Just got a client for Home Security lead generation

A friend of mine just started a home security company as an ADT dealer. He wants me to do some lead generation for him.
I am looking at keywords like ADT + city and home security + city. I plan on using regular backlinking, web 2.0, social bookmarking etc.
I am noticing that there are few nationals companies with large sites with pages for almost every city in the country. It looks like it
will be easy to rank, since most of the pages ranking in some of these cities have no backlinks and are sub pages. But I am concerned
that I don't see any small sites - sites like angieslist.com, securitychoice.com, yourlocalsecurity.com dominate.

Anyone else have experience ranking for local ADT sites or home security sites, will regular onpage and regular backlinking work?

I used to do lead gen for a locksmith, and ADT actually offered to pay me to backlink to there own page... so that's proof right there that they are on top of the local game. However, though you might not grab the top spot - I bet you're not seeing them because nobodies really trying. It should be pretty easy to get some top 10 rankings for a lead gen site.. just put the most efford into quality content and then submit the site threw webmaster tools. If it doesnt show up in the first page or two from that allone, it may not be worth the extra work to do backlinking.

Why not just buy the traffic with google adwords, fb ppc and ppv? You will get the same results but much faster.