The Best Local Strategies?

Good to see you have applied for google places - Check out local directories and submit your website

Google places is the best for that, then check some local directories and if you have money use maybe facebook ads for targeting locals.

I know you said Internet marketing but you could also try offline. Maybe some bandit signs.

You have used almost everything. My suggestion is to use them perfectly. Beside all of this you should move on to do some offline marketing I think. Best of Luck.

I promote a couple of local businesses. I do what you do, but one other strategy I started two months ago is building out an authority site for the industry/location. It's not under the banner of my client's logo, but instead I'm the publisher (I have certification in the industry and used to work in the industry).

I then list my clients as the featured "X" business on various pages. I place a prominent contact form and offer a discount through the site for my clients (clients approved the exclusive discount). I also place my clients' toll free number (actually it goes through my hired call center who takes names for tracking my sales).

In your instance, you could publish a website all about things Chinese in London - restaurants, events, movies, neighborhoods, etc. Yours would be a classic hyperlocal site with a Chinese focus. Throughout the site you promote your client.

Or you could publish a website about learning Mandarin with some pages targeting London.

Basically, determine who the targeted audience is (ask your clients who primarily uses their services) and create an authority site that attracts them - it will need to tie in learning Mandarin in London, but you can go more broad if you wish to add other revenue streams.

This type of site, if you attract targeted traffic will offer additional monetization options such as selling advertising and promoting other relevant businesses/professionals where you can get paid per lead or a percentage of the sale.

This type of site is a fair amount of work to get off the ground, but can be a great way to promote your clients and generate additional revenue.

FYI, my site is too new to report results; however, there are other marketers who create hyperlocal sites for promoting local businesses.

Bryan Clark of Copyblogger has an email course on using hyperlocal (he got his start building these types of sites for realtors). The course is just underway ... the course is called Entreproducer. It's just started, but so far it's interesting. I'm still waiting for more info ... but I've learned enough to realize it's worth trying for local business promotion.