How would you guys promote this?

You could put an ad in the local newspaper. You might find some boss of a company who is looking for your kind of services

Local business events can be a great source of contacts if a local clientele is your target. You can also try Google's local search, which can assist a lot in terms of providing targeted organic traffic.

The online classified sites might also be another option to try out - just make sure to target the placement well.

Hope that helps

Flyers, and I'd go knock on some doors. This is a local thing right? if they know you and you know them, it's easier for you to get something going.

-- you're totally right, thanks for this, definitely the most logical answer! I didn't mention but we do do some offline advertising, mailers etc at the moment, but are a lot less experienced with online advertising so this is something we wanted to try out

-- thanks very much for these ideas!! Going to do some research into Google Local search.

I personally thought that advertising on actual business directories themselves -- banner ad placements rather than putting a listing in there, I mean -- might work, as we are targeting the little businesses that are going on those directories trying to get a web presence/enhance their existing one.

But I have not come across any business directories looking like they offer ad space. Am i being stupid or has anyone encountered a business directory that does offer ads??

Thanks!

Cold calling, direct mail and door knocking are your best bet.

I would first find businesses that do not have websites using Google Locals. I would save all of this information. The businesses that are close or that you feel comfortable with, go knock on the door. There are many different tactics to going about this.

Secondly cold calling can bring you in some clients. I would personally find some places that don't have websites and call them up. Maybe if you have been a customer before you could explain that you like having dinner there, or whatever, and that you work for a web design company that is offering these special services.

Direct mail is the last resort I would take. You can also place ads on craigslist and other online classified sites.

Good Luck

Door to Door, word of mouth, and if you don't like the idea, SEO is the way to go but you'll need patience for that option. Your project will take off once you are willing to do anything to succeed with your project, and that means local promotional methods as some suggestions here were posted.

Take care,

Bernard St-Pierre

Emmab, Honestly I have not done this in quite a while, but I use to use a tool called Google Touche.

Touche Google Maps Extractor

They have a free trial that you can check out. I am in no way affiliated with them. I do like the software though. You should check out the free trial and see if it is for you or not. When I was using it, they were updating it quite often, and the information that it gathered could be saved directly into an excel spread sheet then you could sort the data.

Hope that helps you out.

Not sure how big your local area is but I recently wrote an article on Why SEO May Be Useless For Local Business.
SEO Useless For Local Business » Internet Marketing Reviews and Help » Garland Coulson, The E-Business Tutor

Do keyword research locally to see if SEO makes sense.

I would focus on local list building by email, Twitter and Facebook as well as local forum posting.

Another great way is to offer free workshops on marketing online. I often get new clients this way.

I tried Googling Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. They have a website, and there are over 4000 member businesses. You could search for the contact details and websites of district, municipality and state chamber of commerce and industry organizations in your target areas. These organizations usually have websites. Make a list of the events and relevant activities lined up for the next few months by each organization. You could contact those organizations and offer to improve their websites in terms of visual impact, functionality, viewer experience value and SEO in exchange for a banner link ad placed on their homepage and a solo press release about what you will be doing on their websites. The press release should be published on their offline weekly or monthly publications and on the online news section of their websites as well as on their offline and online newsletters. You could also add to your deal the chance to distribute on a few of their relevant events your brochures or flyers with member-only discounts and other incentives you added just for them as well as the chance to talk about your business and the benefits a business could gain from your products, services and member-only benefits in those events. You could also sign up for membership if your business is qualified, i.e. If your business is registered in an area where they accept applications. You could also sponsor a free event to all members, and the event can be a seminar about the benefits a business can gain and the overheads it can cut down from having effective online presence and Internet promotion and marketing campaigns. Show the expertise of your business in the seminar by explaining your strategies and techniques relevant to your products and services for improving the benefits and cutting down overheads of a business with online presence improvement and Internet promotion and marketing campaigns. Shoot the seminar on video. Package it as a professional looking DVD. Give it at the end of the seminar to the participants. Make a list of the business contact details of those who failed to attend, call them up and inform them you'll be sending them a DVD copy of the seminar via mail. During these things, it'll be beneficial for your business to develop an offline and online - since you'll most likely develop one for them in case they do not have a website yet - affiliate marketing program for them so they can become your affiliates and promote your products and services to their own business contacts, members or non-members, as well as to their site viewers if they already have a website.

emmab, if it is a smaller local area just let me know and I will scrape it for you. Just provide me with the following information.

city, state, and business type (example would be like dentist, house cleaning, etc.)

You can get me on skype almost all of the time - yourwebsitesource