


Business cards

Passing out business cards is great when you meet people. This might not be your most effective means of finding customers, but it can work if done right.

What should you put on the card?

In addition to your contact information, make sure you list a benefit to your customer. This is critical.

Don’t talk about your business. Instead, tell how the customer how they will benefit from doing business with you. If you have some sort of guarantee that separates you from other companies, you might want to put that.


Direct mail

This is one of the most targeted methods of finding local customers, so you probably want to use it.


Magazine advertising

This is another excellent form of targeted offline advertising. You can advertise in magazines that are specific to your business and area. It is slower than direct mail, as it sometimes takes several months for you ad to appear. However, it might work if you find the right magazine.


Online paid ads

Advertising online is a very effective strategy for finding customers in your area. One of the great features about paid marketing is that most platforms allow you to geo-target, meaning your ad will only appear for people in your area. Most of the major advertising platforms allow you to do this, such as Google Adwords, Yahoo, Facebook, etc.


Google local

This is another excellent option for getting local customers. More and more, people are using Google’s local search engine. Therefore, taking advantage of this is smart.

How do you track each source?

By having separate channels for sending the traffic to. Don’t just send every advertising source to the same webpage.

Instead, have a different landing page for each. This way, you can tell not only how much traffic a source is bringing you, but also the quality of it.

How many advertising methods should you use?

As many as possible. The reason is, you never know which one will work and which will not. Therefore, you will give yourself the most chances of success by taking advantage of as many as you can.

It also reduces your risk.

When you are just relying on one or two advertising sources, and they dry up, you will run out of business. Therefore, having multiple channels bringing you business is the way to go.


The bottom line is, these are five of the best advertising sources to get local business. Test all of them out, and see what works and what doesn’t.