The Local Marketing Handbook
The whole system for getting found in your own town — in about fifteen minutes.
The first edition of this book ran 202 pages. This one is thirteen, because the work got faster. What used to eat a Saturday afternoon — the research, the drafting, the writing — now takes minutes with the AI tools already on your phone.
What hasn't changed is what actually decides whether a customer finds you. Your Google Business Profile. Your reviews. Four pages on your website that do a job. And now a new one: whether ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google's AI answers name your business when somebody asks who to call.
Read it tonight. Do the first thirty-minute task tomorrow.
What's inside — 13 pages, 10 chapters
- Context Is Still King — why customers stopped typing keywords and started describing a situation, and what that means for you.
- Plan, Produce, Promote — the three steps behind every task in the book, and the one everybody skips.
- Refine Your Pitch — a two-minute exercise that narrows your audience to one person, plus the AI prompt that does the demographic research.
- Your Google Business Profile — categories, attributes, photos, and posts. The highest-leverage half hour in the book.
- Your Reviews — how to ask so you get the review that actually gets you found, and what to write back to every kind you receive.
- Your Website — four pages that do a job, why one page per service beats one page listing eight, and the two technical things worth asking for.
- Getting Recommended by AI — the new front door. Four things that decide whether an assistant names you, and how to check where you stand today.
- Show Up Where You Live — the one channel no algorithm can copy.
- Your First 30 Days — sixteen tasks, four weeks, none longer than thirty minutes.
- Every week after — the four habits that compound.
Every chapter ends with one task you can finish between calls.
Who this is for
Owners of brick-and-mortar shops, service-area businesses, nonprofits, churches, and local sports organizations. People with a real location, real customers, and not enough hours.
Who it isn't for
Anyone looking for growth hacks, or a national brand. Everything here assumes your customers live near you.
A few things worth knowing
Every chapter is free to read. This is the version you can keep, print, and hand to somebody else.
Want the worksheets, the AI prompts, and the templates too? They're in The Local Marketing Kit, which includes this handbook.
Updates are free. Google renamed My Business to Business Profile the same month the first edition went to print. When this is revised, you get the new version at the same download link.
Written by Roberto Torres, author of The Local Marketing Handbook (Amazon bestseller, 2021) and founder of The Local Marketer in Ware, Massachusetts.
