I owned Ruby’s Pub in Stuart for ten years. Ten years of running a small business in a small Iowa town, and ten years of being the customer of every marketing agency that came pitching. Most of the time, the math didn’t add up.
When I sold Ruby’s in 2017, I spent about a year working inside a West Des Moines marketing agency. That’s when it clicked. The prices small-town businesses were getting quoted weren’t about the work. They were about the office, the payroll, and the overhead.
I started Marketing Main Street in 2021 to be the opposite of that.
From someone who has been on your side of the counter.
Nate Westre, owner
Your website is the hub of The Marketing Wheel.
It is the one place a potential customer can verify that you are real, that you do what they need, and that other people in your community trust you.
Every other channel feeds traffic back
here.
Video is how you let people see you before they ever meet you.
For a small business owner in rural Iowa, that is often the difference between someone
calling and someone scrolling past.
The goal is not film-school polish. The goal is letting your customers know who they would actually be working with.
What platform? What to post? When? How often?
Those are the right questions, and the answers depend on who your customers actually are.
We work with you to find a rhythm you can keep up with, not one that burns you out by month
three.
Most rural Iowa businesses are invisible to the customers searching for them.
Not because the work is bad, but because the website is not telling Google what to look for.
SEO is how we fix that.
The Marketing Main Street Framework treats visibility, consistency, and reputation as the three things Google
actually rewards, and that is what we work on for your site.
Marketing for a small business should not be five different vendors selling five different things that don’t connect.
The Marketing Wheel is how we think about it.
Your website is the hub. Google, social, video, community presence, and events are the spokes.
Each spoke drives traffic back to the hub. Each spoke reinforces the others.
Most small businesses we meet have a flat tire somewhere. We help you find it and fix it.
Small-town Main Street is what we know. We have lived it, run businesses in it, and watched what works. When you do well, your town does well, and that is the point.
We are based in Stuart, Iowa, and so are most of our clients. We live and work in the same towns you do.
You will not be charged extra just because we are a marketing “agency.”
Our prices reflect the work, not the office.
We have been on your side of the counter.
Ten years owning Ruby’s Pub in Stuart taught us every headache of running a small business: the budget pressure, the late nights, the marketing hat you did not have time for.
That’s the lens we bring to your account.
Multiple digital marketing certifications. Fancy college degrees. We can even TikTok.
We are partners in this marketing thing.
No hiding, no jargon, no surprise invoices.
If we cannot explain what we did and why, we shouldn’t have done it.
Marketing Main Street320 N Gaines St, Stuart
