What your shooting business looks like online

Summary

In this checklist, we explain how to audit your digital presence from a customer’s point of view. Walks you through checking maps, search, website, reviews, and social media so you can see what a stranger actually experiences when they look you up. The goal is to fix basic visibility gaps and inconsistencies before investing in more advanced marketing.

Here are the headlines:

1. Act out your customer’s search journey
2. Set up and verify your Google and Apple listings
3. Test voice and map searches on clean devices
4. Audit your website on mobile for clarity and speed
5. Review and respond to reviews; create a plan to gain more
6. Standardise details across websites and social media

Reading Time: 7–8 minutes
Implementation Time: 2–5 hours
Level: Intermediate

Start with a customer's point of view

Perhaps the most important step in successfully marketing your business is to look at it from your customer’s point of view.

1. What are they searching for?
2. Why are they searching for it?

The clearer you are on those two questions, the better your marketing decisions will be.

Most of that journey now happens online, on a mobile phone, and often outside your opening hours. Your customer is researching you and your competitors long before they step onto your ground or into your gunroom.

This article is about one simple task: checking what your online presence actually looks like to a prospective customer, and fixing the obvious gaps.

Go on the buying journey

To begin, stop thinking like a business owner and start thinking like a buyer.

Imagine you are considering a new gun, optic, or lesson package. There is a small adventure you go on before you spend the money:

• You realise you want something.
• You search for information about it.
• You compare alternatives to decide what is right.
• You buy.
• You decide whether you are happy and if you would buy again or recommend it.

On that journey you will:

• Read reviews
• Watch videos
• Look at photos
• Ask friends or instructors
• Visit websites and social media pages
• Check opening times and directions



Your customers are doing exactly the same thing with you.

A very useful exercise is to “act out” this journey as if you were a customer for your own business. Search for the things you actually sell, in the place you actually trade, then see where (or if) you appear.

That is the heart of an online presence check.

Can a customer find you at all?

The Google Business Profile

Go to business.google.com and make sure you have a Google Business Profile set up and verified. Check:

• Business name (exactly as you use it elsewhere)
• Address (see note below if you are home based)
• Phone number and email
• Opening hours
• Website address
• Categories (for example “Shooting ground”, “Gun shop”)

This is what powers your panel on Google Search and your listing on Google Maps.

If you are home based and do not want your address visible, you can set up a service area business rather than showing your front door to the world, which is especially important if firearms are involved.



Move the Google Maps pin

If you regularly hear “Your postcode did not bring me to the right place”, your pin is probably wrong. Within your Google Business Profile:

1. Open your map location.
2. Drag the pin to the exact entrance your customers should use.
3. Save it and check directions from a nearby main road.



Then, on your phone, ask Google Maps for directions as if you were a customer. Make sure it takes you to the correct gate, car park, or clubhouse, not to a random track or a neighbour’s driveway.

Don't ignore Apple

In the UK, around half of all mobile phones are iPhones. Many people never open Google Maps. They ask Siri instead. Visit businessconnect.apple.com and set up your profile:

• Confirm your business name and category
• Set your location
• Add opening hours and contact details
• Write a clear, accurate descriptions of your services

Then test it:

• On an iPhone, open Apple Maps and search for your business by name
• Search instead for “shooting near [your town]” or similar
• See whether you appear and how you are described

If you do not exist here, you are invisible to a very large group of customers who never touch Google Maps at all.

Test voice search like a real customer

Voice search is no longer a novelty. Smart speakers and phones are now a normal way people ask for places, activities, and directions. On your phone or smart speaker, try things like:

• “Siri, get me directions to [your business name].”
• “Siri, clay pigeon shooting near [nearest town].”
• “Alexa, are there shooting schools near [nearest city]?”
• “Hey Google, gun shops near me.”

Notice:

• Do you appear?
• If you do, what information is read back?
• If you do not, who does appear?



This will show you which competitors have done the basics better, and where you need to tighten up your own listings and descriptions.

See what a stranger sees

You cannot trust what you see on your own phone or laptop. Google and other platforms are trying to be helpful, so if you search for your business frequently, they will show you your own site more often and higher up than a stranger would ever see it.

Two ways to get around this:

• Use a friend’s phone or laptop that has never searched for you
• Use a private or incognito window and clear cookies, then search again

Search for:

• Your business name
• “Clay shooting [your area]”
• “Gun shop [your area]”
• “Rifle range [your area]”
• The brands you stock plus your town

Do this on:

• Google
• YouTube
• Bing
• DuckDuckGo



Ask yourself:

• If they look for me this way, do I show up?
• If I do show up, do I look trustworthy and current?
• If I do not, whose business are they going to find instead?