Time to get online?

A recent report from Marchex titled "Unlocking the Potential of the Local Internet" indicates that local businesses aren't doing such a good job of migrating their ad dollars to the Internet. In fact, only about 5% of the $100 billion expected to be spent in local outreach this year will go to online activities. The rest will be focused on traditional venues like yellow pages and local newspapers.

Hey, local small businesses -- snap out of it! No one wants you to ignore your traditional outlets but if you want to be successful (and, more specifically, if you want people to FIND YOU!) you'll need to invest more in online approaches. This means investing in local search outlets (like Citysearch.com) as well as consumer driven sites, like Yelp.com.

Truth is, many people these days turn to the Internet before they'll turn to the Yellow Pages or a local newspaper ad, even for local services. For many of us, it's the best way of finding services -- from plumbers to restaurants to dry cleaners.

So, if you run one of those businesses, take a minute to review the Marchex report and see what you can do to improve your standings. Who knows? Maybe the 20-somethings will start flocking to your doors.