Small local business - Showing results

I'm new to this game. I've read a ton, but not a lot of actual experience. I'm making mobile sites, regular sites, and selling them like hotcakes. All to local businesses. Auto body, plumbers,restaurants,etc. I get that part, and its not a hard sell.

My question is this: I have a local guy: one-man car repair business. He is good, and he's cheap. I have used him personally a bit, and been very satisfied. He started out advertising only on Craigslist, then started renting space, and is now advertising in all of the local classifieds. Roughly $200 per month, and isn't seeing much work from it.

In a minute I can get him to sign on with me, and offer to "take over his advertising". I can build and optimize his site/mobile site (up-front fee), and sell letting me bring him customers. I can put that site on page one of Google without much problem. I can set up his places listing, put him on FB, Twitter, Hotfrog, LinkedIn, etc. I'll put a nice squeeze page on the front of his site, and I'll manage it all.

In a small local business like this though (town is 30K people, keyword searches somewhere in the 20-100 range) how do I drive people in the door and rationalize him spending his advertising budget with me? SMS isn't going to work, it just isn't that sort of business. Like I said, he would sign with me tomorrow. I still need to be able to deliver.

Thoughts? Anyone doing the monthly "Marketing guy" thing with small local businesses? What are you doing to get results? Thanks in advance...