ArticleA shopper decides to walk into your store before they ever touch the door. They decide it on a phone, usually while standing in a parking lot or sitting on a couch, based on what shows up when they search "near me" for whatever your store sells. If that search does not surface your store with the right hours, the right photos, and a handful of recent reviews, the decision gets made for a competitor three doors down. I run Tested Media, a marketing agency that builds this kind of local visibility for retailers and other service businesses.
The Map Pack Is the New Storefront Window
Retailers still budget for marketing the way they did a decade ago: signage, a bit of paid social, maybe a mailer. Meanwhile the actual decision point, the local map pack that shows up when someone searches a category near their location, gets almost no attention. That map pack is doing the job a storefront window used to do. It is the first impression, and for a huge share of shoppers, it is the only impression that matters before they choose where to walk in.