, both business to business and consumer, are now using the Internet as their first port of call when searching for phone numbers, websites or e-mail addresses. A comprehensive list of online local marketing resources is as follows:
- Thomson Local
- Yahoo!
- Brown Book
- Qype
- Yelp
- Scoot
- Trusted Places
- Touch Local
- BT Trade Space
- Marketing Location
- BView
- UK Free Directory
- Touch Target
- City Listings
- Google Place Pages
- Google maps
- Google Adwords
- Yell
- Foursquare
Google is perhaps the most powerful and comprehensive individual resource and in many respects interacts with many of the other. Google Places and Google maps are closely related and often appear in the Google web search results on geographic based searches for hotels, shops, restaurants etc.
Some of the resources listed are specialist local directories. These include Yelp and Qype.
You will notice in the list of resources several social media websites. Although it is early days for social media marketing there is a clear opportunity to be had from local users of Facebook and Twitter. Foursquare is the latest of the social media businesses that are basing themselves on a local geographic platform.
If there is a priority it is to make sure your business is correctly listed on Google Places. You can claim your own Google Place page. This is free. Secondly make sure your Google map location and telephone contact details are correct. This is especially true if you share a similar address with other businesses. Google often relies on other data providers such as Thomson or Yell to gather your details.
Lastly, local marketing should show fairly quick results. You are, after all, competing with a smaller number of competitors. Secondly, customers are are more likely to develop trust with someone who operates close by.
