The Year 2012 portends to be big years for local search marketing, mobile marketing, mobile app development, and modern marketing services focus on ROI, or return on investment. I’ve seen good articles from Search Engine Land and Gomo News on 2012 Predictions, so I thought I would do the same.

Local Search Marketing services in 2012 should become more important as Google extends the functionality of Google Places, Google Maps, Google +, Google Android and Google services to mobile devices were you are interacting locally. Also expect to see Twitter do more with localization and Facebook as their “Check-in” feature takes on FourSquare. Make sure your budget for SEO, social media, content optimization and other Internet marketing services takes this into account.

Mobile marketing opportunities will grow faster than social marketing opportunities and relate to local opportunities. Reports say that there will be more web surfing on mobile devices by 2015. I don’t believe the reports … I think it will happen by the end of 2013. Why? Great Android tablets like Motorola’s Xoom 2 (known as the Motorola Xyboard on Verizon) will final get discovered, Android’s Market for tablet specific apps will explode, and people will realize that great competitors to the iPad 2 already exist. Once Android 4.x kicks in, this will reduce the issue of Android OS fragmentation and mobile will climb even faster than previously projected.

Is your company ready for your mobile app to be the dominant source of marketing information and audience engagement on behalf of your company? What percentage of your marketing budget is set aside for mobile marketing? And don’t forget about Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility. You don’t spend $12.5 Billion just for patents and an IP portfolio!

Your social networks will become more valuable to others doing location searches, whether for B2C or B2B searches. Facebook friend recommendations on Bing.com and Google+ recommendations on Google.com create new opportunities for you to meet people at their new “zero moments of truth” (See Google’s paradigm shattering ZMOT free white paper).

The Google Chrome browser will be the number 2 browser in the world this year and Google will likely integrate more local search tools, services and functionality into this browser — on the desktop, on the Chrome OS laptops, and on Android powered devices. Are you testing on and using the Chrome browser?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as part of your website marketing and overall Internet marketing strategy will need to be more focus geographically. Maps will need to be embedded in your content and appropriately tagged with SEO terminology.

Google + combined with Google Profiles will become more important to your company for link juice and audience engagement than Twitter in the next 18 months. Google + adoption increased 50% in the last two months of 2011. The increased market share of the Chrome browser, the Android operating system, Google-powered mobile devices will give Google + inroads it only dreamed about last year. And don’t overlook the importance of the under reported Google Music service.

Finally, reputation management inclusive of intellectual property protection and audience engagement at the point of negative content will become increasingly important. Sales are driven by reputation and information. That is why SalesForce acquired Radian6. Also see Sprout Social.

Local Search Marketing services will continue to require ROI in the form of undeniable results. 2011 was a horrible year and may predict the same for 2012 with guaranteed political gridlock. Budgets will continue to be tight and managers will need to make up money this year that wasn’t earned last year. And it’s all going to start locally.