Local Business Consulting - What really works?

Hi


One of the ways of generating income quickly - and, if done right, ongoing income as well - it to address 'local' (main street) businesses. These may in fact not be across remote rather than geographically 'local' but the main thing is that they are 'bricks and mortar' businesses which need help with lead generation and other IM-based services.


I've had some experience of this, using outsourcing to the Philippines to get the tech work done, and it has at times been a somewhat painful process. It seems to me that there are a number of ways to tackling this type of business, and i'd be interested in people's views on the following:


1. Generalist Approach. Offer a fairly full range of services to pretty much anyone who wants them. Services include new website (probably Wordpress-based), copy to go on it, traffic generation, social media etc. etc.

Challenge: IM is a broad and ever-changing field, hard to keep on top of it all.


2. Target a Specific Niche Market: Offer broad range of services to a targeted niche (e.g. plastic surgeons / car dealerships / dentists etc.) Get to understand the specific industry, keep up to date with changes in it, be known as the go-to person. Can select niche(s) with high-value clients and money to spend.

Challenge: As for (i). Also, need to be creative to differentiate one website from another. May also be conflict of interest in competitive traffic generation when serving more than one client in same geographic area.


3. Specialist Service Provider. Get really good at one or two things (e.g. paid traffic generation, social media) and only do those, but offer to a wide range of clients.

Challenge: Will this be appealing to clients, will there be enough business?


There are other variants on this, but I think these are the main categories.


One of the issues that is foremost in my mind is that doing websites can be a prolonged an painful process, with lots of subjectivity and back-and-forth with the client (not to mention the delays in getting graphics, images etc.) This is especially the case for people like me who are essentially marketers, not designers: I can select Wordpress themes and get a coder to then make changes and produce a reasonable-looking site, but this is not the same as having a designer with artistic flair work on it. One option might be to work in conjunction with a designer, but there often isn't the budget for this, especially for an in-country (Western) designer.


So, what my question boils down to is this: What have people found to be the best and most time-efficient way of generating substantial local-business income? Is it a truly viable method of earning a full-time income for the solopreneur, or is does it really only work well for a small company (separate sales, project management, quality control etc.) How much specialisation (services offered, markets targeted) is optimal? As a solopreneur local business consultat, how much time and effort should be spent in setting up systems and processes for the business to follow?


All thoughts and opinions welcome.


Thanks,
Paul

Hi Paul,

I answered this question in the private forum for you. ;-)