What is Maps Marketing?
Maps Marketing is the practice of improving and measuring your business’s visibility on Google Maps and Apple Maps – and turning that visibility into real-world customer actions: foot traffic, calls, direction requests, and bookings.
Unlike traditional SEO (which is for your website) Maps Marketing focuses specifically on your Google Business Profile and Apple Maps listings – the pages customers actually land on when they are nearby and ready to buy.
Most businesses treat these profiles as a directory listing: set up once, never touched again. That’s a significant missed opportunity. Your Google Business Profile appears above website results on almost every local search. 60%+ of Google searches never leave the results page – which means your GBP is the landing page most customers actually see. More eyes land on a Google Business Profile than on a business’s website and social media combined.
What most businesses don’t realize: 80% of those views come from people who didn’t search your brand name. They searched “coffee near me” or “urgent care open now” and are actively choosing between you and a competitor. That decision happens on your Google & Apple Maps profiles – not your website.
Maps Marketing is about making sure your business wins that decision every time.
Additional Resources
🎥 Watch
- What is Maps Marketing?
- Google Business Profile vs Traditional SEO
- Why Google Business Profiles Matter More Than Websites
📖 Read
🎓 Free Training
📈 Case Studies
- Arc’teryx: increased total views by 10 million.
- Tire Discounters: +273% discovery searches.
What does Map Labs do?
Map Labs is the #1 Maps Marketing software and service for multi-location businesses. We help businesses get found on Google and Apple Maps and turn map views into calls, direction requests, bookings, and foot traffic.
Most businesses understand that Google Maps matters. What they lack is the data to know what’s actually working, the strategy to improve it, and the tools to manage it efficiently – especially across multiple locations.
Map Labs solves all three. Our purpose-built software gives multi-location businesses the data, tools, and automation to manage Google and Apple Maps profiles at scale. Our professional services team (Coaching and Full Service) provides the strategy and execution to turn that data into growth.
Additional Resources
🎥 Watch
📖 Read
🎓 Free Training
📈 Case Studies
- STARR Restaurants: 435% more discovery impressions
- Crunch Fitness: 335% more reviews
Who is Map Labs for?
Map Labs is built for multi-location businesses that want to get more customers from Google and Apple Maps.
We work across every major industry – restaurants, hospitality, healthcare, retail, fitness, professional services, and more. Our clients range from regional chains with 10 locations to enterprise brands managing 500+. What they share: they’re serious about Maps as a marketing channel and want the software and expertise to run it properly.
If your business has a physical location or a service area, and customers find you through Google or Apple Maps, Map Labs is for you.
See our success stories, here.
Which plan is right for me?
Map Labs offers three service tiers: Software, Coaching, and Full Service.
Software is for marketers who have completed the Map Labs Coaching program and are ready to manage their Maps Marketing independently. You own the strategy and execution — we give you the platform to do it well.
Coaching is for marketers who want to become in-house Maps Marketing experts but need a strategy, a roadmap, and ongoing guidance to get there. You do the work; we tell you exactly what to do and when to do it.
Full Service is for businesses that want to hand Maps Marketing to a team of experts with more than a decade of experience. We develop a detailed strategy alongside you and handle all the execution.
How is Map Labs different from managing our Google Business Profile ourselves?
Map Labs provides the data, strategy, and tools that Google’s native interface doesn’t – so you know exactly what to optimize and why it matters.
Anyone can log into Google Business Profile and make edits. The hard part is knowing what to change, why it matters, and how to do it across dozens or hundreds of locations without making mistakes that cost you customers or falling through the cracks.
Map Labs surfaces performance data Google doesn’t natively provide: keyword-level impressions, branded vs. non-branded search breakdowns, historical trends going back 18+ months. You see what’s working and what isn’t. Our strategy team then brings the expertise: we’ve audited tens of thousands of profiles across every major industry and know exactly what Google rewards. Most businesses we audit are leaving easy wins on the table.
