Internet Marketing Services
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Baldwin County, Alabama, is a place where the visitor count dwarfs the resident count. The tourism bureau counted about 8.4 million visitors in 2024, while the 2020 census counted 231,767 residents. A restaurant near the beach and a roofer in Loxley work in the same county and share almost none of the same customers, yet plans written for the county often treat them alike.
Digital marketing is the whole set of ways a business gets found and chosen online: search engine optimization, a Google Business Profile, Google Ads, Meta Ads (Facebook and Instagram), a website that works on a phone and tracking that shows which of those produced the call. In a visitor county the order matters more than the list. A beach guest decides from a phone, usually the same day, usually from a map. A newcomer on the Eastern Shore decides from reviews, because nobody has told them whom to call. A second-home owner living in another state hires for an empty house and has to find someone from a distance.
The plan below follows the order in which these people actually arrive. First come the surfaces every one of them sees. Then come pages that match each place and service. Paid ads come last, timed to a county calendar that runs from spring break through the summer into fall events such as the National Shrimp Festival in October.
Order of work
List every place the business appears: website, Google Business Profile, map apps, directories and social accounts. Check what a stranger sees on a phone, because a visitor never sees your desktop site. Set up call tracking and a form that records the page it came from, so that by day 10 you can tell a Gulf Shores caller from a Fairhope caller. Then ask the owner where past customers lived; the answer is often a surprise.
Correct names, phone numbers and hours wherever they differ. Hours deserve care in a county where a business may keep one schedule in summer and another in winter. Claim and complete the profile described on our Google Maps and local SEO page, and make the first screen of the site a phone number and a one-line promise in plain words. Nothing paid starts yet, because ads sent to a leaking site only pay for the leak.
Write one page for each service and, where it is true, one for each place served: Spanish Fort, Daphne, Fairhope, Foley, Robertsdale, Gulf Shores, Orange Beach. This is the search engine optimization core, covered on the Baldwin County AL SEO page. Start a steady review request after each job or visit, with a short link, because people who have no other way to judge a business read reviews closely.
With the site and profile ready, Google Ads goes live on the searches closest to a purchase, and Meta Ads join only if there is an offer or an event worth reaching people for. Day 90 ends with a read of the call log: which zone, which source, which service, and what to cut.
Who you are
This business serves people who are settling in, and settling in means hiring someone. The county has 122 residential remodeling locations and 27 roofing locations, and both counts rose sharply from 2017. The first move is call tracking and a profile that shows the real service area, then pages for the towns along State Route 59 and US 98 where the new homes are going up.
A guest chooses in minutes. Full-service restaurants number 246 locations, and 125 of them have 20 or more staff, so the competition is organized. The first move is the map profile: photos, seasonal hours, a menu or booking link that opens fast on a phone, and a request for reviews at the table. Pages and ads come second.
Law offices number 119, physician offices 131 and dentists 92. Newcomers have no family doctor or attorney yet, so they search by service and by town. The first move is a page for each service people actually ask for, a profile for each location, and plain-language answers that read well when an assistant or a search result quotes them.
The field you are entering
| Trade | Employer locations | Per 10,000 residents | Against the typical county | Share under 10 staff | Locations with 20+ staff | Count change from 2017 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Residential remodelers | 122 | 4.8 | 1.5 times | 92 of 100 | 0 | +114 percent |
| Roofing contractors | 27 | 1.1 | 1.3 times | 93 of 100 | 0 | +170 percent |
| Plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors | 119 | 4.7 | 1.5 times | 82 of 100 | 6 | +32.2 percent |
| Full-service restaurants | 246 | 9.7 | 1.4 times | 25 of 100 | 125 | -7.2 percent |
| Real estate agents and brokers | 262 | 10.3 | 3.7 times | 96 of 100 | 0 | +73.5 percent |
| Physicians offices | 131 | 5.2 | 1.3 times | 61 of 100 | 22 | -5.8 percent |
| Dentists | 92 | 3.6 | 1.3 times | 60 of 100 | 3 | +12.2 percent |
| Law offices | 119 | 4.7 | 1.6 times | 94 of 100 | 0 | +4.4 percent |
Source: Census County Business Patterns 2022 and 2017. A location counts only if it has payroll, so solo operators and weekend sellers are outside the table and the real field is larger.
