A market built around move-out day.
Columbia's trades run on a calendar no other Missouri city has: tens of thousands of students arrive in August and leave in May, and every rental in between turns over on the same two weekends. Drywall patches, paint touch-ups, deep cleans, junk hauls, pressure-washed patios — the landlord and property-manager work spikes twice a year, and the shops that own it booked those weeks in March.
The plan for a Columbia trade is built around that: a map listing with "rental turnover" and "move-out" in the services, a website page written for landlords with turnaround times and per-unit pricing, and thirty introductions to the small property managers who repeat every year. The homeowner market — Ashland, Hallsville, the subdivisions south of town, Jefferson City — fills the months between.
A day-zero business, published as it grows.
Tiger Drywall Repair is a drywall repair company started by two Mizzou students in September 2026. Its Google Business Profile went live and verified on September 6 — exact "Dry wall contractor" category, hidden address, ten service areas from Columbia to Jefferson City, thirteen services listed. The website is next, then the pay-per-lead ads. Every month's numbers get published on the results page, including the slow ones, because how a listing ranks from zero is the part of the receipts nobody else shows. Follow it on the results page →
Local Services Ads in mid-Missouri.
Columbia's pay-per-lead auction is thinner than Kansas City's: fewer verified pros per category, cheaper leads, and in several trades an open top spot for the first business that passes screening. That's an opening for a one-truck shop that answers the phone. The screening takes one to three weeks, so the account gets set up in the quiet months and is ranked when the season hits. How I run these ads →
Three parts, one machine.
- Local Services Ads — screening, the exact category, job types trimmed to the work you want, the credit ledger watched weekly.
- Google Business Profile — the map spot that rings: category, service areas, photos of the work, a review habit.
- A website that ranks — a page per money job, a landlord page, real price ranges, a form and a phone number that gets answered.
All three ran for real at my father's Lee's Summit company first. The receipts, month by month →