Google Ads management for Stillwater businesses in a market that lives by the OSU calendar.
Stillwater is one of the purest college towns in the country. The population roughly doubles when school is in session and shrinks dramatically every summer. Game weekends bring 50,000+ visitors. We build campaigns that move with the calendar instead of fighting it.
A flat budget in a college town is the wrong budget.
When Stillwater campaigns underperform, the cause is almost always the same: a structure built for a generic small market, ignoring the seasonal swings that genuinely define a true college town anchored by OSU.
Flat budgets through the academic calendar
July and September don't behave alike in Stillwater. Spending the same daily budget when 25,000 students have left town as when they've all returned leaves money on both sides — burning it in summer and missing the surge in fall. Smart pacing alone moves cost-per-lead meaningfully.
Game weekends treated like normal weekends
50,000+ fans show up at Boone Pickens on a Saturday and the surrounding traffic touches every consumer category in town. Search demand for dining, lodging, transportation, and retail spikes in narrow windows. Campaigns running uniform bids through home games miss the most valuable hours of the week.
Local and regional demand averaged together
A search for "veterinarian stillwater" from an OSU vet school referral seeker behaves very differently from the same search by a Payne County resident. OSU's veterinary, engineering, and research ecosystems pull demand from across the country. Accounts that don't separate them bid wrong on both.
Built around the calendar. Tuned every week.
The opening weeks are about understanding how OSU's rhythm actually shapes your business. From there we keep the campaign moving with the realities of a college-town economy.
Discovery call
Your customer profile, margins, what share of revenue depends on the student population versus permanent residents, and whether game weekends or specific OSU programs touch your business. We build the calendar before the campaign.
Audit or build
Existing account? We check whether budgets actually reflect the academic calendar, whether game-weekend pacing exists at all, and whether out-of-town referral demand is separated from local intent. Starting clean? We build with all of it in mind from day one.
Tracking, done correctly
Call tracking with realistic duration thresholds, form events filtered for spam, key event tagging in GA4 and Google Ads, plus segmentation that lets you see student-driven, game-weekend, and permanent-resident demand side by side. In a market this seasonal, that distinction matters.
Weekly optimization, calendar-aware
Bid edits, negative keyword expansion, ad copy iteration, and budget pacing reviewed against the academic calendar and home football schedule. When move-in week approaches or a ranked matchup is on the docket, the campaign is already prepared to scale.
Monthly recap
Plain-English reporting tied to where we are in the academic year and what's coming next. What worked, what didn't, what we're adjusting. No filler metrics or dashboards built to obscure.
Jamie restructured our account so budget actually scaled with move-in week and game weekends instead of running flat. The change in lead volume during our busy months was immediate and obvious.Verified client review Service business · Google Ads audit
Stillwater is OSU's town. Your campaign has to know that.
Stillwater is built around Oklahoma State University. Roughly 25,000 students, more than 6,000 employees, and a city population that effectively doubles in the school year. The university's College of Veterinary Medicine and Center for Veterinary Health Sciences make Stillwater one of the most important veterinary medicine centers in the country, drawing referrals and research traffic from across the U.S.
Layer in Cowboy football and basketball at Boone Pickens Stadium and Gallagher-Iba, OSU's significant engineering and aerospace research footprint (including the Unmanned Systems Research Institute), Stillwater Medical Center as the regional healthcare anchor, and the broader Payne County agricultural economy, and you have a small market with more depth than the population alone would suggest.
Service area
Stillwater · Perkins · Glencoe · Yale · Cushing · Drumright · Ripley · Pawnee · Perry · Guthrie · Greater Payne, Noble, and Pawnee counties · North Central Oklahoma
Industries we know best in Stillwater
OSU-adjacent businesses (student housing, dining, retail, healthcare, transportation, short-term lodging) · Game-weekend hospitality, dining, and lodging tied to Boone Pickens Stadium and Gallagher-Iba · Veterinary services and pet care tied to the OSU College of Veterinary Medicine referral network · Engineering, aerospace, and research-services businesses supporting OSU's research footprint · Stillwater Medical Center–adjacent specialty practices and healthcare services · Home services (HVAC, plumbing, roofing, foundation) for the North Central Oklahoma climate · Auto services and dealerships drawing demand from students, faculty, and Payne County locals · Agricultural services, ag retail, and farm equipment serving the surrounding Payne County ag economy · Legal services with family law, real estate, and small-business practice areas
Founded by
Jamie Hejna, a Texas-based PPC specialist with deep Google Ads experience and a relationship-first approach to client work
Worth reading before you call
What's a realistic Google Ads budget for a Stillwater business?
Most Stillwater service businesses do well starting between $900 and $3,000 per month in media spend. CPCs across Payne County sit well below Oklahoma City and Tulsa for most consumer categories, which means smaller budgets can do real work here. The honest catch: auctions get meaningfully more competitive during the school year and around game weekends, then loosen up substantially in summer. Categories tied to OSU's veterinary, engineering, and research ecosystems can warrant the upper end because they pull demand from across the country.
How do you handle OSU's academic calendar?
It's the single most important variable in any Stillwater campaign. The city's population roughly doubles when OSU is in session and shrinks dramatically every summer. Move-in week, football Saturdays, Family Weekend, finals, and graduation all reshape demand for housing, dining, retail, auto, and almost every consumer category in town. We map pacing and budget allocation around the actual academic calendar instead of running a flat budget that overspends in July and underspends in September.
Do Cowboy football game weekends actually move the auction?
Yes — meaningfully. Boone Pickens Stadium fills with 50,000+ fans on home football Saturdays, and the surrounding traffic touches restaurants, hotels, short-term lodging, transportation, retail, and bars. Rivalry games and ranked matchups draw even more out-of-town visitors. Search demand for those categories spikes in narrow windows that a flat budget will completely miss. Campaigns that pace around the schedule capture revenue campaigns that don't, won't.
How long until Google Ads starts producing leads in Stillwater?
First leads typically arrive within the first week of launch. The meaningful efficiency curve plays out between days 30 and 90, as Google's bidding signals stabilize and we make data-informed adjustments. Most accounts show clear cost-per-lead and lead-quality improvements by month two — though in a market this seasonal, we make sure timing expectations account for whether we're launching into the school year or the summer dip.
Will I be locked into a long-term contract?
No. Engagements run month-to-month. We'd rather earn each month through the work than rely on paperwork to keep clients in the door. If we aren't producing, you should be free to make a change.
Who owns the Google Ads account?
You do — from day one. We build or manage the account, but it stays in your name throughout the engagement. If we ever part ways, every campaign, conversion tag, and historical data point goes with you. This is non-negotiable on our side.
Do you work with businesses outside Stillwater?
Yes. We're Texas-based but manage Google Ads accounts for businesses across the country including Austin, Minneapolis, and Washington DC. We've expanded into Oklahoma because the state's regional markets — including Stillwater and the OSU-anchored economy — have a mix worth specializing in. Stillwater clients receive the same hands-on attention every account does.
Ready for Google Ads that move with OSU?
A direct conversation with Jamie — no script, no pressure, no canned pitch. Just an honest read on whether we're the right fit for what you're building in Stillwater.