How would you go about this?

Get Claude Whitacre's book Selling Local Advertising. Search for it here on the forum. It's on Amazon & Kindle.

Eva, selling them ad space is a great way to get your foot in the door for other offline services. I sell ads using Bob Ross' 9x12 system, but I have generated much more income by selling these same clients other internet marketing services --e.g. web design, seo, rep management,etc.. Look at it like this, you are approaching them with something they understand, print advertising, and now that you have sold them ad space, they are open to talking with you about your other services. You have established a rapport, and you have credibility. It just makes the other upsells easier.

Put together a collection of services you feel comfortable offering, so that when the opportunities present themselves you are ready to close them.

You can also generate good income from doing solo direct mail campaigns for individual businesses. Many businesses want to use direct mail, but want to take the time to put it together. Just a thought.

Is there a neighborhood business association? Maybe approach them with some free marketing ideas/consulting. Become their marketing coach to open the backdoor to others.

Hi, I think I understand your question..

I would create a geo-located directory for these 250, 300 businesses and call them to offer a free listing.

Getting the free listing is a good way to estimate the buyer appetite and to talk to the owners whilst not actually 'selling' anything.

Once you separate the serious buyers in those 300 leads I'd hook the serious prospects up to a drip feed campaign to soft sell them your services.

Then work your way down from the most serious to the least and start over again in a newer area.

There's lost of positioning/branding opportunities here to be seen as the authority if the niche is untapped.

The advice from Brian Alaway and PanteraIM is very good. If there is no neighborhood association perhaps you could put it together for them. Why not offer to do an association EDDM mailer to introduce potential customers in the surrounding areas to these businesses. Talk to the president of the association if they have one, see if he/she is interested in getting behind this type of promotional mailer.


You might also want to look into doing something like a First Friday Art Walk, to introduce new customers to the newly revitalized area. This is being done in Downtown Oakland and Mid-Town Sacramento as a way to draw in new business to areas under going revitalization.

As Jason suggested, you may want to look at putting on a free seminar on how effectively use the internet to market their business, for the business owners in this area. This will allow you to meet them and establish credibility as an expert. See some of Claude Whitacre's post about giving these free seminars, he usually gets several paying customers from them.

Play your cards right on this one and you can pretty much guarantee yourself
a permanent 100k a year income.

I think what you are asking is not how to sell a business owner on hiring you... rather you are asking how to deliver real results... how to get more people to come into their businesses and buy.

Is that right?

If yes, one option you could test is select 12 - 15 categories of business types and only place one business into each category so each business is given an exclusive. Then use the Magic Box WSO to build a list of Names and Mobile / Cell phone numbers in each of these local business locations.

Then pool all of the leads together and cross promote each business to the entire list via SMS Text Message Marketing. Make sure the people are told to show the business owner the mobile coupon or text marketing message on their phone to redeem the offer.

Hope this helps you.

Cheers,
Steve

Traffic, traffic, where is the traffic? My understanding of your situation is a basic marketing question, where is the traffic going to come from for all these businesses? Online or offline the question is the same.

There are parts of any city that are dying or recovering. There are areas of any city that people drive through, but don't stop in because the neighborhood looks "rough".

Offline getting traffic is much tougher, especially in economically depressed areas because the whole community is responsible for its condition. Many times businesses "start up" in these areas because rent is cheaper there, and then they struggle to get paying clients because the people that walk by their shop everyday are not their target market.

Real marketing research will help you out of this situation. Find out who these businesses clients are, find out WHERE they are, and find out how to reach them.

It may be that a collective radio ad promoting the area businesses would reach people in their target market and bring people to the neighborhood.

It may be that billboards and flyers in other neighborhoods where their target market is would bring in new business.

It may be that their target market lives in a particular subdivision or neighborhood and just doesn't drive to work that way.

It may be that putting these businesses on Google Local would bring in more traffic for them.

Or it may be that these businesses need to move to where their clients are.

Market research. Who are they, where are they, and how can you profitably get these businesses in front of them.

Hope that helps.