Opening a business in Miami: what to do online, and when
This guide is not about LLCs, EINs or visas: for those you need an accountant and a lawyer, and that is not us. It is about everything else — the digital side, the part almost everyone postpones until two weeks before opening and then rushes.
Three months before opening
Register the domain, even with no site yet
It costs fifteen dollars a year and is the first thing to lock down. Take the .com, and if the name is common take the obvious variants too. Practical advice: before falling in love with a name, check the domain is free and that the name is not already a registered Florida company on sunbiz.org. A free two-minute search that saves months of trouble.
Claim your social handles
Instagram, Facebook, TikTok. You do not need to post anything: you need nobody else taking your name while you are busy with the landlord. Five minutes total.
Get photos taken before the place fills up
The most common mistake. On opening day you are overwhelmed and take no decent photos, then six months later you are still using badly lit phone shots. A professional shoot in Miami costs between $600 and $1,500 and feeds your site, socials, Google, press and menus. Highest return on this whole list.
One month before
Create and verify your Google Business Profile
If you read one line of this guide, read this one. For a physical business in Miami, the Google listing brings more customers than your site, socials and ads combined. It is free. Verification takes anywhere from a few days to three weeks, because Google sometimes mails a postcard with a code to the physical address: which is why you start early, not the day before.
When you fill it in: pick the most specific primary category you can ("Pizza restaurant" beats "Restaurant"), upload at least twenty photos, enter real hours, and only turn on messaging if someone can actually reply.
Get at least one page online
You do not need the perfect website. You need someone searching your name to find something of yours, not a Yelp page written by a stranger. One page with your name, what you do, address, hours, phone and a contact button is enough to start. The rest comes later, when you have real photos and know what customers ask.
Set up the socials, without pushing yet
A clear English bio, address, link, and three or four posts showing what is about to open. Countdown content works well in Miami: the build-out, the oven arriving, the first test in the kitchen. People here genuinely follow openings.
Opening week
Ask for reviews from day one
It is the difference between existing and not existing in local search. In Miami a business with forty reviews at 4.6 stars gets chosen over one with three even if it costs more and is further away. Ask the same day, in person, with a printed QR code on the check or the counter. A week later the response rate collapses.
Reply to all of them, bad ones included
Replying calmly to a bad review, without getting defensive, convinces future readers more than ten glowing ones. Americans read owner responses to work out who they are dealing with. Do not delete, do not argue: thank them, say what you will change, close.
Run a small campaign on your neighbourhood
Three hundred dollars on Meta, targeted within five miles, for the two weeks around opening. Not to gain followers: so that people living ten minutes away know you exist. The cheapest way to buy your first customers.
The first three months
Look at what people actually search, not what you assumed
Google Search Console is free and tells you which words bring people to your site. They are almost always different from what you assumed. A restaurant convinced it sells "Emilian cuisine" discovers it gets found for "handmade pasta near me": at that point, put that phrase on the site.
Start collecting email addresses immediately
Bringing back an existing customer costs five times less than convincing a new one, and email is the only channel you truly own: Instagram algorithms change, your list does not. A QR code on the counter with a small discount in exchange for the address is enough.
Pick what to measure, and look only at that
For a restaurant: bookings and midweek covers. For a shop: footfall and average ticket. For a service business: quote requests. Followers and views are not goals, they are a means. If followers rise but nobody walks in, something is off.
One necessary note. This guide covers the digital side only. For incorporation, taxes, licensing, visas and leases you need a CPA and an attorney licensed in Florida: that is not advice we can give. A good starting point is the Italy-America Chamber of Commerce Southeast, based in Miami, which assists Italian companies entering the US market.
The short version
- 1Domain and social handles: right away, they cost nothing
- 2Professional photos: before opening, not after
- 3Verified Google Business Profile: one month before
- 4One page online with the essentials
- 5Reviews asked for from day one, in person
- 6Three hundred dollars of local ads for the opening
- 7Email list from the very first customer
If any of this sounds like work you do not have time for, that is exactly why we exist.
Tell us what you're opening.
Twenty minutes on the phone, no strings. We tell you what you actually need and what can wait.