When advertising for your mortgage or real estate business, are you still using traditional print?  It’s easy to say most of us still are, but the fact is newspapers, especially local community papers, are losing their subscribers and readers like crazy.

In fact, a new study this week by Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy (I know you all love studies!) basically confirms our common sense knowledge that newspaper and TV media will eventually dwindle in favor of the internet.  Advertising will be forced to follow that trend also in ways we don’t yet fully understand.

We’ve already learned to reach out and search the internet for information to expand our “world view.”  Most of the web’s incredible growth over the years has been based on connecting and expanding – ways to move beyond the boundaries of our local communities.  But now we need to learn how best to use the powerful tool in a refined and narrowed local range.

Enter local search on the web.  Instead of thumbing through the yellow pages for a broker with the biggest ad, home buyers and sellers are finding it much easier to type a quick query into Google or their cell phone browser.  They’re already in front of the resource, so why go looking for a tattered old phone book?

A local advertising campaign can’t consist simply of a web 1.0 style listing in a virtual yellow page directory.  That was the concept in 1997, but it just doesn’t fly today.  Pay per click advertising on the search engines has shown promise and many have used it successfully over the years, but again, it’s not the one and only definitive answer.

The local search advertising campaigns that are gradually replacing traditional print and over the air media camps involve the synergy of several unique types of online media.  Naturally, Google is a part of it.  They were one of the first to understand and begin catering to localities.  Try searching for a local business via Google versus one of the other big search players – you’ll see what I mean.

Another important facet of the local targeted internet presence is the all-too-famous blog.  Used effectively, blogs work like crazy.  And the best part, blogging is free.  If you’re a market expert in your community, there’s no reason a blog won’t put you right at the top of local search results if you frequently talk about the local market in your posts.

The Future of Real Estate Marketing Blog, a respected authority on real estate marketing, has done several features covering local search.  How to Get Local With Your Internet Advertising gives an excellent tutorial on the big picture, but is already slightly dated.

Local Search Will Affect Your Business – How You Can Win is a pearl of wisdom from the marketing gurus, outlining the three major components of making the jump to local search.  Take their advice and start winning your local customers online today.

While many questions still remain unanswered about the big transition from traditional local media to online local media, the trend is too clear to ignore any longer.  Local is the future of the web!