Horry County Internet Marketing: A Market Under Construction
Housing is going up fast in Horry County (163.8 permitted units per 10,000 residents in 2025). This page covers Horry County internet marketing one channel at a time, in the order the county's own numbers suggest. You can start for $495 a month, with no contract and no setup fee attached.
Movers arriving
163.8 New Homes per 10,000 Residents: Movers Keep Arriving in Horry County
Horry County issued permits for 163.8 housing units per 10,000 residents in 2025, ahead of 99% of counties. Construction brings movers, and movers have no loyalties: the businesses that show up clearly in search, on Maps and in ads get the first calls.
Residents have been arriving: 13.2% more than in 2020. New employer locations are opening quickly (13.4% more than in 2017, ahead of 90% of counties). What does it mean for digital marketing for Horry County small businesses? In the ranking further down, Meta Ads on Facebook and Instagram and Google Ads come out ahead of the other five channels.
Horry County has 397,478 residents, a $68,684 median household income and 10,313 employer locations, which together employ 118,467 people. That is the backdrop for every number that follows.
300,472 of Horry County's residents (76% of the county) live beyond the edge of every named city, town or census-designated place. Their searches regularly skip a town name and ask for something nearby instead.
Anyone comparing an internet marketing company in Horry County should ask how it would split work across channels for a market that shows 163.8 permitted homes per 10,000 residents; the table further down shows how GetPhound would read the same data.
Six measures
Inside the 79.0: How Horry County Compares
Local Online Reach Index
79.0/ 100
Sits at 56 among 1,822 counties that clear 20,000 residents, and 54 among the 400 markets on this site. The score rises with rivals, new openings, towns, household income, spread and size. How the score is made
The Local Online Reach Index (LORI) scores every county from 0 to 100 on how much ground a small business has to cover to be found: how many employer locations compete for each resident, how fast new ones open, how many towns and how much household income there are to reach, how spread out people are and how big the market is. Horry County lands at 79.0, which is more demanding than most.
Under the headline number, Horry County turns out to be a county adding residents at an above-average rate; it is also a county where new employer locations have been opening quickly. The bars place each measure among all of those counties.
- Resident gain or loss since the 2020 Census +13.2% Brisk pace: 99th percentile
- Typical household income (2023 est.) $68,684 Near the middle: 56th percentile
- Businesses with employees per 1,000 people 25.9 Dense: 77th percentile
- Employer locations opened net of closings, 2017 to 2022 +13.4% Brisk pace: 90th percentile
- Named towns above 2,500 people 5 Lots of places: 80th percentile
- Outside-town population share 76% Spread out: 84th percentile
- 2025 housing permits per 10,000 people 163.8 Busy permitting: 99th percentile
- Share of tiny employer locations (under 5 employees) 58.4% Near the middle: 50th percentile
The percentile bars line Horry County up with all 1,822 counties above the 20,000-resident mark. Inputs come from business counts in County Business Patterns, 2017 and 2022, the 2023 Census population estimates, plus SAIPE income estimates for 2023, with the Building Permits Survey for new homes.
Where residents live
The Communities Inside Horry County
The biggest places in Horry County by resident count. Customers name their town when they search, so each row is a separate audience for local pages, listings and ads.
| No. | Place | 2023 population estimate | Share of county |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Myrtle Beach | 39,697 | 10% |
| 2 | Conway | 27,985 | 7% |
| 3 | North Myrtle Beach | 20,303 | 5% |
| 4 | Surfside Beach | 4,321 | 1% |
| 5 | Loris | 2,749 | 1% |
| 6 | Aynor | 1,051 | 0% |
Population figures are Census estimates, and each named city, town or census-designated place is eligible, so a city shared with another county is listed for its Horry County side alone.
Myrtle Beach leads with 10% of residents, yet 4 other places clear 2,500, so a plan for Horry County has to reach beyond its biggest town.
The ranking
Digital Marketing in Horry County: The Order We Would Work In
We score seven channels with the county's own figures (towns for local pages, local-service density for Maps, household income for Bing, advice-led categories for AI search and so on) and sort them.
