If you have an awareness issue then the buzz of social media should be able to help. Granted your town may not be highly represented on Twitter, but there's no reason to think the same % of people using it worldwide don't apply to your area. The more times people come across your name the more aware they'll be of your existence.
With
SEO don't think of it as having to define yourself as one thing or another. What you're looking for is what people might search for to find you. One person might look for a marketer and one person might look for a publicist. What you might want to do is pick one set of keyword phrases. Maybe you find phrases based around the theme of being a publicist. Work to get search visibility around that theme. Then start working to gain search visibility around the theme marketer or copywriter. That might mean a new section on your site or even a new site.
For example I did a really quick search for keywords on the work 'publicist' and one phrase some people search for is 'finding a publicist'
Assuming you wanted to rank for that phrase you could write an article about how to find a publicist. Make sure to use the phrase as well as similar phrases in your copy
Finding a publicist
how to find a publicist
a publicist can be found by
found a publicist
etc
You create content around the basic phrase using variations of that phrase in your copy. Odds are if you write naturally you'll do this by default. You'd want to use the exact phrase in your page title.
Then you'd have a page optimized for that phrase which you could work at ranking.