Montgomery County AL Business Landscape: Fifteen Trades, Counted

The table below comes from County Business Patterns, which counts business locations that have employees. It leaves out sole proprietors who work alone, so a trade with many one-person firms is undercounted. A small number also swings easily: a trade with eight locations in 2017 and ten in 2022 has added two. Treat the figures as a signal for where to look, not a measure of any single competitor.

The column "versus typical county" divides the trade's locations per 10,000 residents by that of the median county with 20,000 or more residents. A figure above 1 means more per resident than usual, and below 1 means fewer. The columns on staff size separate the one- and two-person shops from larger employers, which tend to have their own marketing already.

Law offices stand out: 162 locations, 7.2 per 10,000 residents, about two and a half times the typical county. Physician offices, accounting firms, dentists and janitorial services are also above typical. In these trades a new marketing effort faces many established names, so differentiation, reviews and a clear page for each service matter most, and paid search may be the faster path to calls.

On the other side, roofing contractors (10 locations), residential remodelers (23), landscaping services (42) and plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors (49) are all below the typical county per resident. Roofing and remodeling have also grown since 2017. A contractor in one of these trades is not competing against a crowd of businesses, but still faces competition for the same homeowner searches, and that makes pages for each service and place worth building.

Health care, manufacturing and public administration together employ more than a third of the county's workers, and education and retail are close behind. This is an institutional economy. A hospital system, a state agency, a university or a military installation buys services on a schedule and through procurement rules, not on impulse, and the employees of those institutions are customers of the restaurants, salons, dentists and repair shops in the table above.

For a business that sells to households, the practical result is that demand follows paychecks and calendars: the first days after payday, the start of a school term or the weeks when the Legislature is in session. For a business that sells to institutions, the result is that a page explaining your qualifications, service area and references matters more than an advertisement. Both cases favor a clear website and an accurate Google Business Profile.

The staff columns in the table show how large the businesses in each trade are. Restaurants stand out: 56 of the 130 full-service restaurant locations have 20 or more staff, the highest of any trade. Physician offices follow with 37 locations of that size, and law offices have 10. In contrast, real estate agents, residential remodelers, beauty salons and insurance agencies are almost entirely small, with 87 to 97 of every 100 locations under 10 staff.

That split changes how to market. In a trade with larger employers, some competitors already have a website team, a reputation program and a paid search budget, so a smaller business must pick where to be visible and do it well. In a trade made up of small shops, the strongest competitor may have only one person managing everything, and a clear website, a complete profile and steady reviews can put a new business in the conversation sooner than you would expect.

The county as a whole counted fewer people in the 2023 estimate than in the 2020 census, yet permits for new homes were higher in 2025 than in any of the previous four years shown. The permit survey is for the whole county, so it cannot tell us how many of those homes are in Pike Road, how many in East Montgomery and how many elsewhere. The place brief points to Pike Road and the east side as the fast-growing parts, but we treat that as a likely pattern rather than a measured fact.

For marketing, the signal is clear enough. New homes mean new households that have not chosen a plumber, an insurance agent, a landscaper or a dentist. Pages that name the growing places, a complete Google Business Profile and a few honest reviews help a business be considered. Our search engine optimization and Google Ads management pages show how each channel fits that goal.