| Channel by rank | Where it sits | Reading of Horry County's data |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Meta Ads on Facebook and Instagram | Begin with this | 397,478 residents and 17.1 restaurants and salons per 10,000. Meta targets by location (including a radius around the business), age and interests. Three platforms total $2,295 a month. |
| 2. Google Ads | First move | Competition is thick (25.9 locations per 1,000 residents, +13.4% since 2017), which is when Google Ads earns attention. Paid Ads opens at $895 a month per platform. |
| 3. RankGuarantee™ local landing pages | Layer in after | 5 places above 2,500 residents, and one landing page per service in each. Silver builds 25 a month, about 5 per town. |
| 4. AI search (GEO) | Add next | 1,240 law, dental, medical, real estate, insurance and accounting locations (31.2 per 10,000 residents), categories people put to assistants. GEO is in every Organic Growth plan. |
| 5. Google Maps and your Business Profile | Layer in after | 779 trade, repair, cleaning and landscaping locations (19.6 per 10,000 residents) plus 678 restaurants and salons. Nearby rivals sit side by side on the map. |
| 6. Custom WordPress website | Hold for now | 58.4% of employer locations have under five staff, and the count is +13.4% since 2017. Most sites cost $3,500 alone; Gold ($2,495 a month) includes a managed custom site. |
| 7. Bing search ads | Later, if needed | Median household income of $68,684 tops 56% of counties. GetPhound describes Bing's audience as older, higher-income and desktop-heavy; two platforms cost $1,595 a month. |
The order is a judgment from Census figures, not a prediction; plan prices come from getphound.com/pricing. Scoring method
Meta Ads (Facebook and Instagram) come first here because of audience size: 397,478 residents and a consumer field of 678 restaurants and salons. Campaigns can promote offers and events and are managed month to month. Google Ads leads in Horry County: 10,313 employer locations, +13.4% more since 2017, mean rivals are many or still arriving, and paid search lets a business appear while organic pages are being built. A platform opens at $895 a month, and the plan brings landing pages, tracking and a dedicated account manager.
RankGuarantee™ pages come next, at $495 a month on their own or bundled into every Organic Growth plan. AI search work follows inside any Organic Growth plan, tested monthly across ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews. Google Maps and the Business Profile are the second wave, covered by Organic Growth. The website ranks last on relative strength, but with 58.4% of locations tiny it is still worth a look later. Bing ranks last despite $68,684 median income since the other channels score higher; it remains an option once Google is running.
None of this predicts leads, rankings or timing; it is a reading of public data to decide where internet marketing for Horry County businesses should begin.
The business mix
Horry County's Business Mix: 10,313 Employer Locations in Fifteen Categories
Where a category is crowded, standing out takes more work; where it is thin, the same effort goes further.
| No. | Business type | Sites with staff | Per 10,000, vs. typical | Since 2017 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Sit-down restaurants | 578 | 14.5 (2.2x) | +2.3% |
| 2 | Real estate offices | 501 | 12.6 (5.1x) | +64.8% |
| 3 | Physician practices | 257 | 6.5 (1.6x) | -1.2% |
| 4 | Law firms | 197 | 5.0 (1.7x) | +2.6% |
| 5 | Landscapers | 195 | 4.9 (1.5x) | +16.8% |
| 6 | Plumbing and HVAC firms | 158 | 4.0 (1.2x) | +0.6% |
| 7 | Insurance agencies | 138 | 3.5 (1.0x) | +16.9% |
| 8 | Home remodelers | 130 | 3.3 (1.1x) | +41.3% |
| 9 | Cleaning firms | 120 | 3.0 (2.0x) | +31.9% |
| 10 | Beauty salons | 100 | 2.5 (1.6x) | +25% |
| 11 | Dental offices | 90 | 2.3 (0.8x) | +1.1% |
| 12 | Electricians | 84 | 2.1 (0.9x) | +31.3% |
| 13 | Auto repair shops | 71 | 1.8 (0.7x) | +1.4% |
| 14 | Accounting firms | 57 | 1.4 (1.2x) | -6.6% |
| 15 | Roofers | 21 | 0.5 (0.9x) | -25% |
Fifteen categories, most numerous first. The multiple in brackets divides Horry County's locations per 10,000 residents by the median county's figure, so anything under 1.0x is lighter than typical. County Business Patterns, 2017 and 2022. It counts employer locations only, so sole proprietors without staff are missing. How we count
Restaurants are the most numerous employer locations in Horry County: 578, followed by real estate offices (501) and physician practices (257). Denser than the typical county: real estate offices at 5.1x and restaurants at 2.2x. Customers choosing among them face the longest lists of local names. Auto repair shops are comparatively scarce (0.7x), a gap a well-presented business could fill. Real estate offices grew fastest, +64.8% since 2017 to 501 locations. The count of physician practices has fallen 1.2% since 2017.
Comparable markets
Which Counties Look Like Horry County?
Look-alikes help show what a similar market looks like in the numbers, a handy reference when you size up the field.
| Close match | LORI | People | Typical household income | Net new employer sites since 2017 | Employer sites per 1,000 residents |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Horry County, SC (the page you are reading) | 79.0 | 397,478 | $68,684 | +13.4% | 25.9 |
| Lexington County, SC | 77.5 | 309,528 | $76,559 | +10.7% | 23.5 |
| Greenville County, SC | 82.7 | 558,036 | $76,281 | +13.5% | 27.2 |
| St. Tammany Parish, LA | 78.8 | 275,583 | $78,484 | +8.3% | 25.4 |
| Sussex County, DE | 81.4 | 263,509 | $78,092 | +13.4% | 24.1 |
| Manatee County, FL | 81.4 | 441,095 | $79,213 | +19.3% | 24.7 |
| Ottawa County, MI | 77.7 | 303,372 | $81,772 | +10.3% | 22.3 |
Matches come from the 400 markets on this site: the six whose size, income, score, business density, openings, towns and spread sit nearest to this county. Sources are the same as in the snapshot above.
