Hiring a marketer for your shop: what to check first

March is when shop owners have time to take a meeting. The holiday receipts are counted and February was quiet: in the Census Bureau’s monthly estimates for 2025, it was the smallest month of the year for retail outside car dealers, about 7% of annual sales. So this is when the agency emails get answered.

Most of those pitches open with ads. A marketer who has worked with stores opens somewhere else, because an independent shop sells to people who are already close by and already deciding. Here is what a good one checks before talking budget.

They look at your hours before your logo

Google’s guidelines ask for regular customer-facing hours, allow seasonal hours to stand in as regular ones, and provide special hours for holidays and events. That last part is where shops slip. The late December evenings, the Sunday you opened for a sidewalk sale, the week you closed for inventory: if Google does not know, the shopper standing in their kitchen sees “Closed” and goes elsewhere.

Whitespark’s 2026 Local Search Ranking Factors survey, published in November, asked local search specialists to score what moves a business in the map results. “Business is open at time of search” came fifth. Proximity to the person searching came second. You cannot move your shop closer to anyone, but you can make sure Google thinks you are open when you are.

A careful marketer also checks the storefront basics Google writes down: permanent signage with your name at the address you show, and the same name on every location’s profile if you have more than one shop. Dull, and the reason some shops never appear for searches outside their own door.

They ask what till you use

This is the question that tells you whether someone has done store work. Google’s Local Inventory app, which used to be a separate service called Pointy, puts the products you stock onto your Business Profile so a nearby shopper can see that you have the item. Google says it is available at no charge. To use it, you need a verified profile, a physical store that scans manufacturer barcodes (UPC or EAN) with a wired scanner or a compatible point of sale, and a store in an eligible category. Google names Clover, Square and Lightspeed among the systems it works with.

If your stock is handmade, vintage or otherwise unbarcoded, the answer is the product editor on the profile, where you upload pictures and descriptions yourself.

There is a second layer. With free local listings switched on in Merchant Center, Google shows a “See what’s in store” panel when someone searches your shop’s name on Search or Maps. Google’s own data, from November 2023 to May 2024, reports retailers showing local inventory getting about 16% more organic shopping impressions on average. That is Google grading its own product, but the listing costs nothing.

A marketer who skips straight to paid Shopping campaigns without asking about your till has skipped the free version of the same thing.

They take reviews seriously and tell you what not to do

BrightLocal’s 2026 Local Consumer Review Survey, out in February, found 97% of consumers read reviews for local businesses, and 47% will not use a business with fewer than 20 of them. A shop with eleven reviews, the newest from last spring, is losing walk-ins it never hears about.

Listen for how the marketer proposes to fix that. The right answer is asking every customer, at the till, with a QR code or a short link to your profile, and replying to what comes in. The wrong answer is any kind of reward. Google treats offering incentives such as free or discounted goods in exchange for reviews as fake and misleading content and prohibits it outright. The FTC’s rule on consumer reviews, finalized in August 2024, bans incentives conditioned on a review expressing a particular sentiment, and it lists discounts and coupons among the things of value it means. “Ten percent off your next visit for a five-star review” breaks both.

They read your sale emails like a regulator would

Stores run on promotions, and promotions run into rules most service businesses never meet. The FTC’s Guides Against Deceptive Pricing say a former price is a fair basis for a comparison only if it was the actual price offered to the public on a regular basis for a reasonably substantial period. The FTC’s own example of a fictitious bargain is a pen marked “Were $10, Now Only $7.50” when $10 was charged for only a few days. The same guide calls a “Reduced to $9.99” claim misleading when the old price was $10.

If you stock goods marketed as American made, the FTC’s Made in USA Labeling Rule applies: final assembly and all significant processing in the country, and all or virtually all components made and sourced here. It reaches “crafted”, “built” and “produced” claims as well as “made”. A marketer worth hiring asks you for the maker’s backing before writing the line.

What the first ninety days should look like

For a store, the order is not the one a plumber’s agency would use. Ours looks like this, and any good plan should look close to it:

• Weeks 1 to 2. Profile audit: categories, regular and special hours, photos, products. The till connected to the Local Inventory app, or the product editor started. Merchant Center opened with free listings on.
• Weeks 2 to 4. Website pages for the product lines people search for by name. Spring and early summer dates on a calendar.
• Weeks 4 to 8. A sign-up at the counter for email and text, with a reason to join. Review requests at checkout. A reply to every review.
• Weeks 8 to 12. Tracking in place, then paid campaigns timed to the next gift date.

Ads come last because they multiply whatever is already there, including wrong hours.

What a useful monthly report shows

A report worth reading shows direction requests, calls and website clicks from your profile, product views and clicks from Merchant Center, the number of new email and text sign-ups, new reviews and replies, and sales tied to a coupon code per channel where you used one. If nothing connects to people walking in, ask why.

What to do this month

• Open your Google profile on your phone, as a stranger would, and fix anything a shopper would trip over, starting with hours.
• Find out whether your point of sale works with the Local Inventory app, and if your stock has no barcodes, add your best sellers through the product editor.
• Put a QR code for reviews at the till and stop any review-for-discount offer still running.
• Pull up your last three sale emails and check every “was” price against what you actually charged, and for how long.
• When you talk to agencies, ask each one what till you use and how they would get your stock onto Google. The answer sorts them quickly.

NRF counts 98% of retailers as small businesses, so most agencies pitching you have worked with someone like you. Whether they have worked with a store is a different question, and the first meeting usually answers it. Our page for independent retail stores sets out how we approach a shop’s year, and the profile work above is what our Google Business Profile service covers.