Online marketing is usually left to the elite (large empires that want to establish their visibility at a global scale) or to online businesses because of the outrageous costs involved in it a few years back. We seldom see small businesses investing on it because it's basically a "big cost no returns" investment a few years back.
Things have changed a lot though for the past couple of years. Nobody has ever expected the internet to become this popular in just a couple of years to the point that it has simply become a basic commodity that all of us could afford. This increase in popularity has led to the development of new and cost efficient ways to advertise online like local search marketing.
Local search marketing in particular is a very unique online marketing strategy not just because it's cheap but because it's a marketing strategy built specifically for local business. It basically works like the search engine's search results that we are used to but instead of showing a global list on your query, it shows the user a filtered search result specific for a certain locality. So for example, if you're in France and your search string is "restaurants", the search engine will automatically filter the data and lists a number of restaurants in France. Pretty cool, huh?
Going back to its being cost efficient, local search marketing could come for free. Once you've subscribed into a search engines' local search result subscription you're already doing some marketing. (This is of course discounting other fixed costs like your costs in internet connections and electricity bills.)
If you're interested in going serious with this marketing method, then this is where a little spending comes into play. Most people would agree that hiring a professional online marketer could help you a lot in achieving the coveted number one spot in the search results. They may cost you some money but they'll be saving you from all the hard work involved in pushing your business name up on the ranks.
Cheap online marketing methods don't usually come our way so if I were you, I wouldn't play around and miss this opportunity.