COMPASS, FOR HIGH-STREET RETAIL

Marketing for High-Street Retail

You run a shop on the high street, and footfall is not what it was while the big discounters keep pulling people away. Compass helps you fill your window and your listings with the things that bring locals in, sets the handful of places your catchment looks, and teaches you the marketing craft to turn a first-timer into a regular. Try Compass today with a free 90 day growth plan.

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Market vendor

What You Came Here to Solve

It's a Tuesday afternoon and the shop is quiet. You straighten the shelves, you serve the one customer who came in for milk, and you watch the street through the window. Saturdays are still busy, but the weekday afternoons have thinned out, the discount chain that opened by the station is taking the everyday spend, and your Google listing sits at four and a half stars with the last review a month old. The half-written Instagram post has sat in your camera roll for three days, the website is years out of date, and the local Facebook group recommends every shop on the parade except yours. You know you need to bring the regulars back and pull the new neighbours in, but the options run into the dozens and your time is the hour after the shutters come down. What do you do?

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Greengrocer

Why Most of the Advice Misses the Mark

Most retail marketing advice was written for chains with a head of marketing and a budget that buys prime ad space, and the agencies offering social media charge more in a month than a few slow afternoons take. You have likely been burned before: a website you paid for that nobody finds, a social-media person who posted for a month and then vanished, a flyer run that brought nobody in. The agency playbook leans on tactics that need a budget and a marketing team, and the trade press is full of multi-site retailers that have nothing in common with one shop on one street. It ends in trying everything once, committing to none, and reaching the end of the quarter with the weekday afternoons still quiet.

Account manager

What Makes Compass Different

The usual AI tools take the posting off your hands and produce the same cheerful filler any shop could put out, when your shop's character is exactly what brings people through the door. Compass works to a different plan. It puts the speed of AI behind coaching and a feel for how a local catchment chooses where to spend, so the words stay yours and you learn the craft of filling the quiet afternoons.

Compass starts with your Google Business Profile and the local-search visibility that decides whether the neighbour searching for what you sell walks in or walks past. It surfaces the listing, photo, opening-hours, and review actions that lift you in the local results, and it names the reason behind each one so the craft stays with you the next time you dress the window. It sets your channel mix to fit a single shop and a catchment of a mile or two, calibrated to the local surfaces your customers use rather than the nationwide model an agency assumes. It teaches you to build the comeback habit that turns a first-timer into a regular, with the small touches that work over a counter, like a face remembered and an offer that does not need an app.

You stay the one in charge of how the shop comes across, you learn why each one brings footfall through the door, and you have a senior marketing executive's judgement behind you that an independent could never put on the payroll.

Adapted to Your Business

Compass calibrates to your specific business. Each of these has its own page with the actions that fit the work best

How Compass Works

1

Learns Your Shop

Twenty minutes to get started. You answer a handful of quick questions about your business: what you sell, where you trade, who walks through your door, where you already appear online. While you answer, Compass researches your local catchment and your nearest competitors and surfaces what it finds for you to confirm or correct. Then a short guided conversation captures the rest: who your last great customer was, what success looks like for the next quarter, what marketing you have already tried, and how much time and budget you can put behind it.

2

Writes Your Marketing Strategy

The free 90 Day Growth Plan lands first: a single on-screen plan personalised to your shop, with the market truth about your category, the customer profiles most worth pursuing, the buying moments that turn the passer-by into a walk-in, and a 90 day roadmap of the actions that matter most for the next three months. Your Pro subscription turns that into a full 12 month marketing strategy with deeper market research, five customer profiles instead of two, and a monthly cadence that adapts as your year unfolds.

3

Turns Your Strategy into Action

A short daily task list, sized to the time you have, anything from one task to a few, organised by customer profile and channel. Some tasks Compass handles for you in the background, such as listings monitoring and review tracking across Google, Facebook, and the local-directory sites your category uses. The rest are short and clear, designed to fit between the lunch rush and closing, with the marketing science behind each one explained in jargon-free language so you learn the craft as you go.

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The Marketing Science Underneath

High-street retail marketing has its own canon of science: how a shopper chooses within a catchment of a mile or two on reviews, proximity, and the cues they pick up walking past, the frequency maths that decides whether a first-timer comes back once a month or once a week, the local-search mechanics that decide whether the neighbour finds you or the discounter by the station, and the way repeat custom and word of mouth carry the margin while paid ads chase the marginal first visit at a cost a single shop rarely recovers. Compass applies the science to your shop and names the reason behind every task in plain English, so you learn your marketing craft every day until one day you won't need Compass anymore.

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Data analysis hands
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Pro Plan subscription £19 per month for as long as you stay.

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  • When the places are filled, the Pro Plan becomes £39 a month.
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FAQs

Compass walks you through the Google Business Profile fields that decide whether your shop appears for the searches in your catchment, names the photos, opening-hours accuracy, and review rhythm that move you up the local results, and surfaces the changes worth making this week. Your listing stays in your account; Compass shows you what to update and why.
Not on price, where you cannot win, but on the things a chain cannot copy: the specific product, the face behind the counter, the neighbourhood knowledge. Compass surfaces where your shop has the advantage and shapes the work around bringing those customers back more often.
Compass looks at when your catchment is searching and spending, and sets the offers, posts, and small touches that pull trade into the slow hours, rather than leaving you to guess.
Often yes, and Compass walks you through the partnership pitch that lands with the neighbour you want to work with. A shared offer, a cross-recommendation, or a joint event can lift footfall for both shops at no ad spend.
It depends on the time you have. Compass calibrates the daily task list to your availability, whether that is fifteen minutes between customers or a longer session on a closed day.
Free includes the 90 Day Growth Plan. Pro is £19 a month for the first 1,000 founders, locked for life. After the 1,000th seat is taken, Pro is £39 a month. No card needed to claim the free plan. See full pricing details.