Can I use Map Labs alongside citation & listing aggregators?
Yes. Map Labs and citation aggregators solve different problems and run in parallel without conflict.
Citation aggregators (such as Yext, BrightLocal, Whitespark, etc) push accurate business information – name, address, phone number – across directories and data networks. That’s useful for web-wide consistency.
Map Labs focuses exclusively on Google and Apple. Here’s why those are the only two that matter: Google Maps has over 1 billion monthly active users and delivers 2 billion+ connections to U.S. businesses every month. Apple Maps is the default on every iPhone – that’s more than half of all smartphones in North America opening Apple Maps before they think to look anywhere else. Every other local search directory combined doesn’t come close. Yelp, Bing, TripAdvisor, Foursquare – these are rounding errors compared to the traffic Google and Apple drive. When a customer is looking for a business near them, they’re almost certainly doing it on one of these two platforms (or, on another search tool that references these platforms.)
That’s where we focus. And we go far beyond accurate contact information: keyword strategy, category optimization, photo and content management, posts, reviews, services, menus, and performance analytics. None of that overlaps with what aggregators do.
Many Map Labs clients use both in parallel – aggregators handling directory networks, Map Labs handling Google and Apple.
How does Map Labs compare to all-in-one platforms?
Most all-in-one platforms are built to solve one problem: keeping your business name, address, and phone number accurate across the internet. That’s useful. It’s also the bare minimum.
Google Maps is 100x more impactful than every other local search platform combined. And there’s a lot more to a great Google Maps profile than accurate contact information. The right categories, photos, reviews, posts, and services are what actually get customers through your door – and most all-in-one tools don’t touch any of them.
Map Labs is built exclusively for Google and Apple Maps. That focus means better tools, deeper data, and more advanced features than any platform that treats Maps as just another checkbox.
Our Professional Services team lives and breathes this channel. Not generalists… specialists who work on Google and Apple Maps profiles every single day.
If you want to win on Maps, depth beats breadth.
Do you connect to more than Google and Apple Maps?
Map Labs focuses on Google and Apple Maps – the two platforms that drive nearly all local search traffic that matters. Google Maps alone has over 1 billion monthly active users. Apple Maps is the default on every iPhone. Every other directory combined doesn’t come close.
That said, we do offer extended network capabilities for an additional cost – covering platforms like Yelp, Bing, and Foursquare. We don’t lead with this because the impact doesn’t compare. Once your information is accurate on these secondary platforms, there’s nothing meaningful left to optimize. It’s a one-time setup, not an ongoing strategy.
Google and Apple are where the customers are, where the complexity is, and where active management actually moves the needle. That’s where we put our energy, and yours.
Do you offer Paid Search Management?
Yes – Map Labs managed over $10M in Google Ads last year.
Your Google Business Profile is the landing page for most local ad placements. A weak or incomplete profile directly undermines your paid campaign performance.
That’s why we recommend getting your profile right first. It makes every dollar you spend on ads work harder – better placements, better conversion, better return.
When you’re ready to add paid search, our Google Ads management is focused on one thing: putting you exactly where you need to be, when customers are ready to buy. We handle Google Search, PMAX, YouTube, Display, and Bing – all managed by the same team that knows your Maps presence inside and out.
Most agencies run Ads in isolation. We run them as part of a complete Maps Marketing strategy. That’s the difference.
Do you do rank tracking?
No.
Traditional Google Maps rank tracking often relies on simulated searches from specific locations and can create a misleading picture of performance.
Instead, Map Labs focuses on real customer activity and first-party performance data. We believe understanding actual customer engagement provides a more accurate view of business performance than tracking individual long-tail keyword positions.
Can you help me with my verification?
Yes, we can! However, your business must adhere to Google’s guidelines and be eligible to appear on Search and Maps.
Please Contact Us for a consultation.
Can I talk to someone at Map Labs?
Yes! Please Contact Us to get in touch.
