Marketing for a local shop: where to start

An owner who decides to “do some marketing” often starts with whatever is most visible: a Facebook page, an Instagram account, a few posts. Then the daily rush takes over, the account goes quiet, and they conclude it's not for them. The problem wasn't the effort. It was the order.

For a neighbourhood shop, the right order follows the customer's path: they find you on Google, they read what others say about you, sometimes they discover you through a video, and they compare you with the shop next door. Four jobs, tackled one after the other.

First, your Google profile

When someone searches for “chip shop Charleroi” or “hairdresser near me”, your Google Business Profile is what answers: name, rating, photos, opening hours, directions, call button. It probably already exists, even if you've never opened it. Google says so itself in its help pages: customers are 70% more likely to visit a business with a complete profile, and 50% more likely to consider buying there.

Allow one hour, just once:

• Claim the profile. Signed in to your Google account, search for “my business” and follow the verification steps.
• Choose the most precise primary category: what your shop is (“Pizzeria”), not everything it offers (“Restaurant”).
• Fill in your opening hours, bank holidays and closures included. Google can't guess that you're closed on 1 and 11 November.
• Add around ten photos taken in daylight: the shopfront, the inside, your best-selling products, you and your team.
• Write the description: who you are, what you do, since when. No links or promotions: Google's guidelines forbid them.

One thing not to miss: the name. Use exactly the one on your shopfront. “Chez Léa, best chip shop in Charleroi” breaks Google's guidelines and can get the profile suspended, at which point it vanishes from the map.

Next, reviews

Your profile makes you findable. Reviews make people choose you. In its help page on local ranking, Google lists the number of reviews and positive ratings among the things that move a business up the map. On the customer side, BrightLocal's local consumer review survey, carried out in the United States in 2026, offers two benchmarks: 74% of respondents look for reviews less than three months old, and 83% of those who were asked for a review left one.

In other words, you don't need a stockpile of reviews, you need a steady flow. And that flow starts as soon as you ask:

1. Ask every customer, as they pay, with a QR code next to the card reader that opens the review form directly. Everyone, not just the delighted regulars: Google's rules forbid picking and choosing.
2. Reply to every review within the week, picking up on a detail (the cone of chips, the skin fade, the Saturday welcome). A “Thanks!” pasted everywhere barely counts.

The line to say at the counter and the traps to avoid are in our article on Google reviews.

Then, one TikTok video a week

With a tidy profile and reviews coming in, you're ready to reach people who don't know you yet. That's the job of short, vertical video. According to DataReportal's Digital 2026 Belgium report, TikTok reaches 4.03 million adults in Belgium, or 42.5% of those aged 18 and over (audience figures reported by the platform itself). Four in ten Belgian adults, then, and hardly any neighbourhood shops posting there: the space is yours to take.

No need to dance or talk to the camera. Show what your hands do: the tray of croissants coming out of the oven, the basket of chips dropping into the fryer, the clippers carving out a fade. Three rules are enough to get started:

• The best moment straight away. TikTok advises its advertisers to show the essentials in the first 3 seconds. No logo, no “Hi everyone”.
• Vertical, facing the window. Daylight beats any lighting kit.
• One a week, kept up over time. A video every week for three months beats five in the first week and then nothing.

The same video can then go on Instagram and Facebook without redoing anything. For your first steps on the app, read our article on TikTok for a local business.

Finally, an eye on competitors

Once a month, open Google Maps, search for your trade in your neighbourhood and note the top three results: their rating, their number of reviews, their latest video or post. This quick check gives you two things. A target for your reviews: catch up with them, then overtake them. And ideas: what they do well that you could do your own way, and above all what nobody is doing yet.

The point isn't to copy. If the bakery across the road already shows its croissants every morning, show your sourdough, your bakehouse before dawn or the Sunday raisin loaf (cramique).

How much time each week

Our advice: one hour to set up your Google profile, just once, then half an hour a week, split into short fixed slots. Put them in your diary like a supplier delivery. At a fixed time, they happen. “When I get a moment”, they don't.

What can wait

A new website, a newsletter, a loyalty card, paid advertising, an account on every network: all of that can wait until the four jobs run on their own. Every tool added before the basics hold firm is mostly one more task you'll end up dropping.

Each job is explained step by step, with templates to copy and a 30-day plan, in the 2027 survival guide for local shops (in French). It's free and easy to read on your phone.