My Salamanca Boutique Survived Amazon Thanks to Google Maps

I'm 47 years old and I've had the boutique for 12 years. It's called Moda Capricho and it's on Calle Los Libreros, three minutes from the central market. Not a particularly touristy street, but I always did well because in Salamanca everyone knows each other and customers came through word of mouth.

Then COVID arrived and everyone learned to shop online.

The problem wasn't that they stopped coming. It was that they started searching before coming. And I wasn't showing up in those searches. I had 17 Google reviews, most from 2021. Anyone searching "women's clothing store Salamanca" would see a chain with 340 reviews before a neighbourhood boutique with 17.

What bothered me was that my regular customers loved me. Many had been coming for years. But they'd never thought to write a review. It's not something that occurs to people naturally.

My niece Lucía, who studies marketing in Madrid, said it plainly at Christmas: "Auntie, you need to ask for reviews. People don't do it on their own." That felt a bit aggressive to me, asking directly. But she explained that there were systems that first asked how the experience went, and only if the response was positive, suggested leaving a review. That felt more natural.

We started in November. The first few days felt uncomfortable. I'd send the WhatsApp and sit there staring at my phone. The first customer who replied was Rosario, who's been coming since I opened. She wrote: "What a lovely question, it's been a while since anyone asked how things went." Then she left a review that made me cry a little: it said that in my shop they'd never let her buy something that didn't suit her.

That's what we do. But I'd never said it out loud.

In four months: 64 reviews, 4.8 stars. And something I didn't expect: new customers started coming. Not from Salamanca city, but from surrounding villages. A woman from Peñaranda de Bracamonte told me she'd read a review saying "they help you choose what actually suits you, not what costs more" and that was exactly what she was looking for.

Amazon can have millions of items. It can't look at you and tell you that colour doesn't work for you.

What I learned: reviews aren't marketing. They're the way your best customers tell others what you really are. I just had to give them a path to do it.