The increased focus on “local” isn’t lost on most national marketers. But those same national brands have generally tended to view local marketing as inefficient and unscalable. So, what’s the trick to making local efforts pay off?

There is an old Sales and Marketing tactic that used to be popular in business, but has lost favor because, well, it can be prosecuted as fraud. It used to work like this:

The problem with selling a home generally isn’t the home. It isn’t the person selling the home (well, most of the time). And you know, it really isn’t even the price. The problem with selling a home by and large comes down to the first rule of marketing – something that applies to home selling just as much as it does to soda pop selling or car selling or anything-else selling.

Employees are in fact consumers, and they want what they want, when they want it. And what they want is not limited to the things that their employers care about like cheap flights, hotels and transportation. They want the tools and facilitation to plan travel that work for them personally.

A few years ago, Google first introduced us to the notion of “micro-moments.” These are defined as “intent-rich moments when a person turns to a device to act on a need - to know, go, do, or buy.”

With the overwhelming amount of e-mails and advertising (web, TV, radio, you name it) that we’re exposed to each and every moment, it’s no surprise that more people are choosing to “check out.”

You know how you behave online. You ask the search engine questions and then scan the results, often starting below the ads. You then evaluate the results, clicking on those that seem most relevant, toggling between the written word, image/video and shopping depending on the nature of the question. How often is there local context in those searches? Often. Provide your customers with exactly what they're looking for and you'll reap the benefits!