Starting a Business in Germany: A Marketing Checklist for the First 90 Days

What should a new business in Germany do first for marketing?

Start with three decisions. Who exactly do you sell to, what makes them contact you, and how will you notice that they did. Then build the smallest set of assets that lets people find you, trust you and get in touch. A name and domain, a website with its legal pages, a Google Business Profile, one or two channels and a way to count enquiries are a sound start for the first three months.

In Berlin, for example, the Berlin service portal explains how to register a trade with the district public order office (Ordnungsamt) and says that the office forwards the registration to other bodies, including the tax office and the chambers. Other cities and states have their own offices and forms. Ask your local authority and your chamber, the IHK or the Handwerkskammer, what applies to you.

How do you choose a business name and domain?

Choose a name that is easy to say, spell and search for, then check that nobody else already holds rights to it. The German Patent and Trade Mark Office (DPMA) advises searching before you apply for a trade mark, because third parties can object and a mark can be deleted or attacked with warning letters or lawsuits. The office says it does not check in the application procedure whether similar or identical marks exist.

DPMAregister, the office’s register, lets you search German trade marks free of charge. It does not offer a similarity search. For European Union and international marks with effect in Germany, the DPMA points to the EUIPO and WIPO databases for a complete search. It also recommends searching the internet, telephone directories and commercial registers for similar signs. Trade mark questions are legal questions, so ask a trade mark lawyer if the name matters to your business.

For the domain, a .de address is the country-code domain for Germany, and Google names such domains as a strong signal that a site is meant for one country. According to DENIC, the registry, .de domains can contain umlauts, ß and other characters, 93 additional characters in all. An umlaut name can be registered in addition to its transliterated form. If your name contains an umlaut, consider registering both forms and sending one to the other.

Use the same name on the website, the Google Business Profile, signage and invoices. Google’s guidelines ask for the name as it is used in the real world, without taglines or keywords added.

Which pages does a new website need?

A new business needs a small, clear website rather than a large one. Plan on these pages from the start.

• Home, with the offer in one sentence and one clear next step.
• Services, with one page for each main service, written for the questions customers ask.
• About, saying who is behind the business and what they do.
• Contact, with address, phone number, email address, a form and opening hours.
• Imprint and privacy information.
• Pages for cities or areas only if you actually serve them and have something specific to say about each.

The imprint and the privacy information are legal requirements. Our guide to website legal requirements in Germany walks through § 5 DDG, GDPR Article 13 and the cookie rule in § 25 TDDDG. Do not launch without them.

Write the content in the language of your customers. If you serve both German and English speakers, give each language its own pages and link them with hreflang, as our German SEO guide explains. For the cost side, see how much a website costs in Germany and our web design service.

How do you set up a Google Business Profile and measurement?

Google offers a Business Profile to businesses that have a location customers can visit or that travel to customers. Verify it, fill in every field and keep the details identical to your website.

• Verify the profile. Google decides which verification options you get, and they can include phone or text, email, a live video call or a postcard.
• Use the name from your signage and website, with address, hours and category in their own fields.
• Give an accurate address or service area. A virtual office is not eligible, and a service-area business should hide its address.
• Choose the fewest categories that describe your core business, and keep one profile per business.

Google says local results are mainly based on relevance, distance and prominence, and that there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. Reviews feed into prominence. Ask real customers for reviews and reply to them.

Set up Search Console for the site so you can see how it performs in Google Search, and decide in advance what counts as an enquiry. Calls, form submissions, bookings and messages count. Page views alone do not. At Digital030 we track up to the enquiry and report real numbers each month.

Analytics and similar tools can store or read information on the visitor’s device. If yours do, § 25 TDDDG requires consent unless an exception applies. Settle this before you add the tool, using the legal guide above.

Which channels should a new business start with?

Pick one or two channels and run them properly. Spreading a small budget over five channels makes it hard to learn what works.

For the search-led channels, see our pages on SEO and Google Ads.

How do you work out a marketing budget backwards?

Start from the customers you need and work back to the spend, instead of starting from an amount you happen to have. Every step is an assumption until you have tested it, so write the assumptions down and replace them with real numbers as they arrive.

The table uses invented numbers to show the method. Your own figures will differ.

Digital030 works the same way. We derive the budget backwards from the client’s numbers, meaning how many enquiries are needed, how many become customers and what a customer is worth. We state the ad budget and our fee separately. We publish no fixed prices, and we prepare an offer after the first conversation. Our usual recommendation for performance marketing is at least 500 to 1,000 euros of ad budget per month, and more in competitive fields such as solar or real estate, around 2,000 euros and up.

If the numbers do not add up, change the channel, the offer or the price, or wait until the website and the tracking are ready.

What does a 90-day plan look like?

Days 1 to 30, set up

• Fix the target customer and the one action you want them to take, such as calling, booking or requesting a quote.
• Check the name and register the domain.
• Build the site with the pages above, including the imprint and privacy information.
• Verify the Google Business Profile.
• Set up Search Console and tracking up to the enquiry.
• Write down your budget assumptions.

Days 31 to 60, launch one channel

• Start the first channel, for example the Business Profile plus Google search ads, or content for search.
• Answer every enquiry quickly and note where it came from.
• Ask your first customers for reviews.
• Check each week that the tracking records enquiries correctly.

Days 61 to 90, learn and adjust

• Compare the real cost per enquiry and the share of enquiries that become customers with your assumptions.
• Keep what works, stop what does not, and change one thing at a time.
• Add a second channel only when the first one runs reliably.
• Plan the next quarter’s budget from real numbers.
• Give SEO time. First improvements are often measurable after a few weeks and larger gains take months.

Which mistakes do new businesses make with marketing?

• Launching without an imprint and privacy information.
• Measuring visits instead of enquiries.
• Running four channels with a budget for one.
• Translating English pages word for word and expecting German rankings.
• Leaving the Google Business Profile unverified, or different from the website.
• Judging search ads or SEO after a few days.
• Sending unsolicited marketing email to bought lists.
• Leaving enquiries unanswered for days.
• Skipping the name check.

If you want a second pair of eyes on your plan, book a free 30-minute call. Simon Krebs speaks fluent English and German. See our page on marketing in Berlin for how we work.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

• Service Berlin, Register a trade: How trade registration works in Berlin and who receives the registration (accessed 2026-10-19)
• DPMA, Trade mark research: Searching before applying, DPMAregister and its limits (German) (accessed 2026-10-19)
• DENIC, IDNs under .de: Umlauts and special characters: Umlaut domains and the permitted characters (accessed 2026-10-19)
• Google Search Central, Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites: Country-code domains as a signal (accessed 2026-10-19)
• Google Business Profile Help, Tips to improve your local ranking on Google: Relevance, distance and prominence (accessed 2026-10-19)
• Google Business Profile Help, Guidelines for representing your business on Google: Name, address, service area and category rules (accessed 2026-10-19)
• Google Business Profile Help, Verify your business on Google: Verification options (accessed 2026-10-19)
• Search Console Help, Performance report (Search results): What Search Console reports (accessed 2026-10-19)

This checklist covers marketing only and is not business formation, tax or legal advice. Ask the competent authorities and your advisers. The sources above were read on 19 October 2026, and the numbers in the budget example are invented.