It moves you out of the auction entirely
A homeowner who types your company name has already decided. They are not comparing you against four paid results, and the click that brings them in costs a fraction of a competitive category click.
During a demand spike that difference stops being a saving and becomes the whole strategy, because the competitive click may not be available at any sensible price.
Transplants build their shortlist from scratch
Someone who arrived last year has no inherited providers and no neighbor with a decade-old recommendation. They assemble a mental shortlist from whatever they have been exposed to, then search it when they need it.
Getting onto that list before the need arises is far cheaper than fighting for attention at the moment of need, and in this metro the pool of people building fresh shortlists is unusually large.
Frequency inside a small area beats reach across the corridor
A budget spread from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs buys one impression per household and produces nothing. The same budget concentrated on a few suburbs buys enough repetition to be remembered.
Most local businesses optimize for how many people saw the ad rather than how many would recognise the name a month later. Only the second one pays.