Reading the table
Real estate is the most crowded trade in the county: 262 locations, which is 3.7 times the typical county for its size, and 96 of every 100 are under 10 staff. An agent who waits for search rankings alone will wait a long time, so the 90 days for that trade leans earlier on paid search and on profile and review work.
Roofing is the opposite case: it has only 27 locations. A field that grew from 10 to 27 locations is still small, and building pages while it is small is cheaper than doing it after the field fills in. Restaurants and physician offices went the other way, with restaurant locations down 7.2 percent and physician offices down 5.8 percent since 2017. In those trades the businesses that remain are the larger ones, so a smaller operator needs a clearer first screen to stand out.
None of this tells you what a good plan costs or how a given business will do. It tells you how hard the first screen has to work, and where waiting would be the expensive choice.
Where plans slip
Starting ads in the week of a festival with nobody ready to answer the phone. The National Shrimp Festival in early to mid October is Gulf Shores' largest event, and the Elberta sausage festival falls on the last weekends of March and October. Calls come in clusters around these dates, and a missed call is paid for twice.
Building only for the beach names. People on the Eastern Shore search for Fairhope, Daphne and Point Clear. Central Baldwin, the Highway 59 corridor from Loxley to Summerdale, is its own search name too. A site that talks only about Gulf Shores and Orange Beach is invisible to a large part of the county.
Having no storm plan. Hurricane Sally came ashore near Gulf Shores on September 16, 2020, and more than 71,000 customers lost power in the county. A plan needs a pause switch for ads, a banner for the website and profile, and a way to restart once the phone can be answered.
Plans
Questions
Search work starts at $495 a month with RankGuarantee™ for 25 landing pages. Organic Growth is $1,495 for Silver (no website), $2,495 for Gold (managed website) and $3,495 for Platinum. Paid ads management is $895 for one platform, $1,595 for two and $2,295 for three, with ad spend paid separately. There is no setup fee and no contract, so a business can begin with one piece and add the next at day 60 or day 90.
The shape holds and the weight moves. A visitor-facing business spends the first weeks on the map profile, photos, hours and reviews, because guests decide on a phone in a few minutes. It then builds pages around what guests search, such as places and activities. A business serving residents leans on service pages and reviews first. Both end with the same day 90 read of the call log.
Count back from spring break, which opens the beach season. A January high near 62 degrees and no measurable snow mean the winter months are quiet but workable, so a business that starts then has its profile and pages settled before the crowds arrive. Starting in the first week of the busy season means you learn from the crowd instead of serving it.
Hurricanes have shaped the county, with disaster declarations after Frederic, Danny, Georges, Ivan, Katrina and Sally. Keep a written pause switch: how to stop ads, post a closure on the profile and website, and restart. Home-service businesses may see demand rise after a storm, so the plan should also say how to scale up and what to do when the phone rings off the hook.
The order holds and the places change. Interstate 10 links the county with Mobile on the west and Pensacola on the east, and US 90 runs about 24 miles from Mobile to Robertsdale and 35 miles from there to Pensacola. A contractor who works both ends adds a page for each neighbor across the line and keeps the Baldwin County pages clear about which jobs are in range.
Most employer locations here are small. In remodeling, 92 of every 100 locations have under 10 staff, and in roofing it is 93 of every 100. A small business is not at a disadvantage when it is clear about what it does and where. The 90 days is built so that one owner can follow it while still working jobs.
Count phone calls long enough to be a real inquiry, split by the page or profile they came from. Traffic is easy to inflate and tells a Gulf Shores business little. Calls, booked tables and appointment requests show whether the site is doing its job. By day 30 you should know which few pages and profiles produce most of them.
Bring the list of services you most want more of, the towns you will and will not drive to, your busiest and slowest months, and access to your website, Google Business Profile and any ad accounts. If you do not have them, we help you find the logins. Nothing here needs a polished plan before the first call.
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Get in Touch
Tell us what you sell, which parts of the county you drive to and which months matter most, and we will lay out the order of work. Call 610-825-4363 or email hello@getphound.com.