I’ve had several clients come to me and ask if location marketing is important. The truth is that it has never been as important as it is right now. A recent report suggested that by 2012 PC’s would be obsolete – completely taken over by handheld devices and pads or laptops. The survey also suggested that many smartphone users were using their phones to browse social networks while at home.

But here’s the kicker.

All of those people who are giving up their PCs for smartphones and pads are using apps.

Now, you may not care if people are using apps, but you may care to know that the people who search for you on popular social networks like Yelp and Gowalla and take the time to check in on Foursquare using their smartphones and ipads are the same people who will be using apps combined with GPS to locate places to eat, shop and play – on the fly.

If you aren’t using location marketing to get your name out there, you can guarantee that your competition is already there. Google and yahoo maps was the first to really push location, location, location and businesses flocked to get listed there (still a very good idea, by the way) because people could search for “shopping” or “pizza” or “dentist” and find the closest around their location. People still do this, but now with an ever growing network of apps and social media which allows people to search for places close to them based on their GPS location and then tell others where they are, what they are doing and what they thought of you the very minute they are doing it means that you better be there when they look for you and you better be monitoring what is being said.

Okay, so that sounds harsh, but it’s true.

Couple the fact that people are searching for you on social networks with the trend for location searching like “ohio social media company” and you better get crafty and fast.

I heard a person say the other day that they didn’t need to promote their air conditioning repair company online because they weren’t big enough to worry about it. I almost told the guy that his reasoning behind it was WHY he isn’t big enough. His potential customers have typed in “Columbus air conditioning repair” and found his competition either in the search engines or on their smart phone through a GPS linked app. If you aren’t there. You’re toast.