For the same reason any store hires any agency: because they do the specific work you need. We work only on online stores, our prices are published, and the exchange rate usually works in your favour.
It is a fair question and it deserves a direct answer rather than a marketing one. Nothing about search work for an American store requires an American agency. The tools, the platforms and the methods are identical.
What matters is whether the agency has worked on stores like yours. That is a much harder thing to find than a nearby postcode.
What Should Canadian Brands Know Before Selling South?
That the American market is larger, more competitive and unforgiving of a half prepared entry. The stores that succeed treat it as a new market rather than as extra traffic on an existing site.
The mistakes are consistent. Prices shown in the wrong currency. Duty and shipping revealed at checkout. Canadian spelling and product terms on pages meant for American buyers. Reviews that are all from another country. No local mentions, no local links, and no reason for an American buyer to choose an unfamiliar foreign store.
Each of these is fixable and none of them are fixed by simply adding a country section to a website. They need content written for that market, signals that identify it as being for that market, and a period of building the mentions and reviews that make a new store credible there.
Budget for six to twelve months before it produces reliably, and treat anything sooner as a bonus.
How Do You Handle Time Zones and Working Hours?
We work Eastern time, which overlaps with every American time zone for at least part of the day. For Pacific clients we set an afternoon standing call.
Eastern time is the most convenient base for North American work. There is a full working overlap with Central and Mountain, and a solid afternoon overlap with Pacific.
In practice the number of things that need a live conversation is small. Most communication is written, which suits everyone and creates a record that a call does not.
Urgent matters, such as something breaking during a migration, get handled immediately regardless of the hour, because a store losing traffic does not wait for office hours.
Do You Charge American Clients in Canadian Dollars?
Prices are published in Canadian dollars and can be billed in either currency. For an American client the effect of the exchange rate is usually favourable.
Our three levels are 2,500, 4,500 and 8,000 Canadian dollars a month. Converted, that puts specialist ecommerce work at a lower cost than an equivalent American agency for the same scope.
We say this plainly rather than hiding it, because it is a real advantage and pretending otherwise would be strange. It is not the main reason to choose us, but it is a genuine one.
What Is Different About Search in the United States Compared With Canada?
Volume, competition and specialisation. Searches are roughly ten times larger, the competition is far deeper, and there is usually already a store devoted to exactly your niche.
The larger volume is the attraction and the deeper competition is the cost. A search term that supports a small business in Canada may support a dozen well funded specialists in the United States, each with years of accumulated authority.
That specialisation is the most important difference in practice. In Canada a store covering a broad category can often do well because nobody has covered it narrowly. In the United States, someone usually has, and competing with them broadly does not work.
The response that does work is to be narrower still, or to be better on the specific questions the specialists handle poorly. That requires research into the actual market rather than an assumption that what worked at home will scale.
Regional differences add another layer. Terms, spellings, sizing conventions, seasonal timing and even which product categories exist vary across the country, and a page written for one region can read as foreign in another.
Which American Stores Are the Best Fit?
Mid sized stores with real catalogues that are too large for a freelancer and too small to be interesting to a big agency. That gap is where we do our best work.
Below a certain size, a store is better served by a good freelancer or by doing the work themselves with a plan. Above a certain size, an organisation needs an agency with a large team and a formal structure, and we would not pretend otherwise.
In between sits a large group of stores doing real revenue with real catalogues, who need specialist attention and cannot get it. A freelancer cannot cover the range of work. A large agency assigns them a junior and a template.
That is the group we built this for, and it is worth being explicit about it so nobody spends time on a call that was never going to fit.