By Anthony Kirlew

Whether your business is local or national, chances are people in your backyard need your products and services. The only question is "can they find you?" With that in mind, here are 7 local business marketing strategies to consider.

1. Search Engine Local Business Profiles.
   
   These are free to set up at the 3 major search engines (Google, Yahoo, and BING) and a missed opportunity if you are not taking advantage of them.
   
   
2. Local City Guides.
   
   These are plenty of people who rely exclusively on the reviews of local city guides and it is usually free to list your business there. A great practice is to let your customers know that you are there and ask them to rate your business.
   
   
3. Get Mobile.
   
   Mobile search is growing at a very rapid pace. If you are not prepared to come up in mobile searches, that is a great place to target as the next phase of your online marketing plan.
   
   
4. Optimize Your Website for Local Terms.
   
   In order to rank well locally, it is ideal to use your location (i.e. city and state) in your websites title tags and other search engine coding.
   
   
5. Paid Local Search.
   
   Did you know that you can tell the pay per click search engines to only send you visitors from your local region? Well it's true! Many people don't employ paid search because they "don't want visitors from all over." Thankfully you can control where the visitors come from with paid search.
   
   
6. Social Media Marketing.
   
   Many small businesses are getting on board with marketing on sites like Facebook and YouTube because they are free platforms. I can tell you first hand, it is a great way to build a local business presence in addition to having a local website and a blog.
   
   
7. Text Message Marketing.
   
   This is a cutting edge strategy which can help keep your brand in front of local customers that have asked you to stay in touch with them and let them know of your special offers and events.

Anthony Kirlew is the founder of a.k.a. Internet Marketing (an online marketing consulting firm) and the author of The Internet Marketing Guide for Small Business. Although he works with businesses of all sizes, much of his work is devoted to local search engine marketing for small businesses.