St. Louis Marketing Company: What to Do First, Second and Third in a City of 79 Neighborhoods

Owners call this job by several names: a St. Louis marketing company, a digital agency, an online marketing firm or an internet marketing company. Whatever the label, it sits between a business and the places customers look: Google results, the map pack, ads, social feeds and the website itself. The value is not in owning every channel. It is in choosing which one to open first, how much to put behind it, and how to tell from calls and forms whether it is working.

St. Louis adds its own wrinkles. The city is independent of St. Louis County, the metro area holds 2,809,299 people and reaches into Illinois, and two area codes, 314 and 557, are in use, so a phone number on a listing, a site and an ad should read the same everywhere. Local search, meaning the map pack and searches that name a neighborhood, and citations, the directory entries that carry your business name, street address and phone number, usually come first for that reason. A plan for a business that serves only the Soulard row homes looks different from one for a company that also works in Webster Groves or Maplewood, and we build the two differently.

In the snapshot plumbing peaks in February and March at about 1.9 times an average month, roofing in March and May at about 1.6, and landscaping in April and March, near 1.4. Tree service has a different shape, peaking in July and May at about 1.2. At the other end, roofing and landscaping are slowest in December and November, plumbing in September and November, and tree service in December and January.

The planning lesson is about when to build. If March is a top-two month for three of the four, the foundation work from the first ninety days wants to be done before it, which points at the quiet autumn and winter weeks. Ads can then be switched up for the rush instead of being asked to cover for a thin profile. A business starting in February will usually test a smaller budget first and read the calls before widening it.

Ask which channel the agency would open first for your trade and why, and whether the answer changes when you describe your service area. Ask how calls are counted, because clicks and impressions can look busy while the phone stays quiet. Ask what happens to the plan in your slowest month, and whether you must sign a contract to find out. Our fee is flat each month, with no setup fee and no contract, and the reasoning is shown against numbers you can check.

Distrust any proposal that reads the same for a mover in Maplewood and a dentist in the Central West End. Those two businesses face different review bars, different seasons and different features on the results page, and a plan that ignores that is not a plan for St. Louis. The neighborhood page shows how much the map changes from one district to the next.