Offlining in small/tiny markets

Which country are you from ?
Offline consulting is not only about google rankings.
They are so many things you can do that can help business owners
and one of them is branding... lets say a company is new or entering a new market
one of the things they will need to compete is to gain a brand name and gain some
market share right and this is where you can come in by helping them
1 dominate the search engines
2 Do fanpages
3 Google places
etc they are many services you can provide.
One of the things you will need to do is some research before you go to see any clients,
so you might need to find an industry with some high search results and high value per lead and this will justify what you will charge your clients. I hope this helps

There is so much more to offline than just getting a client ranked. You may find that your prospects don't even have a website, or don't know anything about marketing online or off. Depending on the infrastructure of your country, you could tap a market of 5,000 people really easily.

Offer more than just website services. Offer business cards, fliers, direct mail, e-mail marketing. Most of this can be done through subcontractors or outsourcing quite easily. Form strategic partnerships, such as partnering with a local print shop, you will get them more volume in the form of business card and fliers and the like if they give you a discounted rate, then you charge a similar rate to your clients as they would charge and you keep the difference.

Maybe even study some media advertising and offer those services. You can pm me and I can get you some great information on radio, tv, and print advertising as that is my background, no opt-in or payment required.

Know that it has less to do with the size of your market and more to do with the need. My town has 3700 people in it, with surrounding areas that number reaches 16,000, but most of the local businesses do not have any online presence, and that is why I am offering offline here.

Everything that has been said above... not knowing where you're from but think of what Groupons is doing targeting business's with coupons.. and offline doesn't necessarily mean YOU are stuck with one location...

1. I bet nobody has seriously looked at your country, so I'm assuming there are a ton of great domain names still available

2. It's much easier to be a big fish in a small pond. A bit of good marketing and you can very quickly become THE guy in your country business owners think of when it comes to marketing help

3. All this specialization means premium pricing. You're there, you have local knowledge, offer more and charge appropriately

No matter where you are geographically based, "Offline Consulting" or "Offline Marketing" as its fondly called using the language of people with an IM outlook to life, is really about Business Development and Marketing.

When you consider it in this light you become aware of more opportunities than you can handle.

BAYO

Just because you reside in a certain country, doesn't mean you are only limited to conducting business in that country. This is the internet. The World Wide Web. You are free to associate yourself with anyone, anywhere.
You could hire sales reps in a different country with a larger population. Then pay them via PayPal.
Also note, that the methods described in the previous posts

Don't forget to look at the trends. Even if people are not looking online in your country as much as some other countries, it will be moving more towards that. If you establish yourself as the expert now, you will have more and more business as more people move online.

how strategic of you haha, but i completely agree, offline offers so much to any client that owns any business. More and more people go to the internet everyday to find things that they need, and the earlier in the better off you will end up here

The range of items or services we can offer to local businesses is one of the reasons I like offline sales as well as online. Once you think beyond selling search rankings, you will be see the same thing.
Think about setting up email
facebook
twitter
wordpress
product specific blogs
articles
reviews of products
etc , but all for that one particular client's business. You won't need to worry about your location as much.

Hope that helps !

Regardless of the size of the population biz owners love to say, "We're ranked #1 on google for __________."

Plus the whole email marketing side of things for local businesses is HUGE.

I'm with Bayo.

Even though I've lurked for a long time around WF, I actually get irritated with people who yakk about SEO and IM in relation to getting "offline" businesses interested in you.

Repeat after me:

Traditional, Brick-and-Mortar Business Owners Don't Know From SEO, and Don't Care, Neither.

Now, if you can tell them how you're going to help them make more MONEY, they'll be all ears. Don't assume that they will automatically connect "first page of Google" to more sales. If they have a website (maybe they don't?), and it's not interesting for visitors, and has no "call to action" that actually resonates and pulls in leads, you can be "first page of Google" till the cows come home and it won't matter.