Across all seven traits, Lexington County, SC is the closest match (score 77.5, against 79.0 for Horry County) and Ottawa County, MI (77.7) the loosest of the six. Resemblance in numbers does not mean the same results.
Housing permits
Permits in Horry County Hold Steady at About 6,511 Units a Year
Each bar is the number of housing units cleared for construction in that year. Data: the Building Permits Survey; the last two bars compare matching January to August totals. A permit is a plan to build, not a finished home.
6,511 units were permitted in 2025 against 6,970 in 2021, a -7% change and 163.8 per 10,000 residents. The January to August comparison runs 4,423 units in 2026 and 4,827 in 2025, a change of -8.4%.
Among the categories tied to housing, real estate offices (5.1x typical) are the busiest in Horry County. A household that has just moved has no habits yet, so being easy to find on Maps, in search and in AI answers counts for more.
What it costs
What Internet Marketing Services in Horry County Costs
Prices are fixed per month, with no contract and no setup fee, and one business per category per city. Here, Silver's 25 pages a month across 5 towns is 5.0 per town. Get our CEO's view on which plan fits.
Break-even check
What Would Digital Marketing in Horry County Have to Earn?
Choose a plan, enter your own customer value, margin and close rate, and see how many customers a month it has to bring in. Nothing here is a forecast for Horry County, nor for any other county.
FAQ
Questions Owners Ask About Internet Marketing Services in Horry County
How much does Horry County internet marketing cost per month?
Billing is monthly and flat, with no setup fee and no contract: $495 buys RankGuarantee™ pages, $1,495, $2,495 or $3,495 buys Silver, Gold or Platinum, and Paid Ads climbs from $895 to $1,595 to $2,295 as platforms are added. For Horry County, where the notable fact is 163.8 permitted homes per 10,000 residents, the lightest sensible start is Meta Ads as a single platform at $895 a month, and the rest can be added later.
In what order would you work the channels in Horry County?
Our reading of the numbers puts Meta Ads on Facebook and Instagram and Google Ads at the front for Horry County, with RankGuarantee™ local landing pages as the next layer. The table above gives the data behind each rank.
Is it possible to begin small in Horry County and grow the plan?
Yes: month-to-month terms let a business in Horry County start with Meta Ads as a single platform at $895 a month and add channels as results justify. Paid Ads steps from $895 to $1,595 to $2,295 with each platform, and Organic Growth steps from $1,495 to $2,495 to $3,495.
Which counties look most like Horry County for online marketing?
Lexington County, SC (77.5), Greenville County, SC (82.7) and St. Tammany Parish, LA (78.8) are the three closest, against 79.0 for Horry County. All six look-alikes are listed with their scores above.
Is Horry County big enough for Meta Ads on Facebook and Instagram?
Meta Ads target by location, including a radius around the business, as well as by age and interests, and can retarget people who visited a website. Horry County has 397,478 residents and 678 restaurants and salons, so the audience is large and the consumer field is busy. A single-platform Paid Ads plan is $895 a month.
Does new construction in Horry County change who to market to?
Horry County permitted 6,511 housing units in 2025, 163.8 per 10,000 residents, more than 99% of counties. New households have no favorite plumber, dentist or roofer yet, which makes Maps listings, reviews and ads work harder.
Should a business in Horry County buy ChatGPT ads?
ChatGPT ads are a separate paid test, and they are not GEO. Only some users see them (those on the Free and lower-priced plans), they are labeled as sponsored, and they are bought in a self-serve Ads Manager that targets by country or context instead of keywords. Measurement is still maturing and ads do not change the answers. With 1,240 law, dental, medical, real estate, insurance and accounting locations in Horry County, we would treat it as an experiment after the core channels, not a replacement for them.
Is the business field in Horry County growing?
Employer locations went from 9,092 in 2017 to 10,313 in 2022, a rise of 13.4%, quicker than 90% of counties. New openings mean new rivals who are building pages and listings from scratch, so standing still costs ground.
Nearby
If You Also Serve Customers Near Horry County
The closest neighbors to Horry County on this site, by distance between county centers:
- Marion County, SC, 25 miles out, 28,508 residents, reach score 26.9
- Columbus County, NC: 50,121 residents, scoring 37.3, 31 miles away
- Georgetown County, SC, 39 miles out, 65,731 residents, reach score 70.3
- Dillon County, SC, 40 miles out, 27,698 residents, reach score 26.7
Get in Touch
Talk Through Online Marketing in Horry County With Our CEO
Bring your services, your service area and a rough budget, and we will go through Horry County's numbers together and price the first step. You can reach our CEO's calendar through 610-825-4363 or hello@getphound.com.