Marketing for a small local business: what to do first, and what can wait

A café, a plumber, a physiotherapist, a framer. If your customers come from a few miles around, most marketing advice was written for somebody else: for businesses selling nationally, online, to strangers.

A local business has a smaller audience and a big advantage. The people you want are close, many of them already know someone who has used you, and the places they look for a local business are few and mostly free. So the order matters more than the tactics. Do the cheap, durable things first, and only pay for attention once they are in place.

1. Be findable where people already look

When someone nearby searches for what you sell, Google says they will find local results on Google Maps and Search. What appears there for you is your Google Business Profile. It is free, Google says there is no way to pay for a better position in it, and a complete, accurate profile is more likely to show up.

If you do only one thing from this page, do that. Then copy the same name, address, phone number and hours to Bing and the other listings, word for word, because the places that describe you should agree. Our local SEO checklist covers the rest, including the website pages that name the towns you actually serve.

2. Earn reviews, and answer them

Reviews are what people read before choosing between the three businesses on the map. Ask every customer, at the moment they are happiest, with a link that takes them straight to the form. Do not offer anything in return, and do not ask only the ones you expect to be kind: both are against Google's rules, and UK law has its own, which we set out in should you only ask happy customers for reviews?

Reply to every review, briefly, in your own words. A calm reply to a bad one is read by everyone who comes after it.

3. Go back to people who already know you

Past customers already know you, which makes them the easiest people to ask for the next job or a recommendation. A short email twice a year, with something useful in it, keeps you in mind.

There are rules. The Information Commissioner's Office explains that under the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations you must not send marketing emails to individuals unless they have consented, or they are "an existing customer who bought (or negotiated to buy) a similar product or service from you in the past, and you gave them a simple way to opt out both when you first collected their details and in every message you have sent" (ICO, electronic mail marketing). That existing-customer rule, often called the soft opt-in, does not cover bought-in lists or people who have never bought from you. The ICO notes the guidance is under review after the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025, so check the page before you plan a campaign.

In practice: collect email addresses when you take a job, say at that moment that you will occasionally send news and how to stop it, and put an unsubscribe link in every email.

4. Be known by the people around you

Local businesses can send each other a lot of work. The plumber recommends the electrician; the café sends people to the framer. That only happens if your neighbours know what you do, well enough to describe it in a sentence, which is why explaining what you do in one sentence pays off locally first.

Three places to start:

• One local business group, attended properly. We wrote about what a local business community actually does and how to choose which networks are worth your time.
• A partner who shares your customers. A wedding florist and a caterer, a gym and a physio. We cover finding and approaching one in finding the right brand partners.
• The town's own calendar. Markets, fairs and late openings bring people onto the street on known dates. Being open, ready and findable on those days costs little; our pieces on towns such as Surbiton's farmers' market look at how nearby shops use them.

5. Then, and only then, pay for attention

Paid ads work best when there is somewhere good for the clicks to land: a complete profile, reviews worth reading, a page that answers the customer's question. Once those are in place, both big platforms can aim at a local area. Google Ads lets you target by location, choosing between people who are physically in an area and people who have shown interest in it. Meta and Google do quite different jobs, which we compare in Meta ads or Google Ads?, and whether search ads will pay for themselves is a sum you can do before you spend anything, which we show in is Google Ads worth it for a small business?

Leaflets, local magazines and sponsorship can work too, but they are harder to measure. If you try one, give it its own phone number, code or landing page, so you can tell afterwards whether it did anything.

Making it a plan

Five steps is still too many to do at once. Pick the gap that matters most, usually the first one you have not done, give it an owner and a date, and decide which number will tell you whether it worked. Our one-page marketing plan has a template for exactly that, and how much to spend on marketing works out a budget from your own numbers rather than a percentage.

Being small and local can also be the one thing a bigger competitor cannot copy, as we argued in how independent businesses compete with national chains online.

Where the evidence is thin

• Which channel works best. We found no reliable UK data comparing how small local businesses win customers across these channels, and it varies enormously by trade. The order above is based on cost and on what each step makes possible, not on a measured ranking.
• Word of mouth. It is widely believed to be the biggest source of work for local firms, and it may well be, but we have not found a sound UK study that measures it. Your own records are the better guide: ask every new customer how they heard of you, and write it down.
• Email rules after 2025. The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 changes parts of the privacy rules, and the ICO says its guidance is under review. What is above is its guidance as published on 28 September 2026.

If you would like a plan built with you, channel by channel and in the right order, our 90-day marketing plan is a fixed £2,500. For businesses near us, see our pages for Epsom and Ewell and Somerset.